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Tue
1
Dec '09

British Summertime

Rob has headed off to Hawaii to visit his folks so I’m playing bachelor girl tonight. For me, this means hunkering down with a good book.  This is fortunate because I had started reading Paul Cornell’s British Summertime and was already deeply sucked into the book and the characters and then it just went places I didn’t expect.

Have you ever finished a book and immediately wanted to start reading it again? That’s the way I felt about British Summertime. It has deep, rich characters and a totally mind-bending plot.  I want to understand how he pulled it off.

5 Comments »

  • http://joeicarus.blogspot.com Joe Iriarte

    I kind of felt that way about Time Traveler’s Wife. There were aspects of that book I found problematic, but I wanted to experience the good parts again.

    Sometimes a novel blows me away to the point where I’m temporarily ruined for reading fiction, because anything else will seem pale by comparison. Stephen King often does this to me. My solution: This is when I pull the nonfiction books out of my TBR pile.

  • http://michaeldthomas.livejournal.com Michael D. Thomas

    I’ve been meaning to read that for a while. Have you read any of Paul’s Doctor Who novels? They’re quite exquisite.

  • http://louanders.blogspot.com/ Lou Anders

    BRITISH SUMMERTIME is indeed wonderful. Of his DOCTOR WHO novels, HUMAN NATURE is my favorite and brings a tear to my eye. The only thing I object to about their filming it in the new series is now it makes the New Adventures version non-canonical. Small price for one of the best episodes of tv ever. His comic work is also quite good, and, well, check out this short story, “Catherine Drewe.”

  • Pam Adams

    I picked it up in Denver, having run into Paul (and you!) at the daily morning stroll. The book sounded fascinating, and mind-blowing- and lived up to its reputation. Eagerly awaiting Shades, which also sounded wonderful.

  • http://www.superdoomedplanet.com/blog/ Wesley Osam

    I occasionally have problems with Cornell’s work. (Mainly that victory is often handed to his characters more because they’ve demonstrated that they’re good people than because they brought it about themselves–on my own blog I described it as winning through grace rather than works, which seems an appropriate metaphor.) It doesn’t matter–I love it anyway. I don’t think he could do anything to lose me as a reader.

    As for the characters… I think it’s down to empathy. Cornell just seems to like everybody, even the villains. Which might also be why I find his books consoling, even when they go down a slightly different path philosophically.

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