Monday 20 April 2009

Monte Carlo final, J.G. Ballard dies.

So the final of the Monte Carlo was today, Rafael Nadal came out top against Novak Djokovic. Not particularly surprising, and in context of Andy Murray's pursuit of the No.3 spot, the preferential result in my eyes :p Djokovic actually gave Nadal a better run for his money in the final than Murray did in the semis considering Djokovic managed to take a set from Nadal and Murray didn't (although he came close). Roll on the next competition. Read on the BBC that author J.G. Ballard died yesterday. I've read quite a few of his books over the years. If you don't recognise the name he was the author of the book "Empire of the Sun", a semi-autobiographical account of a young boys experiences in Shanghai during WWII and his interment in a Japanese POW camp which was later made into a film (starring a very young Christian Bale). I actually did my SSL for Higher English on Empire of the Sun, decent read, the fact that much of it is true makes it quite compelling. Ballards books vary between very good and total mind-fuck in my opinion. His science fiction works are the most mind fuckery in my opinion, they're mostly short stories, so he's just showing you a snapshot of a world he's made up in his head, it's often not what you expect science fiction to be either, it's not space battles or robots or any of that stuff, it's more psychological than that, which is where the mind-fuck comes in. I much preferred his books set in the 20th and 21st centuries, and his books are generally better than the films made of them (I'm thinking Empire of the Sun and Crash here). His books are often overtly sexual and/or violent, so if you really don't want to read fairly graphic descriptions of sex or sexual feelings, I'd probably give Ballard a wide berth, particularly Crash, that's pretty wall-to-wall sex. It's strange, although I enjoyed it Super Cannes took me well over a year to read, something to do with starting The Dark Tower in the middle no doubt :D Super Cannes, although fiction, makes me never ever ever want to be in the sort of lifestyle depicted in the book of the people of Edin Olympia, I think I'd rather be dirt poor than lead the sort of existence where I need to inflict pain on others or play cruel games in order to feel alive (being deliberately vague here to avoid spoilers) So, James Ballard, rest in peace, now I'll be compelled to read your other works, even though they're not going to disappear overnight just because you're dead. (I'll stop talking to the dead man now...) On the promised music blog (yeah, I know there's no one reading right now, but it keeps me right) it's nearly finished, I have a draft saved and I'll probably get it published tomorrow. I might have to learn a bit of HTML now, the picture I posted in my first blog isn't positioned properly and I'm wondering if fiddling with the HTML would fix it. We shall see, freedoms_stain, out.

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