In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 24/52

I'm very late in writing this.  When I say 'late' I mean it's now Tuesday and I'm due to post the 25th week tomorrow.

I read five books between 20th - 26th January.  Three library books, an audio book and a Kindle book.

I'm not really any more impressed with the second Scott Pilgrim graphic novel.  I think Michael Cera's crappy acting and total lack of chemistry with Ramona's actor - as well as the lack of character development - has ruined it for me.

The Stone Angel was very enjoyable.  It's by a Canadian author - and the essay at the back points out how few of these we know of, apart from Margaret Atwood - and is something of a classic, I gather.  It's the life of Hagar, a Canadian woman born at the turn of the century.  It flips between her childhood and her time in her nineties, fighting over being asked to leave her own home and forced into a nursing home.

Big Brother is a book I read years ago.  I enjoy 90% of it, but the last 10% ruins it for me.

I had the same sort of issue with Woman's World.  Woman's World is told using cuttings from 60s women's magazines, like a ransom note.  It's a useful storytelling technique, considering the character.

What disappoints me about the ending is that the issues raised are not resolved.  They just...magically go away.  Which is a lot less interesting than actually dealing with it.

Unseemly Science is the second in the Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire series, focusing on Elizabeth Barnabas and her cross-dressing adventures as her imaginary brother, Edwin.  The Gas-Lit Empire has very Victorian values you see, and being a man can be incredibly useful.  I enjoyed it, enough to have pre-ordered the third book, which comes out on Thursday.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 23/52

Six books last week; that is 13th to 20th January.  One audiobook - Liar - and two books which I'd been reading over Christmas.  Three library books.

I enjoyed Liar.  I wasn't quite sure what to make of it afterwards, so I read the TV Tropes page, which helped.  I actually read the book because of Justine Labalestier's blogpost regarding the cover. As a woman of colour - a mixed race woman of colour - seeing mixed race women represented in fiction is important to me.

That's one thing Scott Pilgrim's pretty bad at, incidentally.  Dealing with people of colour.  I saw the movie years ago and picked up the graphic novel because it was in the library.  It's not brilliant or particularly well-drawn, though it is slightly less racist than the movie if only because it avoided giving the one Indian character a Bollywood number.  I very much agree with this post on the movie.

I very much enjoyed Funny Girl.  I read it in one night; I didn't mean to, I just didn't want to stop.  It's about the TV industry in the '60s.  It's fictitious but includes real photographs from the decade; if it wasn't fiction the characters would easily slip into reality.

I've been reading American Wife since before Christmas.  The library only had the large print version, which made it a 900 page tome.  I eventually just gave in and bought the damn thing for the Kindle just so I didn't have to lug it around any more.  I enjoyed the book; it's a fictionalisation of the life of a first lady.  It's mostly inspired by Laura Bush, which is fair enough; unless you want to write a total alternate history you'd have to at least loosely base it on of the three women who've held the role over the last twenty years.

Tim Ferriss' Four Hour Body is a book on self-experimentation, with specific things that Tim Ferriss has found to work on himself.  It's a pretty interesting read.  The most interesting point he made is that a calorie is literally a unit of energy; people think of it only as something that can be stored (as fat) or converted into work (exercise) but you can also lose it thermodynamically or as matter (ie, shivering and shitting).  Thermodynamics is the easiest one to manage, without indulging in some unhealthy habits.  That's why swimming takes so much energy; you're also letting off heat, since the water's fairly cool.

Finally, Four Past Midnight.  I need to write a longer post about that.