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

Eight books last week!  That's 10th February to 17th February.

I finished the Matched series.  I've owned the first one for years - first read it in 2012 - so I borrowed the two sequels from the library.  It wasn't mind-blowing, but it was fun and nice to finally get some closure.  You can probably read something into the fact that I didn't read the sequels back when I first read the first book.



I also finished the Gas Lit Empire series this week, with The Custodian of Marvels.  My reaction is about the same as to the Matched series, though I did get through it a lot faster.  Part of that is because it's harder to find good audiobooks I can listen to on 3x speed so when I find a series with the right level of listenability I tend to go for it.

I also finished the Spilling CID series, although there's no indication that this book is the end of the series.  A very meta book, The Narrow Bed.   

Spoilers to follow! 

The killer has decided to murder everyone who gave an unwanted ereader to someone else and to kill the recipients who politely accepted the ereaders and shoved them in a drawer.  I'm kind of glad I listened to it as an audiobook and kept the fuck out of that mess.  There's also a straw feminist character, which is almost as bad as Hannah deciding Andrew Wakefield was being picked on.  No other character - not even Charlie who lives an exceptionally feminist life - says anything to the tune of "I'm a feminist but she's a tad overboard".  We just have one crazy feminist as our only example.  

Not one of her stronger efforts, in many ways.

End Spoilers.

The Broken was another audiobook.  It focused on two couples - with dreadful, ugly, London accents - one of whom breaks up.  It kind of fails at being mysterious and intriguing, though it does try.  The final twist was excellent, but there wasn't a lot of build up to it and it wasn't an exciting journey.

Finally, I listened to the first three Harry Potter books.  I originally read The Chamber of Secrets when I was ten or eleven, closely followed by Philosopher's Stone, Prisoner of Azkaban and The Goblet of Fire.

I kind of lost interest at that point.  It's hard to pinpoint why.  Some of it was to do with having a crush on Ron and then having very confused feelings about Hermione, whom I otherwise liked.  I was also put off by Rupert Grinch who looked nothing like I imagined the character.

I think there was an element of backlash as well.  With so many people raving about the series I didn't feel able to join in.  While I can't criticise the books themselves, my enjoyment of them kind of soured.

Now it's been fifteen years and I'm getting some of my affection for the series back.  It helps that I'm listening on Audible which makes it go by a lot faster; the entire series on 3x speed is less than 45 hours.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 22/52

Only two books last week - 7 January to 14th January 2015.  Once Upon a Time is a book of short stories that I've been working on for a while.  They're all pretty great, I just don't often read physical books any more.  Some of them are just okay while some are beautiful.  Authors include Isaac Asimov and Terry Brooks, so it's a pretty esteemed collection.  I particularly liked the story by Katherine Kurtz.

Kind of Cruel is the 7th in the Spilling CID series.  I quite enjoyed it; I remembered the key details but not the exact denouement.  I last read the book in 2012.  There's not a huge amount of re-listen value if you do remember all the details.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 2/52

Seven books this week - 19th to 26th August.

Two of these I'd read before; Charm School and Flour Babies.  I got some Audible credits for my birthday, so I got them.  They're only 3-4 hours long each and they're both fairly high on my favourites list.

How Not to be Wrong is non-fiction, about statistics and applied mathematics.  Absolutely fascinating.

Pictures or it Didn't Happen is another Audible book.  It's, again, 3-4 hours long.  Part of the Quick Reads series, and part of Spilling CID.  It's a nice little mystery.  I found it utterly absorbing.

The final audio book for this week was The Collectors.  It's part of His Dark Materials, a short prequel story.  It's about half an hour long.  I regret listening to it on 3x speed - I feel like I missed something.

Time Trips was a library book, as was How Not to Be Wrong.  It's a collection of Dr Who short stories.  Not the best introduction to someone who's never read any, like me, but a nice collection.  It encouraged me to start watching the series on Netflix.

Honestly, the main thing that was putting me off watching it was not knowing where to start.  You can't watch the show from the beginning, and that baffled me.  I'm glad I broke through that barrier.

Finally, Killer Takes it All was a book I found at a truck-stop on my birthday trip to Wales.  It was fun!  A mystery - the second in a series - about a RP gone wrong.  A bit of self-conscious jargon and a satisfying twist.  Great fun.

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.