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.