se71

This weekend I will be attempting my second Ironman race. Last time in 2007 I did IM France. This time I'm going to Klagenfurt for IM Austria.

My previous time was 12:55, and inevitably I'm hoping to try to beat this. But am I as fit? And if so, where can I shave the minutes off?

I read an interesting document recently that took some averages of all the Ironman age-group times from events around the world, and estimated what course was the hardest. It even put times in. All things being equal, it says that I will be about 40 minutes faster on the Austria course than in France. However, I'm not so sure.

Swim

France was a sea swim, which is my favourite. Extra buoyancy from the salt water, which I also find tastes better. It was two laps, so maybe I'll save a minute there, but I'm fairly sure I'll be around the 1:30 mark again. I'm more confident in the water, and not so scared of the distance, and haven't had any cramp problems with my calfs so far - maybe I can push it a little and save 5 minues.

Bike

Austria doesn't have the long slow climbs that France had. However, I'm a fairly good climber and passed a load of people on that section. I may be atypical and so the time advantage wouldn't apply so much for me because of this. I'm not fast on the flat, and I'm not even very fast descending. My bike time for Windsor triathlon this year was only marginally faster (about 1 minute) than three years ago so time will tell if I can do any better. But I guess 1 minute over 40k equates to nearly 5 minutes over 180k.

Another thing to consider is that in France, I was aiming for 25km/h pace. and so I actively slowed myself down at times. The reason was to avoid overdoing it and not finishing. I did beat that average, but I think I'll be a little more ambitious this time. An average of 30km/h would give me a 6 hour bike time - I'd like that, and depending on the conditions, it is achievable.

Run

Both runs are flat. France was very open and simple to plan - 5K up to the airport, 5k back, and repeat 4 times. I liked this, as it made it very easy to maintain a steady pace. Austria has two laps, but I believe they meander through the town. It will be harder to keep track of my progress maybe. I'm not that confdent in beating my 4:26 time - though I have slightly better run training behind me this season. Time will tell.


Barring accidents or injuries, what it really comes down to I think is how hard I want to push it. I think I am more than capable of 13 hours again. I might be capable of 12 physically, but can I mentally make myself do it. I think this is unlikely. I'll try and do a better estimate soon, but right now, I'm hoping for 12:30.

Found an Ironman France 2007 video on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4eMG9dZ1uc&feature=related&pos=0

that's me in the background, at 50 seconds

While it's all fresh in my mind, a race report.

Summary: I had a great day and finished with a time of 2:41:32, beating my PB from three years ago (which was 2:47:55) by over six minutes.

Detail:
My training regime this past year has involved a cycle commute to work. I normally set off at 6:55am, so my 6:50am start was no problem. I woke up before the alarm clock, and easily navigated the 5 minute drive down to the car park. Having said that, I didn't appreciate the time I needed to get ready; getting the wetsuit on, taping gels to the bike, cracking open a new pair of Zogs Predator goggles, pumping the tyres. I ended up slightly rushed and almost forgot to take my swimming hat to the start. I had to run to get there in time as my bike was positioned as far from the swim start as it's possible to get almost.

Swim:
The water wasn't cold, and the current in the Thames was hardly noticable, unlike last years torrent. I started off slow as usual at the back of the pack, breaststroking until I got some space. I really enjoyed the swim up the river, in the bright sunshine. The people in the waves behind didn't seem to be catching me as fast as last year, though I had no real idea of my time. At one point early on, I thought I was doing really well, and had a quick glance behind to see that there were only two green hats behind me. This was a bit of a disappointment, so I tried to swim a bit faster. Turned around at the buoy, and swam back, and oddly this shorter section seemed to take ages. I never felt particularly tired - always my aim in the swim section. This is good as in three weeks I have to do a 3.8Km swim. Worried that I'd miss the hidden exit, I kept looking up, which was a bit silly. Nevertheless I was really pleased when I got out and looked at my watch:

Swim 37:12

Long run down to my bike, managed to get the wetsuit half off as I went, and did a fairly standard time for T1. Could do better with the wetsuit

T1 2:17

Bike:
Hoping for big things from new Planet-X Stealth carbon bike, but interestingly the technology doesn't seem to have made any significant difference to my time from three years ago. However, it was a lot of fun out there, and I passed a lot of people. Too many people passed my though - I can do better with some specific speed training. I'm training for an Ironman race, so have been more interested in endurance. Slightly annoying was a car that got in the way and appeared to be tracking cyclists rather than trying to overtake. I actually had to pass it myself. As usual, one cyclist seemed to be doing my exact pace, so we leapfrogged each other the whole course. Non-drafting makes this complicated and annoying. I was happy to keep the pace brisk, but not kill myself anywhere - ~34km/h on the flat, and ended with an average 33.4km/h

Bike 1:11:55

I don't think there is really anything I need to work on for T2. Perhaps taking my feet out of my shoes before dismounting would shave a few seconds, but I don't like the extra risk of this, and the loss of speed whilst I'm freewheeling.

T2 1:33

Run:
The run is always harder then I expect it will be. I've done quite a few brick sessions so I didn't suffer from wobbly leg syndrome and felt happy running right from the start. I did feel tired, though not too bad, but didn't feel fresh obviously. I had to put a new elasticated lace on my left shoe and it wasn't correctly tightened. During the second lap, my foot didn't feel right, so I had to stop and tighted the lace. I was fine after that but that lap time is a bit slower and I blame worrying about the foot and stopping to fix it for that. But I was consistent at approximately 16 minutes a lap, with a slight negative split, which is nice. I had enough left for a strong finish - maybe I should have pushed sooner (really got going at the second water stop by Eton College)

Run 48:35

Total Time 2:41:32

Conclusion:
All my times were faster than three years ago (I'm going to try and forget last year's race ever happened :-) ) My overall position was 725th - but considering my swim position was 1444th, I know where I have to improve. I've always known this though. For the record, bike position was 336th which is very pleasing, but run was 601st. I need to keep cycling as I am, and get swim coaching, and do some speedwork for running, before i do this triathlon again.

Nutrition:

For the record.

Pasta dinner the night before, obviously :)
Small banana for breakfast, a few sips of PSP22
SIS caffeine gel as I made my way to the swim start.

2 SIS gels on the bike, and ~400ml of Go electrolyte drink. This was too much - I felt a bit bloated. I usually cycle for an hour before even touching any liquids.

Grabbed a banana in T2, forced down two big bites as I ran. This made me feel worse in fact, but maybe the energy kicked in later. Should have had a gel instead perhaps. Had one sip of water on lap 2.

Via pfig, though on his FB page.

"Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes."

1. The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
2. Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban
3. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
4. South Sea Adventure - Willard Price
5. A Pocket Full of Rye - Agatha Christie
6. Puppet on a String - Alastair MacLean
7. Strange Stories Amazing Facts - Reader's Digest
8. The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
9. Watership Down - Richard Adams
10. Immortality Inc - Robert Sheckley
11. Nine Tomorrows - Isaac Asimov
12. Going Long - Joe Friel
13. Use of Weapons - Ian Banks
14. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
15. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

A lot of these are 'firsts' in some way. A lot are about dying. Make of that what you will. Let me know if you need any further illumination.

This only took me less than 5 minutes to compile - I think about books a lot. List subject to change depending on what mood I might be in.

Only five days to go to the Nokia Windsor Triathlon 2009.

This will be my first triathlon of the year, a small barometer of my fitness. I expect to have a really hard swim (it's been raining heavily so the river will probably have a strong current). I have a new bike and would like to shave a few minutes off previous cycle times. I haven't managed to injure myself yet this year, and if that continues, I am planning on putting in more of an effort on the run.

I'd love to beat my PB, but weather permitting, will settle for beating three hours. I am pretty fit, but I've neglected my swimming, so that's probably going to be the deciding factor.

This is only my 'B' race - Ironman Austria 2009 in under four weeks is my 'A' race, so I need to do what I can to prepare for that.

Just After Sunset - Stephen King

I'm a big Stephen King. This is even though he has disappointed me a lot over the last twenty years. I still keep coming back. Partly it is because even though his later books are sometimes a bit pointless and lack direction, the journey is often enjoyable because he is such a good writer.

The rot set in in about 1985 when I bought the hardback of Skeleton Crew, a book of short stories. I couldn't afford it, but had to have it. I was really disappointed with the quality of the stories - the first time I hadn't liked something King had written. His short stories before this had been superlative. They included classics like "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" and "The Body", from Different Seasons and both made into very famous films. The earlier collection, Night Shift was also responsible for a few films, but the stories are all good.

After that, I didn't give up. As I said, I'm a bit of an addict. I also read the collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes. I can't remember much about it, just that it wasn't that great. There were no stories that I cared much for.

Therefore I wasn't much bothered when "Just After Sunset" came out. I would probably have read it at some point, but I got the hardback for Christmas, and decided I may as well give it a go. I'm not going to describe any of the stories - I see little point in doing that for a short story collection review. What I will say is that these stories are a lot stronger than anything I've read by King for years. Some are horror as you'd expect, but the strongest I think are pure thriller. What many people, I guess the majority in fact, don't know about Stephen King is that he has a rare ability to write stories of pure emotion. His horror gets the most press, and his films are more famous than his books. But he can write about people and situations , and make you care about them, in a way I seldom encounter. This is the real reason I read his books. He only manages to do this in this book once - but once is enough.

Highly recommended, not every story hits the mark, but almost all are well worth reading.

Esio Trot - Roald Dahl

Not sure how I avoided reading this short book over the years. Maybe I instinctively knew it wouldn't really be worth the, admittedly small, effort.

This is not a typical Dahl book. There is an inventiveness about it, and it's surely original, but it doesn't have any of the gruesome, hilarious, horribleness we have come to expect. Instead, we have a love story about two middle-aged people who are brought together by a trick with tortoises.

Only read if you must finish all of Dahl's books - even though it is short, it's only one idea, and you know the ending already by about one quarter of the way in.

This is a post about the state of the music industry, and Spotify specifically, but it will rather ramblingly get there through a history of my own listening habits. Sorry about that.

When I wake up in the morning, I am usually thinking about a song. I'll have dreamed it, or it will hit me as I'm getting dressed, and without even being aware, I'm humming the tune in my head. When I was at school, my only chance of actually listening to the real track were fairly slim. Maybe it was a popular song from the charts, in which case I might get to hear it on the Top 40 Chart Show on Sunday evening on Radio 1. Maybe it was something I already had in my puny record/cassette collection, and I could put it on when I got home from school. More likely, it was a classic hit of some kind and I'd just have to wait for it to come up randomly on the radio, but I'd already be humming something else by then so the opportunity was missed. Remember, in the 1970s, I didn't even have a Sony Walkman cassette player - it was that primitive.

Flash forward a few decades. I now have Spotify.

I woke up this morning with Taylor Swift warbling in my head. "Love Story" is a fantasticly catchy hit, in fact, it's a fantastic song all round. Not to everyone's tastes, I recognise that, but I wanted to listen to it. In the bad old days, that would have been the end of it. I cannot afford to buy every single song I like. But today I sat down at my desk at work, plugged my headphones in, and a few seconds later was listening to the full track in glorious stereo on Spotify. For free.

This is important. This importance cannot be underestimated. It is staggering, and I cannot quite believe it actually exists. [1]

The Spotify distribution model is the single most important thing to happen to music since the invention of radio.

Seriously, this is big. This changes everything.

Let's go back again, back to about 1984, when the CD was introduced. How significant was this? To the music industry it was huge. There is a great article here summarising a bit about how much money the record labels made out of CDs. People liked them, their convenience, portability, durability. We replaced many of our favourite vinyl LPs with them - paying more second time around in most cases. But we were still limited by money, and space. Money is simple to understand - no one can buy everything, and so has to choose. Space is also an important limiting factor, and has stopped my buying cheap CDs, the ones I only quite like, in an attempt to reduce some of the clutter in my house.

But just how important to us as consumers was the difference betweeen vinyl and CD. I'd argue not a lot. We had the same choice and the same limits as vinyl, just different packaging. Home taping was still big - borrow a CD from a friend, your home stereo probably had a One-Click copy button. But having the original always appealed, and people built up huge CD collections.

Around the turn of the millennium, things were changing again. Computers suddenly got fast enough to make and play back songs in a compressed format, the MP3. This was important, but you needed a PC, and some basic skills, so the uptake wasn't huge in the beginning. Even now, MP3s are still fairly niche [2]. But if we extrapolate, and MP3 replaces CD, the same problems of price and storage haven't gone away. Most people will still take the legitimate route and pay for their music, and so will be limited by price on what they purchase. With today's huge hard drives, storage space isn't so much of a problem, but it's fantastically more complicated. Your grandad may pop into HMV for a CD, but will he download an MP3 from iTunes, sync it to his iPod, and connect that to his FM tuner in the car. I have enough trouble doing all that myself - I have the same CD in my car for the past two weeks because it's just too much bother to change it.

This is where I digress a little into the stupidity of DRM and MP3 pricing. DRM is how the music industry tried to stop people who bought MP3 songs from sharing them. I say tried, because happily, they completely failed. I didn't ever buy any of these crippled songs, and never would have. Would you buy a CD that only played in the player in your living room? Not in the car, not in the kitchen, not on your portable discman, possibly not even in your living room if you upgraded the CD player there. No. Seems simple and yet the music industry took nearly ten years to realise it was a stupid idea because that is exactly what they were doing with MP3 files.

Also, would you pay the same amount of money for music you downloaded off the internet versus the same songs in a physical package? I very reluctantly had to pay the same or more for tiny CDs instead of the much more tactile and pleasing vinyl albums, but at least I did get something I could hold in my hand, display in my home, and lend to my friends. But an album of MP3 songs costs about £8.00. I have to pay to download it and store it and back it up in case my computer crashes. I can buy the CD online for about the same price usually, or in Tescos. I can convert it to MP3 format very easily myself, DRM free. So why would I buy the MP3?

The only way MP3 was ever going to win was if it was significantly cheaper and DRM free. This has only recently started to happen, Amazon's MP3 store is a good step forward, I bought a couple of albums off there for £3 each recently, my first music download purchases ever.

But it is far too little too late, and in fact, the MP3 prices on iTunes went up only last week. Bonkers. The record industry may think they are starting to win, with MP3 sales increasing, but I think Spotify and it's like has the power to completely kill this market in the next couple of years.

I have spent a significant proportion of my free time building up my MP3 music collection. I like having access to everything I've bought, I want to be able to listen to it wherever I am - which is usually at home or in the office. So I have a portable 160Gb hard drive where all my music is backed up to and which I used to carry everywhere with me. I can plug it into my work PC, or into a friends PC, and play the songs. But I've stopped carrying it around. When I think of a song I'd like to hear now, I search for it on Spotify, and just listen. They have a huge catalogue - not everything, but huge. So far, for me, it's been enough.

"What shall I listen to today?"

That's what I've titled this post. That's what us music lovers are thinking about a lot of the day. That's where Spotify completely blows the competition out of the water. That's where Spotify changes the way we think about music forever [3]. I am no longer limited by price - I can listen to anything for free. I've listened to all of Taylor Swift's album, still find 'Love Story' fantastic, but am glad I didn't buy the whole thing, which I'd have been forced to do in the past. I'm listening to things I like, but would never have bought. Tracks by on compilation albums that never appeared on the artists own CDs. Albums from 1980's bands which I couldn't afford at the time, and didn't buy later because the time wasn't right and yes, money.

I'm also no longer limited by space. Spotify store all the music, so I don't have to. I can listen to the beginning of an album at work, and finish it off when I get home, without carrying it in my pocket. I can even, and this might hurt a bit, give away or sell my CDs and CD storage racks, making more room in my house for books :-) [4]

Everything isn't perfect of course. I think Spotify is an experiment, and though it is really exciting now, sadly I believe it may not last. I haven't bought any CDs/MP3s since I signed up - just can't see the point as I spend about 90% of my waking life near or at a computer and so can listen to everything I want without having to pay. As more and more people sign up to Spotify, sales will go down. This will not go unnoticed by the record industry, and the adverts will not be enough to pay for the shortfall. Spotify will have to start charging, and then everyone will leave. I'm not interested in paying £9.99 a month to 'rent' music. It is a very confusing time to be trying to sell music, and maybe it could even become impossible. I know that if Spotify goes away I'm going to find it hard to part with my cash again to hear new music.

But for now, "What shall I listen to today?"
Well, just about anything.

---
[1] yes, I know all about Last.fm and eMusic. I know about Bittorrent and Kazaa and Limewire. I know about Napster and iTunes music store and Amazon DRM free MP3s. I know about that Russian site (except it's name escapes me, allofmp3 or something). These are ALL different to Spotify. Stepping stones along the way, but not the paradigm shift that Spotify is.

[2] citation needed - how much music is sold on CD vs MP3?

[3] I really hope Spotify doesn't get shut down before a critical mass see it for what it is, and for what it can be. Once people get used to it, there will be no going back, but right now, it could still die.

[4] I will not be doing this - and will write about the reason why later.

[I've only just scratched the surface of this - I've left so much out to try to stick to the point, and I know I've even failed to do that. More updates coming soon. would love to hear other's thoughts.]

I decided to do triathlon properly after my first sprint attempt. I used a pretty crappy mountain bike helmet in that event, and it only just passed inspection (didn't even realise at the time that they did helmet inspections).

So I went down to my local triathlon shop, SBR in Windsor, and had a long look at the helmets. I wanted something light, strong, sleek and black (in my black phase, other colours are available). I wasn't quite prepared for the price I would have to pay to get all these features in one package, but it quickly became obvious that the Giro Atmos was the helmet for me.

Here is a very positive review of the Atmos.

I've been very happy with the Atmos. I hardly know I'm wearing it except for the chin strap which I might have done a bit on the tight side. As the review says, it is very light, it has a lot of ventilation (has been used in 35-40C in the south of France), and I'm assured it is strong though, hope never to put that to the test. I've also worn it all winter in rain/sleet and snow - it's probably pshchological, but it also seems to keep my head warm.

Me and my Atmos at the Windsor Triathlon.



Do yourself a favour, and get a helmet like this one, not some cheap alternative from Halfords.

Watchmen - The Movie Review

The short version - it's excellent, but is definitely for adults only unfortunately.

I'm not going to review the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, even though one of my copies is signed by the artist. Scandalously, I don't consider myself properly qualified, having only read it for the first time last year. I picked it up so many times in Forbidden Planet over the preceding two decades, but the price tag always made me hesitate, and say to myself "I'll just wait and get it in the sales". The sales did finally arrive, and I ended up with two copies - one signed one for the shelf, one to read.

Why all the preamble then? This is a movie review, not a comic review. The reason is so that you understand that I don't actually have a lot of the emotional investment that many other reviewers have. Comic fans 'love' this book, have been waiting a very long time, for something that the author has said was unfilmable, to reach the screen. They will tell you that the ending is different, maybe they won't like the omission of the comic within the comic story "Tales of the Black Freighter". Maybe they've lived with the characters so long that the actors will never live up to their expectations. I have none of those misgivings, and yet, unlike the majority of cinema goers, I have actually read it, so I think I'm in quite a small category of people who only quite liked the comic.

With the story fairly fresh in my mind, I went into the first day screening with some trepidation that inevitable changes would have been made to fit such a dense work into only two and three quarter hours. But Watchmen is uncompromising, and in my opinion, included everything important - everything I remember anyway.

So - to the movie. Imagine if there really were a group of masked heroes, fighting crime on the streets of New york. Heroes like Batman, not Spiderman. These people use their fists to beat up the bad guys, with a few handy tools and a flying ship, but mostly just their fists. Then imagine further that they were driven underground by an anti-vigilante movement, and most of them have retired. The action takes place in an alternate universe where this has already happened, and it's 1985, and the world is in the middle of the cold war. Richard Nixon is in his fifth term as President, and his finger is hovvering over the armageddon button.

Once masked man, Rorschach, discovers that someone is killing off his ex-colleagues, and starts to investigate. He gets a pretty poor reception along the way from his old gang, but we get a chance to see each of them with flashbacks filling in the backstory. These shifts in time, along with the alternate universe setting, and Dr Manhattan's concept of knowing the past and the future as one time, make it a pretty challenging experience, but every scene is so full of interest that even if you don't fully understand it, it's still enjoyable to watch. I've done some reading around this, and I missed a ton of references I'll only fully discover with a DVD and director's commentaries; I'm looking forward to that. (One example is a tiny scene, where a masked hero saves Batman's parents from murder at the back of an opera theatre - so this universe has no Batman).

Dr Manhattan, I mentioned him above, is the only real superhero in the film. He is a man turned superman, with massive powers over time and space. He has lost most of his humanity and is so apart from it that he doesn't seem to understand right from wrong any more. He is also blue, and naked most of the time.

Jackie Earle Haley is a revelation as Rorschach - the prison scenes are my most memorable, and his line "I'm not locked in here with you, YOU'RE locked in here with ME" summed up his anger, persecution complex, and egotistical personality so well. In the book we don't get to see him say this directly, it's much better in the film. I also loved The Comedian - a great character, must have been so much fun to play. I was a little disappointed with a couple of the others - Night Owl II was a bit too wishy-washy at times, so that when it came time for him to be hard it was less believable. And Carla Gugino I felt was wasted, all that old person makeup.

I was completely surprised by how much music there was in the film. Quite a few scenes dispensed with any dialogue and just ran a full 3-4 minute song - from Dylan's "The Times they are a changing" for the opening titles, to Nat King Cole's "Unforgettable", from Phillip Glass to Wagner. In most cases, I really liked the songs, and it was great to hear them loud in a cinema, but they didn't work as soundtracks to the film. They jarred me out of the scenes, out of the action, and made me think about the song. This isn't a soundtrack's job, you should hardly notice the music unless it's wrong.

If you've seen '300' you'll already be familiar with the ultraviolence of his fighting scenes - we get them here too.
We also get sex, and some hints at violent sex as well. And of course a huge blue naked man walking around. Was this necessary, or gratuitous? Tough call, but I would have cut a bit, and left more to the imagination. I would have made the film a '15' certificate - the '18' is going to kill the audience figures, and even the DVD rentals, and wasn't necessary. It's a shame that so many people who would have loved this film are not going to be allowed to see it, and it would not have hurt artistically I think. If a film is definitely horror, or definitely soft porn, then include everything you need and give it an '18', but maximise your audience unless there is an overwhelming need not to.

Phew, nearly finished. Conclusion - Zack Snyder has made a remarkable film, that looks fantastic. He has taken the comic, and had storyboarding help from the original artist in crafting the scenes, and it all works. It looks authentic, and I can't see any fan of the original, or anyone else, knocking it for this. It's fairly long, but I wanted more, as it's fascinating from beginning to end. I loved it, and would encourage everyone to go and see it - we need more of this kind of cinema, so we should support the people who make it.

I started commenting on Cowfish's blog post about this, but it turned into a bit of a rant, so I extracted it to put here. He doesn't deserve my righteous anger against all things 'factual'.

He feels he has wasted his weekend watching bad films, and so is redeeming himself with a double-bill of "Frost/Nixon" and "Milk".

The problem I have with this is that I have issues with films based on real events - fictionalised. I will not willingly watch either of those films, I will actively avoid them in fact, and hope I never, ever see them.

Sure, they may be great dramas, they may have astonishing Oscar winning acting. But when I watch a film, my top reason for doing it is entertainment. Milk and Frost/Nixon are not primarily entertainment, they are documentaries that have been jazzed up a bit. So anyone watching is expecting to learn something about the people in the film, and are hoping it's an entertaining ride for a couple of hours. This is a Bad Thing. I saw David Frost on TV the other day talking about the play the film is based on, and on how he had pointed out to the writer at the time inaccuracies. He had been convinced by the writer that it was necessary to add some things to make it a more interesting story. (they completely downplay Frost's interviewing experience at the time, to make it look like he was more of an underdog than he really was). You might not think this very important, as long as they get the main points correct. Maybe you are right, but how do you know they got the main points right? How do you know they didn't embellish a few more things here and there to make a more exciting story?

If I want to learn about Frost/Nixon, and I think I would actually, I'd much prefer to watch a documentary made by serious broadcasters who attempted to tell the truth as far as they could find it. I don't want my memories polluted by half truths and fabrications in the name of entertainment. I've no real idea who "Harvey Milk" was, but if I want to find out, I'll try Wikipedia.

Films I have avoided due to dubious fictionalised historical aspects:

Pearl Harbour
Braveheart
that one about Tina Turner, and the one about Johnny Cash
the one about Larry Flint

err, anything really with a real person's name in the title, including all the recent Elizabeth ones.

I used to be capable sometimes of turning off this switch in my head and enjoying a biopic movie - Amadeus and Schindler's List come to mind - but I didn't take either completely seriously, and mostly enjoyed the former for the wonderful soundtrack. and sometime after Schindler's List I realised that I actually felt bad about having watched something purporting to be true, but with quite probably huge amounts of fiction in (all the dialogue for example is almost certain to be invented in these kinds of films). So much so, that I was forced to go and do some backgound reading to make sure I hadn't been mislead completely. So, why not just do the reading if you are interested.

"Let me entertain you" is what I want to hear from a film maker, not "Let me educate you with a half true story about a person's life that hightlights some issues I want you to be aware of".
Life is too short to watch things you don't trust - at least with Barb Wire, you know what you're getting isn't real :-)

Movies I haven't seen that you might expect I have:

The Dark Knight
Pirates of the Caribbean
Army of Darkness
I, Robot
Robots
Tron

If you know me, then there are some obvious films that you'd expect me to have watched. I even can't quite believe some of the massive gaps in my viewing. In the last six months I've watched the complete Karate Kid Quadrilogy (did you even know there were four of them :-) and yet, the billion dollar movie "The Dark knight" remains unseen. What on earth is wrong with me?

[I will add more here as I think of them, and hopefully make an effort to remove some, as I really do want to see them. I even have some of these on disc at home.]

JCVD

This is a tremendous film, easily my favourite of the year so far. [1]
I know you'll find this hard to believe - it has quite a few things going against it. Jean-claude Van Damme isn't known for great art, or great acting and it's almost completely in French with English subtitles. But what makes it work, and why I loved it, is how it mixes real life with fiction, messes about with time lines to reveal itself to us in different ways, and, of course, has the very excellent Mr. JCVD himself giving the best performance of his life.

Did you see "Being John Malkovich"? There are very valid comparisons to that movie, where the lead actor plays a fictionalised version of himself. This one doesn't have any of the weird science fictional aspects though, it's all played completely straight.

Very briefly, the plot. A fading action movie star returns to his native country to try and recover from a divorce and custody battle for his daughter. He is short on money, short on good movies to act in. We see him enter a Post Office, and soon after, there are shots - it's a robbery.

From this opening we are constantly kept guessing - first about what is happening inside, and then how it will all play out in the end. It is a fantastic, funny, tragic and exciting ride. It is also shot in a sepia tinged way that make it look moody and rough, and looks great on Blu-Ray on a big screen TV.

I urge you to see it - there will not be a film it again. The six minute monologue straight to camera is unbelievable, and yet, it exists.

[1] though there isn't that much competition to be honest in the department.

The Guardian finally reached the part of their 1000 novel list that I was interested in, SF.

Here is their website.

I've only read 30 of the 124 books listed. It's a good list though, someone with a real clue wrote it. Obviously some classics are missing and some should be removed, but any list is not going to please everyone. There are several I've never even heard of. I will be writing far more about this list later, watch this space.

Here is the list in an easily digestible format, marked with an X are the ones I've read.

Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) X
Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951) X
Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984) X
Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987) X
Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987) X
Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)
Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio (1999)
Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956) X
Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992) X
Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960) X
Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)
Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)
William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979)
Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)
Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)
Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)
Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) X
Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) X
Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
Arthur C Clarke: Childhood's End (1953)
GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)
Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998) X
Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000)
Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)
Samuel R Delaney: The Einstein Intersection (1967)
Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum (1988)
Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)
John Fowles: The Magus (1966)
Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001) X
Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)
William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984) X
Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)
William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974) X
M John Harrison: Light (2002)
Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) X
Frank Herbert: Dune (1965) X
Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)
Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980) X
James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
Michel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)
Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)
PD James: The Children of Men (1992)
Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)
Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925)
Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
Stephen King: The Shining (1977) X
Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)
Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)
Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994) X
Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954) X
Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006) X
Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)
China Miéville: The Scar (2002)
Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)
Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)
David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004) X
Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)
William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)
Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife (2003) X
Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970) X
Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
Flann O'Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991)
Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)
Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)
John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)
Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)
François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000) X
Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997) X
Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)
Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943)
José Saramago: Blindness (1995)
Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989) X
Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992) X
Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)
Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889)
Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)
Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999)
HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895) X
HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898) X
TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)
Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)
John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)
John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)

Robert Shiels completed this goal

Robert Shiels added an entry about Read 20 books in 2009:

Only managed 40 in 2008.

The Ghost - Robert Harris

My first book of 2009, and not a promising start. His first book "Fatherland" appealed to the alternate history nerd inside me, and wasn't a bad detective story. But this is a watery, weak affair that seems to stumble along trying to find excitement, and even when there is some, it manages to turn the volume down and play it in slow motion.

The narrator/hero of this story is a ghostwriter by profession. I don't think we ever get to know his name, which is a clever trick by Harris - ghostwriters of course are never mentioned on the covers of the books they have 'written'.

He gets the job of writing the autobiography of former Prime Minister of Britain, Adam Lang. The previous person who tried to do this drowned, suicide assumed, but we know that it must be a suspicious death.

Lang and his wife are obviously grotesque parodies of Tony and Cherie Blair, which oddly enough makes this book less interesting rather than more.

So the writer goes to Martha's Vineyard to meet Lang, and spends a short time interviewing him as a political crisis looms. Gradually he uncovers irregularities in Lang's past, and starts to wonder whether his life may be in danger too.

It sounds like a good book, but it's clumsily handled. Characters are cardboard cutouts, and perform randomly as the plot requires. I was reminded of the author Frederick Forsyth for some reason as I read through; it seems like his kind of plot, and I wished someone with his skill had tackled it instead.

Buy it here, or not, whatever. I'd advise against it.

My final two books of the year were

39. World War Z - Max Brooks
40. A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin

So you can see, I didn't make it to 52 :-(

I'll do a full year review post (when I get enough tuits, the round ones) but the jist of it was that I stopped commuting by train, and lost ~eight hours reading a week. Without giving up other things in the evening and weekend, I was lost.

The last two books were really fun to read. "World War Z" was a great zombie novel, which postulated what would happen to the world if zombies really did exist. Then "A Game of Thrones" rounded the year off with some more epic fantasy.

A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin

Book 40 in my 52 books in 52 weeks in 2008

This is my final book for 2008 - so you know I didn't make it to the full 52. This is a shame, but I didn't know I'd lose four months of train commuting, so it wasn't to be helped. Nevertheless, this is I think ten books more than 2007, so I'm very pleased about that. I'm still cycling to work, so 2009 is looking like a 20 book year. We'll see, maybe I'll get a new contract.

How many epic fantasy series can one person read? When each book is about 1000 pages, and authors insist on upwards of ten books, it is a real struggle. You need to choose carefully. I read "Magician", the first in the Riftwar series by Raymond E Feist not that long ago. it was OK, but I didn't feel inclined to continue. Robert jordan's "Wheel of Time" books get a lot of bad press, particularly the later ones. I don't know much about any other series, but this one from George R.R. Martin gets universal acclaim, so I felt it was time to start. for anyone interested, I only just managed to finish it in 2008, at about 30 minutes to midnight, and it took me a couple of months to get through it, a chapter a night.

The first thing to say about this book is that it is really brutal. If it was a film, you'd maybe want to look away occasionally, or have a sick bag handy. Human life is cheap in this medieval society, justice is swift, and it doesn't pay well to be a woman, even a rich one.

The second thing is the almost complete lack of fantasy. There is a bit of course, and heavy hints for more to come in succeeeding volumes no doubt, but this is primarily a book about the politics of ruling a large kingdom when the people in charge all hate each other.

I did enjoy reading this. You get a total immersion feeling from the world you are inhabiting. There is a big cast of characters, and the chapters flit between them giving you views of the situations from all angles. The country itself seems to be about the size of England. In the north, it is freezing all the time and a huge wall has been built across the northern part country to keep the Others/Wildings out. What are the Others? I'm still hardly any the wiser. The climate is variable, but it seems that every ten or twenty years a mini ice age occurs. No one can predict exactly when it will happen, but in the time of the novel, it is overdue, and definitely imminent. Winter is coming.

Any epic fantasy without battles, heroic deaths, treachery and deceit and all those good things would be pointless, so we're not disappointed in those areas. But it is reallllly long, and there are so too many characters that it is easy to get lost a bit along the way. The narrative shifts from person to person and each has their own individuality that you come to recognise, but the bit players, all the knights and outlaws and so on, merge into one at times.

This book is merely a prelude to the ones to come, like a pilot episode of a long running TV series. It introduces the cast and sets the scene for all the shows to come. And it has a great climax to get you to come back for more. I'll be back.

World War Z - Max Brooks

Book 39 in my 52 books in 52 weeks in 2008

Finishing off the year with a couple of books that go back to the basics of some good old SF/Fantasy/Horror. First off, this one, which all the cool kids have been reading, and I've looked forward to since I first heard about it in the spring. Coincidentally, Penny Arcade also featured it while I was reading it - here in a funny cartoon.

What would happen to the world if zombies were real? I do not think this is a disaster scenario that the United Nations are considering, but no need, Max Brooks has it covered.

This is a clever story told from the point of view of the survivors of a World War against zombies. Some of these are ordinary people, some soldiers, and they come from all four corners of the world, from China to Israel; Cuba to Australia.

Every story is in the form of an interview, and each interview follows chronologically if not geographically on from the last. It begins with a doctor who discovered the first outbreak in a remote Chinese village. As the infection spreads, interviewees come from neighbouring countries, until the whole world has to deal with the zombie horde.

I was worried a bit about the detailed political and military knowledge I might need to follow to get me through the book, and in places it does get a little overwhelming. It quickly switches tack though away from this bigger picture to tell individual stories of survival and heroism - some would be great standalone short stories.

It is a very enjoyable and grizzly read, and a testament to just what you can do if you take one ludicrous idea, assume it is real, and extrapolate from there. I loved the way the zombies, with no mental facilities except the desire for human flesh, walk into seas and lakes and get lost (they don't drown of course, just wander around).
There quite a few neat touches like this.

so, finally, a book that does live up to the hype. Read it.