100 Books in a year. 31 - 35.

 Good evening / morning / whatever. You join me in the middle of a mighty journey through a hundred books in one year. Are there even that many books? Turns out, yes. There's loads of them. Better get on with it.

Here's books 31 - 35.

We Solve Murders - Richard Osman

I've very much enjoyed Osman's 'Thursday Murder Club' books. I found them delightful, whimsical tales, glowing with humanity and intrigue. Me and everyone else in the entire world, it seems. Well, except for professional contrarians who sniff haughtily at the idea of anyone enjoying themselves. They don't like the things everyone else likes, and boy do they love telling people about it.

Well, prepare to welcome me, cynics, to your miserable parties, because I didn't like 'We Solve Murders' anywhere near as much. Which annoys me, because now I feel like one of those people who hear a mention of Coldplay and simply have to let you know how much they don't enjoy them. I'm one of them, and I have to hang out with them, and join in when they sneer at anyone who smiles in public.

Perhaps it will help if I tell you what I did like. Respect to Osman for trying out a new bunch of characters, and expanding the scope of the storytelling. The people we meet are interesting and well written, and there's that eye for the small details of life that makes the whole thing relatable, even when people are chasing assassins on planes. There are several moments that made me laugh out loud.

But - and this is more of a me thing, I'll grant you - I didn't have the first clue what was going on. There were far too many characters, many of whom existed in completely different spheres of experience to each other. Their relationships were hard to discern. Deliberately so, of course - this is a murder mystery. But I couldn't quite get a grasp on what motivated them, and why it mattered. Mysteries are fine, but I need to know the difference between information that's deliberately hidden, and information I simply haven't understood. So, while it was fun to watch the characters chatting about Twixes and exchanging droll repartee, I was left being quite glad to finish the book. 

I'm sorry. Please don't make me stay with the cynics. I'll behave.

The Machine Stops - E.M. Forster

I'm going to be completely honest and tell you that I read this because it's short. I googled 'what are the best short books', and this was one of them. It turns out that reading a hundred books is fine if you're a fast reader, but I'm absolutely not. My brain, when reading, is very easily distracted. It's like a dog straining at its lead. Yes, I know you want me to go that way, but I've smelled some very interesting wee on that lamppost.

So, it's short. Very short. Too short? It's definitely a book, in that it constitutes a complete, printed object with a cover and a spine and the like, but it feels a bit like maybe it's a short story actually. I flew through it in no time. As a result my stupid brain had no opportunity to pull desperately away, shouting 'This is about computers and my first computer was a ZX Spectrum and that's when I knew Angela Rhodes and she was mean to me in the library and remember when I use to go to the library every week and why don't I read more books and oh I'm meant to be reading now aren't I, where was I?"

The book appears to be about how we shouldn't let machines take over every aspect of our lives and rob us of our humanity. Astonishingly, it was written over 100 years ago, but feels incredibly pertinent now. Which means either a) Forster was a genius, with an incredible eye for the foundations of human nature or b) Forster was a time traveller who used his powers to make a quick buck in the short story market.

Envy as Sickness - Jody Lancaster

Jody is a friend of mine. He likes to spend his time annoying me by working hard at his creative endeavours, while I lay around pawing at unfinished projects and eating biscuits. Here we find him finishing and publishing a novel, with the exclusive aim of making me feel bad and lazy. 

Well, joke's on you, Lancaster, because I read it anyway, and since I started this '100 books in a year' project, reading counts as research. So you've helped me do something useful and productive after all. And if there are any good ideas in there, I'm definitely going to steal them. So who's the smartest of us now? 

Yes, alright. It's still him. He's written an intelligent and thoughtful book, throbbing with peculiar ideas and vibrant imagery. Best of all, the chapters are really short. I mean, like, I don't think any of them are more than three pages long. I can't overstate how much this contributed to the pleasure I had reading it. The feeling of achievement was awesome. Another chapter done! I hadn't even finished that biscuit!

I don't want him to get too cocky, though. So here's something I didn't get on with. As with the Osman book mentioned above, I wasn't always quite clear on why things mattered. I've come to realise that this is a big part of how I enjoy story. I need to know the stakes, and feel them strongly reinforced. Not every novel is bothered with this, of course, and some of the best works of literature leave me cold as a result. And so I sometimes found myself a little detatched from the - often crazy and peculiar - events of the story. 

However. On the whole, this was a good read. The prose style is excellent and there's an enjoyable madness to the nightmare world he's created. I would, of course, have preferred him to have written an embarrassing, boring failure of a thing, which I could bring up every time we met as a kind of weapon to beat him with. But we can't have everything.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish - Douglas Adams

My wander through the Hitch Hiker books continues. And this one is odd. I remember it completely phasing me as a teenager. We seem to have drifted a long way from the madcap antics of the first couple of books, and this is, tonally, a very different experience.

It's a very slender book, and seems in many ways unfinished. The main plot follows Arthur Dent and his new romance, and that's all Adams seems to be interested in. Then there are sporadic attempts to hit other notes, with Ford Prefect and spaceships and hints at the wider galactic picture. But these feel perfunctory, with little heart or feeling. Indeed, there's a slight sense of contempt to these sections, as if Adams is letting us know how grown up he is to be talking about romance, and we should really be leaving the silly spaceships behind. 

And maybe that's fine. The romance stuff is very lovely, and there's a sincerity and lyricism to Arthur's homecoming that shows a different side to Adams's creativity. But what a shame that he didn't just lean right into the romance, and have confidence in its power. Or, failing that, write something new, rather than this odd beast. 

Outlining Your Novel - KM Weiland

I went to see Jody - the friend/author mentioned a couple of books back - to drink wine and talk about writing. I spent a gleeful half hour outlining the shortcomings of his book, only later admitting that it was generally quite good and I really liked the way he described stuff. 

He listened to my thoughts in the way that a father might listen to his 7 year old son's criticisms of the way the house was decorated - had he considered more pictures of dinosaurs and spaceships? What about knocking through to next door to make the living room bigger? Then, when I'd calmed down, he asked how my book was going. Well can you imagine anything more rude? He knew I couldn't plot things, and that I'd cry if he brought it up. 

Rather graciously, he recommended this book, on how to plot novels. And it turns out it's a thing of wonder. I've read quite a lot of books on story structure, and there are some really good ones out there. So I'd more or less discarded the idea of reading any more. How much more could there be to say? 

It turns out that there is plenty more to say. This is an immensely practical book which matches theory with good, solid advice on how to make things happen. The techniques are fairly simple and I adopted a number of them immediately, and to good effect. It's well written, too, with a friendly, accessible style that doesn't waste time trying to impress you with the author's own amazing skillset. It just gets on with it. 

The moral, then, is that if you have a talented friend, get alongside them. Steal their ideas. Pretend they were your ideas. If they come to you saying, "Hey, those were my ideas," simply say, "Are there, really, any new ideas in the world?" And then leg it. 

See you next time for books 36 - 40.

Or you can look back at last time - books 26 - 30.