Fantastic Metropolis

My reading these days is pretty well confined to the lunch hour at work; anything else takes away from writing time. Therefore, this multimedia list of what made a favorable impression on me in the past year:

The Winter’s Tale, Mark Helprin

I bought my copy in Grand Central Station and found the locomotive metaphor fit the experience of reading it. A slow rattling ride through a New York so glorious, hideous and baroque I was reminded of Gormenghast. Helprin blithely swapped around time, space and continuity and still managed to keep the train on the tracks until the very end. Unfortunately it derailed there. He’s a hell of a world-builder, though, so it was worth the ride.

Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter and Pink Moon, Nick Drake

Out on CD at last. For those of you unacquainted with Nick Drake, it’s probably enough to explain that Drake was the finest acoustic guitarist of his generation. His early death and lack of commercial success have made him a cult figure among people who assume those things equate with talent, but in his case it holds true. Technical perfection paired with haunting beauty and deceptive simplicity; a rare, rare find. He seemed to stand halfway through a doorway into another world, reporting back on its landscape; he didn’t so much die as walk through at last and close the door behind him.

Grim Fandango, LucasArts Games

Okay, all you writers out there: how many hours of creative time have you wasted on FreeCell? Here’s a far more worthwhile way to make those deadlines advance on you like out-of-control steamrollers. Part Mayan myth, part film noir, part Warner Brothers cartoon… You join Manny Calavera in the mean streets of the Land of the Dead, a place strongly resembling 1940’s Los Angeles, and follow him on his four-year journey to the gates of the Ninth Underworld. Action. Adventure. Weird beauty. Romance, even among skeletons. And unforgettable lines like, “Tremble with fear, you pigeons! It’s Robert Frost!”

Carthage Ascendant, Mary Gentle

The most amazing melange of hidden history, alternate history and hard science fiction, all disguised as a historical novel. Damn good writing, too. The characters are compelling, the military history and technology impressively detailed. The subject matter is grim-we’re dealing with 15th-century warfare, after all-but nothing feels gratuitous or overworked. Another great world-builder. In fact, I suspect there are three worlds building here simultaneously.

A Scattering Of Jades, Alexander C. Irvine

I read an advance copy of this one, praised it, and then re-read it when it came out this year and am even more impressed on the second exposure. In a way, this is magical realism, treating as it does of the magic and spirituality that underpins what we think of as the real world. The outrageous plots of gods and magi are interwoven with actual history and make perfect seamless sense. Again, a born writer here: multifaceted characters, lyrical prose.

Ground Force: Music From The BBC TV Programme, the Black Dyke Mills Band

On the evening of September 11, 2001, I happened to tune into this BBC gardening show. The universe was going up in flames, but in one tiny corner of it, three nice Brits were planting a green garden as a surprise for a total stranger. As an emblem of sanity, civility and kindness in a world that sorely needs these things, it comforted me no end. So did the show’s music by Jim Parker, when I finally tracked down an import CD this year. It evokes long summer afternoons in a lost green country. The Black Dyke Mills Band were founded nearly two centuries ago, and musing over their website one wonders if they weren’t the original model for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.