Back a few weeks ago as part of my summer book marathon I picked up Trainspotting. I gave it a slightly less than glowing review because I found it a difficult read (and not in the ‘I’m an unintellectual nitwitway’, more the ‘I am being hit in the face with so much right now that my skull is reeling’) But I enjoyed it well enough, actually, I could even say I liked it. I wanted to give it another chance when I wasn’t reading seventy-five books in a summer. So, we decided to give the movie a chance anyways, because that was the bit that people were really raving to me about. The book, well it was okay, but the movie. And I really hate to say it but…

They were absolutely right.

Trainspotting was a great movie, it both blew your mind out your ears but really put your head in the space it needed to comprehend a druggie lifestyle. It doesn’t glorify the lifestyle but it gives you a fair enough ‘why’ it gives you one that you can accept. It was more linear and easier to wrap your head around. Maybe I’m a victim of society for saying it, but I definately need to read the book again more closely.

Additionally, I finished book six of the S75, that would be a Clockwork Orange. I think we should bring Nadsat into the current vocab, it would be completely horrorshow! Great book, I really need to watch the film again.

Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mouth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye’ve spawned to replace yourself. Choose life.

The first book of the summer seventy five is Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting. A book about drug culture in Edinburgh.

Trainspotting was an obvious first choice for me, though I have yet to decide if I liked it or not. Maybe when I’m not marathoning I’ll take the time to read it again. I’ve been told time and time again that I will love the movie that is based off this book because it’s ‘weird’ and, well, if nothing else it is that written exclusively in the Scottish vernacular it became very endearing very quickly. It is conversational and confessional in nature and so reading it is more like being privvy to a conversation than reading a book.

It can, however, be a bit rocky to read. It certainly adds to the effect of the novel. You generally feel as disoriented as the junkie who you happen to be following, written in quick vignettes. You’ll occasionally be at a loss for who you happen to be following in the malestrom of Scots. I half wish I could ask an actual Scot who has read the novel if it is more comprehensible. The novel is endlessly impactful, constantly punching a huge windhole where you thought you might have had guts at one point.

Do I recommend it? Well, I think its a patient read, one that you need to want to read. If you’re willing to hack through the slang, drugs, sex, and cursing there is something undeniably unbreakable about the book. You read it and realise that depravity is in the eye of the beholder. The message is there should you care enough to dig it out.

For me there is of course the added appeal of it being set in Edinburgh, where I lived a few months. You recognize place names and just wish you were back there.

Whether you chose to read it or not you cannot deny the attachment of the novel to the indulging of your wicked side.

I hope to write a short review for each of the summer seventy-five here, just to keep my writing brain going as well as my reading one. I want to get out a few chapters for a few of the stories I’m writing. Do less random forum writing, and more practical stuff.

Obviously I want to keep up my website design here too.

Anyways, I thought once I wrote that in my blog I’d actually do it. So, Summer Seventy-Five kicking off with Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. Any reccomendations for books as offered by you, the internet, will be taken into consideration.