In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 50/52

This is a little late because last Tuesday, I forgot it was a Tuesday.  Which is unfortunate and odd because I've only recently decided to carry on with this for my 27th year.  With a slight addition - I'm going to take a shot of my unread pile and update that with crosses and whatnot for books read, or given away - just to track why the damn thing isn't shrinking, despite how much I read.  It may or may not be because I keep buying more books.  Though, actually, I've only bought around fifty this year.

Anyway, 22nd July to 28th July.  Six more books.

Only one I'd read before; RedShirts, by John Scalzi.  It's an affectionate Star Trek parody from the point of view of the titular Red Shirts.  They come to realise that they are characters in a TV show and use the utterly broken narrative laws of physics to ask the writers to please stop killing them.  It's written with a lot of heart, as the best parodys are.  I cried.

This is the book my coworker recommended, which prompted me to go to a bookclub, where I later met Tom.  I have a soft spot for it.

Michael Palin's Around the World in 80 Days was given to me by a coworker.  Once my friend Paul tipped me off that Michael Palin was part of Monty Python and not an aging politician I was quite a bit more interested in it.

I quite like the original Around the World in 80 Days.  And this trip sounds amazing, an effect which is only added to by the photos.

Day Shift is by the same author as the Sookie Stackhouse novels and includes a few of the peripheral characters.  I listened to it as an audiobook; not a sensible choice, given how I struggle to concentrate on sound.

Americanah is one I got from our local library (Dudley).  It was excellent; the story of a young Nigerian couple, one of whom gets to study in America while the other falls into the more negative options of life in Nigera and ends up in Britain.  The main character write a blog on her observations of racial difference, and the posts were my favourite bit.

How Google Works is essentially a management guide, describing Google's flat (as opposed to linear) hierarchy.  I found it fascinating.  I think I'd quite like to work for Google.

Finally, Capital is one I've had on my unread pile for ages.  I liked it a lot more than I thought I would (which begs the question of why I bought it...).

Capital is the story of one street in London over the credit crunch.  It dips in and out of all their houses and lives in a way that's quite absorbing.  I guess it has the same strength as the Simpsons - it can go follow someone else when anyone character gets too stale.  It stayed lively over 500+ pages.

In Which We Discuss Reading for Book Clubs

You may recall, I attended a bookclub several years ago.  They were reading Frankenstein, which I'd been meaning to get to for years.  It was an okay evening, but the next few books were things I'd never felt any interest in, so I stopped going.

I've often felt resentful over being forced to read things I'm not interested in.  I think this stems from being forced to read specific books at school.  We'd always read as a group, and it was so slow.  If I'd been allowed to read myself, it would have taken half the time.  But, no, I had to listen to some eejit stammering over words and taking ages to come out with the simplest things.  So frustrating.  So I think I probably had a similar issue with bookclubs suggesting I read things I didn't want to.

My feminist group started a bookclub about a year ago.  At first, my attendance was patchy - couldn't always afford the book, couldn't always get time off to go, sometimes just completely forgot.  Now I'm working the first problem's solved, and I've booked those days off as holiday for the rest of the year.  I get most of then back as my natural rest days anyway.

It helps that it's a small group, and it's amongst people I know and it also helps that it covers a topic I like, so I find reading the books quite interesting and rewarding.

I've started going to another bookclub since then.  A coworker recommended John Scalzi's Red Shirts to me, and when looking at MeetUp a little while later, I noticed a local group was planning to read it.  I enjoyed that meeting, and went to the next one, since it was sci-fi themed and I was free.  Also, because the book had happened to be sitting on my unread shelf for a few years.  Again, it's a small group of people that I like, and the books are things that I'm interested in.  Since we're all fairly fast readers, they've started a midweek book group, as well as the general one, which I've also been going to.  So that's three!

This month, I've actually chosen two of the books.  Sheri Tepper's Plague of Angels, and Colette Dowling's Myth of the Money Tree, both books I've read and enjoyed previously.  I'm quite looking forward to discussing both of them!

I've also been rereading The Dice Man, which I haven't read in a good five years.  I'm still listening to Firestarter on audiobook, though I stopped for a bit.  Making it a daily habit on HabitRPG has really helped me get back into it.  I'm also listening to The High Lord intermittently.