In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 24/52

Six books this week!  Two rereads, four new.  Four library, one kindle, one audible.

Sisterland was new to me.  I borrowed it from the library a while ago.  Saw it there on my lunch break, realised I'd left my purse at the office.  I asked the librarian if there was anyway she could help me; she offered to sell me a new library card, the cheeky cow.  I realised, as I was on my way back to work, that had she bothered to look up from her book for more than a minute, she could simply have looked up my library card number.  I could have typed that manually in to the self-service machines; since I know my pin, all I needed was that number.

Anyway, I went back after work and got it then.  No lazy librarian is keeping me from my books.

I quite liked it.  It's about twin sisters, both of whom had a vague psychic gift.  One has suppressed it and become a suburban mom, the other has embraced it and become a complete hippy.  The latter makes a public prediction of an earthquake to hit St Louis, triggering various plot shenanigans.  I didn't like it as much as Prep, which I read in late 2006/early 2007.

Couch Fiction was another library book, one I picked up along with How to be a Heroine, The Rosie Project and some sheet music when I returned Sisterland.  It's a graphic novel showing a therapy session, with little footnotes and thoughts on what both therapist and client are thinking, and possible issues which are raised.  Incredibly interesting.  I realised I do the opposite of what the client does; instead of suppressing emotions and ignoring any hint my childhood wasn't idyllic, I suppress emotions and ignore any memories of my childhood that weren't relentless abuse or misery.  I find it hard to feel like the good bits count, in light of the rest.  And I guess if I acknowledge that there are good bits, that means something must have changed, which my mother says is my fault.

The Secret of Platform 13 is an old favourite, which predates Harry Potter by three years.  I mention that because it involves a secret door opening in King's Cross station.  The author has said she is not going to sue Rowling.  Behind the door is an idyllic island kingdom.  They lose their prince on the surface, wait nine years for the gump (the secret opening) to reopen, and then mount a rescue mission.  It's lovely.

How to be a Heroine is a book about reading.  It's written by a woman who loved various literary heroines in her adolescence and went back and re-examined them as an adult with a feminist consciousness.  Very interesting.  I'd read about half of the books she mentions, and I'm enthusiastic to read the rest now!

The Rosie Project is about a Sheldon Cooper style character meeting a manic-pixie dream girl.  I am in admiration of Don (Sheldon Cooper)'s organisation skills.  I make a fortnightly meal plan with shopping delivered every fortnight, and lots of meals made in advance and frozen.  He made a weekly meal plan long ago and hasn't varied it, allowing him to perfect his weekly shop and the time it takes to prepare food.  I tempted to try this.  I am aware that I am missing the point of the novel.

Finally, Jingo.  Jingo was the second Discworld book I ever read, after Colour of Magic.  I have a bit of a soft spot for it, and for Vimes specifically.  I listened to it as an audio book this time.  Not sure I quite see a Scottish Detritus and an Irish Sergeant Colon, but it works okay.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 23/52

Only four books this week; two that have been clogging up my unread pile for years, an old favourite and the last Horror High.

Deadly Rumours was originally published as The Dead Girlfriend, which I've not actually read before.  It's eighties teen horror and I love that.

Geisha, a Life is the autobiography of Mineko Iwasaki, who provided some of the information behind Memoirs of a Geisha.  I liked Memoirs, so when I saw it in a charity shop, I bought it.  That was several years, perhaps a decade, ago.  I finally read it, and I really liked it.  Mineko Iwasaki was the most successful geisha in Japan, and she goes into a lot of detail here. 

Nation is a Pratchett novel I've loved since it was released.  It was the audiobook I listened to, which is a fairly recent purchase.  The performance doesn't distract from the story, though it doesn't enhance it as much as Blair Brown's performance as Rose Madder does.

Finally, The Little Friend.  I finally finished the fucking thing, after making myself read twenty-five pages a day.  The main character is a bratty pain-in-the-arse who decides to go about causing trouble because she thinks she's in Harriet the Spy.  I very sincerely wanted her to go away and stop making poor Danny's life worse.  What an unpleasant child.  The novel also lacks catharsis, which I consider to be a major crime.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 22/52

I read eleven books this week, which is probably a record for this year (not for all time; a while back, I read thirty books in one week, just because I was bored).

A lot of the books I read were part of the Horror High series. It turns out that I had already read all but one of these. This wasn’t apparent right away, because they’d changed all the names.

Bizarrely, the horror high series is a reprint of several point horror books. The only change is a simple find and replace on the names. So, Althea becomes Alexandra. Devnee becomes Bethany. Lacey becomes Holly (a change I did not approve of), Roxanne is Laura, Randy becomes Ben, and Shannon is still Shannon, for some odd reason.

My mother collected point horror and similar books, and I read a lot of them as a teenager and pre-adolescent. They are oddly comforting to me. My mother has begun clearing out her clutter by giving the books to her mother, which is where I found them and claimed them. I remember seeing these as a teenager – I think – but I don’t recall actually reading them then.

The first two Horror High books – Toxic Beauty and Killer Instinct – are the second and third books in Caroline B Cooney’s Vampire trilogy. I love this trilogy. The vampire is a dark, rotting mass of shadows who tempts people to wish for things and then pay him back with other people’s lives. In the final book, Lacey and five other teenagers decide to party in the now abandoned mansion, and the vampire decides to make them choose which five will leave and which one will stay. I first read this when I was about fifteen and I loved it. I loved Lacey. I loved that she was strong-minded and quick-thinking, even though all her “friends” and her younger brother thought of her as an unexciting airhead. I also quite liked the name ‘Lacey’ which is a bit more unusual than ‘Holly’.

Date with Death, or Diane Hoh’s Prom Date was the only Horror High I hadn’t read before. I quite liked it. 230 pages of teen horror fiction.  Very comforting.

The Starlight Crystal isn't really aimed at teenagers, but it is by Christopher Pike who wrote quite a few point horror books and other books I loved.  I liked this one.  It's like a cross between The Forever Wars and Downtiming the Nightside or "- All You Zombies -".  It has romance and time stuff and some spirituality.  I liked it.

I listened to Season 4 and Season 5 of Clare in the Community too.  Not much more to say there; there are seven or eight seasons in all.

I read Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness for a bookgroup.  I think I might have read it before, but I can't recall whether I actually have or not, so that should tell you how interesting I found the plot.  The world building was really interesting, but the actual book was a bit meh.

The Water's Rising is by Sheri Tepper, my favourite author.  It's the sequel to Plague of Angels, and the prequel to Fish Tails which was released on Boxing Day and which ties together the series which contains my favourite novel of all time, Jinian Footseer.  I pre-ordered it, and it was delivered to my Kindle but I've been nervous of starting it, in case it disappoints me.

Finally, The Golden Slipper is a nice little book of detective stories by Anna Katherine Green.  It was published over a hundred years ago, and so is out of copyright.  The detective is Violet Strange, a Victorian society lady.  It's like Sherlock Holmes meets Totally Spies.

I need to apologise for the late post.  I sent the image to myself at work, so I could work on it in quiet moments, but those turned out to be totally non-existent.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 21/52

Only four books this week!

Clare in the Community is a radio series based on a comic strip.  It's about a social worker, and parodies the middle class and political correctness, with some excellent voice acting from, among others, Sally Phillips and Nina Conti.  Each series is made up of six 28 minute episodes, and I listened to the first two last week.  They've very enjoyable.  They count as a book because I got them off audible.

Melissa Explains It All is Melissa Joan Hart's autobiography.  I love Melissa Joan Hart.  I never got into Clarissa Explains It All, but I loved Sabrina and Melissa & Joey.  Happily, so did she, which means she talks about them a lot.  Sabrina more so, because at the time it was written, Melissa & Joey was pretty new.  You can sort of see how her character in Melissa & Joey is a slightly twisted version of her real self, and I like that.  I had fun with it.

Spooky Stories 2 is a collection I've owned for about fifteen years now.  I may have read it before, I honestly can't recall.  It's pretty short; nine stories from various authors and around 120 pages.  One of the stories is Gabriel-Ernest which I definitely have read in another collection.  I didn't enjoy it that much, but I kept reading it because I was at work and couldn't really get my hands on another book at the time.

Finally, How I Changed My Life is another non-fiction volume.  Shelley Wilson decided to split a year into twelve projects, including losing weight, completing NaNoWriMo, and being more crafty.  It's cute and short and there are lots of links in it.  I probably won't reread it.

In Which We Discuss my Unread Pile and 2015

I have succeeded in my stated goal of getting my unread pile down to 100 in 2014!

....I celebrated by buying three new books in January's Audible sale.  And got a freebie from amazon because I bought a kindle book in January.  So my unread pile currently stands as follows, with these 104 books;

My goal for 2015 is to get this pile down from 104 to below 15.  I think 5-15 books is a reasonable amount to have hanging around unread at any one time.

It's a bit early to plan this, but what I'd like to do in future years is take a snapshot of my 5-15 unread books, and then if I spot the same ones hanging about on the list a year later, assume I have no interest in them and ditch them.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 20/52

I finished three audiobooks this week - the first and second season of Clare in the Community and Daughter, by Jane Shemilt.  All three were new to me, which is unusual because I normally find it hard to concentrate on new books and prefer to get audio versions of stories I am already familiar with.  I did have this problem with Daughter; it started to drag, so I put it on 3x speed and made a rule to listen to a chapter a day.  This kept it ticking along nicely and I finished the last three hours in one day (it's a nine hour book).

Clare in the Community is a radio drama based on a comic strip, starring lots and lots of fabulous voice acting from people like Sally Philips and Nina Conti.  Each season is made up of six 28 minute episodes, making them about two and a half hours long.  They're pretty fun, and they're about £6 per season on Audible.

Shopaholic on Honeymoon is a short story and part of Sophie Kinsella's Shopaholic series.  I used to love these, but the reviews on the latest one really put me off.  This one is set inbetween the third and fourth books, and I didn't particularly enjoy it, so unless it pops up for 50p on KindofBook I probably won't be reading it.

Last Act was one of Christopher Pike's adult novels, as opposed to the teen fiction he's more known for.  So is Sati.  I've wanted to read Sati for years.  The first chapter of it was at the end of one of Christopher Pike's other books and I always wondered what happened next.  I'm glad I know.


Sati is about a god incarnating in the body of a young girl.   Or possibly about a girl who thinks she's god.  The author indicates that the former interpretation is the more accurate one.

Call Waiting is one of RL Stein's books for teenagers rather than children, like the Goosebumps series.  I found it short and predictable.  I'd forgotten that I'd actually read it before, back in 2012, though it did start to seem familiar halfway through. 

Jaded, I forget why I bought.  It's badly written.  The author spells the word 'ew' as 'ewe'.  It's about a rock star (actually, more like pop star) who decides to finish out her last year in high school.  Lots of missing and found siblings, handsome guys, etc.  It's part of a trilogy which I don't plan to finish.  It was very cheap.

Anne of Green Gables.  I've been reading it at work on wikisource for a few weeks. I've read it before; it's a classic, after all. I love Anne, and how proud Matthew and Marilla are of her.  It has a lot in common with Pollyanna, but Anne is much less of a little goodygoody.

Finally, Grave Secret.  It's the fourth and last of the Harper Connelly Series, and I was worried that it would just trail off rather than wrapping up the story properly.  Happily, it does wrap up the mystery that's been in the background for the other three books, though it does seem a little rushed.  I'm glad to have closure, rushed or not.

In Which We Discuss 2014

Here are my stats, according to goodreads.

....and these are the books I read which were new to me.  184.  I read 244 new books in 2013, but then, I spent half of that unemployed.