reading...

Just finished reading Iain Banks' latest novel, The Steep Approach to Garbadale, and must admit to finding it one of his lesser works. 

The thing is that his writing for me is now coloured by the dissatisfaction I had with his "whisky travelogue", Raw Spirit.

I'd picked up Raw Spirit hoping to really learn something about whisky, its culture, its place in modern Scotland, its flavour.  Instead I encountered several long diatribes about Banks' feelings on Iraq, government in general, how great his cars are, how great his bike is, how great it is to drive really really fast on scottish backroads, how much whisky he has tucked away, and very little on the whisky itself.  Which was a shame as what material there was about whisky was wonderful.

So as I was reading ...Garbadale I just found too many times where, frankly, there was a degree of self-indulgence by getting characters expressing views that Raw Spirit established are clearly those of the author.  Now of course there's nothing wrong with this in and of itself - Andrew McGahan's recent book Underground is a recent Australian example - but sheesh, it's really quite clumsy here.  And the ending could be seen a mile off as well.  Here's hoping his next sf book is a better read.

A much better whisky book is Peat, Smoke and Spirit by Andrew Jefford, which considers solely the history and whiskies of Islay.  I've transcribed a bunch of Jefford's tasting notes for my own info, combined with a few from Andrew Jackson's guide to single malts.  I just found that Jefford writes about the whisky much more descriptively both for newbies such as myself and more considered drinkers.  Increased my knowledge and appreciation of the distiller's art immeasurably, highly recommended.

Also reading Finding Serenity, a collection of pre-Serenity-the-movie essays about Joss Whedon's Firefly edited by Jane Espenson.  Feels like I'm trawling through a bunch of humanities essays at times but has definitely been enough to have me dragging out the dvds of the series for the umpteenth time to consider all over again.  Good reading for fans of the show.