In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 16/52

Six books last week!  Two of them - The Second Sex and Piano & Keyboard I'd been reading for a while.  Three of them - Monstrous Regiment, The Afterdark Princess, and Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? - were audiobooks.  Finally, The Flavours of Love had been hanging out on my unread pile for a while.

The Second Sex I read for my feminist bookclub, a meeting that never actually happened.  Everyone except me cancelled.  I'd only read half the book by the day, so I just carried on with it.  It's a brick.  An interesting read, but a long one.  It really surprised me how much of it was still current and still relevant, despite the book being written sixty-five years ago.  That's kind of sad.

Piano & Keyboard was a decent guide.  I picked up a lot of good tips and I'm glad I read it.  It really helped my musicianship.

The Afterdark Princess was a children's book I used to really like.  It was just over £7 on Audible, but I picked up three credits for £18 and decided to get it.  It's less than three hours long, so I played it through in my locker a couple of times when I was at work to try to get a few Audible badges.  Worked pretty well.

Monstrous Regiment is one of my favourite Discworld books.  Stephen Briggs is a great reader, but I really wish this book had been read by a woman.  A woman who could do great male voices.  I'd love to hear Monstrous Regiment read by a woman who could do great male voices.

I've only seen a bit of The Mindy Show and none of The Office, but I like Mindy Kaling.  And I like hearing autobiographies read by the authors, especially since they tend to be comedians or other performers.  So far, the best performance has been Michael McIntyre.  He did the best voices, especially his impression of his Hungarian grandmother.  Mindy definitely sounded like she was reading not performing, but she was reading so she can be forgiven for that.  And the book was pretty interesting.  I mostly read it while running, or while walking to work or round the supermarket.  I will not be adopting Mindy's revenge-fantasy method of exercise motivation.

Finally, The Flavours of Love.  I love Dorothy Koomson.  Her books are like chick-lit thrillers, two genres I love, and I love that all her heroines are black.  It's something that appears so seldom, which makes me sad.

I read Flavours of Love over a day; a few hours before bed, on the way to work, at lunch, while donating blood, and finished it before falling asleep the next night.  I really enjoyed it.

My unread pile is now at 102.  I'm going to try to have it under 100 on New Year's Eve.  Then, next year, my goal will be to get it to under 15, where I'll try to keep it.  That seems pretty amazing to me right now - I haven't had that few unread books in my possession since I was six or seven years old.  But I think I'll be happier when I don't have all those books cluttering up the place and making me feel guilty.

In Which We Discuss People Who Confuse Me and the Ice Cream Girls

I've been reading a lot over the past few days. I've received the offer of a new job, but haven't been given a start date. The interview was about a month ago. I'd be more worried, but last Friday they invited everyone in my position to a coffee morning where we were able to ask questions and get to know each other a little. They told us they'd call this week; it's now 9pm on Thursday, and they've not, so I'm getting a little concerned again.

Anyway, to distract myself, I've been reading, and you can see what I've read in the image above.  That's from the 26th, with the top left being most recent and the bottom right being least. It's still a little too cold to laze about in the garden, but my room (I live in a shared house) has french doors opening on to it, which face west. I get all the afternoon sunlight. I also have a large window which faces east, so I should get the morning sunlight too. Unfortunately, that window also happens to face a busy road, so I never open the curtains.  Anyway, instead of lying in the garden reading, I've been building a nest of pillows at the end of my bed and lying there and reading instead.  All the sunlight and an electric blanket.  Genius.

Anyway.

 Elizabeth Buchan's Daughters had a lot of characters who really confused me.

Warning: Text Below Contains Spoilers for Daughters.

One character is a woman who married a widower with two children.  They have another child together, and, when they split up, she keeps them all.  That's the first thing that baffled me.  That makes no sense to me.  Why would she keep his children?  Would she have kept them if they'd not had a daughter together?  That's bizarre, surely?

I was going to say that I don't mean to belittle the bond between stepparents and children, but I guess I am.  I accept that adopted parents are just as true as birth parents, so why not stepparents?  If he'd died, they'd probably have stayed with her, after all. 

Thinking about it, I guess the thing that bugs me is; why didn't he want them?  Why would he marry someone, and then leave his children with her?

I have to wonder how much this has to do with stereotypical ideas of women as natural caregivers, and the whole myth of the mothering instinct.

This also reminded me of a similar event in Billie Letts Where the Heart Is, one of my favourite books.  One male character is hailed as a hero when he realises that his soon-to-be ex-wife doesn't want her daughter, and he trades his car for her, so the little girl doesn't have to live with a mother who doesn't want her.

The second thing that confused me; the middle daughter is planning a wedding, and chooses a date in the first week of September.  The youngest daughter has applied to Harvard, and, since she is British, will have to move to America.  If accepted, university will start, as it normally does, in the first week of September.  And the middle sister keeps going on about how utterly selfish it is that the younger sister will miss her wedding for the first week of university.  That seems like an insane overreaction to me.  It was an invitation, not a summons.  Secondly, I'm with the youngest daughter, Maudie; it's the marriage that's important, more than the wedding day itself.  It seems insane for her sister to want her to put herself at a disadvantage for one ludicrously overpriced day.  That said, my idea of the perfect wedding day costs less than £200, is in the clothes we wore on our first date, or some other sentimental item, and has only witnesses, no guests.  So there are many things about the wedding industry that baffle me.  Like wedding dresses.  Why on earth would you spend thousands of pounds - or even hundreds - on a dress that you will only wear once?  It's a bizarre thing to do!  If you want to look like a princess, get into Disney Cosplay, you can dress up all the time then!

Blaaaaaaaaah.

Anyway; third thing that confused me.  Several characters become aware that middle sister - Eve's - fiance is cheating on her.  And they debate with themselves about whether or not to tell her!

I've been in a similar situation before, but, in that case, the person I witnessed cheating was a very close friend of mine while her partner was a stranger.  I can understand reluctance in that case, from loyalty.  But, if you're the bride's sister, or (step)mother, then why would that be an issue?  Why would you debate with yourself for even a second on whether or not to tell her?  She has a right to make her own decisions on the matter, while in full possession of the facts.

And then, when they do tell her, she acts like they've done something wrong!  And they internalise this and apologise!  Someone telling you the truth about your partner cheating on you is not doing anything wrong, for god's sake!

Sigh.  I'm not saying that the book is unrealistic; I'm sure there are many people like that in the world, and they are equally bizarre to me.  But, rarr, these crazy illogical people.

Moving on.  I read The Ice Cream Girls, mostly because I didn't want to wait until the third episode of the televisation is shown next week to find out how it ends.  Incidentally, if you do want to watch the TV show (and you live in the UK), you can see the episodes here.  The first episode will be available for another 16 days.  The third and final episode will be shown on ITV tomorrow (Friday 3rd May) at 9pm.  I usually watch live TV here.

Warning: Text Below Contains Spoilers for The Ice Cream Girls.  

Warning:  Text Below May be Triggering re; Rape/Abuse

There's a lot more in the book than in the TV series.  Some characters are merged into one - Serena's two sisters become one, for instance, and so do her two children - and the plot moves a little faster.  One changed which improved the story was the idea that all of the past events had happened in Brighton, rather than in London.  In the book, it's coincidence that Serena and Poppy both end up in Brighton, having both moved from London.  It seems a little forced.  It's a lot more natural - and, I think, helps with the idea of them being linked to each other through the past events - if they end up back at the place where they grew up, where everything happened.

Earlier today, I was embroiled in quite an interesting conversation about domestic abuse, and here's a repeat of your trigger warning.  Someone posted the idea that domestic abuse is intrinsically linked to monogamy.  It's an interesting thought.  All of the details of domestic abuse that I know do require that people be cut off from family and friends, and from help.  Abusers typically tell their victims that what's happening to them is normal, that they deserve it, etc, and then cut them off from anyone who'd offer a reference point for how un-normal it is.  This also has the effect of cutting them off from anyone who can help.  Although this can and does happen in a relationship in which the abuser is polyamorous but the victims are not - like the relationships in The Ice Cream Girls, or as sometimes happens in marriages where, for example, one man has multiple wives.  It doesn't seem like that kind of abuse can happen in polyamorous relationships in which both partners have multiple secondaries.  However, it doesn't necessarily follow that another kind of domestic abuse can't occur, even if this particular kind can't.  I tried a few thought experiments, and the only one I could think of that would work was the idea of an abuser who was motivated by voyeuristic/'being caught' tendencies rather than jealousy/neediness.  For example, the abuser could be aroused or otherwise consider an unknowing third party to be an essential part of the abuse, and threaten the victim to stay quiet or otherwise hide the abuse.  It was an interesting conversation.  I will continue musing on it.

In Which We Discuss TV Adaptations

Recently, I've been watching ITVs adaptation of Dorothy Koomson's Ice Cream Girls.  I've embedded a TV spot which includes clips and interviews below.

I like Dorothy Koomson's books, though I've not actually read this one before.  I am enjoying the show, though. 

One thing I like about Koomson's work is that I can always rely on her to have a woman of colour in the lead role.  There's nothing wrong with white people, my mother was one, but it's nice to get away from constantly reading about them.

I have a shelf on Goodreads for books with non-white protagonists.  Yes, I know that I have full autonomy in what to read.  But you'd still expect more than nineteen books out of almost a thousand.  I'm quite strict with it, too; I only count it if the one main character is non-white, not if there's one non-white character in a quartet or something.

Another book I liked that was adapted to TV was Sophie Hannah's Point of Rescue (published as The Wrong Mother in the US) and The Other Half Lives, both from her Spilling CID series.  I have it on DVD.  I've had it for a while, in fact, but it took me several months to watch it.  Why?  I was scared.  I love those books.  I didn't want the tv series to suck.

Well, it didn't suck, but it wasn't all that great either, not compared to the books.  The adaptation of Point of Rescue was more faithful than that of The Other Half Lives, but both cut out a lot of the complications and twists of the books.  I did like Olivia Williams and Darren Boyd as Charlie and Simon, though.