In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 31/52

Terry Pratchett died this week.

The first Prachett book I ever read was Only You Can Save Mankind, when I was ten.  Then The Colour of Magic, at eleven.  Then Jingo.  Then, I think Maskerade, then I saw the animated version of Wyrd Sisters, then I spent my birthday money on lots more of the discworld books, whatever they had in my local waterstones.  I'm now reading Raising Steam.  It's the last one for me.  It's the last one for all of us.

Last week, I reread Peony in Love for my feminist book group, which meets next week.  I read it back in November or December as well, so I won't repeat what I said then.

The Housemates was a book I've had sitting on my unread pile for a while.  It reads like someone watched Big Brother, hated it, and decided a fitting punishment for the contestants would be to mash it up with the Saw movies.  Everyone involved in the torture-gameshow is a criminal, and the whole thing is arranged by their victims.  Uncomfortably gory and violent, but compelling and quiet well plotted.  The ending, when it comes, is more obvious than I thought it would be.

Fortunately the Milk... I saw at the library, and had finished it before I got home.  A short children's book, with lots of illustrations, about a father explaining why he was delayed bringing home the milk.  Definitely does not including a time-travellings stegosaurus.

I read How to Become a Police Officer: The Insider's Guide because I'm applying to join the WMP when applications open on Monday.  Some of this is inspired by Commander Vimes.  Vimes is who I want to be when I grow up.  It's a pretty good guide, which talks through the recruitment process in depth with examples of questions that are likely to come up.  I'm confident about the tests - SJT, verbal and mathematic.  I'm confident about the phone interview and the bleep test (I ran one in my garden the other day).  I'm less confident about the initial application form and the face to face interviews, and the roleplay, and the essay questions.  We'll see.  I guess if my application form is fine, that'll mean I've gotten the hang of answering the competency questions, or at least that I'm better at it.

Mr and Miss Anonymous is another book I've had sitting on my unread pile for a while.  I read it because I'm aiming to read all the unread books on my Kobo.  Then maybe sell it or give it away.  I love my Kobo, and it was my faithful companion for months when I couldn't afford a Kindle.  But now I can, and the Kindle is better maintained with a better range of cheaper books.  Plus, I can read my Kobo books on that, or my phone, or my nexus.

Anyway, it's about a couple who donate to an egg and sperm bank.  They meet afterwards, fall in love at first sight, then don't see each other for years.  They meet again when they find out that something very dodgy happened to their genomes.  There are lots of contrived coincidences and love at first sight suddenly happening.  All very silly.  Quick read though.

Something Fierce is the memoir of a girl who served as a revolutionary in South America in the eighties.  I'm glad I read, since that's an area and a time period I don't know a lot about.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 17/52

Eight books this week!  Two by Stephen King, though Cycle of the Werewolf is a very short novella.  You can read slightly more of my thoughts on those in this post, although, to be honest, I'm struggling to find anything original to say.  During this time of his life, King was struggling with addiction and that is reflected in the themes of his novels.  He also wrote more about children, presumably as he watched his own grown up.

Peony in Love was an interesting one.  A ghost story based in historical fact, it's about the three wives of The Three Wives Commentary, originally published in 1694.  The commentary in question was on The Peony Pavilion, a play about a woman who pined away through not being able to be with her lover, but was later revived through love and due to specific beliefs regarding the Chinese afterlife.  As Jeannie Lin points out in her blogpost on the book, the play was first performed in 1598 while Romeo and Juliet was written in 1597.

The three wives were married to Wu Ren; Chen Tong, the first wife, died before their marriage, but they later had a 'ghost ceremony'.  Chen Tong is Peony; Lisa See points out that 'Tong' means 'same' and has Peony adopt the name when she is engaged, since Peony is also her new mother-in-law's name.  Peony dies quite early on (this is not a spoiler - it's quite early on) and goes on to guide the second and third wives who come after her.

What Lisa See does really well is to show the misunderstandings and misinterpretations of her main characters.  Peony misses things.  She doesn't know what people are thinking or why they do things, she misses important things that they do, and she misinterprets why they do things.  Later, she has moments of revelation which the reader shares.  Sometimes, the reader is more aware than Peony.  For instance, it's fairly easy to predict Tan Ze's anger and to read her motivations.

There was an element of Peony in Love that reminded me a lot of The Lovely Bones.  To whit, a ghost uses the body of a living person in order to experience love-making.  In The Lovely Bones this rape is presented purely romantically.  In Peony in Love, the perpetrator is called out for their behaviour and comes to regret it.  Still not a totally comfortable plot-point, but slightly better done.

Gangsta Rap was written by Benjamin Zephaniah.  I picked it up because Benjamin Zephaniah lived near my primary school, and visited us occasionally to perform poetry.  It's not a brilliant novel; a fun and fast read, but clumsily plotted, and the dialogue sometimes seems slightly unrealistic.  It's predictable.  I did like some elements of it though; for instance, it seems the author is more intelligent than the characters, and when they do stupid things - like harass teenage girls because they know no other way to get attention - it's clear that the author seems the problem with this and doesn't condone the behaviour.  The women react realistically.

Further Confessions is a sequel to a book I owned in my early teens.  It's from Simon Mayo's radio show, on which he'd have people send in confessions of things they'd done and pranks they'd played, asking forgiveness from a panel including a priest, a nun, and possibly a rabbi, I don't know, I never listened.  Very much the sort of book to dip in and out of; the kind of book you leave in the bathroom.

The Hollow Hills is another book I read in my early teens.  It's the second part of a series, so earlier this year I borrowed the first part from the library and had another crack at it.  It's a retelling of the Arthur legends, all from Merlin's point of view.  I like it, as much as I like any of the Arthur stories.

As You Wish was an audio book; it's ostensibly by Cary Elwes but has chapters from the other actors involved in The Princess Bride as well as Rob Reiner and William Goldman themselves.  Most of these actors also show up to read their own sections.  It's really more of an interview session on the making of The Princess Bride hosted by Elwes than any sort of biography of his.  Kind of fun.  I'm wishing I'd gone to ComicCon at the NEC this year; he was there selling autographs for £20.  Not sure what I would have had him sign, considering I have The Princess Bride on Kindle and this on Audible, but I do know I would have asked him to write anything other than 'as you wish', just to see what he'd have come up with.

Finally, Stress-Proof Your Life.  A book with some interesting tips.  I tried one yesterday; a day with no chores, no demands, no social media or anything that makes time move fast.  Just a day of relaxing, drinking water, eating vegetables, reading, drawing, writing and napping.  It was nice.  I didn't like coming back to reality today, and it was hard to fully relax, but it was really nice spending an entire day with nothing to do but read and sleep and eat.  I may do that again next month.