Good read for the start of the cold winter

This artful and entertaining collection of essays by the novelist Will Self (The Book of Dave) will delight anyone who enjoys his weekly column of the same name in the Independent or his last collection of essays, Feeding Frenzy.

Here Self shifts from gonzo journalism to the study of psychogeography, the study of how geographical environments affect emotions and behavior.

Setting off on a quest for the intrinsic character of various places as well as the manner in which the contemporary world warps the relationship between psyche and place, Self casts a dismissive eye on most of the world. Singapore strikes him as Basingstoke force-fed with pituitary gland; Sao Paolo's lack of a street plan makes it an unholy miscegenation between London and Los Angeles. But Steadman's beautifully harsh illustrations (worthy of their own book) and Walking to New York, a previously unpublished semi-autobiographical meditation on life and death, reveal a surprising depth to Self's cynical insights.

"Cars and bullet trains may speed up our transit time, but they do nothing to enrich the quality or depth of our interactions. On the contrary, because we arrive so fast, we have no reason to make occasions of anything. By nudging others into this consciousness, Self acts as "an insurgent against the contemporary world."After an afternoon of overload at a local mall, he escapes to the suburbs with his kids, where he reflects on how interzones -- those places where "country and city do battle for the soul of a place" -- excite him. This suburban expedition is Self's way of dragging his children into their own consciousness of place. He wants to yank them "out of all this intense urbanity" and expose them to the suffocating pressure of "the sheer orderliness of all the neat verges and linseed- oiled garage doors" -- just like the teenage Self once felt. Once again, the insurgency: Self watches as his son tenses on his way into the suburbs and relaxes on his way home to the city, his psyche penetrated.

This new book promises to be an excellent read. Check out the book review published by the L.A. Times. Unfortunately, it's not yet vailable at the Windsor Public Library, but it is available at the St. Clair Shores Indigo store - but please try and purchase it from an independant retailer first.