Whilst driving up the motorway last Saturday I received a call from a friend.
“I’ve got two tickets to see Neil Gaiman talking with Philip Pullman about fairy tales on Monday, but can’t go. Do you want them?”
Category: Books
I confess in advance that this review may be a little vague—I listened to George Mann’s The Affinity Bridge about a month ago and have since read The Eyre Affair.
The Affinity Bridge is a steampunk book. It is so steampunk, in fact, that it’s as if the author had a little checklist of ‘steampunk things’ beside them as they wrote it, and diligently made sure to tick every single box before the end. But I get ahead of myself.
I’m not very good at blogging frequently—other things just seem to get in the way at the moment. That’s why I’m writing a quick overview of the Hay Festival of Literature & Arts an entire month after I got back from it. Never mind.
I’ll start by talking about a book that seemed to me, in a number of ways, to be about endings, and how it caught me off guard.
A couple of months ago I read what is currently the latest Discworld novel – ‘Snuff’, by the esteemed Sir Terry Pratchett. It took me considerably longer than I expected, but I think that’s my fault, not the book’s. It was about goblins and tobacco and death, and it was good.