FamiliarPlacesYou are on the archive wiki. The new wiki is here. Over the last few month I have noticed a trend amoung Londoners to read books that are set in London. I've noticed this since due to my financial means, and the fact that I'm too lazy to join a library, I've been trawling the charity shops for books (usually costing me a grand total of a quid to a quid fifty per book - the horror!) The books one finds there are all the cast-offs of Londoners who for some reason have chosen to cull their library. I've found some really good books at these charity shops. Particularily at my favourite, the Notting Hill Gate Charity shop, although the branch I frequent is nowhere near Notting Hill Gate, and is in fact in Tooting. For instance, a fortnight ago I came home with a bumper crop of a William Gibson, a mint condition hard copy of Terry Pratchett's Hat Full of Sky and a non-descript fantasy and some other mod-pop novel. It is in particular the William Gibson, Pattern Recognition, which has brought this home. It is both a delightful and unfamiliar experience to be able to picture a location described in a book not from my imagination but directly out of my memory. In Pattern Recognition, although I'm only about a hundred pages in, a lot of the locations are around Camden. Gibson describes the very street I walked on a few hours before, or the familiar scene of Camden Market on a Saturday thought his (well, the character's) eyes. He talks about Parkway Road, which is just a paltry 500m off Gloucester Avenue where my offices are. He's even mentioned climbing Primrose Hill, an activity I'm saving-up till another one of those days when I just can't take captivity a moment longer. It's wonderful in it's own way. I no longer have to conjure up hazy impression of London based on films, TV and 'folk-lore', it's all there, exactly what is described, in my mind. And the best bit, is now you can understand more of the personal tone that the writer is portraying as opposed to taking it at face value. It's another small thing, but enough to make me happy. Comment: pinetown library (by d@vid on 2005-02-09 17:03:38)...appears in tad williams' otherworld (overworld? that one with the virtual reality system what I've only read one volume of series) series but only briefly Comment: Re: pinetown library (by DrunkLove? on 2005-02-10 03:00:23)Books about London have been on the up recently, starting with the success of Zadie Smith's "White Teeth", set in Willesden, and Monica Ali's "Brick Lane" set in the East End. Londoners like reading about themselves - vanity or laziness, I guess. :) Comment: Re: Re: pinetown library (by LothrielPixie? on 2005-02-10 12:22:51)Bit of both really. Plus due to the vast quantities of time Londoners spend on public transport every day, they read quite a bit, making them a good market for books. After all, there's only so long that you can read The Metro every morning without getting fed up with it sooner or later. In regards to the OtherWorld? series, yes, that was close - not that I've spent much time in Pinetown... However, I got the feeling that Williams has made a lot of it up and just tried to give it the feeling of a fictional future KZN. It wasn't quite the same as say reading a respected international author's book in which the characters are having coffee in Cavendish, and from the description you can tell that it really is Cavendish and the person actually has been there! I'm sorry, it still tickles me pink. |