In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 40/52

11 books last week; that's from the 12th to the 18th of May.

Only five were audiobooks; Shelter, The Great Unexpected, Girls in Love, Girls Under Pressure, and A Hopscotch Summer.

I'm quite glad I listened to The Great Unexpected again; the first time I was in a hurry to get through it and get it off my unread pile, so I didn't follow the story very well.  This time was much more enjoyable.

Two of these I read for bookclubs; Hot Feminist and A Dreadful Murder.  Hot Feminist was for the Birmingham Fems bookclub, which meets this Saturday.  It was interesting, though I did find it quite annoying the way the author kept repeating that she'd never tell anyone they were doing feminism wrong, but people who cared about certain things were stupid.

A Dreadful Murder was disappointing.  It claims to use modern detective skills to solve a hundred year old murder; instead, it just describes the murder.  At least it was a 'Quick Read'.  This was for a bookclub at my local library.  Each month they choose a theme, this one being 'crime'.  I've got a few others to get through.

The bookclub is held in the Children's Library, and while we were in there I spotted The Glass Bird Girl and Doll Bones.  Doll Bones was creepy, though unnecessarily so.  They were doing exactly what the doll wanted, so there was no need for her to go about being creepy all the time.  The Glass Bird Girl was repeatedly compared to Enid Blyton's boarding school stories, on the cover and in reviews, in a kind of desperate, pathetic way.  I wouldn't compare the series to those books any more than I'd compare Harry Potter to them.  So what if they're all set in a boarding school?  That's really not the important element.

NPCs and Insomnia are both books I've read before.  NPCs is fun, about a group of NPCs who end up taking over from the player characters, when the player characters die horribly.  There's a sequel I'd quite like to look into. 

I read Insomnia as part of my Stephen King project.  I was surprised to learn how much I'd forgotten, although considering the book is over 900 pages it wasn't really that surprising.  I'll write a longer post about it later.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 39/52

Six books last week!  That's the 5th to the 11th of May!

Two of these books were for a bookclub; Tudors for Dummies and the Boleyn Inheritance, the latter of which focuses on Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard, Henry VIII's fourth and fifth wives.  Tudors for Dummies offers a very broad overview; at one point it refers to Katherine of Aragon as both Elizabeth and Mary's mother, which obviously isn't the case.

Heir Apparent is one of my favourite books.  Deadly Pink is the sequel, and I read the prequel, User Unfriendly two weeks ago.  All three take place within virtual reality games.

Finally, listening to Beside Myself was a very unpleasant experience.  It's an interesting book, about a pair of twins who swap places.  One refuses to swap back.  That makes an intriguing point about domestic abuse; once the twin is labelled as "the bad twin" it doesn't matter what she actually does, she's always in the wrong.  I just hate stories in which someone isn't believed; I find them immensely frustrating.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 38/52

Seven books last week!  That's from the 28th April to the 4th of May.

Five audiobooks - those things have really increased the amount I read - one kindle book, and one paperback.

I signed up to attend two bookclubs at my local library; one is reading The Tilted World and the other is reading anything on the theme 'royalty', hence my rereading The Other Boleyn Girl.

The Martian was just so awesome I had to listen to it again. 

The Ocean at the End of the Lane was okay; like Coraline crossed with Fire and Hemlock.

Here's the Story is the first audiobook I ever got, if I recall correctly.  I like Maureen McCormick and the Brady Bunch; I think she's a very brave woman, who's done well to fight her way out of the issues she's dealt with.

Love Lessons is another one I listened to recently but wanted to hear again.  Nation is just a truly wonderful book.

Sorry this one's so short.  I'll try to be a bit more thorough next week!

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 37/52

Eight books last week!  That's 21st April to 27th April.

Five of these were audiobooks, which I do tend to get through quite quickly; mostly because I listen to them on double speed or faster.  Two of the others I've been working on for a while, and just happened to finish them this week.  The last one, User Unfriendly, is pretty short, and part of a series I've read a few times before.

Redshirts is a book I've read a few times before.  Listening to it was interesting; it really brought home how often the author describes the characters as having 'said' something.  It became very repetitive after a while.

Nightmares and Dreamscapes is a collection of short stories, which I wrote a longer post about here. 

A Tale for the Time Being is an odd one.  It's about a teenage girl living in Japan, and the author finding her diary, and then time goes a bit odd.  An interesting one. 

The Forgetting Time reminded me a lot of Shelter; it shares the same themes of motherood and dealing with a difficult, unhappy child.

I've spoken about The Forbidden Game before; I finished off the series this week.

Finally, Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping and Development.  I only read the first 300 pages, as they were on general game theory while the otehr 600 were on designing with a specific system which I'm not using (I'm using RPGMaker 2003 right now).  It's a really great guide.