Didn't actually realise that it was part of a series till I'd got quite far through. Found it a little hard to follow: this is the second one, might have been easier if I'd started with "1974". Also there isn't much of an ending, not a lot actually gets resolved.

It's written in a stream-of-consciousness style. Peace also wrote the excellent "The Damned United". I think coming from that where it's played for black comedy made it a bit harder to take this book seriously.

Even so, it's an intense (hopefully exaggerated) portrait of Leeds in the Seventies, complete with brutal police corruption.

Overall, fairly good, but I don't think I've got the stamina to read the other three books. Might just rent the TV series instead.

What I'm Watching
Saw The Road. at the cinema. A man and his son wander around a dying Earth years after an unspecified apocalypse.

Wish I could have liked it more. It's a rare-ish attempt at intelligent science fiction at the cinema: maybe I've been a bit spoiled by District 9 and Moon last year. The movie has an impressively bleak atmosphere: it's partly shot in polluted areas of the US which look suitably grim without CGI clichés. There's some great acting, especially from Kodi Smit-McPhee as The Boy, who seems genuinely baffled by relics of the past. And there are two really good scenes: The house of cannibals and the discovery of the survivalist shelter.

But in spite of its virtues, I just found the movie uninvolving and very boring. Had to resist the urge to walk out, or at least switch the phone on and play some Freecell.

One problem is that up till the ending, nothing of significance happens to the characters. There are some close shaves, but basically they just trudge around looking miserable and talking about how miserable they are.

Couldn't help comparing it to the similarly bleak "Mother Courage and Her Children" which I saw recently, and also features a parent and children wandering a wasteland. But there, you get to see her lose all her children one after another, some as a result of her decisions. The dramatic peak is when she has to pretend not to know the body of her son so the soldiers won't realise her involvement. Even though she never cries or shows self-pity, it's effective tragedy because tragic things happen to the characters.

With The Road, even though Viggo Mortenson blubbers, wails, or smashes up the set (seems obligatory for Hollywood capital-A Acting these days) every ten minutes or so; it doesn't feel tragic; since all the tragic stuff like the death of his wife happened off-screen or years before. So you don't really feel sorry for him. Oh, so that's it, you lost your family? That makes you something special, does it?

Even forgetting Brecht, the recent movie Blindness. seemed to do post-apocalyptic breakdown a lot better. Not only were the characters involved, but you got to see the situation get progressively worse: it's suspenseful as you wonder just how bad things can get. "The Road" has flashbacks, but otherwise it's just a snapshot of a broken-down world.

So without emotional involvement or much action, the movie is pretty dull to watch; which leaves you wondering about things. There were lights in the sky when it happened, earthquakes are ongoing; all the trees and plants are dead, as are the animals. So what the hell was this apocalypse supposed to be? If it's solar radiation or a gamma-ray burst, why the earthquakes? Why are humans still fertile if all the plants are sterilized? Maybe everything outdoors was sterilized, but if so why can't they plant seeds from warehouses?

Inevitably you have to compare it to 2012 which also had solar radiation somehow causing not just earthquakes, but anything else the narrative finds convenient. For some reason the critics seem to have decided that 2012's bullshit explanation counts against it; but equal nonsense is perfectly OK if you don't bother to explain it at all.

I'm also not sure now if the beetle is supposed to be an optimistic sign that the Earth is regenerating. Some cicadas have a 17-year lifecycle, so it could just have been leftover from the old days.

Overall then, not recommended: dull with sentimental turns.

Guardian, Times, Times, Independent, Standard reviews. RT. WP

Some of the reviews are quite positive, but somehow I like the movie even less after reading them. So the real tragedy isn't supposed to be deaths, cannibalism, breakdown of human trust and extinction of the biosphere; but the way the characters can't Express Their Feelings to each other? Good grief.

Me
Went for yet another walk up past Wormwood Scrubs to the Grand Union Canal and got some pics while it was still a bit snowy. Amused to see the graffitists had tagged the canal.

Web
Video. Axe Detailer ad.

Socioeconomics. The Disposable Worker. Somali piracy boosts fish stocks. Analysis of Eurozone bond spreads. Effect of class sizes at university.

Random. Vote for Barbie's new career. "First Sex Robot" unveiled (NSFW).

Pics. How to post photos on the internet.