In Which We Discuss Pet Sematary

I've read Pet Sematary before, but this time, reading it in context of King's other published novels, I found it kind of adorable.  Firstly, in the introduction he talks about Owen and Naomi, his youngest and eldest children.  He tells a story about Naomi that is later echoed by the daughter in Pet Sematary; of when their cat died, and he explained to Naomi that god had taken the cat to be with him.  Naomi had screamed "God can get his own cat!".

He also told a story that more directly influenced the story; that of Owen's near miss with a giant truck.  If I recall correctly, this is the same road where King would later be hit by a car.

Finally, at one point, Louis muses on twins, one of whom dies in the womb and is absorbed by the other, later showing up as a tumour of teeth or hair in their sibling.  This later shows up in The Dark Half.  Rachel also drives past Jerusalem's Lot, musing on the name.

James Smythe comments on the pace of the book, something I noticed.  It's very much a slow burn, like The Dead Zone, but it comes to fruition rather than being lanced.

The book is genuinely scary, not just creepy.  We can see ourselves making the same decisions Louis does.  The story is born of a pretty straightforward adult fear, and King also mentions in the introduction that he hid the book away for several years before allowing it to be published because he felt like he'd gone too far.

I also read Cycle of the Werewolf over the past few days.  Very short little novella; 12 chapters, with illustrations.  I admit, I skimmed it a bit.

James Smythe draws a link with King's addictions, and also points out that this sort of thing exists for serious collectors.

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 Audible Badges

So, my Audible app just updated itself and now it has a whole bunch of new badges on it.  Or, rather, they are almost the exact same badges that were on there before but now they work slightly better.

The new badges are as follows, in alphabetical order.   The entries with question marks are those that I don't actually have yet.

Edit: my app just (18th September 2020) updated to announce I'd achieved the silver level of The Librarian.  I passed 200 books long ago, so I suspect there's been some kind of update.

Badge Name	What to Do	Basic	Silver	Gold
The Annotator	Add a bookmark with a note.	10 bookmarks	40 bookmarks	125 bookmarks
Bitesized Bookworm	Listen to parts of different titles in one day.	3 titles	15 titles	40?
7 Day Stretch	Complete books in one week (note; I earned this by marking books I'd read before as 'finished', not by listening to them all in one week).	3 books	5 books	10 books
Deja Vu	Listen to books multiple times.	3 times	10?	20 times
Done and Dusted	Listen to one complete book, start to finish.	1 book	3 books	5 books
The Epic	Complete  titles over x hours long.	20 hours	35 hours	50 hours
High Noon	Listen during lunchtime (hours do not have to be consecutive!)	1 hour	2 hours	3 hours
The Librarian	Collect audiobooks!	50?	200	500?
Marathoner	Listen for hours in a row.	2 hours	5 hours	8 hours
Night Owl	Listen during the evening or night (hours do not have to be consecutive!)	4 hours	6 hours	8 hours
The Optimist	Have unfinished books in your library.  They must be downloaded and marked as unfinished.	10?	20?	75?
On the Trot	Listen to a portion of an audio book every day.	7 days in a row	30 days in a row	90?
Social Butterfly	Share something to facebook or twitter from the app.	5 times	25 times	100 times
Stats Surfer	View the stats screen.	50 times	200 times	500?
Weekend Warrior	Listen during the weekend (hours do not have to be consecutive!)	5 hours	10 hours	24 hours

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 15/52

So, I read five books lasy week.  Not bad.  I also succeeded in getting my unread pile down to 100, though I promptly picked up a few audio books.  I normally go for audio books I've read before, so listening to totally new novels will be a new experience for me.

Speaking of new novels, both Sushi for Beginners and 50 Ways to Find a Lover have been in my unread pile for a while.  Years, in fact.  I'm glad I finally got around to both because I really enjoyed them.  They're both 'chick-lit', a genre which I have a not-so-secret passionate for.  Sushi for Beginners was wonderfully predictable.  The assholes got what they deserved.  The people I liked got what they deserved.  It was comfortable, but just surprising enough to be interesting.

I mostly liked 50 Ways to Find a Lover because of the main character.  She was disgusting, in a very lovable and realistic way.  All the stuff you do in secret but don't admit to, she doesn't care.  I kind of like that.

Dear Everybody I didn't like so much.  It was an image of a suicidal man's life built up from letters he left behind, by his delusional and naive younger brother.  A quick read, but not that amazing.

I loved the short stories though.  Philip K. Dick may not be good at titles, but he was a good storyteller.  I really liked them once I got into them, though they were sitting on my unread pile for a while before then.

Finally, Double Star.  I read that for a book club.  I only decided to go at the last minute, and the book just dragged me in.  Very short, under two hundred pages, and I read it over one day.  About an actor who is hired to temporarily fill in for a kidnapped politician.  We had fun at the bookclub.  We found out what we were all like at fifteen.

I have decided that "what were you like at fifteen?" is the best ice-breaking question ever.  No one has a boring answer.

In Which We Discuss Christine

I first read Christine in 2008.  Since then, I have described it as 300 pages of plot in a 700 page novel.  I'm not totally sure if I feel that way any more.  A second read through has allowed me to take my time and absorb the plot more without being so impatient to get to the end.  I enjoyed it more, but it's still not in my top ten.

The book reminds me a little of my grandfather; he named his car Christine.

I started making a playlist using the songs quoted in the book, but accidentally returned the book to the library before I finished it.  It's a very good playlist; I particularly enjoyed Woody Guthrie's Take You Ridin' in my Car.

James Smythe seems to have had a similar opinion to myself on this one, though, as always, he's expressed it rather better.

I finished Christine almost a week ago, and it's taken me this long to write this much.  The next book is Pet Semetary, which I've also read before, probably about the same time as Christine.  I picked that up from the library a few days ago and still haven't started - it's been a busy week.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 14/52

Firstly, some news.  I'm on a final written warning at work due to absence.  Mostly it's because I took two months off in the middle of summer due to depression.  The straw that broke the camel's back was the recent five days I took off when I had such a bad cold that I nearly fainted one day, after not being to eat.  All very sad.

I thought of this when writing this post because it lasts for a year.  I'm already 14 weeks, or nearly three months, into being 26.  So maybe it won't be that long until I'm 14 weeks into 27, with a clear record again.

I listened to The Vagina Monologues rather than read them.  I really don't enjoy Eve Ensler's performance, not as much as I did seeing it performed last year.  I listened to it in the car with my new boyfriend.  He quite enjoyed it.  He grew up outnumbered by sisters, so he's already well broken in.

I read Perks of Being a Wallflower because it's been sitting on my kindle for ages and because the film got such good reviews.  It was awful.  Halfway through, it came as a shock to learn that the narrative character was supposed to be a highly literate, intelligent sixteen-year-old and not a slightly simple eight-year-old.  Writing like someone who doesn't communicate well can be used to great effect - for example, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - but not when the character in question is being raved about by other characters for their writing skills.

Last Continent is another one I listened to.  A Discworld book, which I've read before.  I appear to be listening to all of the Discworld books, in no particular order.  I've since moved on to Monstrous Regiment, so you'll see that pop up in a week or two.  Nigel Planer gives an excellent performance, and his accent doesn't wander nearly so much as the Egyptian one he attempted for Pteppic's father in Pyramids.

Christine was part of my Stephen King Chronological Reading Project.  I really need to get a move on and write a proper post for that, I finished it two days ago.

I first read Christine in 2008.  At the time, I felt it had about half as much plot as the pages actually required.  I read it with less impatience this time, and enjoyed it a little more.  The next one will be Pet Semetary, which I've also read before, and which I'll pick up from the library tomorrow.

Big Girls don't cry is yet another old favourite.  I first read it at fifteen or sixteen and it blew me away.  One particular line has been adopted as my personal philosophy; get the foundations right and the building can go up anyhow it likes.  The line applies to underwear and clothing, but I think of it as applying to all beauty.  Master clear skin, well-cut hair and neat eyebrows, and don't bother to put make-up on everyday, is my philosophy.

Finally, Grimm Tales Made Gay.  Humourous verses based on Grimm's Fairytales.  I read it at work.  Short and amusing.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 13/52

Another slow week.  I've been working my way through The Second Sex, so everything else has pretty much taken a back seat to that.

Aberystwyth Mon Amour is a hard-boiled detective novel set in Aberystwyth, a quite little Welsh seaside town.  The juxtaposition is kind of funny, and it's an interesting read.  I had a really nice day trip to Aberystwyth back in February, and I saw them in the museum then, so I bought it when it popped up cheaply on Kindle.

Rivers of London is a police procedural meets Harry Potter.  MET Cop learns magic is real, learns some, hunts ghost-serial-killer who is murdering through evil voodoo puppetry.  I'm reading it for a bookclub.  The meeting isn't for quite a while, but I was on a Sunday shift at work, and we can generally get away with reading then.  Only paperbacks, no kindles, hence why I didn't get on with The Second Sex (the bookclub for that is this Saturday!).

I actually read the sequel to this a while ago.  I don't remember disliking it, but though I've had Rivers of London on my bookcase for a while I just haven't gotten around to actually reading it till now.