The NIght Climbers, Turpentine, and 2010: Odyssey 2

These are three books I read whilst in Belize, all fiction.

1. The Night Climbers is the first book by Ivo Stourton, which is about several students at Cambridge and after, told through flashbacks, coping with their extravagant lifestyle and the crime they end up committing to support their opulence. The conflict centers on the relationship between the main character and the self-destructive yet utterly charismatic leader of their group. The ending feels slightly weird, but is believable and brings about fairly comprehensive resolution.

2. Turpentine is the first book of Spring Warren, and is the story of Bayard Turrentine (Last Name) the Third; I am writing this from memory. "Turpentine", as he is nicknamed, is an invalid sent to the West to recuperate at a Sanatorium that turns out not to exist. The sheer fact that he is away from his doctor means that he improves, and he proceeds to meet a variety of interesting persons, including a transvestite, an insane paleontologist, various Irish people who include his love interest and possibly the worst behaved child imaginable, a painter, Mormons, and an extremely stubborn, yet quite sensitive, horse. The book is well written, but is incredibly sad, with only a very partially happy ending.

3. 2010: Oddysey 2 is the sequel to 2001: a Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clark. The first book is the story of the discovery of an alien monolith on the moon and a second, much larger, monolith between Saturn and one of its moons. A ship is dispatched to investigate it, and the ships computer, HAL, decides it ought to kill the crew, ya know, cause they are fleshy organic sacks made of pulp and therefore incompetent, gets several, then they get HAL and reache the monolith, and then things get very weird in a way that cannot be concisely explained. The book was written at the same time the Stanley Kubrick film of the same name, and the movie is very good if you have already read the book, or at least the final chapter. The sequel picks up where it left off, with another expedition being sent to determine what happened to the first, so you find out why HAL went crazy and get to see what the moons of Jupiter are like, and then, once again, things get weird, not in a bad way, but certainly in a way that is too long to describe beyond it results in the destruction of Jupiter as a planet. I recommend 2001 as it is a masterpiece of Sci-Fi, one of the top ten most important books of the genre, and it is worth reading even if you know the general outline of the plot already, as you now do, and recommend 2010 if you like it.