ERUPTION - Book review

Michael Crichton and James Patterson’s Eruption was published in 2024. Crichton died in 2008 and left an unfinished manuscript plus many notes and research details which the ubiquitous Patterson completed and shaped into this novel. 

After a prologue set in Hawaii in 2016, we move to the near-future, April 2025. All the signs are that an enormous eruption of the volcano Mauna Loa is imminent, within a week! ‘If you measure Mauna Loa from its base on the ocean floor, it is almost six miles high – more than three miles underwater, two and a half miles above... largest geographical feature on this planet’ (p69). Its 1994 eruption produced enough lava to bury Manhattan to a depth of 30ft.

John (Mac) MacGregor was a geologist who headed the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. He has a dedicated team who help monitor the area. There is a second slightly smaller volcano called Mauna Kea that dominates the nearby US Military Reserve. Mac’s main concern is the safety of the major town, Hilo that potentially could be in the path of any eruption’s lava-flow or pyroclastic cloud. Then he learns some staggering information that threatens not only the island but the world if the eruption is not diverted.

Patterson’s tendency to use short chapters ramps up the tension and keeps the pages turning. Inevitably, there’s a lot of technical stuff, but it works. We also get to learn how many lives volcanoes have claimed over the years – not only those people caught in the eruptions, but those studying and investigating the natural phenomena. There’s a helpful map of the Hawaiian islands and 109 chapters.

It’s a blast.

PS: There's a US officer in the story called Morton. Fancy that...

Books - worlds of the imagination

Today is World Book Day in the UK; though UNESCO has deemed it should be on 23 April (which happens to be the anniversary of the death of Shakespeare, 1616).

Two different days for the same event? Why not? To my mind, every day is a ‘book day’. Avid readers and book lovers probably can’t get by most days without reading.

Worlds of adventure and excitement

I can’t remember when I read my first book unaided, but it was a long while back in the mists of time. There were not that many books in our house – a single small bookshelf, containing Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopedia, a few adult hardbacks and home-help tomes, and an enormous dictionary with thumb indents for each letter of the alphabet. With my pocket-money I started collecting the children’s hardback Regent Classics that could be bought in Woolworth’s: Knights of the Round Table, Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, Robinson Crusoe, The Coral Island, Lorna Doone, Kidnapped, Black Beauty, Last of the Mohicans, Quentin Durward, among others; all with bright dust jackets. At about the same time I discovered the local library, and Swallows and Amazons, Doctor Dolittle etc. This was before the paperback explosion of the 1960s, when books became ‘affordable’.

 

Unread books
Even discounting A Brief History of Time, a number of books occupy shelf space but never get read. That’s according to a recent survey, commissioned by a storage firm of all things. In fact, their sample of 2,000 people suggest that one in five books on our shelves go unread. I’m sure the statistic is higher in my case – I’ve got so many unread books because I don’t have the time to read as many as I’d like, but I bought them with every intention of reading! The same applies to my backlog of e-books.

The average home contains 158 hardbacks and paperbacks. (I’ve got more than that in just one genre!)

In Patrick Tilley’s Mission (reviewed here) the main character, an alien, simply has to touch a book and he has read it. I assume he gleans pleasure from the experience. Anyway, that would certainly take care of my backlog!

What are the reasons for hanging on to books? Research suggests many people hoard books (some eight billion!) of which one in five is unread. They keep books because there’s an emotional attachment; others hate throwing away anything. And we all know that charity shops often plead ‘full’ where books are concerned. Sixteen percent of respondents admitted they keep certain titles on their shelves so that they can appear intelligent! Those most likely to impress guests include To Kill A Mockingbird, Moby Dick and the Bible. On the reverse coin, Katie Price’s autobiography, 50 Shades of Grey and anything by James Patterson were considered liable to adversely affect their reputation in the eyes of guests.

The snobbish slight to James Patterson seems a little unfair. He has a ready market of readers who like his books, so why not cater for them? And he does put his money where his mouth is: over the last few years he has supported reading initiatives – not to sell his books but to encourage reading. He has donated £50,000 to the new World Book Day Award. Winning schools will receive thousands of pounds worth of books for their libraries.

 
As Patterson says, ‘Reading is one of the building blocks of life and can take you to another world.’

www.worldbookday

 

'Two distinct races'

Charles Lamb (1775-1834) had a few things to say about borrowing.

‘The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow, and the men who lend.’ – The Two Races of Men

‘I mean you borrowers of books – those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. – The Two Races of Men.

I believe that there are readers who buy books and readers who borrow. [We’ll ignore those people who borrow books from us but never return them…] There are plenty of reasons why readers borrow – cost and storage space being just two. I may have a collection of about 4,000 books, but in my lifetime I’ve read thousands more. Space precludes storing so many. I’ve borrowed from the public library when I couldn’t afford to buy sufficient books to read; and of course pre-Internet, I delved into the non-fiction shelves for research. Like most generalisations, I’m sure this separation into two types of book readers will fall down under close scrutiny, but I feel that it has a grain of truth in it. Until relatively recent times, authors received no payment for books borrowed from libraries.

It seems only fair that authors should benefit in some small measure from institutional borrowing of their work. Twenty-eight countries have a Public Lending Right programme. The first was implemented in Denmark in 1946; the UK’s PLR was enacted in 1979.

As a resident of the EU (UK citizen living in Spain), I am able to take advantage of the PLR system applied to libraries in the UK and Eire. It is a welcome annual event, receiving notification of the pecuniary reward (taxable) along with the number of borrowers for my registered books.

Registered authors are eligible for payment if their PLR earnings reach a minimum of £1. The rate per loan is currently 6.2 pence [and for foreign readers who may not be aware, there are 100 pence in the £]. There is an upper limit for any author, £6,600. Last month, PLR made payments totalling £6.1 million to 22,327 authors. It is funded by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport through the British Library. Writers can register online. A book has to be registered by 30 June to be eligible for assessment in the following January.

To read the rules about registration, please go to the website www.plr.uk.com

A list of the hundred most borrowed titles included James Patterson fifteen times; needless to say, he was the most borrowed fiction author (for the seventh year running); Nora Roberts dropped from fourth place last year to sixth; M.C. Beaton was seventh and tenth was David Baldacci (previously eighteenth). Lee Child had the two top most borrowed titles; J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy was the tenth most borrowed title, well beaten by Fifty Shades of Grey (third).

 

The top twenty of the 100 most-borrowed books in Scotland are all crime novels.
 
Top non-fiction author was cookery expert Mary Berry.
 
The full list can be found on the website.
 
Last year my books (penname Ross Morton) were borrowed 5,464 times from the UK libraries. That’s a great feeling, to know that that number of people have read my novels.
 
Since its publication in 2007, my first novel Death at Bethesda Falls has been borrowed 8,709 times.
 
My most-borrowed title is The $300 Man.

If you can't borrow it, please purchased post-free world-wide from here

So, I must go against the advice of Shakespeare, in Hamlet: ‘… neither a borrower, nor a lender be…’ (I know, he was talking about money, rather than books!)