In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 28/52

Seven books this week!

I finished the original Last Vampire series.  There is a sequel, published in 2010.  The last of these was published in 1997, which gives you an idea of the gap.  I can only assume the vampire zeitgeist was responsible for this, especially since they were all republished in matching binding at the time.  They were pretty good; more actiony, less heart-rending than my favourite Pike novels, Remember Me and The Midnight Club.

Herland I reread for a feminist bookclub recently.  I was hoping to revive the group by choosing a short, sci-fi-ish book.  It's 120 pages, and we had a really good discussion about it.  It lasted two hours, which meant we could all have sat in silence and just reread the entire book, which says a lot about the ideas in it.

Maxiumum Willpower is a book I've been reading at a chapter a week for the past month and a half.  It's about all the things that can test our willpower, and contained some interesting tips for holding out against it.  Definitely worth reading.

Finally, Maskerade.  I've read it before, when I was thirteen or fourteen.  I stole my original copy from my school library.  It was the third or fourth Discworld book I read, depending on whether I got my hands on it before or after Wyrd Sisters.  I enjoyed the audio performance, though I'm a bit baffled as to why the witches all have slightly London accents.  It makes a sort of sense for Vimes, but surely they should be a bit more West Country?

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

Six books this week!  Four of them I've been working on for a while.  The Calculus, for instance, I started last November, simply because I'd never quite mastered it and it was bugging me.  I feel like I have a much better grasp on it now, though I'd need to look up the specific techniques to actually solve a calculus problem.

The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack is something I bought when I first got my kindle because it was less than £1.  It's a hefty collection of 25 short stories, including Ayn Rand's Anthem.  It's a very nice collection, especially for the price.

Saffy's Angel is an audiobook I listened to with Tom in the car, whenever we had a long trip.  It's short - four hours - but it took a while, because we spend most of the time in the car chatting.  It was nice.  I'll probably look for later books in the series on Kindle.

The Hockey Term at Trebizon is another children's book, or at least, aimed at young adults.  This was the first book in the Trebizon series that I read, when I was eight or nine.  It's a boarding school series about close friends who work hard and play hard, like a slightly more mature The Twins at St Claire's.

Speaking of twins, The Girls is written from the point of view of a set of conjoined twins, Rose and Ruby Darlen.  I first read it in 2007 or 8, and recently bought it as an audiobook.

House of Leaves is a book I'm really glad I read.  It's about a young man, Johnny Truant, who find the masterwork of one of his neighbours, following their death.  The book is about a documentary, which is entirely fictitious.  It includes a number of footnotes and references which are also fictitious both in our world and in Johnny's.  The documentary is about a family, who move in a house which suddenly starts expanding and shrinking alarmingly.  It's very experimental; when the family are in a labyrinth for instance, the words are suddenly laid out like a labyrinth, which links to footnotes which eventually lead to deadends, and cause one to backtrack to the main text.

Finally, The Wonderful and Terrible Reasons Why I Run Long Distances.  It's by The Oatmeal, and includes expanded comics on the blerch and other fitness related issues, several of which appears on his webcomic, but a few which haven't.  It's a quickread; took me an hour last night.  I enjoyed it.

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

Only two books this week; The Man in the Rubber Mask and The Handmaid's Tale.

The Man in the Rubber Mask is the autobiography of Robert Llewellyn, who played Kryten in season 3 and onwards of Red Dwarf.  Some backstage gossip - most of it outdated, from early season of Red Dwarf - and lots of whinging about the rubber mask and middle class guilt.  Interesting read though, especially for a fan.

The Handmaid's Tale was a book I read for my sci-fi book group.  This is the more literary one, which reads Hugo and Nebula award winners, as opposed to the more pulpy one which just reads whatever sounds fun.  Handmaid's Tale is one I read years ago, when I was about fourteen.  I think reading it was a big part of identifying as a feminist, for me.  I also like the language in it; my favourite line is "I describe the rope" after a passage where the narrator - Offred, or June - has spent a while doing just that, while discussing coping methods.  I'm kind of talked out on after the other evening, to be honest.

I've not read anything by Stephen King for ages.  Finally bit the bullet and bought a copy of The Talisman.  I'm not planning to start it right away, since I have six books I'm currently reading, but once I've finished House of Leaves, I'll get into it.  Though I'll also be starting Dan Simmons Hyperion then....

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 25/52

It's my half birthday next week, which means I've been doing this for nearly six months.  Huh.

Snuff is a Discworld novel - number 38, and the 8th Watch story.  The second Discworld book I ever read was Jingo, as I believe I mentioned last month, so Vimes holds a special place in my heart.

I enjoyed Snuff.  I've been putting off reading it because, due to Pratchett's illness, Discworld novels are now finite and I didn't want to use them up too early.  I'm glad I did read it, though.  It's about slavery in the same way that Jingo and Monstrous Regiment is about war and it repeats the Pratchett habit of bringing a formerly mook-enemy into the light as a protagonist.

The Last Vampire is a series by Christopher Pike.  It's not my favourite of his books - that would be Remember Me and The Midnight Club - but they're okay.  About a vampire who believes herself to be the last of her kind, but rapidly finds out that she isn't.  I have all seven of them, all in sets of two apart from the last one, so I just read the whole book through.  My mother gave them to my grandmother along with all the Horror High and a few other Pike novels, so I claimed them.  It has the traditional Pike tropes of blonde and blue-eyed Hindus.

The Lost Mind is another one by Pike.  It's about a girl who wakes up with no memory, lying next to the corpse of her best friend.  It's barely 200 pages long, and has the usual Pike tropes of mysticism and murder.

Daddy Long-Legs is a book I read on wikisource after finding out that it's one of my friend's favourite books.  I quite liked it.  It's about an orphaned girl who is given the funds to attend college by a mysterious benefactor whom she is required to write letters to.  The book is made up of her letters, though he never writes back.  I like the heroine, Judy/Jerusha Abbot.  She's strong and determined and sensible and very much knows her own mind.  I think I'll probably read the sequel, Dear Enemy, which is not on wikisource but which is on Project Gutenberg.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is science-fiction.  Harry August lives his life over and over; every time he dies, he wakes up in his newborn baby body, right back at the start of his life.  At the end of his eleventh life, a young girl shows up at his bedside and tells him that the end of the world is a thousand years away and getting faster.  Interesting start, no?  I felt the ending wrapped up far too quickly; it was justified, but it was a little anti-climactic after all the build-up.  It was a good read though.

Finally, Why Evolution is True.  Non-fiction, and a very good, thorough guide to evolution.  It's written in opposition to creationism and "intelligent design", which I already think is ridiculous and requires a lot of anti-scientific thought and outright burying your head in the sand, so he was very much preaching to the choir there.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 24/52

Six books this week!  Two rereads, four new.  Four library, one kindle, one audible.

Sisterland was new to me.  I borrowed it from the library a while ago.  Saw it there on my lunch break, realised I'd left my purse at the office.  I asked the librarian if there was anyway she could help me; she offered to sell me a new library card, the cheeky cow.  I realised, as I was on my way back to work, that had she bothered to look up from her book for more than a minute, she could simply have looked up my library card number.  I could have typed that manually in to the self-service machines; since I know my pin, all I needed was that number.

Anyway, I went back after work and got it then.  No lazy librarian is keeping me from my books.

I quite liked it.  It's about twin sisters, both of whom had a vague psychic gift.  One has suppressed it and become a suburban mom, the other has embraced it and become a complete hippy.  The latter makes a public prediction of an earthquake to hit St Louis, triggering various plot shenanigans.  I didn't like it as much as Prep, which I read in late 2006/early 2007.

Couch Fiction was another library book, one I picked up along with How to be a Heroine, The Rosie Project and some sheet music when I returned Sisterland.  It's a graphic novel showing a therapy session, with little footnotes and thoughts on what both therapist and client are thinking, and possible issues which are raised.  Incredibly interesting.  I realised I do the opposite of what the client does; instead of suppressing emotions and ignoring any hint my childhood wasn't idyllic, I suppress emotions and ignore any memories of my childhood that weren't relentless abuse or misery.  I find it hard to feel like the good bits count, in light of the rest.  And I guess if I acknowledge that there are good bits, that means something must have changed, which my mother says is my fault.

The Secret of Platform 13 is an old favourite, which predates Harry Potter by three years.  I mention that because it involves a secret door opening in King's Cross station.  The author has said she is not going to sue Rowling.  Behind the door is an idyllic island kingdom.  They lose their prince on the surface, wait nine years for the gump (the secret opening) to reopen, and then mount a rescue mission.  It's lovely.

How to be a Heroine is a book about reading.  It's written by a woman who loved various literary heroines in her adolescence and went back and re-examined them as an adult with a feminist consciousness.  Very interesting.  I'd read about half of the books she mentions, and I'm enthusiastic to read the rest now!

The Rosie Project is about a Sheldon Cooper style character meeting a manic-pixie dream girl.  I am in admiration of Don (Sheldon Cooper)'s organisation skills.  I make a fortnightly meal plan with shopping delivered every fortnight, and lots of meals made in advance and frozen.  He made a weekly meal plan long ago and hasn't varied it, allowing him to perfect his weekly shop and the time it takes to prepare food.  I tempted to try this.  I am aware that I am missing the point of the novel.

Finally, Jingo.  Jingo was the second Discworld book I ever read, after Colour of Magic.  I have a bit of a soft spot for it, and for Vimes specifically.  I listened to it as an audio book this time.  Not sure I quite see a Scottish Detritus and an Irish Sergeant Colon, but it works okay.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 23/52

Only four books this week; two that have been clogging up my unread pile for years, an old favourite and the last Horror High.

Deadly Rumours was originally published as The Dead Girlfriend, which I've not actually read before.  It's eighties teen horror and I love that.

Geisha, a Life is the autobiography of Mineko Iwasaki, who provided some of the information behind Memoirs of a Geisha.  I liked Memoirs, so when I saw it in a charity shop, I bought it.  That was several years, perhaps a decade, ago.  I finally read it, and I really liked it.  Mineko Iwasaki was the most successful geisha in Japan, and she goes into a lot of detail here. 

Nation is a Pratchett novel I've loved since it was released.  It was the audiobook I listened to, which is a fairly recent purchase.  The performance doesn't distract from the story, though it doesn't enhance it as much as Blair Brown's performance as Rose Madder does.

Finally, The Little Friend.  I finally finished the fucking thing, after making myself read twenty-five pages a day.  The main character is a bratty pain-in-the-arse who decides to go about causing trouble because she thinks she's in Harriet the Spy.  I very sincerely wanted her to go away and stop making poor Danny's life worse.  What an unpleasant child.  The novel also lacks catharsis, which I consider to be a major crime.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 22/52

I read eleven books this week, which is probably a record for this year (not for all time; a while back, I read thirty books in one week, just because I was bored).

A lot of the books I read were part of the Horror High series. It turns out that I had already read all but one of these. This wasn’t apparent right away, because they’d changed all the names.

Bizarrely, the horror high series is a reprint of several point horror books. The only change is a simple find and replace on the names. So, Althea becomes Alexandra. Devnee becomes Bethany. Lacey becomes Holly (a change I did not approve of), Roxanne is Laura, Randy becomes Ben, and Shannon is still Shannon, for some odd reason.

My mother collected point horror and similar books, and I read a lot of them as a teenager and pre-adolescent. They are oddly comforting to me. My mother has begun clearing out her clutter by giving the books to her mother, which is where I found them and claimed them. I remember seeing these as a teenager – I think – but I don’t recall actually reading them then.

The first two Horror High books – Toxic Beauty and Killer Instinct – are the second and third books in Caroline B Cooney’s Vampire trilogy. I love this trilogy. The vampire is a dark, rotting mass of shadows who tempts people to wish for things and then pay him back with other people’s lives. In the final book, Lacey and five other teenagers decide to party in the now abandoned mansion, and the vampire decides to make them choose which five will leave and which one will stay. I first read this when I was about fifteen and I loved it. I loved Lacey. I loved that she was strong-minded and quick-thinking, even though all her “friends” and her younger brother thought of her as an unexciting airhead. I also quite liked the name ‘Lacey’ which is a bit more unusual than ‘Holly’.

Date with Death, or Diane Hoh’s Prom Date was the only Horror High I hadn’t read before. I quite liked it. 230 pages of teen horror fiction.  Very comforting.

The Starlight Crystal isn't really aimed at teenagers, but it is by Christopher Pike who wrote quite a few point horror books and other books I loved.  I liked this one.  It's like a cross between The Forever Wars and Downtiming the Nightside or "- All You Zombies -".  It has romance and time stuff and some spirituality.  I liked it.

I listened to Season 4 and Season 5 of Clare in the Community too.  Not much more to say there; there are seven or eight seasons in all.

I read Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness for a bookgroup.  I think I might have read it before, but I can't recall whether I actually have or not, so that should tell you how interesting I found the plot.  The world building was really interesting, but the actual book was a bit meh.

The Water's Rising is by Sheri Tepper, my favourite author.  It's the sequel to Plague of Angels, and the prequel to Fish Tails which was released on Boxing Day and which ties together the series which contains my favourite novel of all time, Jinian Footseer.  I pre-ordered it, and it was delivered to my Kindle but I've been nervous of starting it, in case it disappoints me.

Finally, The Golden Slipper is a nice little book of detective stories by Anna Katherine Green.  It was published over a hundred years ago, and so is out of copyright.  The detective is Violet Strange, a Victorian society lady.  It's like Sherlock Holmes meets Totally Spies.

I need to apologise for the late post.  I sent the image to myself at work, so I could work on it in quiet moments, but those turned out to be totally non-existent.