In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 27/52

Six books this week!  Four of them I've been working on for a while.  The Calculus, for instance, I started last November, simply because I'd never quite mastered it and it was bugging me.  I feel like I have a much better grasp on it now, though I'd need to look up the specific techniques to actually solve a calculus problem.

The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack is something I bought when I first got my kindle because it was less than £1.  It's a hefty collection of 25 short stories, including Ayn Rand's Anthem.  It's a very nice collection, especially for the price.

Saffy's Angel is an audiobook I listened to with Tom in the car, whenever we had a long trip.  It's short - four hours - but it took a while, because we spend most of the time in the car chatting.  It was nice.  I'll probably look for later books in the series on Kindle.

The Hockey Term at Trebizon is another children's book, or at least, aimed at young adults.  This was the first book in the Trebizon series that I read, when I was eight or nine.  It's a boarding school series about close friends who work hard and play hard, like a slightly more mature The Twins at St Claire's.

Speaking of twins, The Girls is written from the point of view of a set of conjoined twins, Rose and Ruby Darlen.  I first read it in 2007 or 8, and recently bought it as an audiobook.

House of Leaves is a book I'm really glad I read.  It's about a young man, Johnny Truant, who find the masterwork of one of his neighbours, following their death.  The book is about a documentary, which is entirely fictitious.  It includes a number of footnotes and references which are also fictitious both in our world and in Johnny's.  The documentary is about a family, who move in a house which suddenly starts expanding and shrinking alarmingly.  It's very experimental; when the family are in a labyrinth for instance, the words are suddenly laid out like a labyrinth, which links to footnotes which eventually lead to deadends, and cause one to backtrack to the main text.

Finally, The Wonderful and Terrible Reasons Why I Run Long Distances.  It's by The Oatmeal, and includes expanded comics on the blerch and other fitness related issues, several of which appears on his webcomic, but a few which haven't.  It's a quickread; took me an hour last night.  I enjoyed it.

In Which We Discuss Books I've Read Recently

I kind of lost track of noting down the books I'd read each week.  I'm tempted to begin again; I recently turned 26, right between Into the Fourth at Trebizon and The Myth of the Money Tree, so it wouldn't be too difficult to do posts on the books I read every week aged 26.  I'll think about it; I'm already one and a half behind for that.

You can see I've been rereading the Trebizon series.  I read a couple of them as a child, though I never had the entire set.  They're £2.99 each on Kindle, and they take about half an hour each.  They're set in a boarding school in Cornwall, and were originally published in the late eighties and early nineties.  Very simple, but sweet.  They're quite comforting.

I'd been meaning to get ahold of a copy of Alison Bechdel's Funhouse for ages.  I bought it from Foyles in London.  I've been stressed and depressed recently, so a friend took me down there first class, installed me a Canary Wharf apartment, gave me £200 and a pre-loaded Oyster Card and told me to have fun.  It was fun, until I realised that I was actually still pretty depressed and got taken to hospital.  Funhouse probably seems an odd choice in those circumstances; it's autobiographical, about Bechdel dealing with her own sexuality, and her father's sexuality and suicide.  It didn't bother me, mostly because I didn't personally relate to the issues of Bechdel's father.  I've never struggled with repressing aspects of my personality - my issues are more to do with my impulsiveness.

The scooter book I read because I took my CBT at the end of July.  Didn't pass - couldn't get the hang of the throttle in the short time we were allowed.  Authority and Looking for Alaska I read for bookclubs.

Mounted by the Minotaur  I read purely out of curiosity.  Someone at one of the aforementioned bookclubs had pointed out the existence of dinosaur and mythological erotica on amazon, and I couldn't help but read some of it.  It was free!

Plague of Angels, Last Girlfriend on Earth, Amanda's Wedding and Jemima J were all books I love, and I found it comforting to reread them recently.  I woke up early, the first night I spent with a man I really - loved?  Wanted? - and read a hundred pages of Amanda's Wedding lying next to him.  That's over now.  Plague of Angels was also for a bookclub, this Sunday.

On Gold Mountain by Lisa See was quite interesting.  I've read and loved a few of her books before, and I didn't realise she was mixed.  It was quite interesting reading about the history of a Chinese family in America.  I'm mixed Indian/British, so my family history isn't the same, but there are parallels with other mixed people.

Sharp Objects and The House We Grew Up In are both by authors I've liked in the past, so I thought I'd give these new novels a go.  I didn't like Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects as much as Gone Girl but it was pretty good.  The House We Grew Up In was pretty good too, but not as good as my favourite Lisa Jewell novels - One Hit Wonder, or A Friend of the Family or The Making of Us.

Soul Identity  had an interesting premise; it's about a world in which people can track reincarnation by the pattern in your eyes.  There's no way to recover memory or experiences, beyond leaving a diary for your future self, so that form of reincarnation doesn't seem to have any practical value.  If I don't have my body or my memories or my personality, am I still me?  Purely because the pattern in my eyes is the same?  I'm not totally sure I'm on board with this.  I'd rather gain immortality by not-dying, personally.

The two cookbooks I mostly read in order to get them off my unread pile.  Nothing too special in them, although I did finally use my slow cooker for something, which was nice.  Finally, the poetry; I have a collected edition of Sophie Hannah's poems, but they don't include anything from Hotels Like Houses.  Plus, the man I mentioned earlier was talking a lot about joining the 27-club, and I wanted to show him Your Death is Not Allowed.  He turned 28 last Sunday, so at least I don't need to worry about that.