It really is very good but I think they've misjudged the trailer. This isn't really a gangster thriller or a fighting movie - it is actually a reimagining/reworking of Of Mice and Men.

A petty criminal, Danny (Stephen Graham), cares for a giant of a man with learning difficulties, Joseph (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). When Danny gets in trouble with a local crime boss he persuades Joseph to take part in a series of illegal cage fights in order to pay off his debt.  OK, so far it sounds like a gangster/fighting flick, I grant you, but what has been left out of the trailer is the sub plot about Joseph falling in love with a young woman, also with learning difficulties, played by Maxine Peake.

I say 'learning difficulties' as I have no idea what the acceptable terminology is these days. Special needs? Luckily the film is down-to-earth and honest and doesn't pussyfoot around like I am. The characters speak as they would in real life, which does result in one very funny line which everyone in the audience laughed at but wouldn't dare repeat outside of the cinema*.

The subplot is handled with skill and care. The actors all turn in fine performances, especially Stephen Graham as the quick-witted but ultimately self-destructive central character and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as the simple giant, Joseph. Their relationship, as you discover more and more about it, it utterly believable and is the central spine of the whole film. It's not a life changer, and falters when a few well-worn cliches find their way into the script, but it is, overall, a fine piece of work and well worth checking out if you get the chance.

*"Two mongs don't make a right."

These are the colums to the left and right of the blog where I chuck all sorts of shite that I can't be bothered to write about at length here in the middle.

Allow me to elaborate.

I get sent lots of books to review, 5-10 a week on average, and when they arrive I log them in the New Arrivals column. I cannot possibly read them all but what I promise to do is have a gander at everything I receive, sample a decent chunk and then post my initial thoughts on the Quick Flicks section. These are not proper reviews, and shouldn't be considered as such, but they may well point you in the direction of some interesting books to check out. Or ones to avoid. All a matter of opinion, and certainly an inexact science, but I do want to give everything I receive a fair crack. The stuff I really like goes onto the To Be Read pile and will receive a full review in due course.

When I go to the movies, watch a DVD or see something good on the telly, I post a review in an area called Popcorn Moment. That is a rather silly name, perhaps I should call it something else?

Blogs & Links is self-explanatory but I woud like to point out that I only list the very best blogs and websites here. None of your old goat. If it is on there then it is a consistently excellent place to visit and almost certainly better than hanging around here.

I have been fortunate enough to interview some very interesting writers in the five or six years that this blog has been up and running. The pick of these can be found in the area I like to call Interviews.

Currently Reading is the book I am currently reading. Now Playing is the music I am playing now. There are reading recommendations from my two kids and I will also reveal what tome the wife has her nose in at any given time. Oh, and watch out for Hidden Gems where I attempt to highlight some lesser-known books that I think are rather splendid.

I have probably missed a few but I am sure you get the idea. I try to update these areas regularly, some of them every day, so even if you can't find anything of interest in this middle bit there might be something tasty on the side. So to speak.

Happy browsing!

Now that last year is, well, so last year, I am not blogging there as often but I do still post story reviews now and then.

There are a few more up there now actually, if you care to pop over.

It contains swearing.

And references to onanism.

I love it.

As opening pages go, this one is pretty impressive. Taken from Brief Lives: Fyodor Dostoevsky by Anthony Briggs.

I enjoyed it a great deal. It made it into my top ten of 2011. So I decided to read the book.

It is very different.

But here's the thing. Usually when I read a book after having seen the film (definitely the wrong way round, I know) I end up vaguely disatisfied with both. The book is somewhat tainted by the images that have stuck with me from the celluloid version and the movie goes down in my estimation because of all the stuff it has left out.

Barney's Version is the first time I can recall both being enhanced be the whole experience.

The book is narrated by Barney Panofsky, in his later years, as he looks back on his three marriages, his trial for murder, and the numerous events and characters that combined to make his life story. Problem is, Barney is succumbing to Alzheimer's and his memory isn't what it once was. Here we have an unreliable narrator who has a note from his doctor excusing such behaviour. He wants to set the record straight but he struggles to remember the name of the thing you use to strain spaghetti, let alone more important details. This frustrates him.

Fortunately for the reader, Barney's memoirs have been annotated by his son, Michael, who considerately corrects his father's memory lapses, errors of chronology or stuff he just gets plain wrong through a series of unobtrusive, and often amusing, footnotes.

I don't need to tell you much about the plot - the trailer above is a pretty accurate summary - but it is interesting to note the many differences between book and movie. Mordecai Richler's novel is set a good twenty years before the film adaptation, and the latter omits/conflates/combines several characters and plot points. Barney in the book is vague and rambling (now) looking back on someone with wit and charm (then). In the film we see Barney (mostly) in real time, with the older, less coherent version only really appearing at the end. These are quite major differences but, it seems, I didn't really mind. Instead I found myself impressed at how the screenwriter (Michael Konyves) had managed to carve an entertaining and moving two hours out of a complex and convoluted novel.

What the book and film share is a cracking cast of characters, a leading man who is both a complete arse and a sympathetic romantic, and a painfully accurate portrayal of how love actually works in real life - all its problems and quirks. I am grateful to the movie for introducing me to an author I had not previously come across, despite his being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1990 for Solomon Gursky Was Here.

I would recommend both of Barney's Versions. Up to you which order you go for.

The Magic Place by Julianna Barwick.

I found it utterly charming. And Michelle Williams really does light up the screen every time she walks into shot. Just saying.

Jonathan Lee is the author of the excellent debut novel Who is Mr Satoshi?. He has appeared at two Firestation Book Swaps. He has answered some questions today.

SP: To save me the trouble, can you pitch my readers Who is Mr Satoshi? in a few sentences?

JL: Foss, a once-famous photographer, has withdrawn from the world - no more pictures, no more lovers, and only the occasional excursion outside his London flat. Then his mother dies, and he finds among her belongings a package addressed to someone called ‘Mr Satoshi’. Who is this guy? What did he mean to his mother? Why did she never mention him? These questions gnaw at Foss until, resigned to the the role of reluctant detective, he goes off in search of answers.

That’s the basic story. But the 80,000-word version has all sorts of fun features and behind-the-scenes extras. You know: characters, scenes, all sorts of stuff.

SP: You know that it reminded me a bit of Haruki Murakami, but without the magical realism. I am guessing you are a fan of Japanese fiction but who other than Murakami have you enjoyed reading?

JL: I love Murakami’s books. But even if I’d wanted to, I’m not sure I could ever have pulled off the talking cats, the blokes in sheep costumes, the unusually-earlobed girls that are Murakami’s stock in trade. The reason the magical realism bits work so well in his better books is, I think, because they act as a counterbalance to his other writerly obsession - the careful, highly detailed depictions of the minutae of everyday life. I’m more interested in this second aspect, the realist side of Murakami, the desire to catalogue everydayness and explore the loneliness and comedy inherent in certain daily tasks - pasta-making, ironing, tooth-brushing. I learnt from Murakami that this was a way of getting inside a very isolated character’s head. Foss is shut off from the wider world, so for him small household rituals are imbued with an exaggerated significance; they shape his days, his life. 

My book is partly set in Japan, and I ended up discovering quite a lot of Japanese authors during the writing of it. Among my favourites is Yoko Ogawa. She shares some of Murakami’s attentiveness to small details. Like John Updike, whose Rabbit novels I’m obsessed with, she has this ability to ‘give the mundane it’s beautiful due’.  Martin Amis has pointed out that Updike seemed to know everything - he could write a convincing, beautiful page of prose about the finer points of car engines, or his second wife’s pubic hair, or the currency markets. Yoko Ogawa has the same kind of forensic, all-seeing eye. She’s also not afraid of what now seem to be commonly considered as ‘genre’ attributes: suspense, plot, mystery. I wish a greater number of ‘literary’ authors embraced these elements of fiction-writing. I wrote as much in a blog post a while back and much later, after the Booker debate blew up, got some hate-mail in response. People seemed to think I was saying that readability is everything. Clearly it’s not everything, but we are talking about books here. We’re in trouble if the fundamentals of storytelling get confused with cheap tricks. Sonorous similes are nice, but I’m partial to the odd bit of plot too. There’s still a degree of snobbiness in literary circles - a sense in which the phrase ‘page-turner‘ is more condemnation than compliment. 

SP: Have you been to Japan? If so, chuck us an anecdote. If not, explain yourself.

 JL: Man (me) walks into a bar and sees a middle-aged Japanese guy drinking beer from a bottle. On the stool next to him, this man’s 5-year-old son is swigging frothy brown liquid from a similar bottle labelled ‘KidsBeer’. That’s Japan - a place of constant weirdness. I lived in Tokyo for six months and I was as confused when I left as when I arrived. I loved it.

SP: The idea of a man who is uncomfortable in crowds going off to a strange country on what might well be a wild goose chase is most compelling. Did you always know if he would find what he was looking for, or did you decide as you wrote it?

JL: If you boil the plot of Who Is Mr Satoshi? down, what you have is a quest story. The character goes in search of something. To use that awful creative-writing-class phrase, he’s on a journey. But the disappointing thing about a lot of quest stories is the element of anticlimax. Either the quest fails and a suitably ambiguous ending is tacked on, or you meet the object of the quest and find that this long-heralded moment of confrontation is hugely deflating.

I always felt, even in the early planning stages of the novel, that it would be a cop-out not to at least attempt to describe a meeting with this Mr Satoshi character I’d invented. I had to at least try and pull off an ending that had emotional impact. Whether I succeeded or not is not for me to judge. (This is author-speak for Yes! I succeeded! Tell me I did! Tell me I did!)

SP: Some questions about the mechanics of writing. Do you write longhand, or on a computer? Do you have a special place to write? Bang out a draft and then refine or fiddle as you go along? Fast or slow?

 JL: Computer. I have to write and rewrite sentences so many times that longhand would be unbearable. I know lots of writers swear by longhand, but the idea fills me with horror. Moleskine’s global profits would instantly double.

I try to get to an advanced stage in a given draft before succumbing to the temptation to go back and fiddle with things on the sentence-to-sentence level, but it rarely works out like that. I get up in the morning and I can’t resist looking back over what I did the day before, and dealing with the fact that it’s awful. It’s a matter of patching up my self-esteem before I can progress to the next chapter. When things are going well, I can get a couple of thousand words done in a day. But I’ll probably have to rewrite each of the sentences comprising that 2,000 words twenty times before I’m in a position to convince readers that English is my first language (which, believe it or not, it is). Then I’ll delete all the words and start again.

SP: I have actually met a Mr Satoshi. He writes and illustrates children's books. Do you know him?

 JL: Is this the famous Satoshi Kitamura? I haven’t met him, but a few people have mentioned his name. I actually took the name ‘Satoshi’ from a barber I visited when I lived in Japan. He had a small dog called Lennon Two. Lennon One had died in suspicious circumstances. My mum also told me recently that I had a best friend at playgroup called Satoshi, a Japanese toddler who I apparently hung out with constantly for about a year of my childhood. That freaked me out a bit - no memory of it whatsoever. 

SP: Satoshi was #9 in my Books of the Year 2010. You next book is coming in 2012, what is it about and do you think you could get to #8 this time?

JL: I’ve got my eye on the #7 spot. The book is a dark office comedy set in the City.

SP: Heard any good music recently?

JL: I recently discovered Lykke Li. Saw her live at the Roundhouse a couple of months ago, and she was quirky, weird, a fantastic performer. I’m also still playing my favourite album of last year quite a bit - High Violet by The National.

SP: And before you go can you recommend a book we should all be reading?

JL: You're an Animal, Viskovitz by Alessandro Boffa. It’s a series of love stories (or maybe anti-love stories) narrated by different animals. A pair of parrots split up when their marriage gets bogged down by repetitious dialogue. A scorpion is unlucky in love because in the throes of passion his tail, unbidden by his brain, smashes through his partner’s skull. It’s genius. Sadly it’s not available on Kindle. So everyone should download Who is Mr Satoshi? and read that whilst they wait for the postman to deliver the Boffa paperback

A chap called Steve Wasserman is going around recording people reading something they love. He has asked me to read something from the Me and My Short Stories project. I am currently pondering which story to select.

You can find out more, and also get involved, just over here.

The Last Goodbye by The Kills. I am not a particular fan of this band but I found myself liking this quite a bit.

(For the uninitiated or the amnesiacs, this is a monthly book event that involves readings from the authors, no questions about books or writing but lots and lots of baked goods).

Joining myself and Marie Phillips on stage will be novelists Nicola May and Chris Wakling.

Nicola is the author of Working it Out, in which her heroine is sacked just before Christmas and decides to try out twelve jobs in twelve months until she finds her dream one. But will she find her dream man in the process?

What I Did is the latest novel by Chris Wakling. It has had fellow authors such as Emma Donoghue and previous Book Swapper John Harding falling over each other to praise it. Here is one of those book trailer things for the book.

As always, the evening kicks off at 7.45pm and it costs a fiver on the door. Bake a cake and you will be let in for free. More details here.

I went on a blind date with Zelda Rhiando once. Sort of. At least, that's what I'll tell everyone when she is a big literary sensation. We first met in our teens/early 20s and are now a lot older. She is a very talented individual with a cracking novel under her belt and several bestselling apps and popular websites to her name.

Now that her novel, Caposcripti, is available from all good bookshops I have persuaded her to come on here and answer a few questions.

SP: Tell us about Caposcripti in a couple of sentences (mainly to save me from typing up an explanation myself!)

ZR: A photographer stalks the streets of London looking to capture subjects for his terrifying experiments. An explorer, lost in the Amazon 150 years earlier, is on a quest to discover a language lost since the dawn of civilisation.

Separated by time, they are ruthlessly united in their obsession - to discover the code of life.

SP: The book has had a rather long gestation I believe?

ZR: Yes - it's been a while coming! I first had the idea in the late nineties, and then went and researched it in 1999 in South America. Then followed a period of intense writing when a lot of the jungle scenes were created, and an outline of the whole plot. I was working on various digital projects at the same time, so writing was sometimes compartmentalised, and I put it away for a little while. Then in 2007 I decided to take a fresh look and got in into complete draft shape. It then went through a couple of rounds with a really good editor [Scott: modesty prevents me from revealing the identity of said editor] who made structural suggestions that really helped the book take shape, and resulted in a finished manuscript. Sadly due to economic woes, the publishing offer fell through, and nothing happened with the book for a year and a half.

Meanwhile, I'd begun working with Penguin Digital - developing enhanced digital books and apps as part of their move into digital publishing. This brought me into a wide range of formats, and gave me a rather eye-opening glimpse into the world of publishing - as well as a good understanding of the end-to-end process of getting a book from manuscript form into the hands of a consumer.

A good friend had recently left the Sales department of Hodder and offered to help me get the book into shops, so I decided to go the boutique publishing route. I set up my own imprint (Badzelda Productions) and created several editions of the book. Kindle, ePub and iBooks editions started the ball rolling, followed by a print on demand service for the US, and finally a print run.

SP: Wasn't it a free download for a while? How did that go?

ZR: There hasn't been a free download of the whole of the book - just a few sample chapters. I did get a lot of interest in the chapters, including an interview on BBC London followed by a flurry of downloads. However, the final book is a very different beast to those early concepts. Free downloads could conceivably drive print sales of the book, but in reality paid downloads offset the print costs, and for me that's a better model at this stage.

SP: I have to ask you about the headshrinking. You actually went to South America to research that aspect didn't you?

ZR: I did - I spent time travelling down the Amazon and Janamono rivers in the Loreto district of Peru, looking for the Jivaro and other tribes. Actually most of the tribes I came into contact with in the Amazon were somewhat westernised - satellite telly, football, etc - but I did find some people in the cloud forests of Southern Columbia that were living a much more traditional lifestyle.

SP: Do you have a shrunken head yourself? If so, where do you keep it? If not, do you secretly want one?

ZR: I've got several replicas, but not the real thing. Actually, I think I can live without the captured spirit of a fallen warrior in my house :)

SP: In your other life you do lots of exciting digital things, what sort of projects have you worked on?

ZR: Well I've been making digital stuff since 1996 - so that would be a long list... I've always loved a cross-disciplinary approach: imagining, structuring, coding, designing, and generally making projects happen. I've been lucky enough to do that as a 'company of one' for the last decade or so, which gives me a lot of flexibility with writing. Websites, apps, enhanced tv, digital books - I've worked on all these things at some point.

Recently I've been making apps and enhanced books - mostly for kids, from babies up to young readers, with Penguin, Ladybird and Warne. Other projects are afoot, in the adult space, but I can't talk about them just yet.

SP: What next on the writing front?

ZR: I've got another novel in progress - which will be set in Japan. It's in a fairly early stage at the moment - treatment, emerging outline and a couple of chapters. I'm excited to see where it goes!

SP: And finally, every visitor to my blog is invited to recommend a favourite book. What do you think we should be reading?

ZR: Well, my favourite book to read again and again is Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. In terms of new writers, I really enjoyed Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beaumont. I just read through your top ten books for 2011 and some of them look very intriguing - so off to read a couple of them now.

Thanks for having me Scott!

---

Zelda, it has been a pleasure.

You can discover more about Zelda and her work at www.badzelda.com. Caposcripti is available in print and ebook editions and should be pretty easy to get hold of from your retailer or e-tailer of choice or direct from the author here.

During 2012 I want to write more letters. Not just letters but cards and notes. Anything handwritten, basically, that I can send to other people. I miss the days when we used to write to each other. I do get quite a lot of post, and I am not complaining about all the free books I am sent, but little of it is personal or in the form of ink on paper.

This, I think, is a shame.

So, if I write stuff and send it to people then some of them will presumably write back. And then my letterbox will be happier. Hence my handwritten project. It is not original, I am sure lots of other people have done similar things online, but that doesn't matter.

Here's how it works. I will write to anyone who wants to hear from me. It may be a postcard, a short note, or even a long-winded letter, but it will most certainly be in my own fair hand. The recipient does not have to write back but is more than welcome to do so. Simple.

I mentioned this on Twitter as the old year came to a close and quickly collected over 60 addresses from people who wanted to be involved. Naturally, I would like to extend this offer to the fine people who actually bother to visit my blog. If you want something in the post from me then drop me a line and I will get something out to you just as soon as I can.

I do mention handwritten letters in my book, 21st Century Dodos: A Collection of Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff). They are one of the few entries that I genuinely think are worth saving. I'd love it if people wrote to each other more often. I am sure there'd be more smiles around as a result.

*Trots off to buy more stamps*

To Be With You by The Honey Trees

Starting on page 40 you will find a mighty fine feature on my book, 21st Century Dodos. The headline reads:

Cap guns, cassettes and slam-door trains: some of our lost treasures

I only found out that they wanted to run the piece last Tuesday and had no idea which sections of the book they were going to include. As it happens they have opted for slightly edited versions of Ring Pulls, Slam-Door Trains, White Dog Poo, Advertising Slogans, Massive Viewing Figures, Audio Cassettes, Cap Guns and Look & Learn.

I think it looks great, they have chosen some good pictures to illustrate it, and I hope it alerts some previously none-the-wiser readers to the wonders of this splendid toilet book and that they manage to pick up a copy before retailers return the unsold stock now that Christmas is over!

It certainly can't do any harm.

Hope you enjoy the piece if you do get a chance to read it. Let me know what you think.

I like Brad Listi. He writes books, runs a online culture magazine, helps to make babies and is now the man behind a cracking new literary podcast.

I have asked him some questions.

SP: So, Brad, tell me about this new podcast of yours?

BL: It's called Other People.  It's a twice-weekly, hour-long author interview show, available for free at iTunes or at Stitcher.  It's me, talking to another author at length but the difference is that the main focus tends to be the author himself or herself, rather than the books.  Which is to say: it's not a lit-crit show.  There's not a lot of plot synopsis or quiet, intellectual discussion.  It's more unruly than that.  It's about the authors as human beings, in all of their messy glory.

SP: You describe the interviews as 'in-depth' and 'inappropriate'. How inappropriate? Do you say 'fuck' and 'shit' alot?

BL: Constantly.  As much as possible.

SP: And do you ask questions about their sexual proclivities? Make romantic advances towards them?

BL: (Laughs.)  I'm a married man, so I don't make any romantic advances.  But I do ask plenty of sex questions for sure, particularly when I have guests like Jillian Lauren and Melissa Febos, both of whom have done sex work in the past and have written brilliant memoirs about the experience.  When its germane to the author's life, or if it happens to come up naturally in conversation, I'm happy to go there.  Sex is a big part of life. And people like to hear about it.

SP: What splendid authors have been your guests so far?

BL: Oh, man.  I've had a ton of really great writers on the show.  Jillian and Melissa, to name two.  Dennis Cooper was just on.  And David Shields, who wrote Reality Hunger; I just talked to him.  He's a fascinating guy and a really interesting writer.  Darin Strauss was great; he wrote Half a Life, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award here in the States.  Jonathan Evison, Megan Boyle, Greg Olear, John Warner, Jessica Any Blau, Adam Levin, Shann Ray, Gina Frangello, Katie Arnoldi, Janet Reitman, Elissa Schappell.  So many.  The list goes on.

SP: And who do you have lined up?

BL: Well, in the short term I'm going to be talking with folks like Dana Spiotta, Jamal Joseph, Vanessa Veselka, Tayari Jones, Roxane Gay, D.R. Haney, and Alan Heathcock, just to name a few.  A lot of good ones coming up. 

SP: Dream guest?

BL: Gore Vidal in top form.

SP: Are you prepared to interview British authors?

BL: Hell yes.

SP: And if any publicists representing the superstars of international literature are reading this how would they go about getting their authors on your show?

BL: Just email me:  letters [at] otherpeoplepod [dot] com.

SP: Do you remember writing a book called Attention. Deficit. Disorder? If so, please tell us about it.

BL: (Laughs.)  I have vague recollections.  Attention. Deficit. Disorder. is a novel I wrote in my twenties.  It's about a young man coming to grips with the suicide death of an ex-girlfriend.  A picaresque.  A contemporary coming of age novel set against the backdrop of the information age.  And the narrator, I should mention, is of average intelligence.  That was important to me, to try and do that.  To render him as utterly confused, and searching.  Too many young narrators are wise beyond their years.

SP: And how much better is the UK cover than your American one?

BL: Loads better, I must say.  The rubber cover in particular, on that limited edition hardback, is the ultimate favorite.  A collector's item!

SP: What next, my good man?

BL: Well, I'm working on a new novel, when I can get to it.  And I'm extremely busy with a one-year-old daughter.  And with running The Nervous Breakdown, my online culture magazine and literary community.  And the podcast as well.  It's chaos.  So hopefully I can keep it all going, while also managing to get some sleep here and there.

SP: Finally, can you recommend my readers a good book?

BL: I can't stop talking about Leaving the Atocha Station , by Ben Lerner.  It's a short novel about a drug-addled American Fulbright poet living in Madrid.  A superb book.  And then another one is Nothing , by Blake Butler, which is about insomnia, among other things.  And then there's Not that You Asked , an essay collection by Steve Almond, who is an incredibly funny and perceptive writer who deserves to have a massive readership.  Any one of those three, and you're in good shape.

---

BRAD LISTI is the founder of The Nervous Breakdown, an online culture magazine and literary community that now includes TNB Books, an independent press specializing in literary fiction and nonfiction. He is the author of a novel called Attention. Deficit. Disorder., a Los Angeles Times bestseller, the executive producer of The Nervous Breakdown's podcast series, and the host of Other People with Brad Listi, a twice-weekly podcast featuring in-depth, inappropriate interviews with today's leading authors. To learn more, please visit www.bradlisti.com.

I loved every minute of it.

This minute was particularly good.

Suitable for all the family, as they say, and well worth a visit if you are in town any time soon.

I got to the last page at 12.55 on the 30th December just as we were coming to the end of a long drive to Canvey Island, of all places. Louise was only 10 pages from the end when I triumphed, finishing herself at 13.08.

Far too close for comfort, that. But, to the victor the spoils, as they say. And she will be delivering the spoils, in person, on Friday.

But what about the book? Was it any good?

I don't read a great deal of fantasy fiction, and I hadn't seen the acclaimed television series, so I didn't really know what to expect. I can't pretend I warmed to the prologue, which I found a bit clunky and confusing, but once the main story got going I found myself enjoying it immensely.

It is all about kings and castles and lords and ladies, oaths and secrets and betrayal and destiny. I assumed there'd be lots of wizards and warlocks and magic and stuff but there is very little of that. It is basically an epic piece of historical fiction but not based on real history.

Although there is a bit of dragon action towards the end, which I wasn't altogether sure about, but by that point I could have forgiven it pretty much anything. I was having fun, you see.

Someone somewhere has described it as Knots Landing meets Lord of the Rings, and that is not a million miles from the truth. It has all the best soap opera elements - sex, intrigue, lies, rivalry etc. - and plonks them in a fantasy setting.

The thing is, I found Lord of the Rings (both the movie and the book) to be rather dull. Also, hardly anyone of any consequence dies in Tolkien's saga. The same cannot be said for A Game of Thrones. This rattles along at a cracking pace and you cannot be sure who will make it to the end of the book in one piece, something I found rather appealing.

The 807 pages pretty much flew by.

Although the race might have had something to do with that.

Whatever the reason, I am not sure I could have picked a more entertaining book for a fun holiday read. I might tackle volume two next year.

Spike Jonze: Mourir Auprès de Toi on Nowness.com.

A must-see if you are a fan of books and don't mind watching skeletons have sex.