Neu gelesen (als E-Book)

Iain Banks, Stonemouth

Das vorletzte (nicht SF) Buch von Banks erwies sich wieder als hochgradig faszinierend, so dass es mir wirklich leidtat als ich zum Ende kam, obwohl das Drama am Schluß natürlich wieder entsetzlich spannend war. Gerade bei der Beschreibung von solchen Mikrokosmen wie hier die Kleinstadt an der schottischen Küste in der zwei Familienclans den Ton angeben war Banks so außerordentlich, dass mir der Gedanke, was er noch alles hätte schreiben können mir immer wieder fast unerträglich ist.

"Everybody says kids are what it's all about, don't they? But then that just means you have kids so they can have kids and then those kids can have kids too, and so on and so on ad infinitum, and you have to stop at some point and think, Hold on, shouldn't some of it be about me, or, well, about any of the people from any of those generations? Shouldn't we have something else apart from just being a link in this chain of procreation for the sake of it?" She sighed again, arranged Hannah's hair just so. "Not as though the human race is in any danger of dying out. And we have choice now."
"No time machines, though."
"No, no time machines," she agreed. Her smile was still as beautiful as it had been.
.
I suspect we all sort of secretly think our lives are like these very long movies, with ourselves as the principal characters, obviously. Only very occasionally does it occur to any one of us that all these supporting actors, cameo turns, bit players and extras around us might actually be in some sense real, just as real as we are, and that they might think that the Big Movie is really all about them, not us; that each one of them has their own film unreeling inside their own head and we are just part of the supporting cast in their story.
.
I still have a vague feeling that there might be more to existence than can be experienced with our surface senses, so technically I guess I'm an agnostic, but nothing's more guaranteed to bring out my inner atheist than listening to the witterings of a holy man who thinks all the answers are already there in some book, whether it was written millenia ago or last week.
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(Iain Banks, Stonemouth, 2012)

Wieder-/quergelesen/als Sonntagslektüre dazwischengeschoben:

Star Wars - Tales from Jabba's Palace, edited by Kevin J. Anderson

Für ein Sonntagsfrühstück und anschließendem faulen Vormittag im Fernsehsessel ist diese Anthologie bestens geeignet. Nicht alle Geschichten gefallen mir, aber einige wie 'A Boy and his Monster - the Rancor's Keeper's Tale' von Kevin J. Anderson, 'And the Band played on - The Band's Tale von John Gregory Betancourt, 'Of the Day's Annoyances - Bib Fortuna's Tale' von M. Shayne Bell, 'A Bad Feeling - The Tale of EV-8D9' von Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, 'A Barve like That - The Tale of Boba Fett' von J.D. Montgomery (vermutlich meine Lieblingsgeschichte) und 'Skin Deep - The Fat Dancer's Tale' von A.C. Crispin werde ich wohl auch diesmal nicht zum letzten Mal gelesen haben. Die E-Book-Version verkniff ich mir aber für diesmal noch. Vielleicht beim nächsten Mal.

Neu gelesen: (als E-Book)

Jojo Moyes, The Giver of Stars

Der neue Moyes schlug auf meinem Paperwhite auf, als ich noch an 'The Steep Approach to Garbadale' dran war, und der Titel machte mich doch erst etwas skeptisch - aber spätestens nach den ersten drei Kapiteln war die Skepsis ausgeräumt. Ich hatte schon fast vergessen, wie gut Moyes bei historischen Romanen ist, und hier geht es auch noch um eine Einrichtung, von der ich vorher noch nie gehört hatte und auch kaum für möglich gehalten hätte, das Packhorse Library Project durch das Bücher in die entlegensten Regionen von Kentucky gebracht wurden - hauptsächlich durch Frauen auf Pferden oder Maultieren. Obwohl das allein schon interessant genug wäre, setzt Moyes natürlich noch einen drauf und die Story wurde am Ende mit dem unerwarteten Twist so spannend, dass ich die letzten 30% in einem Rutsch auslesen musste. Zwar sind die männlichen Charakter etwas zu schwarzweiß beschrieben, vor allem die 'guten' sind irgendwie zu perfekt um real zu sein, aber das tut der Qualität der Geschichte kaum Abbruch. Von der Sorte Stories hätte ich gerne mehr.

Neu gelesen: (als E-Book)

Iain Banks, The Steep Approach to Garbadale

Noch eine wirklich faszinierende Geschichte über ein großes Familienunternehmen oder besser im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes Imperium, in dem einer der Vertreter der dritten Generation bei dem Versuch sich abzukoppeln mehr Skelette im Schrank findet als er verkraften kann. Nachdem ich mich erstmal in die ganzen verzweigten Verhältnisse eingelesen hatte, konnte ich das Buch kaum noch aus der Hand legen.

"..I've spent my life waiting for my life to start. It's as though one needs permission from somebody - parents, God, a committee of one's peers; I don't bloody know - to finally take responsibility for one's own actions, one's own life. Only the permission never comes, and gradually - well, gradually for me, I can't speak for others; maybe their realisation comes in some sort of sudden revelation and a blinding light or whatever - gradually you realise taht it never will come, that the way you've lived your life, stumbling through it, winging it half the time, is all thee really is, all there ever was. I feel cheated because of that. I feel, sometimes, like I've cheated myself though I can't see how I could have done much different. And I have a horrible feeling that even if I had a time machine and could go back to visit my younger self to warn him, or at least advise him about all this, he'd - I'd have no idea what my future self was talking about. I'd think he was an idiot. I'd ignore him. I'd ignore myself."
.
Sophie was his religion, he thought, with a kind of shock. He'd built a temple round her image, her idol, her fixed, unchanging, incorruptible icon. The worship of that symbol had become what mattered, rather than the girl as she actually was or the woman she'd become. She represented his faith in his own trueness of spirit, his ability to keep on believing in something. If he could believe in his love for Sophie, he could believe he was a good person, a worthwhile person, a decent man. He was an atheist and a secularist, but now he had to confront his own idiot faith, this slightly mad belief system that he'd carried with him all this time, and accept it for the nonsense it was. Maybe it had been a useful nonsense, in a state of relative ignorance, the way conventional religions could be, but it was still nonsense.
He'd once characterised religions as reason abatement societies. Shit, he hadn't realised with what authority he'd been speaking. Maybe he owed Tom Fromlax an apology.
In his mind, he could feel a particularly non-violent and well-spoken mob politely storming the temple complex that held the graven image of Sophie. He could almost hear the wailing of the priests, the lamentations of the faithful as the great washed, the well-scrubbed crowd of intellectuals - waving scrolls (closely argued, ink still damp) rather than burning torches - defiled the sacred ground with their presence and their doubt and their faithless, argumentative lack of certainty.
.
Sometimes it seemed that all that ever went on was each new generation trying to fix the mistakes and problems caused by the previous one - not to mention those accumulated via still earlier forebears. And this never really seemed to be possible, not as a finished result. It always seemed to be required and it certainly was always worth trying, but if you set your heart on fully achieving such a goal, you were bound to be disappointed.
.
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(Iain Banks, The Steep Approach to Garbadale, 2005)

Neu gelesen: (als E-Book)

Iain Banks, Dead Air

Endlich wieder ein Banks - schon bei den ersten Kapiteln merkte ich wie sehr ich den Autor vermisst habe. Und dieses Buch erwies sich als noch viel besser - und vor allem spannender - als ich gedacht hatte. Vor allem im letzten Viertel, als der Radiomoderator Kenneth in so unglaublich vertrackte und haarsträubende Schwierigkeiten gerät, dass ein Happy End unmöglich erscheint, konnte ich mich kaum davon losreißen. Der nächste Banks steht schon auf dem Paperwhite bereit.

Faith is fine for poetry, for images and metaphors and art and for telling us who we are, who we've been. But when faith tries to describe the world, describe the universe, it just plain gets it wrong. Which wouldn't matter if it admitted it was wrong, but it can't, because all it's got is its unwavering certainty in its own infallibilty; the rest is smoke and mirrors, and admitting imperfection brings the whole lot tumbling down. There are no crystal spheres, and the planets are not the result of some sky god's wet dream. If that is supposed to be taken literally, the it's a lie, plain and simple. If it's a metaphor, then it has bugger all to do with the way things really work.
.
'I was thinking,' she said, 'of bishops on opposing sides, and of different colours as well. Just the two of them there on the chess board, with no other pieces present.'
I nodded. I saw, now, what she meant.
'They could never connect,' I said. 'They could slide past each other for ever, but never affect. They appear to inhabit the same board, but really they don't. Not at all.'
.
(Iain Banks, Dead Air, 2002)

Wieder-/Quergelesen

Anne Fadiman, At Large and At Small, Confessions of a Literary Hedonist

Weil ich nur einige der Essays aus dem Buch wiederlesen und den Rest nur überfliegen wollte, schenkte ich mir die viel zu teure E-Version. Allerdings muss ich im Nachhinein zugeben, dass ich durch den Paperwhite mittlerweile ziemlich verwöhnt worden bin und mir die Lektüre 'richtiger' Bücher immer schwerer fällt, besonders bei gelbem Lampenlicht und eher kleinerer Schrift. Aber meine Lieblingsessays in diesem Band, als da wären "Ice Cream", "Night Owl", "Mail" und "Coffee" lasen sich unverändert gut.

My mother killed my father when I was seven years old. Now, thirty-nine years later, she is dead too, and I am an orphan.

(Ruth Hogan, aus: Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel, 2019)
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