Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell AND Northern Lights I'm afraid. None of them really grab me.

I've decided there's no way I'm going back to Cloud Atlas, (and I know I'm gonna get linched for this) but I found Northern Lights really quite uninspiring. Maybe even dull. I WILL give it another go though. It may be that I've subconsiously made my mind up that I won't like it for no reason I can put my finger on.

Bracing himself,

Nik.

Yes, great trailer, good article in the Independent on Friday and Ang Lee. Has to be worth a look?

UK Release dates for Brokeback Mountain - 6 January (limited) and 13 January.

Sarah

For me it was Rates Of Exchange by Malcolm Bradbury, bought in a second hand shop because I thought I ought to read some of his work and because it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1983.

I managed about 50 pages before I decided to chuck it. I probably wouldn't have got that far if I hadn't already put aside A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe. So then I read Donna Tartt's A Little Friend (a struggle at times because the story is so sluggish) and then back to A Personal Matter again, which seems to be slipping down nicely this time.

I usually find I blame myself when I can't get into a book, wondering if there's some nuance below the uninsipiring prose that everyone else can see but me.

Oh yeah, and it's good to know that a large chunk of you are having trouble with Kate Atkinson's Behind The Scenes...I only went and bought the bloody thing yesterday before I read this thread!

Northern lights grabbed me as soon as I saw the name Asreal, but I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to demonology, so immediately suspected there was more to this book than a simple story.

Colin M

I loved Cloud Atlas and could not put it down. It does seem to be a love-it-or-hate-it book.

I felt Northern Lights was a bit boring up until the last few chapters, and then The Subtle Knife blew me away. I think you need to give it a chance as the pay off really is exceptional, and the rest of the trilogy isn't really the same kind of story as seemingly set up in the first book.

JB

I thought I was the only one who like The Subtle Knife. I thought it was the best of the three. I didn't like the elephant things in the last book at all.

Aha! Thank you, Sarah! And, JB, I never imagined you were!!!

)

A
xxx

Good article on Brokeback Mountain on Sat in the Guardian too. I saw it at a BAFTA screening (I have a useful friend who's a member) and it's a very remarkable film, not only in being non-stereotypical about just about every stereotype you can think of - gay men, cowboys real and fake, the mid-West, sex gay and straight, love, children... The performances were stunning - especially by Heath Ledger and the Rockies. As always with Lee, observed and edited with unobtrusive precision. Just make sure you take several handkerchiefs...

Emma

I thought the first ten chapters or so of Northern Lights was phenomenally boring - I struggled to get past that point a couple of times, but when I did, thought it was just fantastic. (Bad parent that I am - I knew my then-12 year old would just love it if he could get past the first ten chapters, so told him I'd give him a fiver if he did (I was keen to get him reading fiction and thought this might just be the book to do it). He duly did, I paid up, he then couldn't put the book down and raced through it and through the next two.) I thought the second (what's it called?) wasn't as good as NL, and that TSK (that is the third, isn't it? jeez I need to sleep) wasn't as good as the second.

(And btw, it was the book that got him into fiction; he reads it avidly now. A Happy Ending)

Andrea

Okay, okay, you've convinced me. I WILL give Northern Lights another go, possibly even as my next read (after I've finished the sequel to Wolf Brother - similar age (and appeal?) to NL, and, in my opinion, fab!

It's been refreshing and extrememly reassuring to hear that others found the first bit of NL boring et al.. I thought I was the only one, and because I didn't "get it" I was worried there was something wrong with me - worrying really, especially as I write for children!

Cheers,

Nik.

I'm with you on Underworld by DonDeLillo - struggled on but finally gave up - just nothing I could relate to at all. I find this is often the case with books by American males that get lots of hype - I've never been able to really get on with Saul Bellow or John Updike either.

I think the world needs more films like Brokeback Mountain. It is what I've attempted to achieve in my first novel - the destruction of outdated stereotypes.

Whenever someone gay appears in drama, they are always 'affected', like that awful geezer in Coronation Streetor as comic, as in Will and Grace. It is almost as if the gay community is seeking to ingratiate itself with the straight one, when the whole point is to be above those stuifling parameters and just be yourself as an individual. This stereotyping reflects itself everytime someone tells me 'oh I love gay people' or 'gay people are so funny'. My god, it's just cringeworthy. I think the minute one begins to define oneself by what they do in their bedroom, their hearts (or anywhere else for that matter), one misses the target and hits the sawdust of ignorance.

I have often told gay people that tehir sexuality doesnt give them a licensce to be an idiot. Sadly, many sign up for this kind of 'club', where everyone listens to the same music, wears the same clothes, etc, and then acts and talks like a washer woman on a bad hair day. How attractive. How damn fake.

I for one, cannot wait to see what this film has to offer. As someone continually disgusted and appalled by the way the gay community chooses to portray itself, (complete with whinging victim-ness, downright fascist double standards, and poor me-ness posturing) I am ready for a much needed change of perspective.

JB

Re: Cloud Atlas, I'm beginning to feel a bit worried now that so many of you hated it... I loved it myself, and consequently gave it to several people as a birthday or Christmas present. Never suspected anyone might find it less than brilliant. Oh, well.

As for putting books aside, in the past five years or so I've only given up on one book, which was so bad I don't even remember the title or the author's name. But I'm a notorious book-juggler and I often start books only to discover I'm not in the mood for them; I put them aside, though I always pick them up again when the mood comes, be it in a week, a few months, or a few years. I used to hate this in myself and I thought it was a sign of a flighty and impatient character to be in the 'mood' (whatever that means, really) for physics one day, psychoanalysis the next, and Elizabethan poetry the day after that. But perhaps it's not too bad. At least I'm never bored. :-/

James, have you read "The Long Firm" by Jake Arnott (or seen the drama - it was very well done and Jake had a cameo in a bar scene). The main gangster in it is gay and he kicks the shit out the average screen/drama stereotype.

Colin