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.