Sam Iles's Blog

Here’s a quick note for people who like to ruminate on all the hidden meanings of the Lord of the Rings, professing it to be about everything from Christianity to Hitler to God only knows what.

This is J. R. R. Tokien himself writing in the introduction to the second edition of the Lord of the Rings:

It is neither allegorical nor topical…. I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.

He was writing a story. A story.

Case. Closed.

I read a lot of books. I also read a lot of different types of books. But, there’s one genre I keep coming back to which I probably shouldn’t be.

Young Adult or Teen fiction. Or, books for kids.

Obviously, there are stand outs in any genre. Harry Potter is the classic Young Adult series which has found favour with adults. But, the books I enjoy the most are nearly always young adult books.

Twilight, Alex Rider, everything Garth Nix, Young Bond, CHERUB, Pullman – I could go on. In fact, young adults get some of the best one off novels too. Things like Feather Boy come to mind. Novels which are deep and meaningful.

Yet, there still seems to be a stigma attached to reading them. Shouldn’t one start reading adults books as soon as one can? I don’t think so. Because, they really are so good. I think there’s more to it, also. For example, YA books are, generally speaking, easy to read. That isn’t to say that adult books are hard to read. Just, there’s something so easy about reading through a YA book. Many of them can be powered through in just a few hours and are a great way to relax.

In fact, children get some of the best books. There doesn’t seem to be as much pressure on the author to write a work of art which, I think, often makes them better. Really brilliant stories come from YA books.

So, this is what I want to put to you: try out some books for younger people. They really are very, very good.

Every now and then, you read a book which, by page 30, you’ve already added it to your mental list of “Best Books EVER”. Room is one of those books.

It follows the story of a small five year old boy who is – for reasons initially unknown – locked in a small room, where he lives with his mother. The book is ingeniously told from the voice of the five year old Jack, complete with short words and simple, often incorrect, grammar structures. Telling a book from the perspective of a five year old with nothing but the contents of a tiny room is a hard feat to pull off, but Donoghue is clearly talented enough to pull it off so fantastically.

The most ingenious part is the consideration of what life would be for a five year old boy who had never seen the outside world and who has spent his whole life in a small room. His Mum chooses to tell him there is nothing outside and this makes it truly fascinating as she tries to explain what they are and to answer Jack’s questions.

I can’t really say much more other than that you must read this book. It really is brilliant and has won a number of awards, too, so it isn’t just me… check it out on Amazon US and Amazon UK.

I bought my copy of 1984 several years ago from a charity shop. (The book also happens to be published in 1984, which is a nice touch.)

This is in the cover. Clever, no? Seems a shame that they got rid of it, but at least I get to blog their droll humour.

The 100 Thing Challenge by Dave Bruno is an explanation of the author’s mission to live with only 100 things for a year, as an affront to consumerism.

The challenge started on Bruno’s blog and he explains it well on his great website. 100 things may sound like a lot, but it really isn’t. When you realise he is including clothes and everything else we own, it is a tall order. He lists right here the 100 things he’s kept.

I’m not going to get into the challenge itself (which I’ll do another time) but I do want to encourage you to read the book. Bruno does a great job of making the case against consumerism and explaining how you can change your attitudes to it.

He writes really well, explaining how he started the challenge and how his life was before it. Occasional he does stray off into his own life a little too much for my liking but this really is necessary to understand his situation and life with ‘things’.

The 100 Thing Challenge makes a brilliant, compelling read and you can buy it right here on Amazon UK.

Firstly, a confession. I did not know that Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was written by Robert Louis Stevenson (of Treasure Island fame). I must also admit that I didn’t know the book’s title was prefixed with “The Strange Case of…”. I also didn’t really know the full story other than the basics which we all know. How much I had missed out on.

Few books have ever commanded this much excitement and enjoyment from me. Whenever you read one of the classics – the A Christmas Carols and the like – you soon realise just why it’s become a classic and why its themes and quotations have ever entered our every day life.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is one such book. Every new page is incredible – genuine work of art. Imagine a book with a story as ingenious and unique as The Lord of the Rings and prose as haunting and beautiful as A Christmas Carol. Imagine a book so incredible that you sit down to read it and can’t stop. And, one that you want to reread as soon as you’ve finished it.

The story was so different than I expected. Nothing could have prepared me for it. I expected to follow the story of Henry Jekyll but the journey Stevenson takes you on is far from that. It’s easy to see why this book became so popular and was reproduced in stage and television and movie form time after time.

Few books have I enjoyed as much as this one. If you read any book in the next year or so, please, make it this one.

I’m currently reading The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky (one of my favourite authors) and I stumbled across this paragraph, which I thought was more than worth sharing:

Consequently, he had about five minutes left to live, not more. He said those five minutes seemed like an endless time to him, an enormous wealth… The ignorance of and loathing for this new thing that would come presently were terrible; yet he said that nothing was more oppressive for him at that moment than the thought: ‘What if I were not to die! what if life were given back to me—what infinity! And it would be all mine! Then I’d turn each minute into a whole age, I’d lose nothing, I’d reckon up every minute separately, I’d let nothing be wasted!’

I think that ‘I’d reckon up every minute separately’ is particularly poignant. I’m going to print it off and stick it up above my desk.