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On the morning after Sigmund Freud arrives in New York on his first - and only - visit to the United States, a stunning debutante is found bound and strangled in her penthouse apartment, high above Broadway. The following night, another beautiful heiress, Nora Acton, is discovered tied to a chandelier in her parents' home, viciously wounded and unable to speak or to recall her ordeal. Soon Freud and his American disciple, Stratham Younger, are enlisted to help Miss Acton recover her memory, and to piece together the killer's identity. It is a riddle that will test their skills to the limit and lead them on a journey into the darkest places of the city, and of the human mind. -- says the blurb!

Part 3 - Chapter 15
    'A billion people now live on this earth. A billion. And the number is growing geometrically. How are they to live Dr. Freud? What are they to eat? Millions flood our shores every year: the poorest, the least intelligent, the most prone to criminality. Our city is near anarchy because of them. Our jails are bursting. They breed like flies. And they steal from us. One cannot blame them; if a man is too poor to feed his children, he must steal. Yet you, Dr Freud, if I understand your ideas, seem concerned only with the evils of sexual repression. I would think a man of science ought to be more concerned with the dangers of sexual emancipation.' 'What do you propose, Charles, an end to immigration? asked Jelliffe.
    'Sterilisation,' replied Dana sanguinely, dabbing a napkin to his mouth.
    'The meanest farmer knows not to let his worst stock breed. Men are no more created equal than cattle. If cattle were allowed to breed freely, we should have very poor meat indeed. Every immigrant to this country without means should be sterilised.'
    'Not involuntarily, Charles, surely?' asked Mrs. Hyslop.
    'No one compels them to stay. How then can it be called involuntary? if they wish to reproduce, let them leave. What is involuntary is our being required to bear the charge of their unfit offspring, who ends up as beggars and thieves. I make an exception, of course, for those who can pass an intelligence test. Splendid soup, Jelliffe, a true turtle isn't it? Oh, I know, you will all say I am cruel and heartless. But I am only taking away their fertility. Dr Freud would take away something far more important.'
    'What is that?' asked Clara.
    'Their morality,' answered Dana, 'What sort of world would it be, Dr Freud, if your views became general? I can almost picture it. The lower orders come to scold "civilised morality." Gratification becomes god. All join in rejecting discipline and self-denial, without which life has no dignity. The mob will run riot; why should they not? And this mob, what will they want when the rules of civilisation are lifted? Do you think they will want only sex? They will want new rules. They will want to obey some new madman. They will want blood - your blood probably, Dr Freud, if history is any guide. They will want to prove themselves superior, as the lowest always do. And they will kill to prove it. I picture bloodletting, great bloodletting, on a scale never seen before. You would pipe away civilised morality - the only thing that keeps man's brutality in check What do you offer in exchange, Dr Freud? What will you put in its place?'
   'Only the truth' said Freud.

Hi!

Let me introduce myself. I'm Martin Lukes, Special Projects Director at a-b global (UK). Basically, I'm touching base with a highly unique book. As you'll see, it covers the most extraordinary year of personal progress, corporate scandal, and marital drama. This is not only a tale of my own promotion to one of the foremost executives in the country, but also a profound journey of personal learning, aided and abetted by my life coach, Pandora. I am often asked why I should want to share my deeply private philosophies and life secrets with such a wide audience. I always say it is because I am passionate about learning. I learn and grow from my own mistakes, both in the professional space and the personal one. Who Moved My Blackberry is a creovative (tm) work - to use one of my phrases that has now entered the business lingo - and the must-read of 2005.

All my very bestest
Martin Lukes

Author Lucy Kellaway has taken the character she first introduced in the pages of the Financial Times and created a story that will have you in fits of laughter and nodding your head in recognition. -- says the blurb!

From Pandora@CoachworX
To: Martin Lukes

Hi Martin,
Thank you for sharing your dream with me. It is always fascinating watching coachees' dreams take shape, and yours is a uniquely special one. Your road symbolises your journey. the castle is your home life - those walls are very thick and solid, which is a great sign! However, this may also be a reflection of you as a reflective adult, with a vulnerable child within. The tree shows your personal growth - that strong root structure you've drawn is going to be absolutely key when you start to live your dream.
       The white circle in the corner is your true North. This is your guiding star. It shows that whatever you do, you want it to be for a bigger purpose. Yes you want success - but you want it because it helps you achieve immortality.
       Now Martin, I want you to break your dream down into achievable targets. Tell me your specific dreams. And I will help you make them come true.
        Give yourself five minutes and write down as much as you can. Think: what do I really want?

Strive and thrive!
Pandora

OUR CITY, OUR RULES

Pakis. Rajamuffins. Britasians. Rudeboys. Desis. Whatever we are, the other guys are better at being it than I am. I swear I got the same fones that they got but I still look like a gimp.’

Meet Jas. Obsessed with designer clothes, sculpted facial hair, protein shakes and pretending he lives in the ghetto rather than his overbearing mum’s five-bedroom house in Hounslow.

No matter how much Jas tries, though, it isn’t enough to sleep with seriously fit Samira or convince hard-man Harjit. Then Sanjay – a proper player with a Knightsbridge penthouse and a Porsche – offers him a deal he can’t resist. But will Jas be man enough to pay the price for his borrowed bad-boy image…

Thing is, if people like Davinder hadn’t laid into me so much all the time, Hardjit’d never have started stickin up for me in the first place. An if he’d never stuck up for me, I’d probly never’ve become part a his crew. At first I figured the only reason he’d started backing me up was so he could act like Shah Rukh Khan in front a all the ladies. The Bollywood hero always takes care a the underdog, you see. Only difference was Hardjit din’t like takin no glory for stickin up for me. He din’t even like it whenever I thanked him for doing so. I reckon he was basically so freaked out by how gimpy I was that he felt he’d got to cure me. Like those people who are so homophobic that stead a beating gay guys shitless, they actually try an turn em into straight guys.

"The thing is, I know I don't stand a chance with you, but I was wondering whether you'd mind if I chat you up anyway so that you'll agree to gout out to dinner with me next Saturday?"

Proud a me? You fuckin should be. I practised that line a hundred times in front a my bedroom mirror an a hundred fuckin times in front a the bathroom mirror. Sometimes I practised it as Johnny Depp, sometimes as Pierce Brosnan, sometimes as Brad Pitt. But in the end I went with a cross between Andy Garcia an Shah Rukh Khan coz it just worked for me. Samira came back with a reply that she'd obviously been practising herself, only I figured she probly din't practise her lines in front a the mirror. Probly she practised it in front a all te other guy's who'd asked her out.

Naturally I decide to pick out the two quotes that reference Shah Rukh Khan as the highlights of the book, but really this is merely a small sample of the book, while reading it I had too many snippets I considered amusing and worthy of mention that in the end I ditched them all.

Rightly getting a lot of credit for this debut novel Gautam Malkani gives quite an in-depth insight into a large subset of the younger British Asian generation, in fact this described a large chunk of people I went to college with. I considered them the losers (Desi-Chavs) but this novel gives a more in-depth look at the families behind them and how it's partly how their defenses are playing out.

I won't go into detail, but while reading this book all through I felt this could be made into a film, (as I do with most novels these days), but in the end I decided this wouldn't be a good idea. If you read it you'll see why. This is the first novel I've read that has made me double guess myself and forced me to read it again, pretty much as soon as I finished it. In fact apart from those Spot the Dog books back at school, this will be the first book I've read twice, so I have to give it large credit for making me do that.

It finds a great sense of humour that will appeal to most as you'll probably find in the extracts given, but is the novel flawless though? I'd say no. Firstly because it's language includes a lot of Desi (countryman) terminology that may be unfamilair to the non-asian readers. A good effort has been made to clarify a lot of such terminology but not all. Not necessarily a flaw per say but it cuts down the audience that it could have otherwise been aimed towards. The flaw I found was that at points the language got a bit repetitive, much swearing for emphasis and that sort of thing. Rudeboys do speak this way and it does fit to a degree, but it can get a bit much I thought. I've lent the book to a fellow (non-asian) writer friend & am interested to see how he finds it.

All said and done, I had picked up the novel knowing absolutely nothing about it, it's acclaim or it's author, simply because it sounded interesting, minor blemishes aside, I would say it's a masterpiece in it's own right & I'd certainly look out for his future works.

Once, Special Agent Smoky Barrett hunted serial killers for the FBI. She was one of the best -- until a madman terrorized her family, killed her husband and daughter, and left her face scarred and her soul brutalized. Turning the tables on the killer, Smoky shot him dead–but her life was shattered forever.

Now Smoky dreams about picking up her weapon again. She dreams about placing the cold steel between her lips and pulling the trigger one last time. Because for a woman who’s lost everything, what is there left to lose?

She’s about to find out.

In all her years at the Bureau, Smoky has never encountered anyone like him -- a new and fascinating kind of monster, a twisted genius who defies profilers’ attempts to understand him. And he’s issued Smoky a direct challenge, coaxing her back from the brink with the only thing that could convince her to live.

The killer videotaped his latest crime -- an act of horror that left a child motherless -- then sent a message addressed to Agent Smoky Barrett. The message is enough to shock Smoky back to work, back to her FBI team. And that child awakens something in Smoky she thought was gone forever.

Suddenly the stakes are raised. The game has changed. For as this deranged monster embarks on an unspeakable spree of perversion and murder, Smoky is coming alive again -- and she’s about to face her greatest fears as a cop, a woman, a mother . . . and a merciless killer’s next victim.

Chapter 14

I met the dark train (as I call it) during my very first case. It is a thing hard to describe. The train of life runs on the tracks of normality and reality. It is the train most of humanity rides, from birth to death. It is filled with laughter and tears, hardships and triumphs. Its passengers are not perfect, but they do their best.

The dark train is different.

The dark train runs in tracks made of crunching squishy things. It's the train that people like Jack Jr. ride. It's a train fueled by murder and sex and screams. It's a big black blood-drinking snake with wheels. If you hop off the train of life and run through the woods you can find the dark train. You can walk next to it's tracks, run alongside as it passes, get a glimpse of the weeping contents of its boxcars. Jump aboard, move through its corpse-cars, through the whispers and bones, and you will reach the train's conductor. The conductor is the monster you are chasing, and has many guises. He can be short bald and forty. He can be tall and young and blond. Sometimes, rarely, he can be a she. On the dark train, you see the conductor as he really is, underneath the fake smiles and three-piece suits. You stare into the darkness, and at that moment, if you look without flinching, you will understand.

So as I mentioned in a previous post, I picked this one up kinda by mistake, there were 2 books that could have been the book I was after, having read it, I know it was The Skin Gods. After reading that I wasn't in a hurry to read another crime novel, but I got through Anonymous Lawyer so fast it came to this quicker than I had anticipated.

So, Shadow Man by Cody McFayden, it's a prettty decent read. Definitely not one of the many books that I've stopped reading past a point. The characters are well written and described. The chase keeps you thrilled, and I was totally gobsmacked when the mystery does unravel. That said, things took a bit of a dip for me in the climax. It wasn't quite how I'd have expected it to end. If anyone else reads this, I'd be interested to get their thoughts on it. The end in particular.

What is interesting is how gripping the characters around the main characters are, I'm tempted to say almost more so than the main characters. All the work force of Smoky as we meet them are individually believable and lovable in their own way. Towering above the rest, (as a figure of speech) was Bonnie, the mute little girl that gets adopted. I figure only a parent could have written her part, having looked up Cody on his website biography, I was right.

He has another book being released in a couple of months called "The Face of Death", I'm certain I'll pick it up, and my logical reasoning is I want to see more of Smoky and the team and their family. Smoky and her train comes a close second place.

In a nutshell: Cody McFayden in his debut gives us a calculated trained killer who calls himself Jack Jr. a direct descendent of Jack The Ripper, or is he? or does it even matter? He has killed and plans to kill again and again until he is caught. He has chosen his own hunter, our protagonist, Smoky Barett, if he were to be the prey per say, she would be the hunter and he taunts her with enough information to keep the chase of cat and mice close - and so the games begin.

Meet Anonymous Lawyer – corner office, granite desk, and a billable rate of $675 an hour. The summer is about to start, and he’s got a new crop of law school interns who will soon sign away their lives for a six-figure salary at the firm. But he’s also got a few problems that require his attention.

There’s The Jerk, his bitter rival at the firm, who is determined to do whatever it takes to beat him out for the chairman’s job. There’s Anonymous Wife, who is spending his money as fast as he can make it. And there’s that secret blog he’s writing, which is a perverse bit of fun until he gets an e-mail from someone inside the firm who knows he’s its author.

Written in the form of a blog, Anonymous Lawyer is a spectacularly entertaining debut that rips away the bland façade of corporate law and offers a telling glimpse inside a frightening world.

Hilarious and fiendishly clever, Jeremy Blachman’s tale of a lawyer who lives a lie and posts the truth is sure to be one of the year’s most talked-about novels.

"We start the summer assuming everyone will leave with an offer to return after graduation. It's yours to lose. It's hard to lose. But it's been done before. Don't make us regret having given you the opportunity to work here. Don't make us wish you were instead working for the firm down the street, where the lunch allowance is ten dollars lower per person, where the Dodgers tickets are four sections farther from home plate, and where they don't even have a gym membership subsidy, You're one of us now. Welcome."

I then proceeded to the multimedia portion of the presentation.Anytime we can incorporate multimedia into our work it's always appreciated by those who have to sit through these things. Well, except for the fiasco last year when I showed a clip from Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of Will in order to inspire people to pledge their loyalty to the firm in the wake of a series of defections by several star associates.

This year, five film clips. I showed them Collateral so they could see the dangers that await them if they leave the office and start driving around downtown L.A. It's not safe, especially in the sports carsthey're all blowing their salaries to lease.

I showed them Rent to illustrate that while there are indeed 525,600 minutes in a year, the important thingis that every one of those minutes is potentially billable to a client.

I showed them a clip from Brokeback Mountain, which I think was done a tremendous disservice when they pitched it as a gay cowboy movie. I didn't see it, but it's fairly clear from the trailer that the point of the movie is that it's great to have a job that consumes most of your day. "Don't worry about how much time you spend at the office," I told them. "You might fall in love with someone you're working with." There are far too few movies out there that illustrate the fallacy of work-life balance quite so well.

I showed a clip from March of the Penguins for an example of mindless work performed without complaint. The penguins march back and forth to and from the ocean, a long and ardous march in the cold on which many perish, yet none ever bitch and moan. They just do it. No whining, no trying to sneak out of the pack to find a shortcut, no escaping, no giving up. The penguins walk simply because that's what they're supposed to do.

That's all we're asking our associates to do. They don't have to make it more complicated than that. Just march. March to the library. March to the document room. March to the printer. All together now, mindlessly following the herd. That's all we need. Bodies, not brains. The penguins don't expect to be challenged. The penguins don't expect any individual attention. The penguins don't expect any praise for their work. They just do what they have to do. they march.

Finally, I showed a clip from Independence Day to illustrate that sometimes emergencies happen and you have to work over the holiday weekend.

Monday May 15th - Anonymous

As I was in hunt for the 'Skin Gods' from what I recalled of the poster, as always there was an offer of 3 for 2 at Waterstones & I wasn't actually sure that the Skin Gods was the one I was after, the guy at the store thought it would be one of two books, the Skin Gods (which it turned out to be) or Shadow Man (which I shall start reading next). So I had two of three already, this one just sounded fun by its description (above). Being a blogger myself it had it's appeal on a geek level as well as personal one.

As it turns out, this book is awesome. I've now got to the stage where I'll be trailing through its original source reading all the archives over the next few weeks. I'd recommend reading the book first though, as it has its own self-contained story arc.

From the above extract (chosen carefully as it contains film references ;)) you'll get a vague flavour of what this guy is like. He's the very essence of all of us. The things we all think yet few of us say. In a twisted yet humorous kind of way, he's someone to look upto. Okay I should probably point out he is fictional, but hey, so is Hannibal Lecter & Jack Bauer & David Hasselhoff, okay maybe not the latter, but we all know how frickin' cool they are.

Now funnily enough it's a good thing that this guy is fictional as if he was infact a high flying lawyer he'd probably be pretty screwed. I mean of all places I read that Waterstones fired someone for having a blog where he vented. The irony that I happen to pick up this book by random chance at the same store huh??

Not so surprisingly, I can see a lot of parallels between the lawyer's world and my own, though I'm not in the industry of law, I'm still a part of the Capitalist society that only allows the fittest to survive, kinda like Spartans in suits -- things aren't so different. Their expectations of unconditional love for the firm, lack of any other commitments in life, in an ideal world (in the boss's perspective), this is exactly what they would wish for. There would be tolerated things, but many a thing an employee considered normal, the employer would see as pushing things too far.

It may seem to some of you that all the books that I am reading seem to be having top reviews, so I should clarify, if I get through a book, that in itself is an achievement, unlike films, it is quite normal for me to leave a book 10 chapters in if I get bored. With this one I can't imagine anyone able to do that.

Jeremy Blachman gives us an anonymous lawyer with frustrated rants intwined with high dosages of laugh out loud humour. I would recommend this book to anyone that has a job, or a boss, or a life (or not).

It is the steaming heart of summer in the City of Brotherly Love. Back on the force after taking a bullet during the arrest of a sadistic murderer, Detective Kevin Byrne warily returns to police headquarters. He cannot shake the memory of the Rosary Killer's innocent victims --- or his growing sense that the evil has not been vanquished. And when he and his partner, Detective Jessica Balzano, are called in on a bizarre case, Byrne's gravest suspicions are confirmed.

A madman, dubbed The Actor by the homicide unit, is meticulously re-creating Hollywood's most famous --- and most gruesome --- death scenes. The first murder is caught on film, spliced into a rented VHS edition of the Hitchcock black-and-white masterpiece Psycho. But in place of Janet Leigh is a real-life woman, and this time, the blood is red and the knife is real. Soon, more thrilling classics are turned into terrifying snuff films and placed on video store shelves for an unsuspecting public to find.

Chapter Fourty-One

A coffee shop, one of the cookie-cutter chains on Walnut Street, just around the corner from Rittenhouse Square. Coffee-cult figures hover over alternative weeklies.
'What can I get for ya?'
She is no more than nineteen, with fair skin, a thin intriguing face, frizzy hair pulled back into a ponytail.

'Tall latte,' I say. Ben Johnson in The Last Picture Show. 'and I'll have one of them there bis-cottis.' Them there? I almost laugh. i don't, ofcourse. I've never broken character and I'm not going to start now. 'I'm new to this city,' i add. 'I haven't seen a friendly face in weeks.'

She makes my coffee, bags the biscotti, caps my cup, taps the touch scren. 'Where are you from?'
"West Texas," I say with a broad smile. "El Paso. Big Bend country"
'Wow,' she replies, as if I had told her I was from Neptune. 'You're a long way away from home.'
'Aren't we all?' I hand her a five.

She stops, frozen for a moment, as if I said something profound. step out into Walnut Street, feeling tall and fit. Gary Cooper in The Fountainhead. Tall is a method, like weakness.

I finish my latte, breeze into a men's clothing store. I fashion up, vogue briefly near the door, gather my suitors. One of them steps forward.

'Hi' the salesman says. He is thirty. His hair is cropped short. He is suited and booted, wearing a wrinkled gray T-shirt beneath a navy-blue three button number at least one size too small. This seems to be a fashion statement of some sort.
'Hello' I say. I wink at him and he colours slightly.
'What can I show you today?'
Your blood on my Bokhara? I think, channeling Patrick Bateman. I give him my toothy Christian Bale. 'Just looking'.

The Skin Gods, written by Richard Montanari was a novel I picked up only knowing the vague plot synopsis above. It seemed to incidentally fit in with the thoughts & inspirations behind a currently progressing screenplay I'm involved with. - "How films might affect people and their actions", though the screenplay is the opposite genre entirely, on a concept level they equate.

Being a film nutt and looking at this idea from an entirely obtuse angle was something I was looking forward to & boy was I hooked. As the police investigation parallels the works of the psychopath, both racing ahead, it's definitely one of those novels that has given me the experience of understanding the feeling of "can't put it down" & "must read more" that you tend to get whenever you read a book review. Though it's a lot more work than watching a film for a couple of hours at the cinema, I'm going to say it's worth it for just the detail. After all, the devil is in the detail, right?

His next novel titled Broken Angels should hit the shops next month & though this time its not film-related, I'm quite likely to pick it up on the merits of this one. This one was sold to me by the below poster at a tube station:

Highly Recommended to fans of Crime Thrillers, Mysteries & Movies :)

Okay, so I finished this book like in a week, which is really fast for me, I mean it took me over 4 years to finish a book called the 4th hand, and then there is 'Kafka on the Shore' which I need to go back to at some point, only got 2 or 3 chapters left, but its been almost a year.

Overall, pretty damned impressed I must say. It has a very Usual Suspects feel about it. Smart-ass focker getting interviewed by some professional, but thing aren't all they seem. Tis certainly one I'd recommend.

Following a near fatal overdose of painkillers, Daniel Fletcher is resuscitated in a Los Angeles emergency room and detained for psychiatric evaluation. Through a series of questions and tests, the psychiatrist must ascertain whether the patient intended to kill himself, or whether he can walk free. What the psychiatrist doesn't know is that 'Daniel Fletcher' is actually John - Johnny - Dolan Vincent, a brilliant young forger who continually changes his identity to save himself from a lifetime of incarceration. Johnny has done such assessments before - many, many times. As he creates an elaborate bluff for the evaluator, Johnny reveals the true story of his traumatic past - a broken family, descent into the sinister world of forgers and criminals, and his one chance of salvation in the beautiful and elusive Molly. But time is running out; as his underworld clients lose patience and the psychiatrist's net closes around him, Johnny has to negotiate the escape act of his life.

Chapter Eleven
Maybe you're a woman and God was too good to you, and people - men pay serious cash to look at you. Sometimes when you're naked, sometimes not. Sometimes you know it, sometimes you don't. Maybe you smiled at one of them while serving cocktails or waiting for an elevator and now he knows where you live, where you work, your phone number, and your cat went missing a week ago, and the police tell you that the note saying I want to take you with me to the afterlife doesn't implicitly threaten you and anyway, you don't have any proof that he wrote it. So you have to make what you need, whatever papers or documents to say who you want to be. Just don't expect thm to stand up to scrutiny unless you're good. I'm good.

The Contortionist's Handbook is the debut of writer Craig Clevenger and I thoroughly recommend it. Chuck Palahnluk, the writer of Fight Club said "I swear to God this is the best book I have read in easily five years. Easily. Maybe ten years". Irvine Welsh, the writer of Trainspotting said "One of the most interesting writers to emerge in years. This book deserves to be massive.". Richard Kelly, the director of Donnie Darko said "An extraordinary debut. Craig Clevenger has crafted an unforgettable anti-hero"

Just doing a bit of research for this post I realise there is a possibility that a movie adaptation is already in the works. Good stuff, wonder who they'd cast?? .. I say possibility because the iMDB states nothing under Richard Kelly's name about this.

Though from an interview with him at movies.about.com:
I heard you'll be 'supervising' the adaptation of “The Contortionist's Handbook.”
Yeah, I'm probably not going to be doing the adaptation myself. It's a matter of having the time. We would like to get a draft sooner rather than later. I'm excited, actually, to work with another writer, but I'll be very involved.

Who is the writer?
We haven't decided yet. We're still searching.