Author: Bret Easton Ellis

Date: First published 1991

Review:
American Psycho is the story of the yuppie businesman and serial killer Patrick Bateman as he lives his life in the materialistic farce of Manhattan.
There are few books that can inspire a strange mixture of humor, poignancy and horror and deliver it effectively enough that one feels they have been changed just a little through reading it. The books that achieve the feat can be quite rightly dubbed as real modern classics, standing above the more cardboard definition of ‘classic’ so flippantly slapped upon anything popular.
American Psycho fits awkwardly into the classic pedigree. The book is, frequently, sickeningly brutal with its unflinching descriptions of intensely pornographic and horrifyingly violent scenes. As a result the outcry that this extremly-R-rated content created, on occasion, somewhat eclipsed the core message of the book . I have found in other reviews that the book is usefully described as ‘transgressive art’. That is, that the depravity and violence are vital in order to create the right level of juxtaposition to the priviledged and vapid life of Paul Batemen and to allow this life to descend into farce. The black humor of this juxtaposition is the genius of the book, and something that I really enjoyed because I saw (albeit much much milder) echoes of this relationship in my favourite book ‘Dorian Gray’ by Oscar Wilde.
In parts I was laughing aloud or felt moved by the insights about the cancerous yuppie culture that still hold strong in our modern consumer culture. Bateman’s own existential crisis both magnifies the farce but also creates a tragedy that inspires the reader’s empathy (though not sympathy) with the warped protagonist. While in other parts I felt physically sick, to have been any less brutal in the descriptions of the senseless tortures and murders would have led to failure because the message would be dampened or lost.
In conclusion, American Psycho is a cruel book but one that is brilliantly executed and well worth a read.
Now, if you excuse me, I have to return some videotapes.

The Books: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay

By: Suzanne Collins (For ages 12 and up)

People Have said:

The Hunger Games -

Catching fire -

—Time Magazine

Mockingjay -

—Publishers Weekly,STARRED REVIEW

Tie-Ins: The Hunger Games Film

Review: (Moderate Spoiler Warning)

Having watched ‘The Hunger games’ film first after much prodding from my little sister throughout my entire time of studying my Masters, once it was completed I finally sat down and decided to read the whole triology.

Book one revolves around the Hunger Games itself and it is, by far, my favourite. It works nicely as a self contained piece of grounded dystopian sci-fi, with a difficult, strong, complicated and often ‘unattractive’ protagnist at the help who is, in my opinion, one of the characters that all authors should aspire to when writing a grounded real female character, and when tackling the difficult age range of between a child and an adult. Like great dystopian sci-fi one-offs (such as So Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) it drops you into a near future that is plausible yet can grapple with more imaginative futuristic elements with ease. In the Hunger Games Katniss’ home is near-medieval in hardship, and one of the greatest skills that Collins achieves is how perfectly she paints Katniss’ life here, allowing you to feel every inch of the hunger and survival that is a reality of her life. When this is contrasted with the decadent Capitol - a reflection of all the worst parts of a distinctly Westernised style of consumerism and celebrity culture - and when Katniss’ skills are pulled to use in the Hunger Games itself, the action and contrasts are handled by a very skilled hand indeed in Collins’ writing.

As no doubt you would have seen from movie promotions, the Hunger games takes part as a form of forest survival, and for me the book’s - indeed the triology’s - greatest strength is in this Battle Royale of starvation, cunning, politics and survival. A weakness, in my opinion, is shown when things grow too fantasy based when the surreal genetic mutations (‘Mutts’) are introduced. While some, like the Mockingjay, are very effective as symbols for political rebbellion, others come across as simply B-movie monsters, far more noisy yet far less frightening than the threats of wounds, diseases and starvation that have you gripped on the edge of the seat beforehand. Despite this slightly hammy interruption, the book is all in all edge-of-seat reading, with fantastic character development. There are no Mary/Gary-Sues here, no cut corners, and plenty of emotional punch mixed with the thrills.

In Catching fire Katniss’ strategy in the Games have ramifications on a global scale, and Collins handles the writhing knots of politics with a deft and experienced hand, not flinching at the brutalities and complications. Yet, in my opinion when I read it, by taking it to this series loses a certain something. The microcosmic panic and survival and the sureal pomp around creating the games is lost. Without giving too much away, a re-emergance of the Mutts and an attempt to replicate elements of The Hunger Games bypass genuine survival and fear and reality and leap straight in to plain old gimmicky. However, those political knots and the knots in katniss’ own heart and head are the saving grace of the agreeable but perhaps not special second book (that and a certain  new character or two). The twists and the turns and the way Katniss reacts both impulsively and with planning, and alternates between being used and taking charge, being in the dark and being illuminated make for some riveting reading.

Mockingjay is a fitting end to the series but is by no means an easy read. Character conflicts, deaths and war create an utter rawness in the reader through sheer empathy and damned good writing. Collins handles the filth of war perfectly: she makes no apologies and never flinches in telling its horrors on the macrocosm and microcosm, and the little pieces of hope as well as the descents into madness and grief, the betrayals and the loyalties. By the end of it I was distraught but to have written it any other way would have cheapened it, and for that I applaud her.

Overall, I enjoyed the series. I feel that the first book could have stood alone, and out of the three it is the only one that I would revisit, though all three are very well written indeed. Perhaps by the end of the series my yearning for the simpler world of the first book (corrupted though it was) was because of a loss of innocence of sorts from the idealism and soft simple blows that we often find in other books. Emotional trauma, however brief, with the understanding that life is often not ok, and Collins will be damned if she shows it as any other way. In that way I feel as close to Katniss as a reader ever should for a character in a book. Katniss faces a difficult journey and there is no going back for the Girl on Fire. And that was always the point. But there is hope for her, and as the pages close and the message settles there is hope for the reader too.

The sign of a great piece of literature - not simply a good book - is that it makes you feel right to your core and it sears itself onto your mind for a long time to come. The Hunger Games Triology does just that.

That’s it. Finito. On Monday I handed in my dissertation on Monsters in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and my Master’s course in Early Modern History came to a close, along with the entirety of my life in education. You expect a huge weight off and a sense of liberation but, like so many things in life, the actual moment was anticlimactic. Perhaps my stress bubble had burst from general hysteria a few days earlier, or perhaps it simply hasn’t sunk in yet.

All the same, what also came to an end, theoretically at least, was my constant whining to anyone who’d listen about my monster ‘to-read’ list, and how the sheer amount of course-reading I had to do was throttling my desire to enjoy fiction. Now, only working on weekends until I can ensnare some poor sap into giving me a ‘career’, I have all the free time in the world to tackle my pile of books. It’s a rather daunting process.

After much agonizing about what to begin with (and sneakily adding another book to the pile with buying American Psycho while procrastinating in Oxfam) do you know what I chose?

A history book.

Another bloody history text book.
As if reading over 66 history texts for the one dissertation alone wasn’t e-bloody-nough.

That said, I think that there is something very different indeed in reading a history book just for the love of history itself. The text in question is The Romans Who Shaped Britain by Sam Moorhead and David Stuttard (gents I’ve actually met in person, who are very friendly and passionate about the topic, which always bodes well). My knowledge of the Romans begins and ends with the Mythology, so this should be a treat.
However I can’t keep away from fiction, so it’s likely that I’ll twin this with another book simultaneously. I have I,Claudius sitting on my to-read list. Perhaps I shall go for the whole Roman theme to the max and read that alongside the history book.
We shall see, we shall see. All I know is that it will take a while to train myself back in to reading for pleasure alone, and actually allowing myself the indulgence of sitting with a good book for hours on end.

Finally, one book that I did manage to squeeze in and read in dibs and dabs during my dissertation work was the brilliant Professor Brian Cox’s Wonders of the Universe. A fantastic (non-fiction) book, especially if you’re like me and love science as a concept but don’t have the mental wiring to understand the nuances without considerable guidance. Utterly fantastic as a coffee-table book, but I’ll get to that with the review.

Hello there. I’m finally back to let you know what I’ve been up to in the world of literature of late. While I’ve been bogged down writing two killer essays and sorting out a presentation, I haven’t had much time to read traditionally. But I did stumble across a fantastic internet storytelling project that far more people should know about, and it is certainly worth dipping in to a reading if you’re a fan of the supernatural or horror genre.

The project is The SCP Foundation.

If that name rings a bell, you’re probably thinking of this guy:

I stumbled across the franchise when a couple of my favourite youtube gamers Robbaz and PewDiePie played a free downloadable survival horror game ‘SCP Containment Breach’ and it’s predecessor. It wasn’t long before I found out that the games (rather basic and experimental, but certainly interesting when you check the bakcstories of the monsters) actually were inspired from a proper source, and that was the SCP Foundation writing project. I looked it up and I was hooked.

The concept is simple. SCP stands for To Secure, To Contain, To Protect. Like a mix between the secrecy and organisation of Men in Black and the dubious morals and obsessions of Apature Science, this fictional organisation hunts out supernatural occurences and contains them and studies them. The website is mostly made up of literally over a thousand such case files of each supernatural item/monster/creature/occurence (or ‘SCP’), written in a scientific style, the majority of which are user written and user submitted (and can be rated by visitors).

It is clear what passion and quality there is in these submissions. They all conform to a house style of a scientific analysis and governance, and are increidbly imaginative. The founding SCP, for example, is a red button that -if pressed- ‘destroys everything’, and compels the user to push it. There is the Weeping-Angel-esque creature in the image above, an endless staircase with a disembodied face, a horrifying creature that appears as a decomposing elderly man and can pull victims into other dimensions, transforming tickets that doom the user to be pulled into another dimension via a ghost train, an indestructible monster, a cursed play, an extra terrestrial tower that makes attempts to worship humanity, a coffin that throws up terrifying images when viewed through recording equipment which are never perceived in real life….the list is endless and fascinating.

What I adore most of all is the reality even the most surreal concepts are given when the dossier outlines in such detail each experiment placed on the SCP subject. These can range from true horror to humor, and sometimes both at the same time. The imaginativeness of the writing is mixed with a care to detail and a warmth that show the obvious love that the writers have to the project as a whole.

In short, I was charmed, creeped out, and thoroughly entertained, and I have only just scratched the surface of the vast wealth of material that the website holds.

I would thoroughly recommend it as a casual read that you can dip in and out of and explore.

To give you a taste, below the ‘Read More’ I’ve pasted the Case file for SCP-294, one of the funnier SCPs, and yet one that showcases the writing talent and attention to detail that I spoke of. I hope you enjoy, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Read More