In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 4/52

Wow.  I've been twenty-six for a month already.  That's gone quite fast.

Most of these books were new to me, though some had been sitting in my unread pile for quite a while.  Feather Boy has been in there for about a year, and I'm so glad I left it in there.  I considered donating it to a charity shop so many times.  It's aimed at either children or young adults, and I really liked it.

Everyday Bento is a nice beginners guide to creating pretty bentoes for children, although there's no reason not to scale up.  It includes specific directions for making a few designs which is nice, although it doesn't tend to reuse things like picks very often, so if you wanted to make them as specified there'd be quite a huge initial outlay.  Good for ideas though.  It goes more into modern bento designs rather than bento theory.

Bad Science is a book I've read before.  It's basically a long rant by Ben Goldacre over common mistakes in how science is reported in the media, along with calling out specific people who spread inaccurate information along with why exactly it's inaccurate.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is another one that's been on my unread pile for over a year.  I bought it for my kobo ages ago, and I'm quite pleased to have gotten round to reading it now.  It reminded me a lot of Shanghai Girls which was the first book of Lisa See's that I read, and which I really enjoyed.  It continued the theme of two women who are close, and yet who misunderstand each other.  I also liked learning about Nu Shu, which was a secret script used by and known only to women.

Finally, Danse Macabre.  I read it as part of my Chronological Reading Project, and I loved it.  It's non-fiction, and covers horror through the fifties, sixties and seventies.  King discusses his favourite films and novels, and how he felt they contributed to the genre, as well as his thoughts on the genre itself.  It includes recommended reading/watching lists at the end, and I'm pretty sold on them.

This was a good week!

In Which We Discuss Integral Ameretat

There is an art to putting a meal together.  You need a balance of flavour, of lightness and heaviness, of nutrition, of crunchiness and softness, and so on.  You need contrast amongst dishes which should also complement each other - they complete each other.

There isn't a word for this.  At least, not as far as google can tell me.  But when I googled, I found two words I liked.  Integral stands alone, obviously, but I also liked this sentence, from here;

The word integral is used in Spanish to describe wholeness (as in wholemeal bread or whole wheat).

Ameretat I got from here, and this was the quote I liked;

...in the Yasna, the great liturgical text of Zoroastrian ritual, Haurvatat and Ameretat are repeatedly honored: one as the divine guardian of the water and other liquids used in the libations of the ritual, the other as the guardian of the plant materials used in the ritual such as wood for the Fire, and the plants, fruits, and flour that make up the foods consecrated at Zoroastrian ceremonies.

So there we go.  Integral Ameretat refers to the completeness and wholeness of a meal, and how the dishes interact and complement and contrast with one another.  I made it up.  Let's use it!

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 Tattoos

I have two tattoos so far; a red butterfly on my ribcage, and ivy on my inner thigh.  I got them both done at the same time, a few years ago, and I adore them.  I'm planning to get another soon.

My red butterfly - nicknamed Patrick - was inspired by the Project Zero/Fatal Frame games, particularly the second one, Crimson Butterfly.  It was really anything to do with the game itself - it was the end song, Chou or Butterfly.  There's a line in which I first saw translated as "See, I can flutter better than you thought".  I liked the song, and I liked that sentiment.  Other parts of the song - particularly the start of the chorus which loosely translates to "burned down/burn on" also appealed to me.  I've struggled with depression since my early teens, so this idea of burning, destruction, etc, followed immediately by the idea of "see, I can flutter better than you thought" spoke to me.  It spoke of recovery and hope.

I started using the red butterfly as a custom smilie to sign off forum posts.  I was about seventeen then.  When I was twenty-one or twenty-two and getting my ivy tattoo, I asked them to take five minutes to put my butterfly on me. It was a spur of the moment decision which was exactly right.

My ivy was a little less straightforward.  I started planning that tattoo out in early 2007 when I was eighteen.  I knew I wanted it to be a twining ivy design on my left inner thigh.  I liked the idea of it being slightly seductive; you'd see the edge of it below a miniskirt and wonder how high it went.  I also wanted my tattoos to be somewhere I could see them, and I preferred them to be somewhere that was hidden by default.  Not because I'm ashamed of them; because I like to customise my look with wigs and different outfits and make-up, so I didn't want anything permanent on display.

Ivy as a symbol had been in my head for a while.  I associate it with my maternal line; my great-grandmother's cottage was covered in it, and there are paintings of ivy in my grandmother's current home.  It was always around when I was a child.  I also like that it's tenacious and stubborn.  That appealed to me too.

I decided to have my tattoos done after I was raped for the second time.  It was part of recovering; I wanted to reclaim my body as mine and I wanted it to hurt so the knowledge really burnt into me.  The tattoos I'd been planning for years seemed the best way to do that.  I'm glad I didn't try to be too 'deep' or referential with them; I could so easily have gone for a relevant quote or something more objectively symbolic which was easier to explain, but also less personal.  That wouldn't have been right for me.

I've often thought that the way I feel about my tattoos is the way I'd like to feel about anyone I marry.  The voice in your head should say "YES THAT ONE" as loudly as possible.  When they ask "I do", the response should be "You're damn right I do".

Since I've been struggling with another bout of depression recently, I've been thinking of getting another tattoo if I reach a certain date.  I'm thinking November.

I want a castle on a hillside.  The hillside will be my right hip, and will follow the curves of my body.  The castle will be a rook, ie, the chess piece.  It's a castle imitation.

The main idea comes from the song Castle Imitation, which appears at the end of the game Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter.  You see, in that game, there's a bonus dungeon.  Fifty floors of battles, no saving, limited inventory, starting with a level 1 party.  Takes about eight hours.  I completed it over a weekend; the first time, I died on the fiftieth floor, so I tried again the next day and finally made it through.  Then I defeated the final boss - which was MUCH easier - and finished the entire game.

The basic premise of Dragon Quarter is that the entire society lives underground.  Your party are trying to reach the surface and the mythical 'sky'.  You start 1000 metres below ground and work your way up. 

So, the end of the game; the combination of my having spent sixteen hours over two days finishing that damn dungeon and the fact that my characters finally got out of the darkness and felt the sunlight for the first time in their lives...it was a good moment.  I had a sense of complete and utter relief when I heard that ending song, Castle Imitation.   I still feel that when I hear the song now.  Just a sense of...it's over, it's done, you did it, you can rest now.  I've felt relief on other occasions, of course, but this was the most distilled version.  Every other time, it was tempered with something else, and it was more complicated, and it wasn't really over.  This was a game; it was a discrete experience that wasn't connected to anything but itself.  That's why that feeling wasn't diluted, and that's why that's the memory I want to commemorate.

It reminds me of my favourite line from A Streetcar named Desire; "Sometimes, there's God, so quickly". I've used that on occasions when I've felt that feeling of relief; on suddenly having a job offer, or receiving money when you didn't know how you were going to pay all the bills that month.  I'm an atheist and I'm not a huge fan of the play otherwise, so I don't want to ink anything more strongly connected onto me.  It's just a nice little bonus in this case.

The song has a line in it; "Ikite, ikite, ikite, ikite, ikite...".  It translate to "I live, live, live, live live...".  I like that.  It reminds me of other things, most notably my favourite line in my favourite novel, Jinian Footseer.  Jinian is depressed, and is suffering from total emotional numbness.  Bartelmy shocks her back into feeling, and asks if she would rather be alive than dead, even if it hurts.  Jinian replies;  "I would rather be alive.  Even if it hurts".

I would rather be alive.  Even if it hurts.  That's the other thing I want my tattoo to say.  I'm alive, and I'm okay, and I got through it, and when bad things happen sometimes there will be god so quickly, and I would rather be alive even if it hurts.

In Which We Discuss Roadwork

See, I said I'd get through them a bit faster.

Roadwork was Stephen King's 10th published novel, in 1981.  It covers a man slowly backing himself into a corner while trying not to think about what he's doing.

I think I must have read this before, since I'm sure I read the entire volume of Bachman Books when I first got it.  And certain parts of it - Olivia mostly - rang a bell.  Other than that, it didn't particularly stand out to me.  It's short, I'll give it that - around 320 pages.  The last hundred went fastest.

Again, James Smythe offers far more insight than I can.  Apparently, the novel was King's response to watching his mother die of cancer.  He hated it at first, but has since come to consider it one of his favourite early novels.

There are also links to other novels; the Blue Ribbon Laundry, which Barton runs, shares a name with the one Carrie's mother works in, as well as the one where the Mangler came to life in Night Shift.

Next up is Cujo, the novel King doesn't remember writing because he drank his way through it.  King was drinking and doing drugs heavily in this period of his life, and an intervention was staged after the publication of Cujo.  King didn't become fully sober and straight until the late 1980s, before writing Needful Things.  We should bear this in mind through the next few novels.

While researching that, I learned that King's daughter, Naomi, is living with her same-sex partner.  Good for her!

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.