In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 28/52

Seven books this week!

I finished the original Last Vampire series.  There is a sequel, published in 2010.  The last of these was published in 1997, which gives you an idea of the gap.  I can only assume the vampire zeitgeist was responsible for this, especially since they were all republished in matching binding at the time.  They were pretty good; more actiony, less heart-rending than my favourite Pike novels, Remember Me and The Midnight Club.

Herland I reread for a feminist bookclub recently.  I was hoping to revive the group by choosing a short, sci-fi-ish book.  It's 120 pages, and we had a really good discussion about it.  It lasted two hours, which meant we could all have sat in silence and just reread the entire book, which says a lot about the ideas in it.

Maxiumum Willpower is a book I've been reading at a chapter a week for the past month and a half.  It's about all the things that can test our willpower, and contained some interesting tips for holding out against it.  Definitely worth reading.

Finally, Maskerade.  I've read it before, when I was thirteen or fourteen.  I stole my original copy from my school library.  It was the third or fourth Discworld book I read, depending on whether I got my hands on it before or after Wyrd Sisters.  I enjoyed the audio performance, though I'm a bit baffled as to why the witches all have slightly London accents.  It makes a sort of sense for Vimes, but surely they should be a bit more West Country?

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 27/52

Six books this week!  Four of them I've been working on for a while.  The Calculus, for instance, I started last November, simply because I'd never quite mastered it and it was bugging me.  I feel like I have a much better grasp on it now, though I'd need to look up the specific techniques to actually solve a calculus problem.

The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack is something I bought when I first got my kindle because it was less than £1.  It's a hefty collection of 25 short stories, including Ayn Rand's Anthem.  It's a very nice collection, especially for the price.

Saffy's Angel is an audiobook I listened to with Tom in the car, whenever we had a long trip.  It's short - four hours - but it took a while, because we spend most of the time in the car chatting.  It was nice.  I'll probably look for later books in the series on Kindle.

The Hockey Term at Trebizon is another children's book, or at least, aimed at young adults.  This was the first book in the Trebizon series that I read, when I was eight or nine.  It's a boarding school series about close friends who work hard and play hard, like a slightly more mature The Twins at St Claire's.

Speaking of twins, The Girls is written from the point of view of a set of conjoined twins, Rose and Ruby Darlen.  I first read it in 2007 or 8, and recently bought it as an audiobook.

House of Leaves is a book I'm really glad I read.  It's about a young man, Johnny Truant, who find the masterwork of one of his neighbours, following their death.  The book is about a documentary, which is entirely fictitious.  It includes a number of footnotes and references which are also fictitious both in our world and in Johnny's.  The documentary is about a family, who move in a house which suddenly starts expanding and shrinking alarmingly.  It's very experimental; when the family are in a labyrinth for instance, the words are suddenly laid out like a labyrinth, which links to footnotes which eventually lead to deadends, and cause one to backtrack to the main text.

Finally, The Wonderful and Terrible Reasons Why I Run Long Distances.  It's by The Oatmeal, and includes expanded comics on the blerch and other fitness related issues, several of which appears on his webcomic, but a few which haven't.  It's a quickread; took me an hour last night.  I enjoyed it.

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

Only two books this week; The Man in the Rubber Mask and The Handmaid's Tale.

The Man in the Rubber Mask is the autobiography of Robert Llewellyn, who played Kryten in season 3 and onwards of Red Dwarf.  Some backstage gossip - most of it outdated, from early season of Red Dwarf - and lots of whinging about the rubber mask and middle class guilt.  Interesting read though, especially for a fan.

The Handmaid's Tale was a book I read for my sci-fi book group.  This is the more literary one, which reads Hugo and Nebula award winners, as opposed to the more pulpy one which just reads whatever sounds fun.  Handmaid's Tale is one I read years ago, when I was about fourteen.  I think reading it was a big part of identifying as a feminist, for me.  I also like the language in it; my favourite line is "I describe the rope" after a passage where the narrator - Offred, or June - has spent a while doing just that, while discussing coping methods.  I'm kind of talked out on after the other evening, to be honest.

I've not read anything by Stephen King for ages.  Finally bit the bullet and bought a copy of The Talisman.  I'm not planning to start it right away, since I have six books I'm currently reading, but once I've finished House of Leaves, I'll get into it.  Though I'll also be starting Dan Simmons Hyperion then....

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 25/52

It's my half birthday next week, which means I've been doing this for nearly six months.  Huh.

Snuff is a Discworld novel - number 38, and the 8th Watch story.  The second Discworld book I ever read was Jingo, as I believe I mentioned last month, so Vimes holds a special place in my heart.

I enjoyed Snuff.  I've been putting off reading it because, due to Pratchett's illness, Discworld novels are now finite and I didn't want to use them up too early.  I'm glad I did read it, though.  It's about slavery in the same way that Jingo and Monstrous Regiment is about war and it repeats the Pratchett habit of bringing a formerly mook-enemy into the light as a protagonist.

The Last Vampire is a series by Christopher Pike.  It's not my favourite of his books - that would be Remember Me and The Midnight Club - but they're okay.  About a vampire who believes herself to be the last of her kind, but rapidly finds out that she isn't.  I have all seven of them, all in sets of two apart from the last one, so I just read the whole book through.  My mother gave them to my grandmother along with all the Horror High and a few other Pike novels, so I claimed them.  It has the traditional Pike tropes of blonde and blue-eyed Hindus.

The Lost Mind is another one by Pike.  It's about a girl who wakes up with no memory, lying next to the corpse of her best friend.  It's barely 200 pages long, and has the usual Pike tropes of mysticism and murder.

Daddy Long-Legs is a book I read on wikisource after finding out that it's one of my friend's favourite books.  I quite liked it.  It's about an orphaned girl who is given the funds to attend college by a mysterious benefactor whom she is required to write letters to.  The book is made up of her letters, though he never writes back.  I like the heroine, Judy/Jerusha Abbot.  She's strong and determined and sensible and very much knows her own mind.  I think I'll probably read the sequel, Dear Enemy, which is not on wikisource but which is on Project Gutenberg.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is science-fiction.  Harry August lives his life over and over; every time he dies, he wakes up in his newborn baby body, right back at the start of his life.  At the end of his eleventh life, a young girl shows up at his bedside and tells him that the end of the world is a thousand years away and getting faster.  Interesting start, no?  I felt the ending wrapped up far too quickly; it was justified, but it was a little anti-climactic after all the build-up.  It was a good read though.

Finally, Why Evolution is True.  Non-fiction, and a very good, thorough guide to evolution.  It's written in opposition to creationism and "intelligent design", which I already think is ridiculous and requires a lot of anti-scientific thought and outright burying your head in the sand, so he was very much preaching to the choir there.