In Which We Discuss Books I Read Last Week VI

I started lots of books this week. I didn't finish many.

 A lot of the books I've been reading are short stories - Night Shift, Binocular Vision, and The Best Russian Short Stories, those first two by Stephen King and Edith Pearlman respectively.  Because they're short stories, I've not been reading them in one go; instead I've been dipping in and out at random.

I've also been reading Mansfield Park; I've never gotten along with Austen but I listened to a Freakonomics podcast a while back that theorised about her novels being an exploration of game theory in a social setting, which made me a little more interested.  Plus, Project Gutenberg is one site that's unblocked at work and that no one says a thing about me looking at during quiet times.  So I've been dipping into Flatland when Mansfield Park becomes a bit too much.

I also started reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for a bookclub I'll be attending on Tuesday evening.  I like it so far.  It's about HeLa cells, the first immortal strain of human cells, which is still propagating in petri dishes all over the world, and the woman they came from in the first place.

Going back to what I actually did finish reading this week.  I've read The Devil Wears Prada before.  I remember Brit-picking it, and you can read that rant here.  You can also read my longer review of the book here.

I reread The Devil Wears Prada this week because I got my hands on a copy of Revenge Wears Prada and figured I should reread the original so it was fresh in my mind.  It worked pretty well.  Both were 99p on the Kindle store.

Revenge Wears Prada is in third person, which is a bit of a jump from the first person viewpoint of Devil.  Weisberger has also dropped that religion theme-naming thing she was doing.  All of the old characters pop back up, and the work is thematically similar, in that Andy is treated unfairly until she snaps and fixes her life.  I quite enjoyed it, though it wasn't anything too special.  If you liked the original book, it's probably worth a look if you have the time and 99p to spare.  There isn't really any revenge though.

I think I gave them both 3/5 stars.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read Last Week V

It's been a busy fortnight.  I've been working full time for almost a month, I'm a year older, and I have a new boyfriend.  I call him Trix.  He makes me smile and go all pinky and giggly.

Anyway, books.

Crunchy Betty's Food on Your Face is a book I've wanted to read for a while.  Crunchy Betty, aka Leslie Martin is a beauty blogger who uses all natural beauty products, mostly of the edible variety.  The book in particular is focused on oily skin, and mine is dry, so a lot of the info wasn't applicable.  That said, some of it was, and I'm happy to support her.  On a practical level though the blog stands on its own merits.  4/5.

Big Brother is by Lionel Shriver, who also wrote We Need to Talk About Kevin.  This one focuses on a business woman whose brother has suddenly put on an extra 200 or so lbs, and how utterly horrific this is.  I was eye-rolling throughout much of it.  There are so many ignorant assumptions; that big people must be binging like pigs, that no one would ever find them attractive, that it was such a huge trial to have one of them in your home, being related to you, etc etc.  I agree that a huge change in a family member's appearance would be a cause for concern if they also showed signs of depression, but, really?  How petty.  I quite enjoyed the middle section, when the heroine decides to help her brother lose weight, but that was quickly undone by the ending.  3/5.

Richard Bacon, as some of you may remember, was the Blue Peter presenter who was fired for snorting cocaine.  I was nine or ten at the time, and I remember having a bit of a crush on him, so I thought it would be fun to see it from the other side.

I loved A Series of Unrelated Events.  Bacon is deeply, deeply sarcastic, and the book is hilarious.  It's like the way I imagine my little rants sound in my head.  It really is written more as a series of broadly unrelated events, rather than a narrative, and it really works.  4/5.

Dana Bane's The Secret Supper Club was about a woman who has always wanted to be a chef, but has been discouraged by her parents, partner, etc etc.  Having lost said partner, she is convinced to cheer herself up by hosting one of those pop-up restaurants.  In many ways it reminded me of Sophie Kinsella's The Undomestic Goddess, particularly the parts about a career woman finding peace in the joy of cooking.  Lots of loving talk of food and fluffy drama.  4/5.

The World According to Humphrey  is a children's book I found on Kind of Book which was reduced to free on the Kindle store.  It's a children's book from the point of view of a classroom hamster.  I quite liked it; 3/5 stars.

How Many Socks Make a Pair? was a lovely little book about recreational mathematics.  The author writes that he wanted to demonstrate the ah?  Aha, and haha! of mathematics.  I think he succeeded.  It's fairly short, but it was interesting, and I went on about it all afternoon.  My coworkers enjoyed it.  They didn't say otherwise, anyway.  4/5 stars, and here's a little logic puzzle for you.  A woman is 21 years older than her son.  In six years, she will be five times his age.  Where is the father?

Finally, The Basic Eight.  This is a book I've read before, and is, in fact, one of my favourites.  I bought myself a digital copy and gave the paperback to Trix.  I hope he likes it.

The Basic Eight is written as if it is a true crime novel inside a fictitious universe.  That is, Flannery writes as if the audience is fully aware of the murder she's commited, which leads to an interesting little bit about a photograph.  You'll understand if you read it.

Daniel Handler also writes as Lemony Snicket, and his dark humour comes across here too.  The book reminds me, more than anything, of Heathers, the movie with Christian Slater and a fifteen-year-old Winona Ryder.

I'm too tired to be descriptive.  It gets 5/5 stars, obviously.  Trust me, read it, it's awesome.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read Last Week IV

I started work last Monday, so this week has involved slightly less reading.  Well, actually, it's more complicated than that.  I've had less time for doing stuff in general, but I'm reading regularly on the train and during my breaks, so it's a more regular amount of reading time, and more than I did when I was just playing videogames and watching movies all day.  I did do that sometimes, and barely read anything.

Anyway; this week's books!

I forget whether Coraline showed up on Kind of Book or not.  I do recall that it was very cheap, and since I liked the film and the graphic novel, I figured I should give it a read.  I gave it 4/5 stars.  Because the story wasn't new to me, it's hard to find anything to say about it.

I've had The Donor for a while.  Last time Kobo ran a competition, I used some of my vouchers to pick it up cheaply.  It's initially introduced as a dilemma; twins are both suffering from kidney failure, and their (single) father cannot donate to both of them.  So yeah, it sounds a bit Jodi Picoult-ish.  The book itself goes into their relationships with each other and their past in a way that's a lot more interesting than the actual dilemma, even if the whole thing does twinge on an incredibly unlikely fact.

Spoilers Below

Seriously - no one has ever told Will that two blue-eyed parents couldn't have brown-eyed children?  No one's ever mentioned that to him, ever?  I can understand why no one else would point it out, since they'd probably just assume that Georgie and Kay's mother had brown-eyes, and even the girls themselves might not have looked that closely at old photos.  The author didn't even need to throw that fact in there; their paternity wasn't realised or even suspected because of their eyes, and it could so easily have not been mentioned at all.

End Spoilers.

I gave it 4/5 stars because I enjoyed the journey.

Rage I've read before.  It was Stephen King's fifth published novel, though one that he started in High School.  It's no longer in print, though it does seem to be included in the Kindle edition of The Bachman Books, and you can still pick up second hand copies.  I gave that 4/5 stars as well.

I picked up Thank You For Smoking because Kind of Book notified me that it was reduced to 99p. I'd heard of the movie and thought of watching it, though I never actually got around to it.  Anyway, I figured I'd just read the book because it sounded pretty interesting.  4/5.

Divergent was another book I found on Kind of Book, and I really should break that addiction.  A friend of mine has been recommending it for ages, and I'm so glad I finally got around to reading it.  It's another dystopian teen trilogy like The Hunger Games or Pretties.  The basic premise is that, in this society, sixteen-year-olds are given an aptitude test which indicates which of five societal groups they are best suited to being before choosing which of those groups to belong to for the rest of their lives.  I predict it will follow the essential path; the first book introduces the society, focusing on one member who doesn't quite fit into it as they come up to a specific occasion where they are to take on their adult role within society.  They train for this role for a while, learning more and more, until they - or she, usually she - accidentally breaks society due to their personality being incompatible plus some kind of megalomaniacal Big Bad trying to take over.  During the second book, our societally unacceptable heroine will join some rebels, at least one of whom will have important technical knowledge.  Finally, she will triumph in the third book.

All of that isn't to say that I don't enjoy this kind of thing, or that I won't read more of it.  Another 4/5.

In Which We Discuss The Shining and Rage

It took me quite a long time to finish The Shining. According to Goodreads, I started it on the 4th and finished it on the 28th. That's unusual for me, and not just compared to Rage, which I started on the 30th and finished earlier today, the 31st.

The Shining was Stephen King's third published novel, following Carrie and 'salem's Lot.  Rage was his fourth, though he actually started playing with the idea while still in high school.  In contrast, he began Carrie after college (uni).

I've never even seen the movie of The Shining - which, apparently, is not a very faithful adaptation anyway - so I came to it completely fresh.  I don't know why I found it so hard to get through.  It's not like I abandoned it and then came back and read it in chunks; I just read a chapter or two a night every other day.  That's very unusual for me.  During that same time period I read quite a few other books, but if I'd left one this long without finishing, I normally would have just given up.

Rage, on the other hand, I'd read before.  As I said, it was started when Stephen King was in high school, and published in 1977, three years after Carrie and the same year as The Shining.  It was published under the name Richard Bachman, and my edition of The Bachman Books has an essay on "Why I was Bachman".  Essentially, it has to do with wondering if his success was pure luck or talent, and with wanting to publish more than his publishers deemed necessary.  In the essay, Stephen King describes how The Beatles dreamt of just going for an anonymous tour as Randy and the Rockets.

"They would wear hokey capes and masks a la Count Five, he said, so no one would recognise them, and they would just have a rave-up, like in the old days.

When the interviewer suggested they would be recognised by their voices, Paul seemed at first startled...and then a bit appalled."

Later in the essay, King points out that the Beatles would have been recognised before they even opened their mouths, by George's guitar licks.  Since day one, he's been getting letters asking if he was Richard Bachman.

Since Bachman died of cancer-of-the-pseudonym in 1985, three years before I was born, I have never not known that Bachman and King were the same person.  So I can't comment on whether I would have guessed or not.

The next book on the list is Night Shift, a collection of short stories King published in a variety of magazines - including playboy - throughout the previous years. 

Some edits, while I remember;

King's goal, with The Shining was to write more than simple horror.  To have a character driven by inner demons as well as outer ones.  The film is a very unfaithful adaptation, but this does come across in the book.

Rage was withdrawn from publication following several real school shootings which made King uncomfortable with continuing to publish.  I have it in an old edition of The Bachman Books, and it seems like it's also available in the Kindle edition of that book.

In Which We Discuss Nikki Grahame and Disordered Eating

Yesterday, Nikki Grahame's updated biography popped up on Kind of Book for 99p.  For those who don't recall, Nikki Grahame was a Big Brother contestant, most famous for her tantrums.  What stood out to me most was her "Who is she?!" rant and the whole ipod thing.  I don't really remember how those came to my attention, because I don't follow the show.  Except one season, when it was on right before Graham Norton, which I did watch because you couldn't follow the first ten minutes of Graham Norton without knowing what was going on in the house.  Also because it was easier to just turn the TV on early than to remember to do so at the exact right time.

Anyway.  I really like reading the biographies of people - predominantly women - who are on the periphery of my life.  I'm not really sure what the appeal is for me.  Part of it is the reminder that other people are people too, if you know what I mean.

An example.  Sarah Burge.  She's very often criticised for the amount of plastic surgery she's had, for being a bad woman, a bad feminist, a bad mother, etc, etc.  Her biography, The Half a Million Pound Girl gives her more backstory.  Short version; she was forced into prostitution at fifteen, and generally taught that her looks were the only thing that mattered about her.  She had her first operation after a partner beat her so badly that her face was destroyed.  The NHS job damaged her sense of self-esteem - which, as you know, was heavily based on being told, for years, that the only valuable thing about her was her looks - so much that she began having surgery privately to repair it.  She's also a much better mother, with far different values than the Daily Mail would have you believe.  I find it a lot harder to judge her for her decisions knowing that, and I think that's a good feeling for me to have, and to extend to people around me.

In Nikki's case, the book mostly focuses on her long struggle with anorexia, and the way she spent most of her childhood - from the age of eight - in psychiatric wards and hospitals for mentally ill children.  That leaves me with a whole different impression of her.

I think, for me, the difference between fiction and biography is that I already tend to have an impression of real people, and it's the stripping away of that initial impression that I find so interesting.  As I said, my impression of Nikki consisted of those two clips.  They were literally all I could recall about her.  Finding out that she had so much more going on reminded me to be aware of stranger bias.  You know, when you're angry it's because of circumstances, but when a stranger is angry, they're obviously just a horrible moody person.

I've probably mentioned this before, but one of the first biographies I ever read, after Walt Disney's, was Mel Bs, of the Spice Girls.  Bo Selecta had a character based on her, and frequently advertised (Leeds accent) her 'new book', Catch a Fire.  When I saw a copy going cheap I just thought, well, why not actually read it?  It was an interesting experience.  The Spice Girls were famous when I was eight years old.  They weren't like real people to me - they were cartoon characters.  If I recall correctly, I'm older now than they were then.  I've read Geri and Victoria's biographies too, and seeing the Spice Girls turn from cartoon characters into real women was incredibly interesting.

Recently, I read Crystal Renn's biography, Hungry.  Crystal Renn is a very successful plus-sized model who started out as a straight size (ie, tiny) model.  She also struggled to control her eating habits in order to gain what she was told was the only acceptable body for her chosen career.  She slowly broke free of that, and the book is a wonderful discourse on fat-shaming and the pressures women are put under to stay below a certain weight.  It's exaggerated in the modelling industry but is in no way absent in the real world.  It's very similar to Fragile, though I had no preconceptions of Crystal Renn, since I'm from the UK and had never heard of her.  I actually found the book in the 99p shop.  They still have a bunch of copies.  It's absolutely worth buying.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read Last Week III

I'm actually starting this post a few days early, since I won't have time on Monday - I'll be completing my first day in my new job!

This week has dragged.  It was one thing when unemployment was a long term thing, that stretched on.  I could come up with routines, experiment with recipes within my meagre budget, and generally just get on with living.  Now though, I'm not living, I'm waiting.  For my real life to begin.  So I'll read a book or maybe two or three...

Neverwhere - This has been in my unread pile for a while.  I like most of Neil Gaiman's stuff, though recently, I've found it hard to forget his association with and support of Amanda Palmer, considering the Evelyn and Evelyn trainwreck (post here about why it was so terrible).  Anyway, that's probably why it took me so long to get to Neverwhere.

I liked Neverwhere.  I read it over two days, and it was interesting and absorbing, and so on.  I don't know why though, I just can't get excited about it.  The plot is what you might imagine you'd get if someone with an interest in fantasy started having fever dreams beneath a map of London tube stations.  I gave it 4/5 stars, but I'm thinking of revising it to 3.

I seem to be the last amongst my group of friends to have read it.  When I checked goodreads, they'd all left their stars already.

The Perfect Murder - I actually read this last week, or maybe the week before, but completely forgot to mark it as finished.  It's a collection of short stories, like The Perfect Escape, which I read two weeks ago.  Essentially, you get a bunch of short stories and a sample chapter of a novel by the same author to go with each one.  They were pretty good, especially since the Kindle edition was free.  I gave it 3/5.

We Use Coupons, You Should Too - this is yet another book aimed at an American market.  I read it because I'm frugal and because I have an odd habit of reading non-fiction books that do not in any way apply to me.  For instance, I'm currently reading Babynomics, a finance book written for expectant parents.  When I was about thirteen or so, I read The Selfish Pig's Guide to Caring, which is even more irrelevant to me, since I have no intention of ever becoming a carer.  It was very well written though.

Anyway, I enjoyed reading this.  It's a very thorough guide, and even though much of it doesn't apply to me, I  still found it interesting.  And now I'm tempted to go look up couponing (vouchering?) in the UK.

...okay, it's now Monday, and I did google it, and it's not really possible.  I gave it 3/5 stars anyway.

I picked up Nikki Grahame's Fragile in another Kind of Book sale, if I recall correctly.  I'm working on a longer post about it, so I won't say too much here.  I gave it 4/5 stars.

Finally, The Shining.  Another one that I want to discuss in another post.  For some reason, it took me ages to read it; a good fortnight or so.  Unusual for me, especially since I didn't hate it.  3/5.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read Last Week II

 Oh hey, I guess I am carrying on with this. Jolly good.

I read a lot more books I found on Kind of Book this week.  I think I may have a bit of a problem.  Especially since I bought the Kindle Paperwhite a month early, because I realised I could afford it if I just didn't buy food for a while, and I'm now spending my last food money on books for her (my Kindle's name is Melinda).  It's like some kind of unholy cross between a demon baby and a cocaine addiction.  God love her.

Try-It Diets: Macrobiotics and Raw Food - I bought these because I liked the vegan one.  I downloaded samples first, just to look at the contents pages.  I don't do that with most books, but I always do with cookbooks.  I think because I feel really guilty about having a cookbook which I don't actually cook from.  With my physical cookbooks, I tick off recipes on the contents page as I make them, and write the date and notes down on the pages.  The Kindle and Kobo let me do that with the 'note' function.

Anyway.  I had only the vaguest idea of what macrobiotics were, but from the contents page, I noted several vegetably recipes, and a few that were explicitly titled as vegan, so I figured it was worth a look.  Turns out, macrobiotics is a vegan (possibly vegetarian, can't recall if any dairy or eggs are used) way of balanced cooking, that is mixing food with certain elements with food with opposing elements to create a balanced dish.  Or something.  I skimmed the intro a bit, and then skimmed the recipes once I'd got the gist.  Also, if I didn't have an amazing ability to never get hangovers, I would be hungover right now, so let's go check wikipedia.

A macrobiotic diet (or macrobiotics), from "macro" (long) and "bios, biot-" (life), is a dietary regimen which involves eating grains as a staple food, supplemented with other foods such as local vegetables, and avoiding the use of highly processed or refined foods and most animal products.

They don't write well for their audience in this one.  If the concept behind the Try-It series is to introduce people to new things, then you probably shouldn't throw in terms your audience won't be familiar with without explanation.  I had to google so many terms; shoyu, for instance.  It's soy sauce.  Why not call it by the name your audience are more likely to know it as?  If you were writing a British cookbook, you wouldn't label all the courgettes as zucchinis, would you?

The raw food one I got because raw food is mostly vegan, since you can't really go around eating unprocessed raw meat, eggs or dairy.  Some of the recipes include honey, but that's easy to replace.  The problem I had with it was that at least half the recipes require a dehydrator.

I have no intention of becoming a raw foodist; it doesn't fit my personal morality any better than veganism, so I get no benefits there, and the "science" behind it is utter nonsense (this article is pretty thorough on why, and less ranty than what follows here).  There are studies that prove that all that "live enzyme" bollocks is bollocks.  I stopped going to the Brummie Veggies and Vegans meeting when they had a talk from a raw foodist who went on about how she'd cured her cancer through the diet.  No.  Fuck you.  I'm glad you're in remission, but if it was really just a case of eating raw food don't you think the medical community would be all over that?  If you had a cure for cancer that was simple, cheap, uncopyrightable, and available everywhere, cancer would be cured by now.  Anecdata is not proof.  Some people were always going to go into remission; in order to prove that it was due to a raw food diet, you'd need to get a statistically significant sample size and have all of them go into remission.

My aunt died of leukemia a few weeks ago, I'm testy on the subject.

Oh, and then she banged on about how she put some non-organic apples in the fridge and they didn't go off.  No shit, really?  That's what apples do.  They store well in low temperatures.  That's what we've been doing with them for hundreds of years.  It's not weird or disgusting, and even if it was, she didn't even put an organic apple in there to see how they compared under similar conditions.  That's not science, that's cherry-picking evidence to fit your bias.

Anyway.  Point I was making.  Because I see no value in making a point of not-cooking foods, I'm not going to make anything that requires a dehydrator (a machine that basically cooks food at a low temperature for several hours, so as not to "kill the enzymes").  I'm not going to do that.  I'm just going to cook it.

I've seen some really interesting raw desserts which looked yummy, and I'd hoped they'd have some of those and more ideas for simple meals that you can make without cooking.  Oh well.  It was less than a pound, anyway.

I gave both 2/5 stars.

My Big Fake Irish Life - I saw this on amazon months ago, when I first started playing around with my price link.

I should tell you about my price link.  This is my price link.  It will display all Kindle books between 0-99p.  But wait, there's more.  If you change the bolded numbers below and then copypaste the link into the address bar, you can change those 0-99p values.  You can find all the Kindle books reduced to under 20p, or 50p, or whatever.  Or change the second value to 500 to find all the books under £5 or something. Have fun!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=sr_ex_n_1?rh=n%3A341677031%2Cn%3A!341678031%2Cn%3A341689031%2Cp_15%3A-domain%2Cp_36%3A00-99&bbn=341689031&ie=UTF8&qid=1360170055


Anyway, My Big Fake Irish Life.  Saw it on Amazon ages ago, finally got around to buying it.  It's about an actress who is unsuccessful as her dishwater-blonde mid-American self, so decides to reinvent herself as an Irish redhead in order to give herself a unique selling point.  It's laugh-out-loud funny in places, and all the characters are squeeful.  I looked at a few other reviews on goodreads, and one negative review said she felt that the main character spent too long dwelling over whether she should reveal herself or not, and it got repetitive.  I guess it does come up a lot, but, y'know, that's the story.  I didn't find it irritating.  That said, some books - Lisa Jewell's Joy and Vince and Thirty-Nothing come to mind - have a will-they-won't-they storyline that drags on for decades (both within the book, and in the time it feels like it takes to get to where they actually make a decision) and that did my head in.  I didn't find this book similar in that aspect, but I guess I can see why someone would.  I gave it 4/5 stars.  It was happy and silly and generally cheering.

Play or Die - this book was awesome.  I got it for free from Kind of Book, though the price has since gone back up to £3.39.  The description starts with;

Ready to play the game of your life?

Could you stay ahead of a sociopathic hunter being sent your co-ordinates every three hours? Jo Warrington is about to live this nightmare. On a Melbourne city street she is plunged into a game devised by people from the future. Her choices - play or die.

That was intriguing.  But, what I really, really loved about this book was that neither the protagonist nor the antagonist held the idiot ball.  The book pits two intelligent people against each other, and has neither of them do really stupid and illogical things for the sake of plot.  I've been watching a lot of Charmed recently, which seems to take place on a planet made of idiot ball, so I'm utterly thrilled about this.  And it was so much fun to think about what you'd do in Jo's position.  She has $20,000 Australian to play with, due to the rest of the plot, and my first thought was to jump on a plane.  If she managed to do it without tipping off the hunter, she'd have a good 20+ hours in which to sleep, which would be a huge bonus over the five days.  Of course, the hunter could be only a few hours behind her.  And I don't think anyone would read or write the version where the hunter missed the plane.  Anyway, the author points out that the character doesn't have a current passport, which neatly sidesteps that strategy.

The ending is a little bit idealistic, but I needed that at that point.  I wanted it to be.  The author gave us so much awesome action earlier that I'm happy to go with an unlikely happy ending rather than a horrible bleak one.  I gave it 5/5 stars, obviously.

Love in the Fourth Dimension - this was a weird little book.  For much of it, the tone sounds like it's giving us a summary of a more detailed story.  It's a love story with some strange little vignettes and asides.  It deals with some serious issues, like alcoholism, and not everything goes right, but it works out in the end.  I gave it 3/5.

A Blink of the Screen - Collected short stories by Terry Pratchett.  I've read several of them before; The Sea and the Little Fishes, for instance, appears in Legends, and two more show up in Knights of Madness and The Flying Sorcerers.  You can read Theatre of Cruelty - a Discworld story featuring Captain (then Corporal) Carrot - on L-Space.

It made me feel a little sad reading this.  I know it's made to - cash in on?  Commemorate?  Less mercenary, less happy.  Anyway, something to do with Pratchett's alzheimers and his continued loss of focus and impeding death.  And being reminded of that was sad.

I really liked The High Meggas, the story which was the origin of The Long Earth, Pratchett's collaborative novel with Stephen Baxter.  I didn't really have any idea of what The Long Earth was about before that, but now I'm really excited to get my hands on it.  This was a library book, and I gave it 4/5 stars.

The Last Girlfriend on Earth - I loved this book.  It's a collection of short stories around the concept of love.  The author decided write about how different situations feel, rather than trying to literally describe them, and it works really well.  The best example of this is one where the main character's ex-girlfriend's new partner turns out to be literally Hitler - and no one else has a problem with it.  There's one about a whingy goat who's been "friend-zoned" - the character never uses that term, but his attitude is the same as the sort of people who complain about the fact that they have a good friend who doesn't want to sleep with them.  The stories are all pretty short and surreal, but with an underlying truth to them.  Another Kind of Book - it's currently reduced to £1.  Gogogo.  5/5.

I didn't get anything off my unread pile this week.  Stupid sexy Kindle.

Note:  I couldn't tag as thoroughly as I would like here, because of the 200 character limit.

In Which We Discuss Neutering the Vampire and Blood in Fiction

This post was originally written a while back and posted to another of my blogs. It was inspired by two different books;  Daughters of Darkness: Lesbian Vampire Stories, collected by Pam Keesey, and Alicorn's re-imaging of Twilight, in which Bella is a rationalist thinker.

I feel that I should mention, at this point, that I don't like Twilight.  I do love Alicorn's take on it.  Her take on Bella is fantastic, and someone I feel I can relate to, as a person and a feminist, far more than to Meyer's original.  I highly recommend checking it out, especially if reading Twilight made you feel dirty.  Seriously, go check it out right now, I'll wait.  For days, if necessary.

Finally, this post was inspired by a thread on GoodReads, which began with the assumption that Jacob was the 'nice guy' who 'finished last', while Edward was the 'bad boy'.  I disagree, both with that idea and with the entire concept of nice guys, bad boys, and women preferring one over the other.  This is, at least in part, because every person I've ever seen whining about how nice they are, and how women don't appreciate them, has been a whiny selfish jerk, who thinks the world owes them something, ie Nice Guys TM.  But, I digress.

Daughters of Darkness (which I've yet to finish) has a very interesting introduction.  Keesey talks about how, before Bram Stoker's Dracula became the vampire story, stories of lesbian vampires were very common.  (Incidentally, I also highly recommend Angela Carter's The Lady of the House of Love, which as published in The Flying Sorcerers and The Bloody Chamber).

In our society, as in most, if not all, others, the young female virgin is the ultimate symbol of sexual innocence.  She is rarely allowed control of her sexuality; she is a prize, to be taken.  She is someone who something is done to, not someone who does.  L. Sigel does an excellent job of describing this idea in her essay, which discusses reactions to her study of pornography.

Before quoting a short extract from her essay, I should explain that the 'Bella' she refers to is not Bella Swan; rather, she is Bella of the Victorian erotica story, The Autobiography of a Flea, a character who is seduced by several characters, including her own uncle.

As a woman who studies sexuality, I find myself understood as part of my work. My intellectual work gets positioned where it doesn't belong--on my body. The idea that women are so finely tuned sexual creature that the contagion of sexuality must be kept from them or they will be polluted remains central to our understanding of gender. As a woman I find myself continuously positioned as Bella or against Bella. I can either be deviant or I can be against deviance. I cannot just think about the process or the performance of deviance. The process by which I have been disciplined is voyeurism overlaid with threat, intimidation, and shame. Here are two examples of the process: When I was in London for a number of months doing my research I met an interesting man. I went out for coffee with him and told me he didn't want to get involved (with me) because he had a girlfriend in California. We agreed to that. We talked, went to a movie, and drank coffee. He propositioned me and I said "No." And I said "No". And I said "No." He told me that he only wanted to sleep with me because of my research. He thought I would be adventurous in bed. I had to say "no" a number of times because at some level, perhaps on the surface, perhaps unconsciously, he couldn't believe that I was unaccessible as a sexual partner. As a woman who studied sexuality, I was sexually accessible and sexually voracious. He made that clear when he referred to my research. By referring to my research, he also meant to insult me. The sum of my worth as a sexual partner came from my "adventurousness" predicated upon my intellectual leanings. I had teased him as a woman because of my studies and he could retaliate by denigrating my worth with an "only." As a woman I did not deserve attention, my value "only" came from my deviant sexuality.

Normative discipline works as the flip side of deviant discipline. Women are to be protected from sexuality, or scorning that, women become sexualized and accessible. Consider this: Customs, by pre-arrangement, met me when I came home. Both Customs and I wanted to make sure that I didn't bring home any illegal materials. The Customs agent, who was generally very nice, said "What does your mother think? Isn't she ashamed of what you're doing?"

Customs, in searching for child pornography and/or bestiality which are illegal in this country, has a right to decide boundaries of normative and deviant sexual representation. Behind the practice of search, seizure, and arrest is the theory that children should not be sexual objects for adults. Representations that picture sexualized children 1) encourage adults to sexualize children and 2) provide lasting testimony to the children's shame which adults can continue to take pleasure in. The belief that the state should protect the weak is implicit in its stance towards child pornography. However, bestiality is usually just seen as wrong. When it gets considered at all, it is generally seen as degrading towards the humans involved and not the animals. Instead of protecting animals, restrictions against bestiality protect humans from the contagion of deviant sexuality by discouraging thinking about such acts and from advertising the degradation in such acts.
In the cases of bestiality and child pornography, humans-- children and adults-- need to be protected by the state from the thought of deviancy. Voyeuristic moralism cannot be strong enough to overcome titillation or excitement. The state can only stop them in tandem, by stopping the trade in articles. However, in my experience with Customs, it was neither bestiality nor child pornography which constituted deviance. The agent hadn't seen my research materials at all and couldn't know if were deviant according to the legal definition of restricted materials. The problem was that I had pornography, that I looked at pornography, and that I thought about pornography. I broke a boundary situated in gender through which normative behavior gets defined. I thought about bad things. To demonstrate that he re-positioned me as a child by referring to my mother to place me under the protective umbrella of family and state. I was re-positioned in the materials, as one who needs protection, rather than out of them as one who studies them.

Lesbian vampires stories were common because vampires were, and are, the most sexual of all supernatural creatures (except, possibly, the succubus/incubus, who would appear to have missed out on fame due to a lack of subtlety.  There's no slow burn with succubi or incubi; they are fucking.  That's it.).  The fact that they were lesbian vampires adds a layer of deviance; not so deviant that they cannot be discussed in public (unlike, say paedophilia), but deviant enough to be interesting).  Vampires are, traditionally, creatures who prey on female innocence (incidentally, Daughters of Darkness is not a book of erotica, despite the description; it contains stories of sexuality, few of which are explicit.  It seems that it is classed as erotica purely by virtue of focusing on lesbian sexuality).

Edward Cullen displays none of the normal seduction of a traditional vampire.  He is not dark and interesting; he sparkles.  He does not want to seduce Bella; he wants to marry her.  He does not come alone, in the night - he brings an entire family, with parents who approve.  Meyer has effectively neutered the raw sexuality of a vampire, trapped him in marriage and a cosy homelife.  Not just Edward - the plot point of the mate bond means that all vampires are loyal husbands and wives waiting to happen.

Instead it is Bella who is mysterious; he cannot read her mind.  It is Bella who attempts to seduce him, who would prefer not to wait till marriage.  It is Bella who has the choice to leave him, as, when she is human, she is not tied by the mate bond.

Werewolves have been used to symbolise female sexuality, or, at the very least, contain links to menarche and menstruation, due to their mimicry of the monthly cycle  (though, sadly, not nearly often enough).  The moon, after all, is female.  Tanith Lee's Wolfland, in Red as Blood, makes the symbolism very clear.

Again, Meyer has twisted this.  Female werewolves lose their ability to menstruate entirely, something a character describes as making her feel less of a woman, as if the whole point of being a woman is to be a mother and a wife.  The fact that (only) male werewolves imprint on (female) children also has the effect of robbing them of their sexuality; these children are explicitly groomed, in Meyer's stories, growing up with an enormous pressure for their sexuality to grow in a set, pre-defined way.

Give me womanist female werewolves, growing into their power and sexuality.  Give me vampires who won't be caught, who won't go willingly to domesticity, who are as hard to tame as tigers.

Put the blood back in my myths, menstrual and otherwise.

Please?

In Which We Discuss Books I Read Last Week

Gosh, I have been a busy girl, haven't I?  A lot of this was pure excitement at getting a Kindle Paperwhite.  Anyway, here are some quick notes (and my */5 ratings) on the books I read last week.  I may keep doing this, I may not.  We'll see.

Clovenhoof - a hilarious tale of Satan being kicked out of hell and sent to live in the Midlands.  It helps that I wanted to like it because it was written by a friend of a friend, but it really does stand on its own merits.  I gave it 4/5 stars.  I got it for 99p on the Kindle Store, but it's gone up a bit since then.

Red Dwarf and Better Than Life - the first two Red Dwarf books, written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, who conceived and wrote the TV show.  I found these in my local charity shop, when I went in to donate some other books.  In places, it's like reading a collection of episode summaries.  Elsewhere, it expands on things that were only throw-away lines in the show.

The series is actually a trilogy, but both Grant and Naylor had different ideas about how they wanted it to go, so they each wrote their own ending.  I'll have to track them down one of these days.  I gave the first one 4 stars and the second 5.

The Children of Green Knowe - a children's book that's been in my unread pile for years.  I read it to get it out of the way.  3/5.

In the Red - a non-fiction story of a Scottish woman who got £30,000 into debt and spent a year cutting back to try to pay some of it off.  Since her idea of cutting back is buying a £24 kettle rather than a £50 one, I'm not surprised she was so far in debt.  I like these little slice of life things though.  It reads similarly to Save Karyn or How I Lived on a Pound a Day.  3/5 stars.  This was a library book.

Baked - a short story from the Kindle store that showed up on Kind of Book for 77p.  A love story between a scabby little jam doughnut and a big trollopy eclair (direct quote).  Cute and well written, but a little expensive for the length.  4/5 stars.

Princess - a disturbing psychological thriller, and that's both a direct quote and my opinion.  Another 77p short story, which I bought from my Kindle Device after finishing Who is Sarah Lawson.  Very disturbing.  My grandmother would like it, she loves all those creepy murder shows and magazines.  It reminded me a lot of the Point Horror short stories, particularly John Gordon's Bone Meal from 13 More Tales of Horror.  4/5.

Who is Sarah Lawson - another Kind of Book rec.  62p from the Kindle store.  You can read the full review here.  Short version, interesting but amateurish.  3/5.

The Perfect Escape - a collection of short stories from female light romance writers.  Free on the Kindle Store.  It's designed as an advert for the writers' other books, so it contains a little introduction for each author and a free chapter from those books as well.  The stories are pretty decent, except for one, which isn't actually a story - it's an essay on Ryan Gosling movies, based around how attractive he looks in each one.  Seriously?  3/5.

Try-It Diet: Vegan - a short introduction to veganism.  I was a vegan, but I stopped due to monetary restraints and disordered eating habits.  In short, it hasn't psychological healthy for me to try to be vegan recently.  However, I'm now in a better place, and since I'll be starting work and earning more money soon, I really want to be a vegan again.  I really enjoy it.

I did download the free sample of this first, but, unfortunately, it's so short that it cuts off before you see a single recipe, so I took a 46p gamble and bought it.

There's an entire series of these books, it turns out.  The basic premise is that they give you a meal plan and recipes for two weeks, so you can try out a diet and see if it's for you.  I kind of want to get the Paleo and Gluten-free versions too, just for the sake of an honest comparison.  I was a vegan for two years, and I found that I was able to eat lots of yummy things, that I was more enthusiastic about cooking, and that I could eat whatever I wanted and maintain a weight on my low-side of normal.  Since April, when I decided not to feel guilty and started eating more meat and dairy, I've gained 6lbs, and I just don't feel as well.  So I know that veganism works better for my body than an omnivorous diet does.  I also feel that veganism is the choice that aligns with my morals best, which is why I would like to return to it as long as I don't hurt myself by doing so.

I've known a lot of people who've done very well on Paleo diets (though the idea that it's based on what our ancestors ate is utter bullshit), and I've heard very positive things from people who've cut gluten out of their diets, even if they don't have an allergy.  I would really like to see what happens to my body if I did either of those for six weeks.  But, I'll be honest here, the idea of cooking a ton of meat for that period, like I think I'd need to for the Paleo isn't good.  And gluten-free seems like it would involve lots of ingredients I've never heard of, with scary names.  Which is a silly reason, because so did veganism.  I'll think about it when I start work.

Going back to this book; the recipes were interesting.  Some I'm really interested in trying.  The author has a tendency to rely on egg-replacer, which, fortunately, is easy to make, but still.  I really prefer recipes designed to be vegan from the get-go rather than recipes which are translated from omnivorism.  Also, most of the cake recipes use a "boxed-cake mix".  You can tell that it was written by an American, right?  Though, in fairness, apart from the boxed cake mix, the ingredients are all pretty standard in the UK.

A note for Americans; we can buy boxed cake mixes here, but they're for children.  It's something you'd spend an afternoon making with a child.  It's not something you'd seriously buy and make and serve to adult guests.  So when we see adults using 'recipes' that include boxed cake mixes, we kind of look at you like we would an adult who had stabilizers on their bike.

Anyway, I gave the book 3/5 stars, and I probably will try it at some point.  The majority of the recipes seem to be within my skill level, and only slightly outside of my comfort zone.  Plus, I just remembered that Tesco do a 22p own-brand cake mix, so if that's vegan it might be kind of fun to play around with.

In Which We Discuss the Kindle Paperwhite

Contents

• The Device
• Price
• Selection   
• Battery Life
• Wi-fi
• Apps
• Page Count
• Text
• Menu
• Archiving/Downloading
• Interactivity
• Subscriptions

The Device

The Kindle Paperwhite is a device made by Amazon.  It has a 6" screen which is good for reading but which is a little hard on my hands; after reading for a few hours last night, I had some tingling and nerve pain from how I'd been holding it.

The screen lights up with varying degrees of brightness which is easy to change.  The screen is clearly visible both in darkness and bright sunlight.

The Paperwhite comes in black, and you can buy decals from decal girl or a variety of cases from Amazon to decorate it.

I've just checked, and the device will fit into a jacket pocket. Theoretically, it fit into my jeans pocket too, it just wasn't terribly secure.

The touch screen is very responsive.

Price

The Kindle Paperwhite currently sells at £109. With built-in 3G access it's £169, but I believe you'll have that 3G access for life.

Selection

The Kindle Store has a huge selection, many of which are available for free.  However, you cannot read non-Kindle books on the device.

Kindle books can often be heavily reduced, so if you keep an eye on a site like Kind of Book it's possible to get great bargains. 

Battery Life

I read for 2-3 or more hours a day, and I doubt that the Paperwhite would stay charged for more than two weeks at that rate.  The USB charger is exactly the same as the Kobo charger, which is handy if, like me, you have both.

Wi-Fi

You can sign into Wi-Fi hotspots, pay £60 more for 3G access, or simply edit your library from the desktop application.


Apps

Both the desktop and iOs app work extremely well.


Page Count

The Paperwhite has a time-to-read feature which tells you how long you have left in your current chapter and in the book as a whole based on your reading speed.  Some books feature "real page numbers" which tells you which page you'd be on if you were reading a physical copy.  All Kindle books use 'locations' which really just annoy me.  I really don't find it encouraging to know that I'm looking at location 2247 out of 7768, and nor do I find it helpful when my bookmarks give their location like that.

Text

You can choose from a variety of fonts, font sizes, margins, and justifications.  They're illustrated with little pictures, rather than on a sliding scale, so you can see what it'll look like before changing it.

Menu

I hate the Kindle Paperwhite's menu screen.

In cover view, your menu screen will first show you three books in your library - in order of recently read, author, title, or collection - along with a 'we suggest' section at the bottom, showing four books they want you to buy.  You can also clearly see the little shopping cart icon, and what bugs me about both of these is the sense of being sold to all the time.  Sure, if I go to the amazon website I expect them to try to sell me things.  I don't want them to keep nudging at me every time I want to read a book.

In list view, you can, again, see your books in order of recently read, title, author, or collections.  Collections are like folders that you can put books into, only books can be in more than one at a time.  I  currently have Cookbooks, Light Fiction, Dark Fiction, Detective, Non-Fiction, Sci-fi/Fantasy, Short Stories, and Stephen King.

Archiving/Downloading

Like the Kobo you can either view books on your device or all books in your collection.  It takes less than a minute to download a book.

Interactivity

I haven't noticed any.  Oh, wait, they once did this thing where if you linked your Amazon and Facebook accounts you could win a prize.

Subscriptions

There are a number of subscriptions available for e-ink devices.  I haven't currently tested any, but I did just get a free subscription to a magazine, so I'll let you know how it works.  There are a few free magazine subscriptions available, but no free newspaper subscriptions so far.

 

In Which We Discuss the Kobo Mini

Contents

• The Device
• Price
• Selection   
• Battery Life 
• Wi-fi 
• Apps 
• Page Count
• Text
• Menu
• Archiving/Downloading
• Interactivity
• Subscriptions

The Device

The Kobo Mini is a very small eReader made by Canadian company Rakuten.  It has a 5" glare-free touch screen, and comes in white or black, with coloured snap-covers for the back in a variety of shades.  Plus, you can also get decals from Decal Girl, if you like.  It weighs 134g, and is 0.4 inches thick - about the same as a pen.  It is monochrome, and does not light up.

From personal experience, I can tell you that it easily fits into a coat pocket, and, a little more snugly, into a jeans pocket.  The screen is perfectly visible in bright light.  On the downside, I have found the touch screen to be a little unresponsive sometimes so I've had to tap twice or tap with a nail rather than a fingertip. 

Price

I got my Kobo Mini for £49.99 with a free snapback case (pink).  They generally retail for £59.99.



Selection

Kobo's website has a huge amount of books available.  However, many are also available in the Kindle store for the same price or cheaper.


Rakuten is very much of the opinion that "your ebooks are YOUR ebooks", and it's very easy to put non-Kobo files onto your eReader.  I generally use Calibre to convert them and/or strip the DRM and upload them, but you can also just drag and drop the files onto your device when you've plugged it in.  This means that you can download free books from Obooko.com and all sorts of other places - including the Kindle Store.

Battery Life

I read for 2-3 hours or more a day, and I doubt that the Kobo Mini would last a week on a full charge at this rate.  However, it recharges quickly.  It uses a USB charger which plugs right into the wall plugs I got for my iPhone.

Wi-Fi

You can sign into wi-fi hotspots, or edit your library using the desktop application.  If you don't have wi-fi at home, I fear that this could be a problem due to the buggy nature of the desktop app.

Apps

The Kobo desktop app is disappointing.  It's extremely slow and prone to freezing

It does make it easy to specify which books you want downloaded to your device, and which you wish to keep archived.  You can read books on it too, and, theoretically, get your recommendations or search for other books and buy them.  However, it's so prone to freezing that I don't actually do any of that.

The iOS app works a lot better.  You can choose which books you want downloaded and which you want archived, separately to what you keep on your device or PC.


Page Count

The Kobo Mini (and, presumably, other Kobo devices) will tell you how many pages there are in the current chapter, and what percentage of the way through the book you are.  You can't tell how many pages are left in the entire book.

By 'pages' I mean screens in your current font and size, rather than the real page count you may be used to with Kindle devices.

Text

You can choose to display text in a variety of fonts, and resize the text, margins, and line spacing.  You can also change the justification.

The variations in size, margins and line-spacing are all done on a sliding scale, so you won't see the results until after you've changed it.  This is in comparison to Kindle devices, in which you choose from a variety of sizes/spacing/margins which are shown clearly before you click on them.

Menu

I love the Kobo's menu screen, ie, how it displays your library.  At first it will show you four book covers, in order of most recently opened.   When you click on 'library' it will show you either your entire library, or only items currently downloaded to your device, in either list format or tiled covers.  The list format also shows you how big the file is, how much of it you've read, what kind of file it is, and a small image of the cover.  You can only see five items per screen in list format, or six per screen in tile format.  You can organise items by title, author, or recently read.


Archiving/Downloading

You have the choice of either archiving books or keeping them on your device.  On your menu screen, you can choose to view all the books that you own or only those currently on your device.  I generally split this into books I've read and books I haven't, so it's handy for me.  It takes a minute or two for a book to download.


Interactivity

The Kobo has numerous awards you can earn for various things, which are very sweet.  They're like the X-Box achievements, and you can see the list of the ones that I know about here. Unfortunately, Rakuten appear to have lost interest in updating and supporting them.

Rakuten frequently run competitions on KoboBooks.com, offering money and Kobo Glos as prizes.  These have typically taken the form of ten questions, with a new one released per day.  Answering correctly nets you a money-off code for between 10-75%, and answering all ten correctly enters you into the prize draw.  You can answer all questions on the final day, rather than checking back every day if you prefer.  So far, Kobo have been running competitions like that every six weeks or so.  You can't use these codes on every book - typically, they're used to push the slightly less best-selling ones, which are often very good.

They also ran a rather fun competition recently where they released three free short stories a week or so apart.  The idea was to use clues in the text and illustrations to locate a website, and finding all three would get you the information you needed to find the entry form.  I did try to take part in that, but it was too hard for me.  Stories were good though.


Subscriptions

The Kobo subscription service does not currently work in the UK.

In Which We Discuss Opal Kobo and Melinda Kindle

...yes, of course I name my electronics, don't you?

I bought my Kobo Mini back in December, just before going away for Christmas.  Before buying an eReader, I'd take piles of books away with me, which left barely any room for clothes.  Also, they were heavy and hard to carry around.  When I saw that Kobo Mini's were reduced to £49.99 I made a split-second decision that I'd rather pay £50 than cart books around with me for a week like I did in 2011.  If you were wondering, Opal Kobo is a reference to Opal Koboi, a character in Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl books.  I reread them just before Christmas, so they were on my mind.

Melinda Kindle (a Paperwhite) I bought just yesterday.  I start work on the 29th (!), and a bit of calculation showed that if I am very careful not to eat too much I can afford to buy her now without being unable to pay my bills.  I was going to wait until my birthday, on the 12th of August, but then I remembered that I am a grown up and can give myself presents whenever I like, bank account willing.  I wasn't too ingenious with her name, I've just been watching a lot of Charmed lately.

I love my Kobo Mini.  It fits right into my pocket, has a touchscreen, and is so much lighter than physical books.  It's really convenient for reading on packed buses, and for general carrying about purposes.  It was also super cheap, and does this cool thing where it tells me how many pages are left in a chapter.

I wanted a Paperwhite to fill in a few gaps.  Although it is often convenient to have an eReader in my pocket, I wanted to have a bigger screen to look at sometimes.  I also wanted something that lit up - over Christmas, I stayed in a youth hostel, and it would have been nice to be able to read without a light on.  I've felt that urge at night, too.  I wanted a Kindle specifically because the chapter page count thing goes weird if you read a Kindle book on the Kobo, and I really liked the idea of the timing thing that it does - it tells you how long it'll take you to finish the current chapter and the entire book, based on your previous reading speed.  It needed to be touch screen, which ruled the original Kindle out.  That thing doesn't light up anyway.  I didn't feel the urge to go up to a Kindle Fire simply because I want just an eReader, not a tablet.

Of course, both Kobo and Kindle have iOS apps, and I have both of them on my phone.  I just rarely look at them.  I really don't like reading books on my phone.  I think it has to do with the size of the screen.

Anyway, my next two posts will describe both devices.  I don't want to put them into one post, because then it looks like a comparison, which it isn't.  If I thought one device was better than the other, I'd have sold one by now.

In Which We Discuss K. J. Rabane and Sarah Lawson

Gosh, it's been ages since I've written an actual review rather than a discussion piece.  Let's see how I do.

As you'll know if you've read the spoiler-free part of my previous post, I picked up K. J. Rabane's Who is Sarah Lawson for 62p  from the Kindle store.  I found out that it was heavily reduced through Kind of Book, and, seriously, go check them out.

It was the basic premise that drew me in initially.  A woman goes home to find a family of complete strangers living in her house, insisting that she has amnesia and that she's a completely different person to who she thinks she is.  That's an interesting start, and, as I said in my last post, I'd love to see what someone like Sophie Hannah would do with it.

The book itself is split into three sections, focusing on different times and characters.  This means that the readers were made aware of a lot of information that the characters either didn't know or didn't have a particular reason to recall in the 'present' of the story, and a major problem I had with Who is Sarah Lawson was the way in which Rabane completely ignored this.  Characters suddenly come to realisations after the audience has read the relevant section, rather than because they've seen or heard something to bring an idea to mind.  It's not a bad story, but it's badly told.  Things happen because the plot demands them, and, likewise, characters realise or know things because the plot demands them.  The plot is the overarching puppet-master, rather than the story or the characters developing naturally and realistically.  It simply doesn't hang together.

The timing is also off.  For the first third, the plot seemed simple.  Then it began to seem equally simple in another direction.  The audience weren't held in suspense for more than a few pages at a time, and that's a problem in getting people to carry on reading a psychological thriller.  Characters also seemed to ignore obvious ways to destroy the masque for the sake of the plot.

In short, my conclusion is that K. J. Rabane is not a skilled writer.  That isn't to say that she isn't talented or promising - just that she was not able to make Who is Sarah Lawson hang together and flow properly, and it reads like the work of a talented amateur.  It was worth 62p and the 2-3 hours I spent reading it, but probably not much more than that.  That said, I do quite want to read some of her other work, but only if it's cheap.  Maybe her short stories.

If you want to read something similar but better try Sophie Hannah, who writes similar impossible-beginnings thrillers, or Sebastien Japrisot's Trap for Cinderella.

In Which We Discuss Kind of Book and Sarah Lawson's Identity

I recently found Kind of Book via facebook. They're a site which gathers together ten Kindle books which are heavily discounted below their normal price; most are under a £1, and generally 2-3 will be free.

They are the devil.

Over the past few days I've been downloading most of the free ones and a few others that looked interesting.    Yesterday, that included Play or Die (which I mentioned on Twitter, and which is still free at the time of writing) and Who is Sarah Lawson, which was discounted to 62p.  Both sounded fascinating.

So far, I'm two thirds of the way through Who is Sarah Lawson.  It's about a woman who returns home from work to find her house occupied by total strangers who insist that she doesn't live there, and that she is the husband's sister who suffers from memory loss ever since 'the accident'.  I love the premise, and I'd love to see what Sophie Hannah would do with it.

There may be spoilers for the first two thirds of Who is Sarah Lawson below.

The first third focuses on Rowena Shaw, the aforementioned woman.  Her actions sometimes seem illogical to me, and she seems to miss several obvious things.  Although she hires a private detective, and takes steps to  prove her identity, she doesn't once consider having a DNA test done to discover whether or not Andy actually is her brother or not, which seems like a really obvious way to poke a hole in his story.  At one point, she finds a bottle of Rowena Shaw's pills in her brother's bathroom.  She calls her doctor, and though he is out of town, the receptionist comments on her changing her name from Rowena Shaw to Sarah Lawson.  Instead of paying attention to the fact that here is somebody who acknowledges a suspicious connection between Rowena and Sarah, and who has records to prove it, Rowena simply hangs up and throws the bottle of pills away in disgust because the receptionist calls her Sarah, and she can't bring herself to use that name.

The second third focuses on Owen, Rowena's ex-fiance, focusing on a point before the books starts when he and Rowena were still together.  His actions make no sense either.  When the real Sarah Lawson begins stalking him and imagining that they're together, he doesn't tell Rowena about it.  Even when he does, he doesn't tell her everything.  He never goes to the police, either.  Sure, at first, it's the kind of thing where you aren't quite sure.  Like when you get an odd vibe about someone, but everything they do has a plausible explanation, and you sound really vain and paranoid when you try to explain it.  But, it very quickly goes beyond that point, and still Owen doesn't do or say anything.  I guess it's possible that someone would act that way in real life, but it still seems pretty implausible, and at this point the story doesn't seem to hang together.  There also seem to be some strange discrepancies between Rowena and Owen's accounts, and that bugged me until it occured to me that maybe the 'Rowena' we've been hearing from actually is Sarah.  If that does turn out to be the case, the book will make a whole lot more sense.  K. J. Rabane won't have shot her story-telling load way too soon, the inaccuracies make sense, and even  Rowena's thing with the receptionist will hang together.  The detective not suggesting a DNA test will still seem a little off though.  But we'll see.

In Which We Discuss Bookmarks

Up until the age of 19 or so, I just used to fold the corners of books down.  People would criticise me for it, but it's my book, and I like when they look loved.  Then I started going to the library regular, and started using bookmarks.  I have a couple before then, but it was around this time that I realised I could cross stitch bookmarks, and my collection started to take off.

Unfortunately, I suck at picture taking, but this is one of the first bookmarks I cross stitched.  Plus a dollar bill.  It cost 66p, which is a fair price for a bookmark, and those things are pretty interesting when you're used to pounds.

Anyway, the cross-stitched bookmark.  The figures are from the first Final Fantasy game, as filtered through 8 Bit Theater (which I hadn't read at the time).  Pixelated images are incredibly easy to cross stitch, since they're basically exactly the same thing - images made up of small squares.  Anything 8-bit can basically be cross-stitched as is.

I went with the 8-Bit Theatre images purely because I prefered that version of the White Mage.  I later read it, and it was pretty good.

More cross-stitch.  My beloved Deis, again, copied directly from her 8-bit existence, with lettering from a cross-stitch book I have around here somewhere.  The other one, the 'K' was a gift from a friend's mother.  She has since succumbed to bowel cancer, so it's a little special.

I did use the Deis sprite to make Cloud, Tifa, and Aeris sprites, but I've since switched computers and lost the file.  It's a shame, because they came out really well.  Speaking of Final Fantasy, I also had a bookmark in blue-green mako colours which had Aeris in a large font, and, underneath, "You're the slum drunk!", but I managed to drop it outside one day and I never found it again.  I might make another version some day.  I've also made a konami code bookmark for a friend's birthday, and I'm tempted to make myself one of those again.  I love Kirby Krackle's song about it.

Here's the last of my cross-stitched bookmarks.

Not very fancy, and not my favourite.  While I can't imagine Squall or Rinoa with anyone else, I find Selphie and Irvine's relationship more interesting, and, if we swap games, Alice and Yuri more so than that.  It was fun to experiment with the final fantasy font, though.  I'd change the 'Q' to make it one row wider than it is, but other than that, I'm very happy with how the letters came out.

When I design my own bookmarks or other cross-stitch patterns, I generally just draw them onto squared paper.  I've been working on a Sookie Stackhouse bookmark, but it's hard to get the fanged smirk looking the way I want.  I'm tempted to make a 'Griever' bookmark, copying the griever symbol in freehand embroidery, and then writing the name vertically, rather like my Deis bookmark.  I'll keep that in mind next time I feel like sewing something.

Finally, my non-homemade bookmarks.  These are mostly magnetic mini-bookmarks, which I find rather lovely.  I have crime and horror.  Also a few metal petals, but I don't use them often because I find that they tend to mangle the pages a bit.

In Which We Discuss Richard Matheson

Richard Matheson, the author of I Am Legend died just over a week ago, on June 23rd.  He wrote a lot of other things, including several Twilight Zone episodes, but that's the only book of his that I've read, and that was after seeing the 2007 movie adaptation.  That adaptation went in quite a different direction from the book.  I like both stories, and I highly recommend reading the book.

I read I Am Legend back in 2007, and hadn't thought of Matheson much until recently, when I was idly browsing the graphic novels section of my local library and spotted a comic book adaptation of the novel.  That was about a month ago, and I've yet to read it, though I intend to start it at some point today.  I'd been toying with the idea of rereading the novel, and the comic seemed like an interesting compromise.

Note here; I like the word comic.  I don't want to call them 'graphic novels' simply because that phrase seems like it was coined in order to give comics a bit of legitimacy as a literary art form, and I think they have that as comics.  It's like sticking 'adult' covers on the Discworld and Harry Potter books - it's still the same story underneath.  That said, I absolutely do believe in judging books by their covers.  Short version; publishers want you to find books that you like.  They don't want to trick you, or at least, not too much.  Thus, you can usually, at the very least, tell what a publisher thinks of a book from it's cover, what category they would put it in, what books they think it resembles, if nothing else.  That doesn't mean there are no surprises; just that the cover is a rather better indicator than that phrase would suggest, and yes, this absolutely does apply to the metaphor as interpreted as applying to other objects.  Anyway, yes, I take a childish joy from using the word 'comic'.

I guess what I wanted to say here is, what a shame.  He was 87, which is better innings than most people get, but it's always a shame when people die.  He influenced a number of other creators, including Stephen King who dedicated the novel Cell  to him.  He was due to receive the Visionary Award at the 39th Saturn Awards ceremony, which was held on June 26th.  The award was given posthumously, with the ceremony dedicated to him.

In Which We Discuss 'Salem's Lot

So, I finished 'salem's Lot last night/early this morning.  It took me a while, and not just because the book is so long.  Honestly, I just wasn't feeling it.

I've read 'salem's Lot before, but only once, and I didn't remember much about it at all.  This must have been pre-2011, because there was no record of it on my goodread's account, so it's no wonder I didn't remember much.  The fact that I've not re-read it since then is also telling.

I'm finding it really hard to get excited about 'salem's Lot.  Lots of people do really like it, and I'm sure that the fact that I wasn't feeling it right now affected my enjoyment.  Along with other things like, the illustrated edition is really hard to hold up, and it made my wrists hurt.  But, yeah.  The Shining next, which I've owned for years but never read.  Never seen the film either.

There're two short stories, Jerusalem's Lot and One for the Road, prequel and sequel respectively.  Both are included in the illustrated edition.  Apparently, they also show up in Night Shift (which I have read before, though I don't recall every story in it).  Father Callahan later shows up in the Dark Tower series, too.  'salem's Lot was adapted into two mini-series' - one in 1979 and one in 2004 - a movie, Return to 'Salem's Lot which served as a sequel to the '79 series, and a radio drama in 1995.  I don't intend to watch any of these.  However, I did watch the '76 movie of Carrie, and the sequel, The Rage.  The Rage was originally intended to be an original work, but they turned it into a sequel both to cash in on the success of Carrie and to avoid accusations of plagiarism.  I remember both gave me nightmares as a teenager, but I didn't find them overly terrifying now (this may have something to do with playing dot hack at the same time).  I couldn't get ahold of the 2002 movie, which I did quite want to see.  Apparently, they changed the ending a little, with the idea of spinning off into a TV series, but, unfortunately, that was not to be.

Another remake was due to be released a few months ago, but was pushed back to October.  I'm quite excited to see it, based purely on the fact that, from the trailer, the town looks exactly like how I picture it when I read the book.

To finish; an anecdote.  I can't quite recall where I've read it, but, essentially, after Carrie, Stephen King had written two novels, Roadwork and 'salem's Lot, either of which could be published.  His agent told him that 'salem's Lot was the better choice, but....but what?  Well, if we publish 'salem's lot, you'll be stereotyped as a horror writer.

King's reply?  "I don't care what they call me as long as the cheques don't bounce."

In Which We Discuss Lolita, Catch-22, Stephen King, and Lionel Shriver

The funny thing about reading classics is it's all been done before.  I finished Lolita a few days ago, and I was quite pleased to find out that Humbert Humbert was supposed to be creepy.  I was a bit worried that the whole thing was a defence of paedophilia, and it would turn out that the author thought H.H was totally normal.  Luckily, no.  Though I do wish they'd stop putting young girls in provocative poses on the covers, it's a total misrepresentation.  And creepy.  HH style creepy.  Like, "reader, she came on to me, look at how she's posing!".  To which I will recite Ellen Page's speeches from Hard Candy, you creep.

Ahem.

I started Catch-22 yesterday.  That book has been in my unread pile for almost a decade.  I was surprised to find that it's funny, really laugh-out-loud funny.  I knew I planned to read it someday (eventually), so I tried to avoid spoiling it for myself.  It's dark humour, but that's what my family goes in for.  My aunt had her leg amputated a few weeks ago, and we've already discussed getting her a parrot and an eyepatch for Christmas.  It's how we cope.

In other news, Stephen King did a recent ask-the-author session on Reddit.  There's a summary of the questions and answers here, and the entire thread is here.  It's finished now, but it's still an interesting read.  I'm very gratified to see how many other people loved Rose Madder.

Lionel Shriver did a similar session yesterday, on Goodreads.  She seemed to get bored halfway through, though.

In Which We Discuss Another Kobo Competition

Go here to play.  Each day until the 26th of June, Kobo will be releasing one new trivia question based around film adaptations of books.  Each correct answer will get you a discount code for 10%-75% off certain books and answering all ten correctly puts you in a draw to win either the top prize of two Kobo Aura HD eReaders + $1000CA (approximately £640), or one of the second prizes of a Kobo Mini.  I have one; they're adorable.  Mine is called Opal.  Terms and conditions here.

No, I'm not going to tell you the answers.

In Which We Discuss Carrie

Carrie was Stephen King's first published novel, written while he was at university.  It's not his first published work; to my knowledge, that would be Graveyard Shift, a short story which appears in Night Shift, if I recall correctly.

The story (as relayed in the introduction) goes that Stephen King, newly married to Tabitha, was writing short stories to sell to magazines for extra money.  He started Carrie, wrote the shower scene, and decided his time would be better spent writing short stories to sell than a novel which nobody might want.  Tabitha fished the pages out of the bin, read them, and suggested that he finish them.

Incidentally, Tabitha King is a writer too.  In one of the most romantic things I've heard, Stephen King has said that Tabitha is one of his favourite writers.  I have her first novel, Small World, which was published in 1981.  I might slip that into my experiment, between Roadwork and Danse Macabre.  It would actually be pretty interesting to read both Stephen and Tabitha King's work in published order together, to see if they were thinking on similar themes, if they inspired each other, if they both worked out the same issue through writing, etc.

Carrie was published in 1974, at which point Stephen and Tabitha had been married for three years and had two children, Naomi and Joe.  Joe is also a writer, under the monicker of Joe Hill.  He and his father have collaborated on a few recent short stories.  One is available on the Kindle store, and I gather that the others are available as eBooks, but haven't researched where yet.  Joe Hill has published three novels and a collection of short stories; I've read Heart-Shaped Box and intend to read NOS4A2.  So including him is also a possibility.  I don't need to commit to that right now, since his collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, wasn't published till 2005.

Owen Phillips King, who was born quite a bit after Carrie, in 1977, is also a writer.  He's published a collection of three short stories and a novella and one novel, starting in 2005.   He's also married to a writer, Kelly Braffet, and they are cute together, but, honestly, this is getting absurd.  According to Goodreads, Kelly Braffet has published four novels, starting in 2005.  I wonder what happened in 2005; did the King family propose a writing competition in 2004 or something?

I'm kidding, I'm sure that year is a coincidence.

Naomi King is not a writer, doesn't even have her own wikipedia page, and probably enjoys her privacy.  And if she or Joe turns out to be married to a writer, I am throwing in the towel right now.

Anyway, Carrie.  In short, it's about a telekinetic teenage girl, who has horrible things done to her, and makes things explode in return.  Apparently, King was inspired to start writing it because someone had told him he couldn't write women, and he wanted to prove them wrong.  So, he began with menarche, and the theme of menstruation and blood continues throughout the novel.  It's a lot more apparent in the book than the film (I saw the film at thirteen, and it scared the bejeesus out of me).

I first read Carrie at fifteen, possibly sixteen, and since I experienced menarche at the age of eleven, it was old news to me by that point.  My grandmother experienced it at eight.  That was a terrifying experience for her.  Her 1950s father conducted himself well; he was the only one in the house, so he tootled off down to the shops to buy her some towels.

The book is semi-epistolary, with newspaper clippings and excerpts from books within the fictional universe discussing the event.  There are also third person segments which offer a more unbiased viewpoint.  It's pretty short, especially for Stephen King.   In my paperback edition, only 242 pages in total.  Purely based on wrist strength, it's a lot easier to read than the brick that is the illustrated edition of 'Salem's Lot, which I'm working through now.

I like Carrie, and I think that Stephen King does write quite good women.  I don't like Carrie as much as Rose Madder or Dolores Claibourne, but it's pretty good.  The film is a pretty faithful adaptation, too.

Part of what inspired me to do this in the first place was this flow chart, which lists the links each of Stephen King's books has with the others.  In Carrie's case, it references Castle Rock.  Later, Johnny Smith in The Dead Zone mentions the prom night fire, and Ray Bower, the infamous body of The Body (filmed as Stand By Me) was from Chamberlain, where Carrie is set.  Finally, Dinky Earnshaw of the Dark Tower #7 says he doesn't want to be like Carrie.