In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 30/52

Six books last week!  That's the 3rd March to the 9th March.

I listened to the first three series' of Clare in the Community a radio show about a social worker.  I listened to the whole eight series' about two years ago and felt like doing it again.

I also listened to Brave New World, which I found quite interesting.  I enjoyed Contact more than the movie.  I liked that it shows women in STEM fields, with some struggles but also just very good at science.

Disclaimer I read for a bookclub, which I ended up missing due to having a migraine.  It's an interesting story marred by truly awful, amateurish writing.  The writer is quite experienced in other media, so it seems odd that she'd do so badly here.  Maybe it was assumed she didn't need a story editor, or maybe it's just that writing prose is very different from writing plays?  I plan to write a long post, pointing out specific bits which didn't make sense.  Oh, and it was also marred by the fact that the 'twist' was easy to see coming, from quite a long way away, though it took the characters much longer to spot it.

In Which We Discuss My Unread Pile

So here's the shot for March;

So far this calendar year, I've bought 15 new books, which is just over one per week and well on track to buying less than 60 new books this year.  Considering I bought 124 in 2015 that's a huge difference!

My unread pile is down to 53; again, on track to getting it below 30 by the end of the year.  Ideally, I'd like to get it below 10 or even 5.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 29/52

Seven books last week!  That's 25th February to the 2nd March.  Bluebeard's Egg and Breakfast at Tiffany's are both library books.  I didn't enjoy Breakfast at Tiffany's because I didn't like Holly Golightly.  She's an annoying little twit and quite self-centred.  Bluebeard's Egg had some interesting stories but like most of Atwood's stories they didn't have a lot of plot.  I like plot.  Plot is awesome.  I enjoy books with plot.  You can do many excellent things without a lot of plot, such as examining situations and thinking about them.  But I quite like when things actually happen.

The Seventh Pan Book of Horror Stories did have plots.  Most of the stories were pretty Victorian, as it was published in the sixties and included a lot of Victorian work.  I found there wasn't a lot of build-up; most of the stories simply explained the horror and that was the end of it.

I did enjoy the short story by Harry Harrison in the collection, moreso than The Stainless Steel Rat.  It was okay, just not the sort of thing I normally go for; a cyberpunk piracy and conman story.

Memoirs of a Geisha is a book I've returned to over and over in the past decade.  This was the first time I'd listened to the audiobook, which I enjoyed once I'd gotten used to the voice.  I like listening to books on 3x speed; it makes longer books much more accessible.  Which is how I finished the Harry Potter series, though it did make me cry on the bus.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 28/52

Ten books last week - 18th February to 24th February.

It's actually only seven books; Day of the Dead, Seven Deadly Sins, and Being an Account of the Life and Death of the Emperor Heliogabolus were all books I read a few weeks ago but didn't date for some reason.

I listened to the fourth and fifth Harry Potter books this week.  I thought I'd read the fifth book before, but now I come to listen to it I don't think I can have.  I definitely read Goblet of Fire back when it first came out.  They've very enjoyable.  I'm reading along with the essays on hpcompanion.

Haunted Heart is an biography of Stephen King.  I rather enjoyed it.  The book goes into the way that Stephen King tries to write away his fears.  It's a kind of superstition; if he writes about it it won't happen.  Which explains a lot.  Speaking of Stephen King The Dark: Tower: The Gunslinger is a graphic novel of part of The Gunslinger.  I'd forgotten half of the plot - mostly because I wasn't paying attention - so it was a nice refresher.

I liked The Psychopath Test better than So You've Been Publicly Shamed, I suspect because Jon Ronson didn't read it to me.  He's a much better writer than he is a reader.

I read Big Fish because I loved the film.  The book wasn't as good.  Less clear and fantastical, and more subtle in a way that was less interesting.

I didn't enjoy The Great Unexpected that much either; Sharon Creech's books are always a bit hit or miss for me.

Finally, Goblet of Fire and The Order of the Phoenix.  I'd read Goblet before and I thought I'd read Phoenix but now I've listened to it I don't think I can have.

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

Eight books last week!  That's 10th February to 17th February.

I finished the Matched series.  I've owned the first one for years - first read it in 2012 - so I borrowed the two sequels from the library.  It wasn't mind-blowing, but it was fun and nice to finally get some closure.  You can probably read something into the fact that I didn't read the sequels back when I first read the first book.



I also finished the Gas Lit Empire series this week, with The Custodian of Marvels.  My reaction is about the same as to the Matched series, though I did get through it a lot faster.  Part of that is because it's harder to find good audiobooks I can listen to on 3x speed so when I find a series with the right level of listenability I tend to go for it.

I also finished the Spilling CID series, although there's no indication that this book is the end of the series.  A very meta book, The Narrow Bed.   

Spoilers to follow! 

The killer has decided to murder everyone who gave an unwanted ereader to someone else and to kill the recipients who politely accepted the ereaders and shoved them in a drawer.  I'm kind of glad I listened to it as an audiobook and kept the fuck out of that mess.  There's also a straw feminist character, which is almost as bad as Hannah deciding Andrew Wakefield was being picked on.  No other character - not even Charlie who lives an exceptionally feminist life - says anything to the tune of "I'm a feminist but she's a tad overboard".  We just have one crazy feminist as our only example.  

Not one of her stronger efforts, in many ways.

End Spoilers.

The Broken was another audiobook.  It focused on two couples - with dreadful, ugly, London accents - one of whom breaks up.  It kind of fails at being mysterious and intriguing, though it does try.  The final twist was excellent, but there wasn't a lot of build up to it and it wasn't an exciting journey.

Finally, I listened to the first three Harry Potter books.  I originally read The Chamber of Secrets when I was ten or eleven, closely followed by Philosopher's Stone, Prisoner of Azkaban and The Goblet of Fire.

I kind of lost interest at that point.  It's hard to pinpoint why.  Some of it was to do with having a crush on Ron and then having very confused feelings about Hermione, whom I otherwise liked.  I was also put off by Rupert Grinch who looked nothing like I imagined the character.

I think there was an element of backlash as well.  With so many people raving about the series I didn't feel able to join in.  While I can't criticise the books themselves, my enjoyment of them kind of soured.

Now it's been fifteen years and I'm getting some of my affection for the series back.  It helps that I'm listening on Audible which makes it go by a lot faster; the entire series on 3x speed is less than 45 hours.

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

It's my half birthday!

I read nine books last week - 4th - 10th February.  Four audiobooks, three books on my kindle, and two library books.

The library books were Shopaholic to the Rescue and The Waste Lands, which I wrote a longer post about here.  Shopaholic to the Rescue wasn't quite as bad as the other books in the Shopaholic series.  I really liked the first three; I read them as a teenager and they were amazing.  But then they kept coming.  On and on and on and on and....

I did like Step by Wicked Step.  It's one of Anne Fine's children novels, and after listening to Charm School and Flour Babies last week I thought I'd give this one a go.

The Imperfectionists and Little Star are both books I've had on my kobo for years.  I finally felt it was time to get around to them.  They were both pretty good when I got going, although Little Star was far, far too gory for my taste.

I actually read Little Star because I used a random number generator to pick which book to read from my unread pile next.  I did that again when I finished and it picked Middlesex so I'll start that tomorrow.

I reread Matched because it seemed time to finish the series.  I first read it a couple of years ago.  I've borrowed the second and third parts of the trilogy from the library, so I'll soon know how it turned out.

Witch World is a book I've listened to before.  I love Christopher Pike.  He's like Stephen King  for teenagers and with slightly more of a sci-fi bent.

The Telling Error was another book I'd read before.  It's the latest book in the Spilling CID series until The Narrow Bed comes out...tomorrow!  I just went to check.  Didn't realise how close it was, thought it was ages away.  Yay!

Finally, The Ice Twins.  A weird little psychological thriller.  Pretty good, though I forget what made me choose it.

In Which We Discuss The Wastelands

I am really getting into the Dark Tower series now.  The Wastelands was something rather like the DLR - a cross between a roller-coaster and a train ride.

This third novel in the series has Roland dealing with his newly contradictive memory and the Ka-Tet moving further along the beam towards the tower.  There's also a bright pink, crazy, train, a mechanical bear god and a killing spree set off by 80s music.  It all works, somehow.

Following this, there was a six-year-gap before the next installation was published.  This means I need to read the following before I find out what happens next;

Needful Things - 1991
Gerald's Game - 1992
Dolores Claiborne - 1992

Nightmares and Dreamscapes - 1993
Insomnia - 1994
Rose Madder - 1995
The Green Mile - 1996
Desperation - 1996

The Regulators - 1996
Six Stories - 1997
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass - 1997

In this case, the bolded books are the ones I've read previously.  Gerald's Game and Dolores Claiborne are part of a loose series, which is thematically similar to my favourite, Rose Madder.  Nightmares and Dreamscapes is another short-story collection.  I've read Insomnia once and Green Mile twice, I think.  The move was pretty good.

Hopefully, those ten books will take less than six years for me to read.  Eight more after that and I'll be out of the nineties!

This has been a very long-running project.  It's taken me almost three years to read thirty-two books, and that's out of a total of ninety-three.  In other words I'm 34% of the way through!

I can (and do) read faster than that, as you can tell from my weekly logs.  But I can't read just one author.

In the afterword, Stephen King seems to indicate that this is his favourite of his own series'.  His magnum opus.  James Smythe points out that this is where the series began to take shape, to find its form.  It's an excellent post.

Onwards to Needful Things which loosely follows the Sun Dog from Four Past Midnight.  I've read it before, about a decade ago, though I don't remember too many of the details.