Lockdown Reading: Take 10. Results

NEW. And big. Boris Johnson says ONLY DOUBLE JABBED to be allowed to go to nightclubs by end of September. Enforced by law. Negative test not enough.

— Ben Riley-Smith (@benrileysmith) July 19, 2021

 

Well, it’s 19^th July and England’s COVID restrictions have been removed. COVID cases, hospitalisations and deaths are all on the rise…  So Johnson has arbitrarily gone ahead with unlocking the country. Not even 36 million people, out of 66 million in the country, are fully vaccinated. The clubs opened at 00:01 last night, and a flood of 18-25-year-olds- many of whom would be still waiting for their first or second dose of a vaccine- pumped through their doors. However- newsflash- this lax law has, at the time of writing, been reversed, and proof of vaccination is mandatory.

This is a necessity. Yes, all the vulnerable groups are vaccinated. But the vaccines are only 93% effective, so out of a thousand people, if you introduce someone who is COVID positive, a handful of vaccinated people will still contract the virus. Some will still get sick. This is the science. The science- virology, if we’re being specific- that Johnson and his cronies have repeatedly ignored, which has led to 128 thousand deaths.

Either way, back in May I said I would update with the books I’ve read.  They were:

 




Everything I read in this lockdown @chuckpalahniuk @Schwarzenegger staying in wasn't so bad! pic.twitter.com/mbRcoEr7gA

— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matthewtuckey) July 19, 2021

 

Adjustment Day

Chuck Palahniuk predicts (kinda) the 6^th January attacks on Capitol Hill with his 2018 novel, Adjustment Day. The US edges towards a huge war, and the country’s college-age kids look likely to be sent off to die. This backfires on lawmakers when the youth retaliate. They’ve been updating a website, a new, darker form of Social Media, allowing people to vote on who gets killed- a kind of reverse popularity test, reminiscent of the trending topics on Black Mirror’s Hated in the Nation (in which a swarm of mechanised bees attacked whomever trended with a certain hashtag).

 

The teens strike a pre-emptive blow, murdering thousands of political figures and dumping their bodies in vast pits.

The attack- known as Adjustment Day- marks a new, confusing era that Palahniuk himself hasn’t properly thought out. Half way into the book the idea seems exhausted, but the kids- now living in a dystopian Lord-of-the-Flies scenario- start to turn on each other as the States of America become disunited and society becomes segregated into ethnicity and sexual orientation (which knowingly contradicts itself: people normally fit more than one demographic).

NATO is notably- and inexplicably- absent as the new, disunited states fall into disrepair and key characters off each other for breaking rules they help to create (I wonder if Dominic Cummings has read any Palahniuk?), culminating in a weirdly abrupt ending. Entertaining, but confusing.

The Invention of Sound

Movie sound recordist Mitzi Ives has a secret. She’s a go-to girl for movie producers everywhere who need horror sounds. What no-one knows, though, is that those screams are the sounds of real, innocent victims, an obsession she inherited from her murderous father. Meanwhile, Foster Gates, private detective, is searching for his lost daughter. He’s about to stumble headlong into Mitzi’s dark world.

Chuck Palahniuk’s latest book is a short, fast-paced, twisty yarn, leading us through the world of horror movies and the sound industry- shady enough, without one of their key recordists (a weirdly analogue-recording one) being a serial killer.

After a few books perhaps hitting bum notes (Adjustment Day being one of them), The Invention of Sound is likely to strike a chord with his fans.

Tell-All

Chuck Palahniuk’s 11^th Novel, released in 2010, was the missing piece in my Palahniuk bookshelf. Tell-all, seemingly set in the roaring forties in Hollywood, follows Hazie Coogan, Personal Assistant to Katherine ‘Miss Kathie’ Kenton, a bulimic, man-eating Elizabeth Taylor-type movie star. As PA, Coogan’s main role seems to be to bat off the advances of various would-be suitors. She’s basically a golden-age cock-block. When charmer Webster Carlton shows up with a weirdly prophetic tell-all memoir, Coogan has to save Kenton from heartbreak- and death.

This, Palahniuk’s shortest novel, is also his most confusing. There are a lot of 40s-era movie references that even I don’t know, and I was a big-time movie nut in my teens. Some I think were B-rate movie stars, some fictional names. Similarly confusing is the plot- it isn’t always clear what’s actually happening and what’s just being retold from the pages of Carlton’s memoirs (which Carlton keeps rewriting). Short, dense and vague. A low point in Palahniuk’s bibliography, but don’t let that put you off his work.

Consider This: Moments in my Writing Life After Which Everything was Different

Last year, Chuck Palahniuk finally gave in and, after his peers and fans repeatedly asked him to, created a guide to writing. Consider This is part autobiography, part advice book. Drawing on nearly 60 years of experience, the Fight Club author put together his life learnings from years in the publishing industry, and his life before this.

Way back in 2013 I met Palahniuk at the signing for Doomed. I asked him about the relevance of a Journalism degree (one of which the author has from way back). He responded with a series of cautionary tales that he’d heard from other people- in workplaces, at dinners, etc. He couldn’t have retold these stories, he explained, without that journalism training. Many of these fables- the blood-soaked veterinary graduation, the mid-meal cancer diagnosis, and more- they’re retold in this book. At the time, my sketchy Teeline abilities- not as refine as they are now- couldn’t quite get all the details down, but I managed pretty well, it seems.

Embedded in and around the stories are golden nuggets of writing advice, the dos and don’ts of storytelling, and of being in a position to get the inspiration for those stories: the observation, the mind-tricks. If you’re going to take advice from any living writer, make it Palahniuk. A fascinating read.

I am now, 21 years after first reading Fight Club, up to date with Palahniuk’s books for the first time. The pandemic was good for something…

The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding

If Arnold Schwarzenegger hadn’t written this, who would have done? Who better than the Austrian who came to The States aged 21 and won Mr Olympia 7 times?

A thorough, detailed guide to everything bodybuilding-related, The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding is the most informative book on the subject I’ve ever come across. It’s a heavy, impressive-looking book, although the excess of white space makes it look more generous than it is. Every element of bodybuilding is covered: from choosing a gym through to keeping your head in a bodybuilding contest, and the journey in between.

I had a few issues with the book. I’d have put the section on nutrition right at the start. What you put in your stomach ultimately affects every other aspect of bodybuilding, and is arguably the most important. It’s also the first part of the process of improving health, something every bodybuilder aims to do. I would also have added a short section on getting proper sleep, without which no fitness regimen will have the desired effect.

Nitpicking aside, whether you want to compete professionally or mix in some weight training to help with a sport, or just improve general fitness, this book will advise you on how to do it.

To wrap up… I finished this last book today. I can see there being another lockdown reading project when the rules are reversed again, when it transpires that the majority of COVID spreaders were unvaccinated, and they’ve passed it on to vaccinated people, a small handful of whom will still get sick (although not as many in previous waves) and batshit anti-vaxxers will spout off as if this is their proof that ‘vaccines don’t work,’ although, as mentioned, scientists have said from the start that the vaccines wouldn’t be foolproof. Depressingly predictable.

What about the gym? Under a month ago I mentioned I was aiming to get down to 80kg. The gym has been open throughout this portion of the pandemic, and I’ve tapped away at personal bests. Bicep chinups- hands together, palms facing face- went from 10 to 12. Quad extension went from 70kg to 80kg, the machine’s top weight. I’ve started recording extra-wide chin-ups, using outward protruding handles so that my palms face each other, about a metre’s width apart. This isolates I think the latissimus dorsi – the lats - just below the armpit, and makes for a particularly hard chin-up. I went from 3 to 9. Aside from that, I’ve made steady progress on things like running and dips, encroaching PBs but not quite beating them. Also, I was at 87.54kg, around the same weight I was at last month. Oh well.

Will there be a part 11? Will Johnson reverse and lock us down again? I genuinely don’t know. It wouldn’t surprise me. Why they haven’t just waited until the rollout is complete is beyond me. Whatever. Point is, I read some great books.