In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 7/52

Tiger Lily I found because I was looking for a specific Peter Pan quote I've always identified with.

“Tink was not all bad: or, rather, she was all bad just now, but, on the other hand, sometimes she was all good. Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time. They are, however, allowed to change, only it must be a complete change.”

While looking for that, I wound up on this page, which has a number of quotes from Jodi Lynn Anderson's Tiger Lily.  It looked interesting.  One thing that always fascinated me about Peter Pan was the fact that every women in the original book was in love with him, and he had no way of understanding that.  It seemed like Tiger Lily explored that theme.  Plus, it's written from Tink's point of view, and who can not like that?

The book was pretty good.  Peter Pan was aged up to make the relationship a bit more believable, and I did like Tink as the narrator, and seeing more of Tiger Lily.  I didn't find it as magical as I might have ten years ago, though.

Speaking of ten years ago, Horrorscope is another book I first read as a teenager.  I don't know why I like it so much.  I guess I do like the conceit of someone murdering people in the order of their starsigns, and the amount of research into horoscope theory that's been done (yes, horoscope theory is a real thing).  I like the characters.  It's good comfort reading.

Player of Games I read at the last minute for a bookclub.  I've been meaning to read some Iain M. Banks for quite a while, so it seemed like a good opportunity.  I read it in two days.  It was okay.  A bit farfetched and unlikely. 

Pyramids is another book I first read as a teenager.  I got it as an audio-book.  It has so much in common with Small Gods that it seemed a natural choice, especially since I'm not particularly fussed about reading the Discworld books in order.  I know the series well enough that I can place relevant events in context.

Finally, A Wonderlandiful World is the third part of the Ever After High novels.  I watched the webisodes because they were on Netflix, and then I started reading the books.  They use some very clever language tricks and puns, especially in those novel when the narrator is infected with something from Wonderland and Maddie appeals to the reader themselves (yes you) in a nod to Peter Pan.  This book managed to make me like Lizzie Hearts, who I'd always found slightly irritating before.  It also brought out my soft spot for Duchess.  It's hard not to, considering her story, even if she is a cow.

In Which We Discuss Hundreds of Books

A while ago, the Guardian published Information is Beautiful's David McCandless' infographic which collected together various '100 Book' lists. It includes the 100 most borrowed library books, Pulitzer Prize winners, Oprah's bookclub, and a few others - you can see the full data used here.

The infographic itself looks like this, and you can see it fullsized here.

In Which We Discuss Eating Animals You Can Talk To

There are quite a few stories out there with characters who can speak to animals, but very few then go to deal with the dilemma of eating them.  Off the top of my head, I can think of three.

Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is an excellent, novel-length Harry Potter fanfic which imagines that Lily was kind to Petunia, and as a direct result, Petunia married a scientist and was more loving towards Harry.  Harry Potter-Evans-Verres is a scientifically-minded rationalist who does lots and lots of interesting things at Hogwarts, and I very highly recommend giving it a read.  However, what we are concerned with here is what he does when he finds out about Parselmouth, and hears of other spells that can give animals cognisance.  He diligently researches exactly which foods are likely to have come from sentient creatures and avoids those he isn't sure of.

In Jinian Footseer, Jinian, who can talk to animals, doesn't eat anything explicitly mentioned as not being vegetarian in the first book.  In the second and third, she does explicitly eat meat.

In The Fairy Godmother, part of Mercedes Lackey's 500 Kingdoms series, Elaina drinks dragon blood and begins to understand all animal speech.  After listening to the chickens for five minutes she decides it's okay to eat them because they're stupid.

In Which We Discuss Cujo

Cujo was Stephen King's twelfth novel, published in 1981.  It's the one he doesn't remember writing, due to his alcoholism.  It recalls the events of the Dead Zone, and Sheriff George Bannerman plays a large role in this one.

I read this years ago, when I was nineteen or so, and it's better than I remember it being. It links quite strongly into The Dead Zone which I hadn't read the last time I read Cujo.  Specific characters are mentioned, and it's set in Castle Rock.

James Smythe has a very interesting post on Cujo as a metaphor for addiction.  I'm lazy and have a cold, so I'm not going to write anything that detailed.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 6/52

So, welcome to the end of my 6th week as a 26-year-old.

Walk Two Moons is something of a sequel to Absolutely Normal Chaos.  It follows Salamanca Hiddle as she traces her mother footsteps - "walk[s] two moons in [her] moccasins" - and tells her grandparents the story of the last few months.  Which she spent in the same town that Absolutely Normal Chaos was set in.

Walk Two Moons is my least favourite of the trilogy, mostly due to one element.  Salamanca Hiddle is part Native American, or Nican Tlaca.  However, her mother referred to herself as 'Indian', and part of Salamanca's character development is to claim that name for herself.  However, fuck off.

I'm Indian.  My father's family came over from Gujerat in the 60s.  I understand that Native American people didn't choose to be called 'Indian' for a time, but there are unfortunate implications all over the place in this scenario.  And I resented it.  Indian is the name for people from India.  Claim your own identity, not mine.

Chasing Redbird on the other hand, is my favourite one of the trilogy, and the first one I read.  I must have been around thirteen.  Zinnia Taylor, in trying to deal with the recent death of her aunt and the more historic death of her cousin, starts trying to uncover a twenty mile trail.  I liked the characters, I liked the plot, I liked how it was played out.  It's loosely connected to the other novels in that Zinnia was once Salamanca's best friend - although Sal doesn't mention Zinny at all - and that Zinny lives in the area Sal remembers with such fondness.

I first read Life and Laughing a couple of years ago.  I like how happy Michael McIntyre is about his life.  Not all the time - he goes through trouble with family, his dad's death, unrequited love, lots of debt, and so on, and then it all works out.  I got it as an audio book because I like his stand-up and thought it would be fun to hear him do all the voices, and to actually hear the joy in his voice.  It was.

I first saw The Illustrated Treasury of Disney Songs at the library.  It has songs from the golden age of Disney, ranging from the early years of Minnie's Yoohoo to the 90s, with vocal lines and the bass and treble lines for piano.  I like it.

Cujo was better than I remembered.  I read it over two or three days, then got through The Running Man in another two.  It was okay.  Short.  I preferred Play or Die.  I'll go into why more in my longer post about that.

I'd heard about If On A Winter's Night, A Traveler a couple of times, and it sounded interesting.  The overarching plot is about you, (yes, you reader) reading Italo Calvino's new novel If On A Winter's Night, A Traveler.  However, various shenanigans mean that, instead, you end up reading the beginning of ten different novels, none of which you are able to finish.  Once you have read these novels, the framing text begins to take on elements of them, ie, after reading a detective story, the narrative takes on elements of that.

Finally, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.  This was the third Sherlock Holmes book published, following A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four which were both novel-length adventures.  Adventures is a collection of short stories originally published in The Strand magazine, and this collection includes The Speckled Band, The Red-Headed League, and the Adventure of the Copper Beaches, among others.  I first read it when I was somewhere between nine and twelve.  I reread it during quiet moments at work this time round - the entire book is on wikisource along with all the other Sherlock Holmes stories and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's other works.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 5/52

A lot of rereading this week.  Class Trip, The Dice Man, Absolutely Normal Chaos, and Small Gods were all books I originally read between the ages of fourteen and seventeen.

The Dice Man is probably the one that had the biggest effect on my psyche.  Although I have no intention of making any or all decisions with dice, I found the idea that you could break character fascinating.  You don't have to be consistent with what you think you are - you can do something different.  This also solidified the idea, for me, that being 'nice' or 'kind' (for example) didn't make sense as describing a person or personality, only in describing an action.  You can be a person who has done kind things in the past and who is likely to do kind things in the future, but only the things, the actions themselves, are kind, not the person.  This also means you can change negative parts of your personality by noting the actions and trying not to do them any more.  You may be a person-who-is-inclined-to-be-impatient-and-snappy, but you can change that to being a person-who-is-inclined-to-be-impatient-and-snappy-but-who-stops-and-thinks-and-doesn't-snap.  This book convinced me that reinvention is easy - a series of small changes.  A case of breaking character.

I disagree that you should break character to the point of no longer having one, which was the basis of Rhinehart's dice life.  Just break out of the one you don't like.

Class Trip was part of a collected edition of three teen horror novels that my mom owned.  My favourite in the volume was actually Horrorscope, but Class Trip was intriguing because of the twist at the end, which I haven't actually seen replicated anywhere.  It was pretty unique.  I liked it.

My mom recently gave a pile of books to my grandmother, including that one.  It's mine now.

I first read Absolutely Normal Chaos because I loved the sequel, Chasing Redbird.  The other two in the series, this and Walk Two Moons aren't nearly as good.    I have a serious problem with Walk Two Moons which I will elaborate on in next week's post, since I'm already halfway through.  I am only reading these two to build up to Chasing Redbird.  

Small Gods is a Discworld book, one that I listened to as an audiobook.  Read by Nigel Planer, who performed it very well.  I love that book.

 Small World is by Tabitha King, Stephen King's wife.  I've owned it for several years now - seven, at a guess - and I read it now as part of my chronological reading project.  It was pretty good.  I felt like Leyna gave up too fast though, and I don't see how she had a reason.  At the time, it seemed like she didn't understand the extent of her situation, and thus didn't know if it was hopeless or not.

Dancing Girls was another one I've owned for a while.  Atwood is okay.  I don't like any of her books as much as I liked The Handmaid's Tale, but I keep hoping.

In Which We Discuss Divergence

I quite liked the Divergent series.  Well, in all candor (which would be my faction) I liked 2/3s of it.  The last third, ie, the final book, was a bit of a let down.

Here Be Spoilers for Allegiant, book 3 of the Divergent Series

Veronica Roth knew exactly how she wanted the series to end and that isn't a bad thing, necessarily.  Rowling did the same thing with great success, and other authors have done something similar.  The mistake Roth made was in railroading her characters to her desired outcome.  She forced people to act in nonsensical ways, and to carry out plans which could have been greatly improved with a moment's thought.  She forced it.

Stories are like clockwork.  You wind them up and let them go.  Roth failed to grasp that, resulting in a failure of a third novel.

I'm currently in the process of watching the first movie of what will undoubtedly be a trilogy.  For once, I hope that the films do not follow the books, that they instead create a much better and more in-character and realistic ending.  I hope they diverge from the source material right at the point where it went wrong.

Here Spoilers for Allegiant, book 3 of the Divergent Series End 
Spoilers for Book 1 & Movie Continue

When I say I'm in the process of watching the movie, I mean I have it paused at 32:11 in another tab.  Blinkbox offered me a free movie because Tesco's TV site or whatever it was is ending, and I'd been meaning to get to it so...

Oh, and I also realised that I still had just over £3 left of a gift voucher someone gave me, so I got Lovelace as well.  Two rented movie for under 50p, bargain.  I am celebrating with popcorn and gummy cherries.

Anyway, back to the movie.  So far, I'm enjoying it.  I like Shailene Woodley and Theo James as Tris and Four, particularly the latter.  He looks exactly as Four is described in the books.  I think we can forgive the fact that Tris is wearing an awful lot of make-up for a Stiff, since that comes under the same law that explains how Emma and Snow White's false eyelashes stayed on while wandering through the enchanted forest of Once Upon a Time.  I'm not so sure I like Caleb, but he won't really come into play until much later.  Very happy to see Ashley Judd as Natalie, since I loved her in Where the Heart Is and Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood (both also adapted from books!).

I quite liked the way the test played out, though I'm sure they skipped some bits and took a bit of visual artistic license with it.  I've also liked seeing the Dauntless so far; all very pulse-raising.  I am genuinely concerned for Tris' well-being despite knowing how this book ends.

Ooh, I like the futuristic tattooing style, though I miss the explanation of why Tris chose it.  I suppose it isn't important, and since the film is over two hours long anyway, it was easy to cut.  But still.

I'm also disappointed that they cut out Four taunting Tris when he threw knives at her, though the capture-the-flag sequence is a lot more dramatic than I remember it being.

I'm not a big fan of Miles Teller as Peter.  He seems impactless, to me.  Doesn't really make any impression.

Oh, here's a key bit of divergence.  Tris and Christina grabbed the flag together, Tris first, rather than Christina taking all of the glory.  I'm pretty sure the bit in the hospital didn't happen that way either.

I should reread the book to verify this stuff.

Oh, the fear landscape is different.  They only did one.  That disappoints me.

We're carrying on with this reflection thing?  Okay, that's interesting. 

A few subtle changes in Four's fear landscape.  Not sure how I feel about those yet.

Ha!  They left the hilarious bit of Tris' landscape the same.  I enjoyed that.

Is it just me or does Shailene Woodley have a voice almost identical to a young Lindsay Lohan?

I'm 90% sure that the dagger through the hand thing is new!


Why on earth would you let go when you knew you needed to grab her again a second later?

The ending seems different.  It doesn't seem to lead into an obvious sequel.  Maybe they weren't sure if they were going to be able to make the next one?

In Which We Discuss Danse Macabre

As part of my quest to read all of Stephen King's novels, I've just finished Danse Macabre and I loved it.  It's a non-fiction account of King's favourite horror movies and novels throughout the fifties to the eighties, and his thoughts on the horror genre as a whole.  There's a long list of recommendations at the back, which I certainly intend to look at.  I'm quite sold on Ira Levin - I've already read Stepford Wives, and King did a great job of pushing Rosemary's Baby.

King also devoted a brief paragraph to his wife's first novel, Small World which was newly released at the time of writing.  He didn't say more, as he felt he would be slightly biased.  However, that did remind me of the idea I had of reading his wife and childrens' novels at the appropriate points in the time line.  So, here is Tabitha King's bibliography;

• (1981) Small World
• (1983) Caretakers 
• (1985) The Trap (also published as Wolves at the Door)
• (1988) Pearl
• (1993) One on One
•  (1994) The Book of Reuben
•  (1997) Survivor
•  (2006) Candles Burning (with Michael McDowell) 

That isn't including short stories, non-fiction or poetry.

Considering what an effort this is turning out to be - I didn't expect it to take a year to get 10% through! - I don't think I will make the effort to seek out all of Tabitha, Joe or Owen King's novels, though I may read the first one of each when they appear. 

I actually am reading Small World at the moment.  It's pretty interesting.  I'll give it its own post when I'm done.  Oh, and I've got Rosemary's Baby and Cujo reserved at the library.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that King frequently mentioned his son Joe Hill in Danse Macabre.  Joe Hill was born in 1972, so he would have been nine-years-old when this was published.  Naomi King and Owen King were born in 1970 and 1977 respectively, so they were eleven and four at the time.  When Carrie was first published in 1973 Naomi would have been three while Joe was a year old.  Owen would have been born a month before The Shining was published, a he would have been a months old when Rage was released.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 4/52

Wow.  I've been twenty-six for a month already.  That's gone quite fast.

Most of these books were new to me, though some had been sitting in my unread pile for quite a while.  Feather Boy has been in there for about a year, and I'm so glad I left it in there.  I considered donating it to a charity shop so many times.  It's aimed at either children or young adults, and I really liked it.

Everyday Bento is a nice beginners guide to creating pretty bentoes for children, although there's no reason not to scale up.  It includes specific directions for making a few designs which is nice, although it doesn't tend to reuse things like picks very often, so if you wanted to make them as specified there'd be quite a huge initial outlay.  Good for ideas though.  It goes more into modern bento designs rather than bento theory.

Bad Science is a book I've read before.  It's basically a long rant by Ben Goldacre over common mistakes in how science is reported in the media, along with calling out specific people who spread inaccurate information along with why exactly it's inaccurate.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is another one that's been on my unread pile for over a year.  I bought it for my kobo ages ago, and I'm quite pleased to have gotten round to reading it now.  It reminded me a lot of Shanghai Girls which was the first book of Lisa See's that I read, and which I really enjoyed.  It continued the theme of two women who are close, and yet who misunderstand each other.  I also liked learning about Nu Shu, which was a secret script used by and known only to women.

Finally, Danse Macabre.  I read it as part of my Chronological Reading Project, and I loved it.  It's non-fiction, and covers horror through the fifties, sixties and seventies.  King discusses his favourite films and novels, and how he felt they contributed to the genre, as well as his thoughts on the genre itself.  It includes recommended reading/watching lists at the end, and I'm pretty sold on them.

This was a good week!

In Which We Discuss Integral Ameretat

There is an art to putting a meal together.  You need a balance of flavour, of lightness and heaviness, of nutrition, of crunchiness and softness, and so on.  You need contrast amongst dishes which should also complement each other - they complete each other.

There isn't a word for this.  At least, not as far as google can tell me.  But when I googled, I found two words I liked.  Integral stands alone, obviously, but I also liked this sentence, from here;

The word integral is used in Spanish to describe wholeness (as in wholemeal bread or whole wheat).

Ameretat I got from here, and this was the quote I liked;

...in the Yasna, the great liturgical text of Zoroastrian ritual, Haurvatat and Ameretat are repeatedly honored: one as the divine guardian of the water and other liquids used in the libations of the ritual, the other as the guardian of the plant materials used in the ritual such as wood for the Fire, and the plants, fruits, and flour that make up the foods consecrated at Zoroastrian ceremonies.

So there we go.  Integral Ameretat refers to the completeness and wholeness of a meal, and how the dishes interact and complement and contrast with one another.  I made it up.  Let's use it!

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 3/52

I didn't think I'd read so much this week.  I thought I'd only finished one or two books!

Fire & Hemlock is one I first read years ago.  It's a little longer than most of Diana Wynne Jones' books, and a little bit harder to follow. In fact, the ending is a lot more satisfying and makes more sense once you have someone else talk you through it.  Or it was for me, anyway.

I've also read The High Lord before.  I do enjoy the series, but this one I listened to as an audiobook.  I started it months ago, then started listening to Firestarter and found it a bit tricky to get back in to.  On the bright side, I found that it only takes about a minute to get used to listening to audiobooks at 3x speed, which got me through it a lot faster!  It's not that I wanted it to be over - it's that I consume books like popcorn.


Songwriting for Dummies was new to me.  I bought myself a keyboard for my birthday, and it's quite fun making up songs.  I found some of the book useful, but, to be honest, I prefer this Songwriting course on coursera.  It's run by Pat Pattison of Berklee, and his lectures are absolutely fascinating.

One thing the book goes into that Pat doesn't is selling your songs, but I mostly skimmed those chapters since it's not the area I'm particularly interested in right now.

Finally, I don't even know why I had a copy of How Not to Be a Perfect Mother.  It's an informal parenting guide covering the ages 0-3.  I have no children.  I have a mirena which is not due to be removed until next March, and which will likely be replaced with another one at that time.  I have no close friends or relatives with small children whom I am expected to know things about.  In short, the subject matter of this book has no relevance to my life.  Especially not because Purves is almost offensively middleclass and was a complete idiot over the MMR issue.  Paraphrased; there is no evidence whatsoever linking MMR to autism.  "Yes, but lots of parents still feel that there is, and feelings are just as important as evidence and truth!".  Sigh.