In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 25/52

Six books last week!  That's the 28th January to the 3rd of February.

Three were audio books and relatively short.  Charm School and Flour Babies are both around three hours long and both are books I first read and loved around 11 or 12.  I do love Anne Fine's writing.

I finally finished Adventures in the Dream Trade.  That's a collection of introductions and other bits and pieces by Neil Gaiman, including his online diary of the bits between writing and publishing American Gods, which I'm now rereading.

Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears is a collection of modern fairytales.  There are some particularly good ones in this collection, including my favourite one about a kitsune, which is a lovely word to say.  Kitsune.

About A Boy is a book I first read as a teenager.  This was the audiobook and I love Julian Rhind-Tutt's performance, actually more than that of Hugh Grant in the movie (and not least because I'm a bit of a Green Wing fan).

I've just heard that the book is being taught in secondary schools now, which I love.  I've reread it a few times over the years and I can see it would be an excellent point of discussion for teenagers.

It's weird to think of a book that I love being a 'school book'.  Though, of course, Shakespeare and Dickens et all were all very popular authors, and I do read Dickens novels for fun.

Better Than Before was a useful book.  It's about habits and motivation and so far I'm using two very useful tips.

The first one is the 'tendencies' the author sees people as being split into.

Upholders who are equally motivated by external and internal expectations.
Obligers, who are more motivated by external goals but more likely to let internal goals or expectations lapse.
Questioners, who will not accept a goal or expectation until they have question it and internalised it as acceptable.
Rebels, who defy expectations and find it hard to be motivated by a goal.

I'm definitely an obliger; if I decide to do something I find it very easy to talk myself out of it, whereas if someone else expects me to do something I find it harder to avoid. So the trick for me will be to externalise any habits I decide to do.  I've already done this; I've told my fb friends that if I don't stick to my study schedule for the week then I'm going to put the UKIP logo up as my facebook banner and my PC and phone background.   So far, that threat has been sufficient to get me up at 7am to study between 7:30am - 8:30am because I couldn't manage at any other time in the morning.

The other useful bit is realising that I'm very much a starter.  I LOVE starting new projects.  I love making new blogs, buying new notebooks and pens, making details plans...but I'm a bit meh on actually finishing things.  Knowing that is useful.  It's why my unread pile doesn't go down and why I end up buying books which I later just donate to charity.  Still working on ways to get around it, but at least I understand the issue better now.

In Which We Discuss Four Past Midnight

Four Past Midnight is a collection of short novellas, similar to Four Seasons though rather less famous and with a greater focus on horror and the supernatural.  It's Stephen King's 31st published work by my count, in 1990.

I had read it before, although I didn't remember much of it.  I remembered The Langoliers but not the details of Secret Window, Secret Garden which was the very story I picked the collection up for.

The Langoliers focuses on a few people who wake up on a plane with everyone else gone.  I like the Langoliers, the supernatural monsters that turn up halfway through.

Secret Window, Secret Garden was turned into a movie starring Johnny Depp.  That on focuses on plagiarism.

The Library Policeman was also very good; however, I do find it interesting that Stephen King mentions that 'the library policeman' was a fear of his younger son, Owen.  The character who is pursued by it pictures it in that form because he was raped by a man calling himself a 'library policeman' at an early age.  I'm not sure I'd be able to separate the two characters once one had grown from the other.  That's one of the many reasons why Stephen King is a much better writer than I am.

Sun Dog is a weird little story about a camera.  Rather enjoyable in its own way.

James Smythe points out in his article that many people focus on The Langoliers, like I did.  He's also reminded me that Sun Dog is part of a series with Needful Things and, I think, either The Dark Half or The Tommyknockers.  It also features Pop Merril as a main character, Pop being the uncle of Ace from The Body and related to several characters in The Tommyknockers.  A character in the Sun Dog also refers to the divorce and suicide of The Dark Half's Thad Beaumont.

So now, on to The Wastelands, the third Dark Tower novel.  I'm also part of the way through Haunted Heart, a biography of Stephen King which I hope will give me some interesting background.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 24/52

I'm very late in writing this.  When I say 'late' I mean it's now Tuesday and I'm due to post the 25th week tomorrow.

I read five books between 20th - 26th January.  Three library books, an audio book and a Kindle book.

I'm not really any more impressed with the second Scott Pilgrim graphic novel.  I think Michael Cera's crappy acting and total lack of chemistry with Ramona's actor - as well as the lack of character development - has ruined it for me.

The Stone Angel was very enjoyable.  It's by a Canadian author - and the essay at the back points out how few of these we know of, apart from Margaret Atwood - and is something of a classic, I gather.  It's the life of Hagar, a Canadian woman born at the turn of the century.  It flips between her childhood and her time in her nineties, fighting over being asked to leave her own home and forced into a nursing home.

Big Brother is a book I read years ago.  I enjoy 90% of it, but the last 10% ruins it for me.

I had the same sort of issue with Woman's World.  Woman's World is told using cuttings from 60s women's magazines, like a ransom note.  It's a useful storytelling technique, considering the character.

What disappoints me about the ending is that the issues raised are not resolved.  They just...magically go away.  Which is a lot less interesting than actually dealing with it.

Unseemly Science is the second in the Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire series, focusing on Elizabeth Barnabas and her cross-dressing adventures as her imaginary brother, Edwin.  The Gas-Lit Empire has very Victorian values you see, and being a man can be incredibly useful.  I enjoyed it, enough to have pre-ordered the third book, which comes out on Thursday.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 23/52

Six books last week; that is 13th to 20th January.  One audiobook - Liar - and two books which I'd been reading over Christmas.  Three library books.

I enjoyed Liar.  I wasn't quite sure what to make of it afterwards, so I read the TV Tropes page, which helped.  I actually read the book because of Justine Labalestier's blogpost regarding the cover. As a woman of colour - a mixed race woman of colour - seeing mixed race women represented in fiction is important to me.

That's one thing Scott Pilgrim's pretty bad at, incidentally.  Dealing with people of colour.  I saw the movie years ago and picked up the graphic novel because it was in the library.  It's not brilliant or particularly well-drawn, though it is slightly less racist than the movie if only because it avoided giving the one Indian character a Bollywood number.  I very much agree with this post on the movie.

I very much enjoyed Funny Girl.  I read it in one night; I didn't mean to, I just didn't want to stop.  It's about the TV industry in the '60s.  It's fictitious but includes real photographs from the decade; if it wasn't fiction the characters would easily slip into reality.

I've been reading American Wife since before Christmas.  The library only had the large print version, which made it a 900 page tome.  I eventually just gave in and bought the damn thing for the Kindle just so I didn't have to lug it around any more.  I enjoyed the book; it's a fictionalisation of the life of a first lady.  It's mostly inspired by Laura Bush, which is fair enough; unless you want to write a total alternate history you'd have to at least loosely base it on of the three women who've held the role over the last twenty years.

Tim Ferriss' Four Hour Body is a book on self-experimentation, with specific things that Tim Ferriss has found to work on himself.  It's a pretty interesting read.  The most interesting point he made is that a calorie is literally a unit of energy; people think of it only as something that can be stored (as fat) or converted into work (exercise) but you can also lose it thermodynamically or as matter (ie, shivering and shitting).  Thermodynamics is the easiest one to manage, without indulging in some unhealthy habits.  That's why swimming takes so much energy; you're also letting off heat, since the water's fairly cool.

Finally, Four Past Midnight.  I need to write a longer post about that.

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 21/52

 

Seven books this week - 30th December to 6th January.

Both The Visitor's Book and Something Untoward are collections of Sophie Hannah's short stories.  There are four in the former and six in the latter; both are quite creepy, so god only knows why I read them together.

Marionette focuses on a lesbian teenager who has recently tried to commit suicide; it's a little bit about things going better but also, surprisingly, a little bit mafia.  I enjoyed it.

Lasting Damage is the 6th book in Sophie Hannah's Spilling CID series.  I don't yet have the next one, Kind of Cruel, which is why I've listened to three other audiobooks this week.  The odd thing about the audio of Lasting Damage is the fact that there are two readers; one male and one female, one for the main narrative and one for the first person bits.  Why bother?  The main character in the narrative is Charlie (a woman) anyway, and one female reader sufficed for all the previous books.  It worked in Rose Madder because the two characters were male and female and in direct opposition.  Also because the male reader was the author, which was an interesting novelty by itself.

Anyway; I also listened to Modern Romance, The Girls and The Tales of Max Carrados, the last of which was a loyalty gift from Audible.  Apparently Max Carrados' popularity rivalled that of Sherlock Holmes at the time of printing.  The story was okay, but my Homles stage was twelve years ago and I worked it out of my system then.  Sorry Carrados.

I did like Modern Romance, though Aziz Ansari does occasionally tell you off for making him read it to you.  It's non-fiction, focusing on romance in the modern world (duh).  Ansari has spoken to focus groups of varying ages to get an idea of how romance has changed, as well as speaking to various experts.  He observed that most people who are pensioners now typically married someone who lived near them at the age of 23-24.  Today, most people meet online - more than meet through friends or university - though many are still embarrassed to admit that.  I found it really interesting.

Finally, The Girls.  It was an okay ride; I've been walking a lot recently, which is why I finished it so quickly. 

Pretty early on, you're given an obvious suspect for the crime.  That suspect remains obvious - so obvious that there's no mystery to it at all - until the last minute, when the real culprit gets away scot free.  I am genuinely concerned about Lisa Jewell's children, considering how often she's writing about them getting away with despicable and selfish behaviour.  Speaking of Lisa Jewell's children, one of the readers for this book is her daughter.  She can read well for a nine-year-old, but I really dislike London accents so that was quite off-putting.

In Which We Discuss 2015

This year, I read the following268 books.

 

The following 179 books were completely new to me;

...and I bought a total of 123 books this year.

In theory, that should mean my unread pile dropped by 56.  That's not actually the case.  Some of the new books were gifts, some were library books and so on.  That said, I am going to try to limit the number of books I purchase in 2016.  I'm thinking a total of sixty over the entire year.

Finally, here is my unread pile so far;

That leaves my unread pile at 65 for the end of 2015, down from 104.  I'll try to get it to below 15 by the end of the year.  I'll try to read at least one or two per week.