In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 34/52

Six books last week; that's 31st March to the 6th of April.  Four I'd read before; only two were new to me.

Caradoc's Quest was one of those.  It's part of the Six World's Saga, one of which I read and enjoyed in my early teens.  It's set in a future where humanity has gone to stars, populating six planets which circle two twinned stars.  All religion has been lost - no religion but Christianity appears to have ever existed - and the heros are general trying to bring Christanity back.  I'm an atheist, but I attended a Catholic school, and I'll tell you this for nothing; the Bible is pretty epic.  If you ignore any real life implications and just read it as a story it's a long, winding saga about one family and the shenanigans they get up to.  If the book was the one ring, this thing would be fun than Tolkien.  The Qu'ran and the Torah are the same; they're very broadly the same story, literally the same family.  The Torah disagrees on the point of Jesus, and the Qu'ran splits off on the point of whether it was Isaac or Ishmael that Abraham/Ibrahim tried to sacrifice before god called 'psych!'.  If you've read The Handmaid's Tale then allow me to point out that this is the story used to justify the handmaid's; Sarah, Abraham's wife believed she was too older to bear children, so she encouraged Abraham to have a child with a concubine.  Later, she was actually able to have a son.  The latter was Isaac, the former Ishmael.  So it does seem odd that the society of The Handmaid's Tale is based on Christianity, when this particular story would better suit their needs in the Islamic interpretation.  Though, on second thought, it's not that odd; they were using whatever they could to justify what they wanted to do, rather than letting conclusions come from information.  Reminds me of an argument I had with an ex-housemate; he insisted that being gay was wrong because "it's in the Bible"; when I asked him about adultery and shellfish he claimed those examples were irrelevant because "people don't care about those".  Totally incapable of recognising his own circular logic there.

American Gods is a book I first read a few years ago; it's set in a world where Gods work based on belief and many travellers brought their gods to America with them.  The old Gods are going to war with the new Gods, and there's a whole boatload of symbolism, as well as some lampshade-hanging on how similar many of the stories are.

Clare in the Community - season 6 and 7 this week - is a radio show, with the titular Clare voiced by Sally Phillips.  She's lovely.  I particularly like her work in Smack the Pony.

Neil Patrick Harris' Choose Your Own Autobiography is another book I've read before.  It have the audiobook, which loses something in the translation; I'm tempted to borrow the physical book from the library, especially after reading this lovely review by Emily Short.

Finally, Sleep Tight is the other book which was new to me; it's an audiobook I was given by the author, so I do need to write a specific post for it!

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 31/52

Six books lasy week; three more seasons of Clare in the Community, Needful Things and Gerald's Game, and Wuthering Heights.

Wuthering Heights was the only book was was new to me.  I got it as an audiobook on Audible's daily deal for £2.99, and it was listening to it as an audiobook that got me through it.  I found the opening quite slow and I didn't like a lot of the characters.  It seems to be that Cathy and Heathcliff deserved one another, and it would have saved everyone else a lot of trouble if they'd just fucked off together early on.

I liked Heathcliff more towards the end.  He began to remind me of Snape, if Snape were a sociopath.

I've written a longer post about the Stephen King books here.

Clare in the Community is a radio series starring Sally Phillips.  I love basically everything she's in.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 30/52

Six books last week!  That's the 3rd March to the 9th March.

I listened to the first three series' of Clare in the Community a radio show about a social worker.  I listened to the whole eight series' about two years ago and felt like doing it again.

I also listened to Brave New World, which I found quite interesting.  I enjoyed Contact more than the movie.  I liked that it shows women in STEM fields, with some struggles but also just very good at science.

Disclaimer I read for a bookclub, which I ended up missing due to having a migraine.  It's an interesting story marred by truly awful, amateurish writing.  The writer is quite experienced in other media, so it seems odd that she'd do so badly here.  Maybe it was assumed she didn't need a story editor, or maybe it's just that writing prose is very different from writing plays?  I plan to write a long post, pointing out specific bits which didn't make sense.  Oh, and it was also marred by the fact that the 'twist' was easy to see coming, from quite a long way away, though it took the characters much longer to spot it.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 35/52

Another late post!

I finished three audiobooks last week; seasons 6 & 7 of Clare in the Community and Lorna Doone.

Did you know that there's a dirty joke about cucumbers in chapter 53 of Lorna Doone?

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 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.