I finished reading Stephen Fry’s The Hippopotamus last week, and thought I’d raid my bookshelves for something different and came up with Shaun Hutson’s Deadhead. You can’t get more of a contrast, and I’ve been a fan of Huston since the beginning, so I read that one this week too. (Review coming soon!) For those of you who don’t know, The Hippopotamus is a middle-class comedy set in Norfolk, and Deadhead is a brutally realistic urban horror novel
Now I’m reading Stephen King’s On Writing, another old hardback from my ancient collection that’s been gathering dust for years. King says he reads between 60-70 books a year. Like King, I’m a fairly slow reader, and I doubt I’ve ever managed 60-70! At the moment I’m on a pretty good run and I’ve read about four books in three weeks and should finish On Writing tomorrow or Monday, which puts it at four days, which I think is pretty good. Of course, King is counting audio books. I’ve never read an audio book, haven’t listened to one either. Fry would be excellent, he does the Harry Potter books, but I’ve read all of those.
A quick check on ebay and I’ve bought a collection of Clive Barker books, unabridged as King suggests, an Edgar Rice Burroughs collection and H. G .Wells, and some classics. When they arrive I’ll download them to my ipod and listen to them instead of 30 Seconds to Mars.
On Writing is good. King doesn’t like adverbs or the passive voice, so I’m trying not to use those. He also doesn’t plot. Which does explain some of his novels. I am a fan of Stephen King, when he’s on form he’s one of the best, Different Seasons is amazing. But the last book of his I read was Rose Madder, one he says he did plot. That was utter pants. On Writing is much better, and it helps to read books about writing every now and then, it’s like driving, after we pass the test we learn lots of bad habits. It’s the same with writing but without the test. I will try to put his advice to the test and hopefully will wind up with his success.
Wrote the Hutson review (needs to be edited), an article on Scream Queens which was really hard work, and a flash zombie story which was fun. Nose to the grindstone!
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