Adventures With Words

When it was published in 2005, Twilight was an instant sensation. Hundreds, no, thousands of teenage girls devoured the series, delighted by twin heroes Edward and Jacob, both driven to desperation and dangerous acts by their love for damsel-in-distress Bella Swan.

Throughout the novels, Bella is torn between vampire Cullen and werewolf Black; both would do anything for her. Edward pleads with Bella not to sacrifice her humanity to be with him, even going so far as abandoning her in the belief that she will be better off without him. As a result, she is pushed towards Jacob, who as a werewolf despises vampires in general, and Edward in particular, for the same reason - Bella may choose to lose her life in order to be with Edward.

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How can you help mankind when they won’t help themselves? Welcome to Heaven Inc. Meet God, CEO of Heaven Inc. Its mantra? “We’ve got Earth covered”. Unless of course someone is away from their desk. But these days, God is kind of disillusioned. He knows he should be keeping an eye on genocides and stuff, but he’d rather watch the church channels on cable. And his first priority in terms of wielding his power is to get Lynyrd Skynyrd back together…

What In God’s Name is the second novel from the youngest ever writer to be hired by Saturday Night Live, Simon Rich. His previous offering, Elliot Allagash, won him many high-profile fans, including Judd Apatow and Jon Stewart, and was described as Clueless for boys. In this book, he looks to his Jewish upbringing for inspiration and creates a deeply, dryly funny and ironic view of just what the big man upstairs might be getting up to. And, of course, what his helpers might be doing to keep him on the straight and narrow. This concept isn’t new, of course - I’m thinking Dogma, or A Life Less Ordinary - but with a topic and canvas as big as this, there’s plenty of room left for interpretation.

Simon will be in the UK in August when What In God’s Name is published, by Serpent’s Tail; keep an eye out, this looks like a good one…

Kate on The Hunger Games:

Katniss Everdeen. Long brown hair, an olive complexion and used to struggling to stay alive.  She’s also the heroine of teen book and now film sensation The Hunger Games.  She’s able to transfer her skills at hunting, which she uses every day to provide for her one-parent family, into self-defence and killing when absolutely necessary in order to try to survive the Hunger Games, a 70-year old tradition in Panem, the post-apocalyptic remains of America.

Opening the film with hand-held, washed out shots set the scene perfectly; it was a bit too shaky for me personally, I was starting to feel a bit seasick, but it certainly created a sense of poverty and desperation that was necessary to allow us to understand a world in which the Hunger Games could be in any way acceptable.  I was reminded of some of the more desperate scenes from Cold Mountain, which is surprisingly appropriate as District 12, Katniss’ home, nestles among the Appalachian Mountains.  I would have liked to spend a little more time here with Katniss’ family and friends, especially Gale, in order to fully appreciate the sacrifice she made by volunteering to be a Tribute.

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April 23rd is no longer just St George’s Day or the anniversary of the birth and death of Shakespeare; for the last two years, it’s also been World Book Night, where a million books of all genres have been given away free to members of the public around the UK, and elsewhere.

This year, the shortlist was a little longer than in 2011, with twenty-five titles for givers and receivers to choose from. I was lucky enough to have a box full of The Player of Games by Iain M Banks to distribute, AWW originator Rob gave Misery by Stephen King, and on a very rainy evening, we took our novels to The Big BookBang at Slack Space, a not-for-profit arts space in Colchester.  We had the privilege of advocating and reading passages from our books, along with eight or nine other givers.  This was interspersed with an introduction to Book Crossing, plus local poets Fred Slattern and Mark Brayley, some stand-up comedy and even a local author.

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Do you ever wish you could command a crowd of strangers? Feel like you’re not being recognised for the intellectual or political genius you are? Perhaps you’re a secret super-villain? In which case, could I recommend to you an excellent hour spent in the company of poet and story-teller Tim Clare?

Tim visited Colchester Arts Centre touring his show How to be a Leader, which starts in almost total darkness as he tells us about an experiment carried out to see how strangers would behave without light in a room together for 60 minutes - by 45 minutes, most were engaging in ‘intimate activity’… Now, the lights did come back on but Tim’s delivery, a mixture of earnest enthusiasm, humour and irony, set the tone for the show. 

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