Anders Hanson

It’s been a while since I updated on this, but I have gone back to reading avidly.

The book I am now nearing the end of is Complicity by Iain Banks. The first Iain Banks I read was one of his most recent - Dead Air - a book that I would probably label as one of my favourites. So, hoping that I’d found an author I could without question say is brilliant, I then read The Bridge. Maybe I’m not intellectual enough, but I hated it and found it incredibly confusing. However, hoping that it was just a one off, I then started Complicity. The book so far has been very good. Basically, it is a mystery story, but what I love about this book, as with Dead Air, is the way that Iain Banks describes things from everyday, and not so everyday, life that makes you realise picture exactly what he is referring to.

The last book I read was another mystery, but along the more conventional lines. That time it was Murder in the Marais by Cara Black. I had wanted to buy this book for some time. I first found Cara Black’s books in Waterstone’s in Southampton and just by reading the back of them I wanted to buy them. So I kept looking out for the first one in the series - Murder in the Marais - from then on. I finally bought it in January this year. Murder in the Marais is about a murder with links to the occupation of Paris during the Second World War. It twists and turns quite a lot and so can sometimes be difficult to follow, but when you get back on track it all fits together nicely. Although I don’t know the Marais at all, it really did conjour up a strong image of it in my mind. A very good book, and I will certainly read more by Cara Black.

AMAZON UK: Complicity by Iain Banks

AMAZON UK: Murder in the Marais by Cara Black

A few random pointers to the year I’ve just had and the year I want to have:

The best fiction I read in 2006

OK, so it was a major bestseller and is either loved, hated or one people love to hate, but it has to be “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown. It was long, it twisted and turned, and yes it was pretty implausible at times, but I was hooked. I have never read such a long book so quickly and I couldn’t put it down.

The best political book I read in 2006

An odd choice perhaps, but it is “Clement Davies: Liberal Leader” by Alun Wyburn-Powell. The period through which Clement Davies was leader was crucial to the survival of the party, and yet he is a leader that most people know nothing about. It was informative but also an easy read, and I also learnt a lot from it.

The most inspirational book I read in 2006

Another odd choice, but it was “NUTS! Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success” by Kevin & Jackie Freiberg. I had had this book for some years and finally got round to reading it. It was inspiring on the basis that it shows how much one company can enthuse people and it gave me pointers to life and work by showing that you can be successful and enjoy yourself. At a time when I wasn’t enjoying working for a particular employer, it proved to me why I was right to think they were rubbish.

The best single of 2006

This is a toss up between two songs, and yes both of them are commercial but both are very different. The first is “Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol which really stirs the emotions and does what I like in a lot of songs, building and building in sound as it goes along before finishing a beautiful flourish. The other song is “LDN” by Lily Allen which is fun, catchy and is pretty strong on imagery. Just what a song should be. As an aside, one other song I should talk up is “Stronger” by Public Symphony which is a beautiful song that is just so relaxing and I haven’t been able to stop listening to it.

The best album of 2006

This album came out in 2005, but I didn’t buy it until the end of that year and have then ended up listening t0 it non-stop in 2006 and so it should be my album of 2006 - “You See Colours” by Delays. Delays have continued as a band that does brilliant songs that are catchy but serious and just absorb you completely. I also saw them live this year and they were brilliant. My favourite band and my favourite album without a doubt. The band is completely underated and have not had the commercial success they deserve, and the proof of why they deserve it so much is on this album.

The best thing I’ve done in 2006

Early in the year I went to Monaco. I am not a spur of the moment person, but one of my friends is, and so it was great to be asked to go away to somewhere I’ve never visited. It was the most relaxing break I’ve had all year and it was wonderful to go somewhere warm, sunny and so completely different just before my busiest time of the year. Alas, in 2007 I won’t get the chance to go away early on.

The worst thing I’ve done in 2006

Although I managed to stop this by the end of the year, the worst thing was working for WHSmith. A one-time great company which has managed to return to profitability. But this has only been achieved by cutting back to the bare bones and by becoming a bad employer. Reading NUTS whilst working for WHSmith, shows you how far the company has to go to be a decent employer.

I already seem to be failing on one New Year resolution of posting to this website more often. However, the last week has seen me reading voraciously.

I have started and finished “Gallows View” by Peter Robinson in the last week. This author was recommended to me by my parents. I enjoy thrillers and crime fiction, like a lot of people, but I’ve tended to enjoy the grittier and more realistic crime stories, rather than the nicey nicey pretty little village fiction, or “nice murders” as I’ve heard them described. Peter Robinson’s books are set in the Yorkshire Dales and so I assumed these would be the same. But I was pleasantly surprised. Although my first impression was that they were cliche ridden and full of fairly simplistic dialogue, the book grew on me and eventually I was addicted. The book is also a lot more realistic than I had expected and the characters are flawed rather than perfect. A good read.

I have now moved back to political reading with my latest choice - “To Dream of Freedom” by Roy Clews. Ever since I lived in Wales I have had a fascination with Wales as a whole and Welsh politics in particular. One thing that I knew little about though was the terrorist attacks during the 1960s by the more extreme Welsh Nationalists. Although there is clearly an agenda from the author, I want to know the outlook from those closely involved in these acts. People tried to ban this book because of its subject, but I want to know what people on the extremes think, even if I disagree with them. You can only deal with extremists if you understand their motives. But this is also a cause that few understand even though it is so close to home. As an example, many people know that a lot of people in Wales were angry by the building of the reservoirs in Mid Wales, but it is only when you read facts like “forty per cent of homes [in Montgomeryshire] still had no piped water to homes” (from Clement Davies: Liberal Leader by Alun Wyburn-Powell) that you can understand so starkly why there was so much anger.

AMAZON UK: Gallows View by Peter Robinson

AMAZON UK: To Dream of Freedom by Roy Clews

Messiah by Boris Starling was read very quickly and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who likes thrillers. I already had an idea of who might be behind the murders and why before I reached the end, but it didn’t spoilt what was a gripping and enjoyable read.

I have now moved on to “The Fire Baby” by “Jim Kelly” - another thriller, this time set in the Fens. This is an author whose books I have never read before and so I have no real idea of what to expect. But it has had good (on the whole) reviews from people writing on Amazon, with the only criticism being that the landscape in which it is set is too bleak. Fine, as bleak is a thread that seems to have run through my recent posts on here anyway.

AMAZON UK: Messiah by Boris Startling

AMAZON UK: The Fire Baby by Jim Kelly

I’m still on with John Major’s very well written autobiography, a book which is very prophetic when he talks about all the problems there would have been in Iraq if they had gone all the way to Baghdad and deposed Saddam Hussein following the Gulf War.

But as a bit of a break I have switched to some lighter reading for a bit - Boris Starling’s “Messiah”. I say lighter reading, but it is a thriller and some of the murders in the book are pretty gruesome. I have been reading it for nearly a week and have ploughed through it at some speed as it is really gripping. You really want to know what will happen next, and it also includes quite a few twists and turns in the plot and more general character background than a lot of thrillers. I didn’t see the television dramatisation of this book (there is only one Messiah book and the rest of them were written for TV) but I am told it is nowhere near as good as the book.

AMAZON UK: Messiah by Boris Starling