In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 11/52

Only two this week - I've been busy.

A Wag Abroad is the sequel to The Wag's Diary, both by Alison Kervin.  Honestly, I was pretty disappointed.  The first book worked because it was silly with a lot of heart.  The sequel ups the silly and loses some of the heart.  The plot is transparent and flimsy.  Several times, it is necessary for Tracie to misunderstand a conversation, and the way this is done is far too obvious and contrived.  Tracie also manages to go from basically intelligent but ignorant of things outside of her area of interest to a total idiot.  Finally, the production values were incredibly low on the ebook; poorly formatted, typoes everywhere, etc.  I only finished it on goodwill left over from the first one.  Probably won't bother with the third.

As for Different Seasons, I wrote a longer post on that here. 

In Which We Discuss Creepshow and Different Seasons

I've been reading so fast I've gotten a little behind, so here, have two in one.

Creepshow was the first screenplay Stephen King wrote, if I recall correctly.  Directed by George Romero, it consists of three short stories and a framework.  Stephen King's son, author Joe Hill stars in the framing story while King himself plays the main character in one of the shorts.

Joe Hill is the little boy with the voodoo doll, and King is the one you can see in the thumbnail, behind the doctor.  While we're looking at Stephen and Joe, here's Tabitha at around the same time.

And a 2103 interview with Owen King and Joe Hill on being the children of authors and their own new novels.  And Joe's children, which I didn't realise he had, because I'm a reader, not a stalker.

My favourite extract from the interview;

How did you decide to spend your life writing fiction?
OK: I hope Joe has a good answer, because it was never like I read a book and said, “That’s what I wanna do.” It was more like I loved to read, I liked to tell stories, I practiced; eventually, it started to seem viable.
JH: I don’t think there was exactly one aha moment. But you’d come home from school and Mom would be in her room clattering away on this tomato-colored typewriter and my dad would be up in his office working on a word processor with the glowing green letters on the black screen, and they’d both be making stuff up. So for myself, by the time I was 11, 12, I’d kind of absorbed the idea that you should spend a little time each afternoon making stuff up and eventually you’d be paid really well for it.

Back to Creepshow.  It's pretty silly.  Creepy at times, very eighties, very camp.  There's also a comic book, but it's ridiculously expensive.

Now for Different Seasons.

Some people like Apt Pupil.  Some like The Body - or Stand By Me, as they called the movie.  And some just love Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.  But me, I like The Breathing Method and Sandra Stansfield the best.

Sandra is a woman in the mould of Irene Adler.  Not Sherlock's lover Irene, but someone closer to the original.  A determined, intelligent, strong woman who runs rings around the men in her life.  And, like Irene's appearance in A Scandel in Bohemia, we see her through the eyes of a man watching the man who admires her.  Not loves in a romantic way, but admires.  Looks up to.

It's Different Seasons that contains the anecdote where King's editor worries about him being typecast.  It's when they decide to publish 'salem's Lot after Carrie.  Well King is typecast, but he doesn't seem to mind.  I get the idea that you can sum up his philosophy of writing with the idea 'you take what you've got and you do what you can.  And if you can pay the bills with it, so much the better'.  He writes the kinds of books he likes.  In the epilogue of Different Seasons, he acknowledges that he isn't a great literary writer, but also that he doesn't make a habit of reading great literature.  Which sounds fair enough to me.

As we all know, Shawshank became a very successful movie.  Apt Pupil was also filmed, with Sir Ian McKellen as Kurt Dussander.

James Smythe agrees with my feelings on The Breathing Method.  He skipped Creepshow, also fair.

Now for another checkpoint, just because.  I last updated this list on the 17th of August.  The ones in red I have read previously, while the ones in blue were new to me.  I've also included the first published novels of Stephen King's wife, two sons, and daughter-in-law.  I have not forgotten about Naomi King, but since she isn't a public figure in any sense it'd be kind of weird to go and look stuff up about her.

Owen King did contribute to a collection of baseball stories in 2003, but I've decided not to count that.  Because I don't like baseball.

Carrie - 1974 -  June 15th 2013
'Salem's Lot - 1975 - June 30th 2013
The Shining - 1977 - July 28th 2013
Rage - 1977 - July 31st 2013
Night Shift - 1978 - August 28th 2013

The Stand - 1978 - March 20th 2014
The Long Walk - 1979 - March 23rd 2014
The Dead Zone - 1979 - June 2014
Firestarter - 1980 - August 16th 2014


- 06/13 to 17/8/14 - 9

Roadwork - 1981 - 23rd August 2014
Danse Macabre - 1981 - 7th September 2014


- BONUS: Small World (Tabitha King) - 10th September 2014

Cujo - 1981 - 20th September 2014
The Running Man - 1982- 22nd September 2014
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger - 1982 - 30th September 2014

Creepshow - 1982 - 1st October 2014
Different Seasons - 1982  - 24th October 2014

- 17/8/14 to 25/10/14 - 7 (16)
 
Christine - 1983
Pet Sematary - 1983
Cycle of the Werewolf - 1983

The Talisman - 1984
Thinner - 1984

Skeleton Crew - 1985
It - 1986
The Eyes of the Dragon - 1987

The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three - 1987
Misery - 1987

The Tommyknockers - 1987
Nightmares in the Sky  - 1988
The Dark Half - 1989

Four Past Midnight - 1990
The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands - 1991 

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

Nightmares & 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
Bag of Bones - 1998
Storm of the Century - 1999 

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - 1999
The New Lieutenant's Rap - 1999  

Hearts in Atlantis - 1999
Blood and Smoke - 1999
"Riding the Bullet" - 2000  

On Writing - 2000
Secret Windows - 2000 

The Plant - 2000      
Dreamcatcher - 2001
Black House (with Peter Straub) -2001

Everything's Eventual - 2002
From a Buick 8 - 2002

The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla - 2003  
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah - 2004
The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower - 2004

Faithful - 2004
- BONUS: 20th Century Ghosts (Joe Hill) - Jan 2005
- BONUS: Josie & Jack (Kelly Braffet)  - Feb 2005
- BONUS: We're All in This Together (Owen King) - 2005
The Colorado Kid - 2005

Cell - 2006
Lisey's Story - 2006
Blaze - 2007

Duma Key - 2008  
Just After Sunset - 2008 

Stephen King Goes to the Movies - 2009
Ur - 2009     
Under the Dome - 2009

Blockade Billy - 2010
Full Dark, No Stars - 2010

Mile 81 - 2011    
11/22/63 - 2011
American Vampire (with Scott Snyder) - 2011

"Throttle" (with Joe Hill) - 2012
The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole - 2012 

A Face in the Crowd (with Stewart O'Nan) - 2012
"In the Tall Grass"  (with Joe Hill) - 2012
"GUNS" - 2013

Ghost Brothers of Darkland County - 2013
Joyland - 2013

The Dark Man: An Illustrated Poem - 2013
Doctor Sleep - 2013
Mr. Mercedes - 2014      

Revival - November 2014
Finders Keepers - 2015


I've now read  16 out of 86 books, which is a big jump from the 9 I'd read last time.  It's 18.6%, which feels a lot more respectable.  It's helped that I made a rule about reading at least 25 pages a day, and once I'd hit that, I'd often carry on for quite a bit longer.

There's a lot of rereads coming up.  Christine and Pet Semetary, neither of which I remember particularly enjoying.  Especially not Christine, which I've described as 300 pages worth of plot in a 700+ page novel.  I'm going to see if the library has it; don't feel like buying a copy.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 10/52

I finished some books this week!

The School of Good and Evil was an interesting one.  Another fairytale rewrite; this one is about a school where pupils are raised to be either good - generally princes and princesses - or evil, ie, witches.  Sophie and Agatha are from a village from which two children are kidnapped in order to attend the school.  Sophie is determined to be the pretty princess, while Agatha only wants to go home, so it's a bit of a shock when Agatha's dropped into the good half of the school and Sophie in the bad.  Kind of silly.  I think the major flaw is that it ignores every single other fairytale rewrite over the past twenty or so years and assumes we're all starting with some very, very old clichés which it proceeds to subvert.  Loses some of the effect when we've seen it done so many times.

Handmaid's Tale I listened to as an audio book.  I first read it as a teenager.  Atwood is a bit hit and miss for me, but this one I like.

The WAGs Diary is a book I first read in 2007.  I really liked it; it's about a WAG, Tracie Martin, who really throws herself into the whole thing.  There's a sweet depth to the character; an abusive mother gives her a freudian excuse for throwing herself into the world of Waggishness and it is genuinely funny.  I was a little put off the book when I read about some of Alison Kervin's comments on chavs; I began to worry that the joke was, in fact, on me.  I'm the mixed-race, bastard result of a teenage pregnancy raised on a council estate by a single mother.  My dad's an unemployed drug dealer, and both sides of my family are rife with alcoholism.  I'm a bit sensitive to the word 'chav'.

Cinderella Ate My Daughter is a book I read for my feminist bookclub, which I ended up missing in the end.  It explores the trials of raising a daughter in a world full of pretty pink princesses.  It touches on a lot of issues in 200 or so pages, which makes it harder to delve into some of them.  I do want to write a longer post on the book - probably just flicking through my highlights and writing down why I highlighted them - because it did trigger quite a lot of thoughts.

Incidentally, I missed my feminist meeting because I was in bed with this guy.

We've been dating for about a month.  He's sweet, and laughs at my jokes, and reads, and climbs, and has all those muscles that make smart girls stupid.  I honestly thought of getting out of bed, then got distracted. I'm not even going to pretend to be sorry.

Finally, Mini-Habits was 125 pages and I read it in one evening.  It really didn't need to be that long.  Basic premise is, if you set yourself an absurdly simple habit - ie, doing one push-up - you're more likely to actually stick to it in the long run, and even surpass it.  This makes sense to me.  My rule for learning the guitar, and now, the keyboard, was to practice once a day.  No minimum.  I could literally pick either instrument up, play one chord, and be done for the day.  That made it easy; it wasn't a big commitment or a chore, and 99% of the time I'd surpass that goal.  But I didn't have to, so I didn't feel bad on days when I really could only put in the bare minimum.  It let me keep it up without ever feeling like a failure.  That's the basic argument this book makes.  It also points out that decided to do something that feels like a chore - a 30 minute workout, or an hour's piano practice - imposes a huge cost on your willpower, which is finite.  Deciding to do single push-up or turn on my keyboard and play one chord costs far less, so you're more likely to actually do it.

Really, that's it.  Could have been explained in one blog post.  Good idea though.

In Which We Discuss Fairy Tale Anthologies

Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow have collected several volumes of rewritten fairy-tales.  Some of which are amazing.  And you know what drives me mad?  There doesn't seem to be a concise list of them anywhere.  There doesn't even seem to be a collective name for the series.  Even Goodreads doesn't link them together.  How am I supposed to collect them all?  Quite apart from the fact that not all of them are on Kindle.  Honestly.

• Snow White, Blood Red (1995) - I have a physical copy of this.
• Black Thorn, White Rose (1995) - I have a physical copy of this.
• Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears (1996) - I have this on Kobo.
• Black Swan, White Raven (1997) - I have this on Kobo.
• Silver Birch, Blood Moon (1999) - this volume contains my favourite story of the entire collection - Nalo Hopkinson's Precious.  I now own this volume on Kindle.
• Black Heart, Ivory Bones (2000)

Here they are.  I wrote that damn list myself, before finding that if you click very carefully and follow the right links, you can get to this page.  And no, you can't just get there by searching for "snow white, blood red anthology", don't be silly.

As far as I know, the only one you can't get as an ebook is that first one, Snow White, Blood Red, so I'm glad to have my physical copy.

It was actually searching for Precious that lead me to look all this up.  I was fairly sure I'd read it in the first volume I found, which I borrowed from Birmingham Central Library.  I just couldn't remember which one that was, and if I'd later bought a copy or not.  I knew I owned a few physical books, but wasn't sure how many, and I knew I had a few on kobo too.  Glad to have that straightened out!

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, 9/52

None.  Absolutely none.

This is what I'm in the middle of now!

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 8/52

 

I've now been 26 for two months.  That went fast.

I wrote a dedicated post for The Gunslinger here.  Since then, I've watched Creepshow and read 1/3 of Different Seasons.  I also watched Shawshank again, just because.  I should write about those.

The Secret Shopper's Revenge was another reread. I first read it four or five years ago, when I borrowed it from the library.  I've returned to it a few times since then, and now own it on Kindle.

The book's about three women who all, while in dire straits, take up mystery shopping.  It's not like real life mystery shopping, being a lot more high-tech for a start, but I am very happy to ignore that.  One of them is a Brummie!  And the way they pull themselves from dire straits to rather better ones makes me happy.

I read Little Lord Fauntleroy on a quiet day at work.  I read it as a child originally, and it makes me happy.  I like how pleasant Lord Fauntleroy and his mother are.  I like how it all works out with quite minimal fuss.  It makes me happy.

Rosemary's Baby I read on Sunday, another quiet day.  It reminded me a lot of Jekyll & Hyde, in that, due to cultural osmosis, I had such a strong idea of the plot that it didn't function effectively as suspense.  It was more a case of waiting for the characters to catch up.  I read it because Stephen King because such

Stolen Child was okay.  Again, a case of waiting for the characters to catch up to the action, in a way that was frustratingly slow at times.

I've been twenty-six for two months!  Things have changed very rapidly in that time!

Darker than Your Wonderland, Chapters 25-27

Part 8 is here.

25: Redemption

She came to find him the day before they were due to leave. He was sitting in their usual place outside, alone. He wasn't reading, for once, just thinking, and he didn't seem surprised to see her there. She took a deep breath and sat down next to him.

"I'm sorry Scorpius. You were right.  You were right about everything."

She didn't give him time to interrupt.

"You know what happened between Lily and Snape? How the final straw between them was that name he used for her? Well, we don't have a similar word for Purebloods, not with all the negative connotations and history, but, if we did, then it would have meant all the presumptions I used on you and your family. "

He shrugged.

"I want to get to know you again, Scorpius, properly. I want to make things right with Aphelocoma. And I would like to meet your father, and make my mind up based on him as he is now, not based on his father, and his past." She took a deep breath. "If, that is, you're okay with that."

Scorpius didn't reply. Instead, he put an arm around her, and squeezed, briefly.

"Is this your way of admitting to being in love with me, Rose?"

She was shocked, that he was taking it so lightly. That he could be so forgiving. Shocked, but glad, too. They'd gotten a second chance, and, this time, they would get it right.

She knew then that they would be okay. They knew enough to be honest with each other now, to communicate properly. They wouldn't let a stupid teenage mistake ruin the best friendship either of them had ever had. She would treat him like a friend. A real friend.

"Eeeeeewwwwwww!" She said, gently pushing him away, though not so far that they lost contact. "A Weasley and a Malfoy? Can you think of anything worse?"

"You love my Malfoyness."

"Nuh-uh." She'd never seen him act like this before, but she liked it.

He pulled her close again. "Yuh-huh."

She was suddenly very, very aware that the shy boy she'd met at eleven was now almost sixteen, over six foot tall, and very close. Her hands rested on his chest, where she'd pushed him, and she was acutely aware of the muscle beneath them. She could feel his hands on her, electrifying her, one on her shoulder, the other on her waist. She remembered kissing him at fourteen, and wondered if it would be the same now. No, something inside told her, it would be better. Because, this time, they weren't 'too young'.

"Let's go to London," she said, her voice suddenly soft. "Next weekend."

"Deal," he replied.

26: Living in the Past

Later, he told her that he'd decided the fault didn't entirely lay with her. He could have asked. He could have addressed the issue. He could have reached out to keep them together, and he hadn't. He was determined not to make that mistake again. He'd decided to be more open, more forthcoming, less guarded. To trust her, rather than let paranoia come between them again, from either side.

She wasn't convinced that his blame was equal to hers, but knew that the important thing was moving on, not living in the past. They'd done far too much of that.

27: London

They'd gone to London in the first week of the holidays, after meeting his father for lunch. Aphelocoma had been there too, and Rose had been determined to see the younger girl's reticence as concern for her brother, and not hatred for a Weasley. She'd managed to earn a smile, by the end of the meal, and felt disproportionately proud.

At King's Cross station, they'd found a photobooth. Rose had explained how they'd worked, and Scorpius had insisted on trying it out, fascinated by the idea of seeing himself in a photo that didn't move.

She'd sat on his lap and he'd tickled her, something she couldn't have imagined the younger Scorpius relaxing enough to do. It was a change for the better. The last photo caught them kissing again.

They'd headed to Waterstones then, her favourite muggle book chain. The first book she bought him was under romance, rather than sci-fi, and it was one that she'd read before and loved.

Do You Remember the First Time?

It was about second chances, and about getting things right this time.