| Author | Message | ||
     Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.159.145.130 |
'Slights' by Kaaron Warren. I was sent this Angry Robot / HarperCollins book free by the BFS (presumably sent to all members). It's not the sort of book I would have found in a bookshop or thought to buy, but so far I am enormously impressed with it. A popular Horror blockbuster with literary edge and texture and stunning originality. Perhaps more from me about it later. I now note I have already reviewed a Kaaron Warren story when I real-time reviewed 'The Alsiso Project' here: http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/the_alsiso_project.htm At that time, the name meant nothing to me. If Gary M's Angry Robot book is as good as this one (and I've no reason to think it won't be) then I shall be in for another enormous treat.  HarperCollins produced the ANONTHOLOGY project (that I reviewed here: http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/anonthology.htm) in the tradition of Nemonymous. I am proud that Gary M has been in three separate issues of Nemonymous with his literate yet compulsively accessible style. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
SKIGHTS was the best novel I read last year. Devastating stuff. Kaaron is an exceptionally talented writer. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
SLIGHTS, even. Bastard typos.  | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.159.145.130 |
Skights is a good name for a character. Go for it, Gary. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
Good name for a species of monster...hands off!  | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.0.114.254 |
A new form of legging worn by Skiers: Skights. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.159.145.130 |
If 'Skights' is used for literary purposes, it will amazingly fit with my earlier mention above of 'The Alsiso Project' that was also based on a typo. This now famous Alsiso typo was 'coined' by Marion Arnott (who wrote 'The Sleepwalkers' anthology real-time reviewed by me here: http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/sleepwalkers__marion_arnott.htm). And coincidentally, earlier today, I happened to mention the Big Brother thread I share with Marion here: http://www.ttapress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=182&start=1530 when writing about Steve Duffy's THE LION'S DEN. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.159.145.130 |
Not skiing so much as skighting on thin ice there. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.159.145.130 |
At that time, the name meant nothing to me. ======================== Sorry, I have now been told that fiction of mine appeared in an anthology (Nasty Snips in late nineties) alongside a story by Kaaron Warren! | ||
| Coral (Coral) Username: Coral Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 90.215.237.98 |
This is great: "Mostly Murder" Sir Sidney Smith. Contemporary with Bernard Spilsbury but always kind of in his shadow. An autobiography. | ||
| Coral (Coral) Username: Coral Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 90.215.237.98 |
ha ha me, I posted in the wrong thread AGAIN, been doin that for years, sorry mr Des. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.159.145.130 |
No problem, Coral. Gives me opportunity to link to this film of a skight as a bright night: http://slowthing.com/vida/2008/02/21/skight/ | ||
| Coral (Coral) Username: Coral Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 90.215.237.98 |
"SKYT" was...erm...interesting, too. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.159.145.130 |
Skights It always seemed to happen during fog. We’d spent ages, it seemed, complaining about the snow and ice, so fog came as a sort of relief, as if it were a harbinger of Spring or at least of a small thaw. Meanwhile, the vague, if unjustifiable, promise of something better in the future allowed us to endure snow, ice and fog together, because we couldn’t see everything so clearly. And that’s when the Skights occurred to me. You had a theory that Skights were what skiers wore instead of tights. And I told you how you were Skighting on thin ice. This exchange seemed somehow appropriate, bearing in mind the Winter we were suffering. How we laughed. I later believed that Skight should be a word for a monstrous creature. The very Skight in question once pointed out this meaning to me before it had even crossed my mind. And there were others involved. Who were these people who suffered to discuss such old nonsense with the likes of me? I wondered if I would ever meet them again.... or even for the first time. I'll now come clean and tell you that 'skight' is a real word, or was a real word ... being the Nineteen Fifties nickname for a Threepenny Bit in the same way as Tanner was for a Sixpenny Bit. I literally hated Threepeny Bits, because, in those days, a Threepenny Bit was all I was given by my parents for my weekly pocket money. My friends were given a Tanner and those blighters could therefore buy many more chews and licquorice twirls and pineapple chunks and pear drops and sherbet dabs. On the subject of hating Threepeny Bits, I only hated things, like Threepenny Bits. I never hated people. But that may be the duplicity of hindsight. But, in any event, I don't really think Hate exists. Hate is not from within 'you' now, this moment. Hate is only other people's observations and interpretations of 'you', including 'your' own observations and interpretations about a 'you' that existed in the past (even if that past is only a few seconds ago). Love is more pervasive – even right unto and into the present moment itself - but love is harder to attain in the first place. And a small hand appears through the fog, with a Skight held out to me. (Winter 2010) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.0.114.254 |
You tinker. You kept a copy. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.159.145.130 |
No, Gary, I saw the writing on the wall, before the wall collapsed. (And above is a revision). | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.159.146.233 |
Perhaps more from me about it later. ================= Progressing through the book. About halfway. Despite its relatively simple prose, it strangely seems necessary to savour it slowly. It is certainly a cut above much else with smilar covers. A number of cuts above. I've especially enjoyed the concepts of writing a novel in the margins of various library books. Also on the brink of cracking up if one empathises too much with the main protagonist. And that's the horror of the book. Being drawn in too far. More later, perhaps. | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 86.158.6.141 |
Just finished this and found it pretty absorbing. Extremely well written. And yeah, the confessional novel written in library books was a fantastic idea! Criticisms I've read of it say it should have been pared down, and while quite a lot of it was technically unnecessary (in terms of advancing the story), I still found myself savouring it. Writing such a narrator must have been gruelling (at least it would be for me), and Stevie seemed disturbingly real. Never a caricature. I absolutely loved some of the sociopathic mischief - telling the kids that scary story was hilarious. And I couldn't stop giggling at the guy at the club who asked what they were drinking. "Our own urine." Why can I never think of such lines when I get chatted up? LOL So I enjoyed the book very much (if that's the word) and would certainly read more from her. Lord P's given me some PKD to read now, to lighten me up. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.181.152.177 |
I now have two copies of this book - I think I got a copy in my FCon bag last year. If anybody wants one of them let me know and it'll be with you in a jiffy (ha-ha)... | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
Yes please Mick. Email me on efilsgod_at_hotmail_dot_co_dot_uk Sounds like a cracking little book. Do you want any money to cover postage? | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.181.152.177 |
Just mailed you - don't worry about the postage. | ||
| Nathaniel Tapley (Natt) Username: Natt Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 89.240.59.35 |
I was expecting a copy to arrive with Prism the other day, but it didn't. I can only assume that because I didn't join the BFS until October, I missed out on this Slights bonanza... I should be held up to children as a cautionary tale against procrastination... | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 86.158.6.141 |
Want my copy, Natt? I'm not going to keep it. | ||
| Nathaniel Tapley (Natt) Username: Natt Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 89.240.59.35 |
I wouldn't mind, Kate, given the rave reviews it's been getting here... Thank you! | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 86.158.6.141 |
OK, send me your address! | ||
| Nathaniel Tapley (Natt) Username: Natt Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 89.240.59.35 |
Done... (via email) | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.121.214.114 |
Picked the book up from the sorting office this morning. Thanx Mick. | ||
| Nathaniel Tapley (Natt) Username: Natt Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 89.240.59.35 |
And I got mine in the post from Kate this morning. Thanks, Kate! | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.177.181.73 |
No problem, Weber - shame it wouldn't fit through your letterbox! | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.157.25.236 |
About three-quarters through now. Its strange how things can creep up on you without realising how it is done. I hadn't fully appreciated certain aspects until they dawned on me slowly. Dawning slowly is more powerful than attacking me as an axe-murderer would. The book's words seem to carry meanings increasingly more than they should carry. The protagonist seems to be in collusion with the book as a Trojan Chameleon. You can't really talk abut it without spoiling it. I don't want to make an enemy of this book, however slight. Perhaps more later. | ||
| Colin Leslie (Blackabyss) Username: Blackabyss Registered: 02-2010 Posted From: 86.164.67.73 |
I have a spare copy, brand new, free to a good home. Already had a copy when the BFS one arrived. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.156.233.165 |
You still got it? | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.156.233.165 |
Er, I'll have it, if you have! | ||
| Colin Leslie (Blackabyss) Username: Blackabyss Registered: 02-2010 Posted From: 86.164.67.73 |
Tony, still got it, send me your address to cgleslie@gmail.com and I'll stick it in the post. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.153.238.132 |
Tonight, I finished 'Slights'... and it will leave scars of a read that almost reads itself, slowly, agonisingly. I can hardly credit Stevie copied out all those words added to the library books. But of course I credit it. It was the the Catcher of the Right and Left Margins. Significant that one of the library books was Elizabeth Bowen's last novel, 'Eva Trout'. "A little was enough, sometimes." 'Slights' is a significant book that lifts out of any genre it's framed within - a bit like Auntie Jessie's marginalia. An ever-spreading photographic plate that no dark room could possibly handle. The preterite of 'slight' is 'slit'. Stevie: "If you'd ever taken the time to listen to me you'd know all this. You could have stopped me." | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.156.38.66 |
I have a copy of this book..Purloined from last years Fantasycon. The comments have piqued my interest enough to put it on the to be read pile. gcw | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.177.181.73 |
Started this yesterday - very good so far. |