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Currently reading Miracles of Life and thoroughly enjoying it. It's an absolute MUST for any Ballard fan. Odd to see the private familial side of the shy dying writer, and, most unexplored of all, a sentimental Ballard waxing lyrical about flying kites with his kids and wishing those times could last forever. A poignant and beautiful and fascinating and sad book all round. Really fills in a lot of holes in any long-term reader's view of the writer's life.

Personally, my fave Ballard books are Kingdom Come, and also The Unlimited Dream Company. Conversations is pretty great too.

G.

Graham, I LOVE Unlimited Dream Company. I would rate this alongside High-Rise as the best of JGB's novels (this is excluding Atrocity, because it isn't exactly a novel).

I can't wait to read 'Miracles of Life.' I've been waiting for a biography of Ballard for years now, but an autobiography has the potential to be even better. I read a couple of reviews of 'Miracles' that were enthusiastic about Ballard's humility, as in he doesn't go on about his achievements etc. Did you find it thus?

I don't want to open a can of worms here, but what about comparing JGB's abilities as a parent to that of WSB? No competition.

I'm around halfway through and Ballard really hasn't had all that many achievements yet workwise in the chronological presentation of his life; really just starting out his writing career. But there is no ego in the way he presents the rest of the book so far; just straight sometimes-horrifying truth, as usual. And I just found out that there is an audiobook of the book available in the UK; a must, as Ballard reads the book, and it will be very interesting to hear him read certain poignant sections of it.

G.

i'll have to have both the book and the audiobook. the other ballard i haven't read is kingdom come. there are ballard books i like more than others, but i don't think the man ever wrote a bad book. a couple other favorites of mine are: the crystal world, and hello america.

There's no accounting for taste. I thought Hello America was the closest Ballard ever came to a bad book. I hated it. I had a nice first edition but disliked the book so much that I dumped it at a used bookstore.

ballard writing about las vegas with charles manson as a character is of special interest to me, but, yeah, i seem to be alone on this one. reviews were not good either. perverse as it is i enjoy appreciating something that most others don't.

here's an amazon readers' review who maybe saw it the same way as you. i couldn't find a good review.

"I regret that I cannot recommend "Hello America." In fact, it got so silly at times that it was embarrassing. J.G. Ballard is a British writer whose perception of America is, to say the least, a little too broad. The book's premise (the whole population of the United States flees to Europe in the 2030s, then the whole continent is turned to desert when the Bering Strait is dammed) and characters (nutcases all) were totally implausible. The attempted humor falls flat because the author is taking his premise so seriously, but the premise falls flat because the characters and their adventures are so ridiculous."

*also of note is ballard once again was way ahead of the game on topics like climate control.

see, that's one i thought was just okay. i rushed thru the first half, hungry for any ballard, but by midway i was not so enthused. i got the impression, rightly or wrongly, that he was going thru the motions. and his usual brilliant imagination seemed somewhat restrained to me.

Not long ago I read somewhere (ballardian.com, maybe?) that JGB originally intended Hello America as a book for teen readers. That intention would make it a bit more palatable -- as well as funny and perverse.

I didn't think Millennium People was as good as Super-Cannes, but I thought it was solid, funny, insightful, and as timely as Ballard always seems to be. For me it was hardly "going through the motions." It was more like living through JGB's obsessions with him -- again.

Honestly I'm waiting to read Kingdom Come and the memoir because the odds of us having any further Ballard books in the near future are slim. I thought I'd save these two for a day when I'm really in the mood for some new Ballard... And I've never read Empire of the Sun, either.

I wonder if Ballard or his estate will ever authorize a collection of letters? I've heard that in the past Ballard has been cool toward the idea, but maybe this retrospective moment before death will warm him to the idea?

Finished reading Miracles of Life. Superb, though I personally thought the first half of it or so, talking about Ballard's relationship with his parents and coming back to England after WWII, was the better part because a lot of the material had not been discussed anywhere before. The bits about his kids being born and his wife dying were very, very moving. A very personal book for the author, and one apparently written very quickly, as he says that he started out writing it at the start of 2007 and the date at the end is September 2007. A very sad, beautiful, poignant work and a fitting last book. Definitely recommended. And RealStud, if you read Kingdom Come you'll enjoy it, guaranteed. Quality mayhem indeed.

G.

Got the audiobook yesterday. It's not read by Ballard, rather by somebody named Tim Piggott-Smith, whoever he may be. Which is a gyp cos the Ebay seller I got it from sort of made it sound like it was Ballard reading it (guess he was too weak to do so). I looked at amazon.co.uk but they don't list who reads it, so I just assumed (stupidly, in retrospect) it was the author. Oh well. Still okay to have and listen to going to and from work.

G.

Review of Miracles of Life. You might want to notice the link at the end of this review... Ahem... Cough... Sputter... Er, download...

http://www.greylodge.org/gpc/?p=1356

Thanks, am generally ambigious about audiobooks but will for sure try this out

check out this interesting short film on j. g. via ballardian.com
http://blip.tv/file/655465

I got a postcard (Tizanio's 'Amor Sacro e Profano' from 1514 - http://www.galleriaborghese.it/borghese/en/eamor.htm) from Ballard a coupla daze ago, dated 28/4/08. Says he had just started a course of chemotherapy and was feeling a little better for it - "besides, I am 77, + no one lives forever - I think they hope to keep going for a little while longer." I was glad to hear from him cos I thought he was a hospital in-patient near death (though he spends a lot of time there), but apparently he's not quite that bad yet, thankfully. I kept looking at Ballardian.com and Jgballard.com and waiting to hear about him having died.

Not yet, thankfully. Hope he'll be around for a while yet.

G.

That's great to hear, Graham. I've been expecting the same bad news every time I look at ballardian.com.