Black Ink

As is probably obvious I’ve given up on weekly book and album reviews, mostly because I’m failing miserably on the album front.

Still, here’s a catch up on what I’ve been reading, just to prove I’ve kept to better than one a week, and so I’ve got a record for later in the year:

Non fiction
Cities by John Reader
A book about the history and growth of the city. Not a specific city, just cities generally. A bit academic for on-the-bus reading, but I thought it was interesting. When I have some time, I’m going to re-read it again and try and absorb more this time.

The Subterranean Railway: How the London Underground Was Built and How It Changed the City Forever by Christian Wolmar
I like the tube. I like it’s history, because it’s full of the sort of quality Victorian mad bastards and Men Of Vision that you just couldn’t make up.

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
The account of a former child soldier from Sierra Leone. Very, very good indeed. Ths single best book in this batch of reading material, in fact, and one I strongly urge you to seek out.

Fiction
The Devil’s Home On Leave by Derek Raymond
I am utterly fucking ecstatic that someone is bringing Raymond back into print. This was the only one of his Factory novels that I hadn’t read, and it’s as good as all the others – black, horrible crime writinf of the finest, most damaged kind.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
And here’s the much less good kind of crime fiction – a trash potboiler that I’m astonished anyone could turn into an entire TV series, but apparently they have. I’ve seen a few episodes of the TV show – they struck me as badly written, and over exposited. The novel’s first person perspective is a bit more forgiving, but still, this is just more serial-killer-cool that the like of Hannibal made popular. It’s entertaing enough, but it’s not actually good, you know?

Altered Carbon
Broken Angels
Woken Furies
Market Forces all by Richard Morgan
A rare thing: good (or at least enjoyable) cyberpunk writing.

I have just spent a deeply frustrating 20 mins on the phone with Parcel Force’s computer. Their idea of customer service seems to be stuck in the mid-ninties, as they eschew even the most basic Indian call centre, preferring instead to use a system that doesn’t seem to have any way of connecting me to an actual human.

There is a package I really want to be able to collect today. If I can’t, I face another internet-free weekend. I want to confirm that it’s at the depot, that it will not be sent out again, and that it will wait there until I knock off work early, and collect it.

I cannot speak to a human, and I cannot convince their fucking voice recognition system that I live at 270A rather than 278, so I cannot make certain of this.

Does anyone know a number for Parcelforce that I can use that will result in speaking to a human?

Edit: It turns out it’s surprisingly easy. The options go:

Press 1 for….
Press 2 for….
[pause]
[pause]
[caller presses one of the above, thinking that's it]
Press 3 for…
Press 4 for…
[pause]
[caller hangs up in disgust]
Press 5 for an Indian call centre.

Still, got there in the end, after phoning their head bloody office.

My home internet is down again. Changing ISP in the middle of this week ought to fix it, but until then, I can’t promise anything like reliable responses to emails or other things, as the only net access I’ve got it at work, where I am about to vanish into a black hole of spreadsheets and financial reporting for the next month, as one of our clients prepares for the Christmas period.

If I owe you email, or a response to anything on-line in general, I’ll try and get to it when I can. Sorry.

Have been offline for four days now. The shakes on the third day were the worst part, but I got through it. Anyway, I don’t propose to read back more than my current 50 post friends page, so if there’s anything you need me to know or care about on LJ since last Wednesday night, please leave a comment directing me to it.

In unrelated news, my god, wasn’t the ending of Dr Who fucking awful? They were doing really bloody well for a season closer – “Utopia” and “The Sound of Drums” were astonishingly good for RTD-penned episodes (helped especially by John Simm) and even the first 20 minutes of “Last of the Timelords” was pretty reasonable. And then it just turned into the biggest heap of steaming shit I’ve seen out of modern-era Dr Who. Worse than the ending of the first season, which I really thought was where they hit bottom.

Anyone want to bet against Sea Devils being the big re-vamped villain for next season, by the way?