In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 16/52

Six books last week!  Two of them - The Second Sex and Piano & Keyboard I'd been reading for a while.  Three of them - Monstrous Regiment, The Afterdark Princess, and Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? - were audiobooks.  Finally, The Flavours of Love had been hanging out on my unread pile for a while.

The Second Sex I read for my feminist bookclub, a meeting that never actually happened.  Everyone except me cancelled.  I'd only read half the book by the day, so I just carried on with it.  It's a brick.  An interesting read, but a long one.  It really surprised me how much of it was still current and still relevant, despite the book being written sixty-five years ago.  That's kind of sad.

Piano & Keyboard was a decent guide.  I picked up a lot of good tips and I'm glad I read it.  It really helped my musicianship.

The Afterdark Princess was a children's book I used to really like.  It was just over £7 on Audible, but I picked up three credits for £18 and decided to get it.  It's less than three hours long, so I played it through in my locker a couple of times when I was at work to try to get a few Audible badges.  Worked pretty well.

Monstrous Regiment is one of my favourite Discworld books.  Stephen Briggs is a great reader, but I really wish this book had been read by a woman.  A woman who could do great male voices.  I'd love to hear Monstrous Regiment read by a woman who could do great male voices.

I've only seen a bit of The Mindy Show and none of The Office, but I like Mindy Kaling.  And I like hearing autobiographies read by the authors, especially since they tend to be comedians or other performers.  So far, the best performance has been Michael McIntyre.  He did the best voices, especially his impression of his Hungarian grandmother.  Mindy definitely sounded like she was reading not performing, but she was reading so she can be forgiven for that.  And the book was pretty interesting.  I mostly read it while running, or while walking to work or round the supermarket.  I will not be adopting Mindy's revenge-fantasy method of exercise motivation.

Finally, The Flavours of Love.  I love Dorothy Koomson.  Her books are like chick-lit thrillers, two genres I love, and I love that all her heroines are black.  It's something that appears so seldom, which makes me sad.

I read Flavours of Love over a day; a few hours before bed, on the way to work, at lunch, while donating blood, and finished it before falling asleep the next night.  I really enjoyed it.

My unread pile is now at 102.  I'm going to try to have it under 100 on New Year's Eve.  Then, next year, my goal will be to get it to under 15, where I'll try to keep it.  That seems pretty amazing to me right now - I haven't had that few unread books in my possession since I was six or seven years old.  But I think I'll be happier when I don't have all those books cluttering up the place and making me feel guilty.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 12/52

I read a LOT this week.  From Wednesday, I was off work with some sort of terrible lurgy.  I pretty much just slept and read for three or four days in a row.  Didn't eat which is probably why I fainted halfway through.

A Doll's House is a play I've read before.  Again, it's on wikisource, so I read it on a quiet Tuesday at work.  It's a classic, and considered to be one of the first if not the first feminist plays.  I saw it performed at the Birmingham rep when I was sixteen, which is ten years ago now.

True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle is another one I first read years ago.  Just over fifteen years ago actually - it was a gift for my eleventh birthday.  I think my friends just went round their local charity shops and came out with a handful of books, but I'm glad this is one of them.  It just blew me away.  It's about a proper young Victorian miss who ends up witnessing a mutiny on a ship.  Newbury Medal winner.

According to wikipedia;

A film adaption of the book is in development. It is to be written and directed by Danny DeVito, starring Morgan Freeman as Zachariah and Pierce Brosnan as Jaggery. Dakota Fanning was originally cast as Charlotte Doyle, but had to drop out as production was continually halted and she eventually grew too old for the part. Saoirse Ronan was later cast, but she also grew too old. Locations are being scouted in Ireland and shooting is set for July 2014.

Exciting!

I read The Eternal Enemy because I loved Remember Me by the same author.  Eternal Enemy is about a young girl who buys a VCR which can record the future.  She records the news and tries to prevent terrible accidents, until the day she sees her own face on there.  Unfortunately, she doesn't get all of the broadcast...something goes wrong.

That plot was described in Remember Me by Peter, one of the characters.  When I found out that Pike had actually written it, I just had to read it.  It's pretty interesting.   Heads off into sci-fi rather than horror, much like Koji Suzuki's Ring Trilogy does.

Silver Birch, Blood Moon is the fifth in a series of modernised or reimagined fairy tale anthologies edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.  I wrote a slightly longer post about the series here.

Because this volume was the first I read, I have a special fondness for it.  I love Precious obviously, but also the incredibly creepy retelling of Thumbelina, the romantic Rumpelstiltskin, and the terrible story of one of the princes who didn't make it through Sleeping Beauty's hedge.  Less fond of the retelling of Snow White, who lives in an iron graveyard and dies of tetanus.

Music Theory for Dummies is a book I bought myself for my birthday, along with my keyboard.  It's been pretty useful.  Took me a while to get through it, and I didn't quite take in all the bits about permutations of chords, but that's also covered in Piano and Keyboard All-in-One for Dummies which I'm currently reading.

Unsouled is the third part of Neal Shusterman's Unwind series.  It's set in a universe where abortion is not allowed, but you can have troublesome teenagers 'unwound' - that is, taken apart for parts.  Every cell is kept alive and donated to someone who needs it.  It's an interesting and well-written series, which really goes into the ramifications of that idea.

Finally, Don't Tell the Groom is one that popped up on Kind of Book, a site which will notify you of heavily reduced Kindle books.  I don't subscribe any more, because it was making my unread pile grow uncontrollably.

Speaking of which, my unread pile is now down to 107.  My goal is still to get it down to 100 or less by the end of the year, so I'm well on track for that, as long as I don't buy any more.

Anyway, Don't Tell the Groom.  It's about a woman who accidentally gambles away her wedding savings and then tries to organise a cheaper wedding on the sly so the groom won't find out.  She tells him she wants it to be a surprise, and from a money-saving point of view, it's interesting.  Some nice ideas, and even a shout out to Martin Lewis.  The gambling support is fairly well done too, though I'm not totally convinced at how easily the main character gave up on her bingo addiction.  I've never had an addiction, but it seems like it would take more than realising you have a problem, deciding to give up, and then only slipping up twice - once spending about £5 on scratchcards and once almost stealing a scratchcard from another bride's wedding favours.  It all seems a bit too easy. 

I mostly picked it up because it's very 'chick-lit', but touched on a serious issue which doesn't normally have a place in that genre.  I feel like more could have been done with it, but it was still a decent read.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 6/52

So, welcome to the end of my 6th week as a 26-year-old.

Walk Two Moons is something of a sequel to Absolutely Normal Chaos.  It follows Salamanca Hiddle as she traces her mother footsteps - "walk[s] two moons in [her] moccasins" - and tells her grandparents the story of the last few months.  Which she spent in the same town that Absolutely Normal Chaos was set in.

Walk Two Moons is my least favourite of the trilogy, mostly due to one element.  Salamanca Hiddle is part Native American, or Nican Tlaca.  However, her mother referred to herself as 'Indian', and part of Salamanca's character development is to claim that name for herself.  However, fuck off.

I'm Indian.  My father's family came over from Gujerat in the 60s.  I understand that Native American people didn't choose to be called 'Indian' for a time, but there are unfortunate implications all over the place in this scenario.  And I resented it.  Indian is the name for people from India.  Claim your own identity, not mine.

Chasing Redbird on the other hand, is my favourite one of the trilogy, and the first one I read.  I must have been around thirteen.  Zinnia Taylor, in trying to deal with the recent death of her aunt and the more historic death of her cousin, starts trying to uncover a twenty mile trail.  I liked the characters, I liked the plot, I liked how it was played out.  It's loosely connected to the other novels in that Zinnia was once Salamanca's best friend - although Sal doesn't mention Zinny at all - and that Zinny lives in the area Sal remembers with such fondness.

I first read Life and Laughing a couple of years ago.  I like how happy Michael McIntyre is about his life.  Not all the time - he goes through trouble with family, his dad's death, unrequited love, lots of debt, and so on, and then it all works out.  I got it as an audio book because I like his stand-up and thought it would be fun to hear him do all the voices, and to actually hear the joy in his voice.  It was.

I first saw The Illustrated Treasury of Disney Songs at the library.  It has songs from the golden age of Disney, ranging from the early years of Minnie's Yoohoo to the 90s, with vocal lines and the bass and treble lines for piano.  I like it.

Cujo was better than I remembered.  I read it over two or three days, then got through The Running Man in another two.  It was okay.  Short.  I preferred Play or Die.  I'll go into why more in my longer post about that.

I'd heard about If On A Winter's Night, A Traveler a couple of times, and it sounded interesting.  The overarching plot is about you, (yes, you reader) reading Italo Calvino's new novel If On A Winter's Night, A Traveler.  However, various shenanigans mean that, instead, you end up reading the beginning of ten different novels, none of which you are able to finish.  Once you have read these novels, the framing text begins to take on elements of them, ie, after reading a detective story, the narrative takes on elements of that.

Finally, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.  This was the third Sherlock Holmes book published, following A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four which were both novel-length adventures.  Adventures is a collection of short stories originally published in The Strand magazine, and this collection includes The Speckled Band, The Red-Headed League, and the Adventure of the Copper Beaches, among others.  I first read it when I was somewhere between nine and twelve.  I reread it during quiet moments at work this time round - the entire book is on wikisource along with all the other Sherlock Holmes stories and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's other works.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 3/52

I didn't think I'd read so much this week.  I thought I'd only finished one or two books!

Fire & Hemlock is one I first read years ago.  It's a little longer than most of Diana Wynne Jones' books, and a little bit harder to follow. In fact, the ending is a lot more satisfying and makes more sense once you have someone else talk you through it.  Or it was for me, anyway.

I've also read The High Lord before.  I do enjoy the series, but this one I listened to as an audiobook.  I started it months ago, then started listening to Firestarter and found it a bit tricky to get back in to.  On the bright side, I found that it only takes about a minute to get used to listening to audiobooks at 3x speed, which got me through it a lot faster!  It's not that I wanted it to be over - it's that I consume books like popcorn.


Songwriting for Dummies was new to me.  I bought myself a keyboard for my birthday, and it's quite fun making up songs.  I found some of the book useful, but, to be honest, I prefer this Songwriting course on coursera.  It's run by Pat Pattison of Berklee, and his lectures are absolutely fascinating.

One thing the book goes into that Pat doesn't is selling your songs, but I mostly skimmed those chapters since it's not the area I'm particularly interested in right now.

Finally, I don't even know why I had a copy of How Not to Be a Perfect Mother.  It's an informal parenting guide covering the ages 0-3.  I have no children.  I have a mirena which is not due to be removed until next March, and which will likely be replaced with another one at that time.  I have no close friends or relatives with small children whom I am expected to know things about.  In short, the subject matter of this book has no relevance to my life.  Especially not because Purves is almost offensively middleclass and was a complete idiot over the MMR issue.  Paraphrased; there is no evidence whatsoever linking MMR to autism.  "Yes, but lots of parents still feel that there is, and feelings are just as important as evidence and truth!".  Sigh.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 2/52

I've been reading bits of lots of books, so I haven't finished many recently.

Throne of Glass has been sitting in my unread pile for a while (which is now down to 126 - I need to get a move on to get it below 100 before the end of the year!).  It was okay; a fantasy story about assassins competing to be the top assassin, and ancient magic and a love triangle and whatnot.  It's part of a trilogy, but I don't feel particularly inclined to read the other parts.  Think I gave it a two or three out of five.

Disney Hits is sheet music for Disney songs.  It's a good book for beginners; it includes the vocal line and some basic chords - in essence, the melody someone would normally sing and a bit underneath it to give it depth.  It's not what you'd play if you wanted to sing it, but it's simple and recognisable.  Easy to Play the Nineties is another book of sheet music, which includes things like Always, Words and Un-Break my Heart.  Again, vocal lines and chords.

Roadwork I read as part of my challenge to read Stephen King's novels in order.  I wrote a slightly longer post about it here.

Finally, Use Your Loaf is a book on bread-making.  It's very in depth, explaining things like how yeast works, proper kneading technique, etc etc.  The first half or so is all about technique, and there's a couple of recipes at the end.  I've made some bread rolls from it already, which were delicious.  I might have a go at the actual recipes, but it's more fun to work with the formula and techniques given and try to perfect those than to use it as a recipe book.  I had a lot of fun with it - it's one of my favourite food books now!

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 1/52

These are the four books I finished in the week since turning 26, on the 12th of August.

The Myth of the Money Tree is a book I've read before.  I actually reread for my feminist bookclub - it was my suggestion.  Unfortunately, I was the only one who was able to make it that weekend, so it didn't happen.  Shame; it's quite an interesting book, about some of the issues women typically have with handling money due to social attitudes.  It was originally published in 1998, so not as relevant today as it used to be, but it still spoke to me.  Interestingly, new copies are going for almost £2500 right now while second hand copies are a penny.

I picked up the book on keyboards because I got myself a keyboard for my birthday.  I've found it the best way to distract myself from being depressed.  Last time it got this bad, learning to play the guitar worked pretty well so I guess I'm trying to repeat the trick.   This was a decent guide for total beginners, and a good refresher for people as rusty as me.  It talked through the basics of music theory and playing the keyboard, and it has some easy sheet music at the back to practice on.  I borrowed it from the library, which is probably best as it's about sixty pages long and shouldn't take more than a few hours to work through.

Ancillary Justice, I read for a bookclub, which I wasn't well enough to attend in the end.  It was okay; I couldn't really pay attention to it at the beginning, which made it a bit trickier to follow later on.  I wrote a fuller review here.

I finally finished Firestarter.  I've read it before, but this time I listened to the audiobook, which was nearly fifteen hours long.  I guess I just got really into listening to music for a month - I started this on the 4th of June and didn't finish it until the 17th of August.  I listened to about eight hours of it last week, most of it on 1.5 or double speed, which I hadn't done before.  Turns out, it's actually easier to focus at that speed.  How strange.

Firestarter was never one of my favourite King novels, although I've now read it three or four times, which puts it ahead of most of the others.

At the moment, I'm reading quite a lot of books at once.  Mostly non-fiction, because that doesn't make me feel stuff.  I should be able to mark a few of them as finished soon.

In Which We Discuss Song Lyrics

Song lyrics are a kind of writing, different from that in books, or scripts. You're limited with the words you can choose - they have to scan, for a start. So, the best song lyrics are ones that manage to evoke strong images or feelings with only a few words, taking advantage of the music to carry the meaning instead of just relying on what is being said. Most songs today don't seem to even try to reach the pinnacle of song-writing - they just talk about how much they'd like to have sex with another person, and don't even bother with clever wordplay.


A few songs are interesting. Take Big Girls Don't Cry - although those four words are continually repeated, closer listening reveals that big girls do cry, and that the narrators belief that they don't is false - and this comes across despite the story being told from his point of view.

However, my favourite Four Seasons song is actually Oh, What a Night. I'm not sure how many people notice this, but about a minute and a half in (1:47), after the line "I felt a rush like a rolling ball of thunder, spinning my head around and taking my body under, oh what a night!", the song has around fifteen seconds of instrumentals. And if you listen closely to these instrumentals, you can hear the "bom-chicka-wa-wa" of seventies porn. Fantastic. Why don't more people do things like that?

Duets are also sadly neglected. Many of them just consist of two people singing alternate verses. Things like Baby it's Cold Outside, or even A Place For Us, performed by Leigh Nash and Tyler James - I love the way their voices intertwine. Going back to Baby it's Cold Outside, well that's just a classic.