This week in books 12/6/17-18/6/17

It's been a long time since I did one of these, and yes I realise it is now near the end of this week and these books are ancient history, but I somehow managed to finish five books last week?! (Okay, so one was 32 pages long, but still). So I figured why not.


The first book I read this week was The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. This has been on my radar basically forever, because who hasn't heard of it? I read his A Thousand Splendid Suns waaaay back in 2011 and always intended to get to this one next... but I never did. This is about two friends growing up in Afghanistan from the 1970s onwards- Amir and the son of his father's servant, Hassan. Things happen, their friendship turns a bit sour, and later Amir moves to the US when shit goes down in Afghanistan. Later as an adult, he returns to Afghanistan to make amends. I liked this in a lot of ways- I'm always fascinated by books set in times and countries that I know very little about, and the depiction of the horrible things that happen in this book is brave and unflinching... but there were other things I was less keen on. The trouble with books that deal with such horrible things as war, rape, child abuse and so on is that it's difficult to avoid becoming overly sentimental and, well, a bit hackneyed. And it's not helped by the frequently implausible coincidences and the like that go on in the plot. Is this balanced out by the horror? I don't really know. Still, I enjoyed this, if not quite as much as A Thousand Splendid Suns.



I know already that Girl Mans Up by M-E Girard is going to be one of my favourite books of the year. I've been looking forward to reading it basically since I first heard about it- a YA book with a butch lesbian main character!- and it did not disappoint. I'm trying to formulate a full-length review of this because I have so many feelings, so I'll be relatively brief here. Pen is a boyish girl who loves video games and struggles to deal with her traditional Portuguese family who disapprove of the way she dresses and acts and want her to be more like a girl. Also, her friends are kind of dickbags. She starts dating Blake, the lead singer of a band and strikes up an unlikely friendship with her best friend's ex Olivia, cuts her hair, learns to 'man up' and deal with her family and friend problems. I loved this book on so many levels- the focus on gender identity and not feeling like quite one or the other, misogyny, masculine identity, as well as just being a really good story about a girl growing up and dealing with shit. I loved this so hard.



Next up we have Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, something I probably wouldn't have picked up myself except my girlfriend is a big fan and swore it's better than the movie. And it totally is in many ways. The book is much more scientific and much more violent and it really does make you wish for a more loyal adaptation- or maybe a nice Netflix original series. But at the same time, the film does simplify it to an extent that feels much more accessible. There are so many characters in this book that don't really serve much purpose and all sort of run into one another- I much prefer the distilled main cast in the movie. Plus Hammond, the rather cuddly, eccentric owner of the island is completely different and completely awful in the book. Which makes me weirdly uneasy, even though obviously the book Hammond came first. All in all this is a pretty fun read.



Next up: Tenth of December by George Saunders. Hmm. Sometimes when I'm doing these round-ups, I get to a book and I don't really know what to say... because in the short space of time since I've read it, it really hasn't left any impression on me. And, sadly, this is one of those. I wanted to like it, as in general I like short stories and this came highly recommended, but... yeah. Don't get me wrong, this is definitely not a bad book and I guess I liked it, but maybe I just wanted more. This is a collection of short stories which can be best described as a bit weird, a bit off. And normally that's my jam, but... oh, I don't know.





Okay, let's get this out of the way: I bought Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie literally a day before all the stuff came out about her views on trans women vs. cis women and it sort of put me off her a little. But only a little. The relationship between trans* people and privilege is a vast, complicated issue and I don't think she meant any ill will by her comments. Basically, I don't agree with her and that's soured our relationship just a little. And that's all I'm going to say about that.
But anyway! This is another little short book very much in the style of We Should All Be Feminists (I actually just listened to the TED talk for the first time this week too). It's a response to Adichie's friend who asked for advice on raising her daughter as a feminist. This treads a lot of the same ground as WSABF but sort of sets out more of a vision for how to raise the next generation to make them feminists. It's a nice companion to it, actually. And it's only 32 pages long, so definitely worth a read if you can pick up a copy.


What I'm reading next:

• Wildthorn by Jane Eagland, a YA take on the "Victorian girl is falsely imprisoned in lunatic asylum trop". With lesbians!

• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, as I have read and loved only bits of Ulysses and it's definitely time to read something proper (and relatively unintimidating) by Joyce

• The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia by Sir Philip Sidney, in which I once again try to put myself outside of my comfort zone by reading some 16th century literature. Also, according to Emma Donoghue it has lesbian undertones, and I'm all for that.

What I'm reading now, adventures in tattooing, and some challenges!

Hello! It's been a full two weeks since Bout of Books, so I figured an update was due.

So I started a new job during Bout of Books and I'm settling in pretty well, I think. It's actually quite nice working again- I'm so much more productive when I'm working. When I'm off I tend to just lie about watching reality TV and browsing Reddit, while if I'm at work all day and come home with just a couple of hours before bed I'm far more likely to actually want to play the ukulele or read a decent book. So that's good.

That said, I hardly read anything last week- for two days in a row I read absolutely nothing, and on the third day I managed about 10 pages. That's pretty shameful for me. A day when I read nothing at all just feels wrong.

I did finally finish NOS4R2 though, after reading it for far longer than I should have. Weirdly, that happened to me with Joe Hill's Horns as well, I think I was reading that for about the entirety of October... Overall I liked it, but I think I ruined it for myself slightly by taking so long to read it and having too high expectations after reading so many rave reviews. Still, I'd definitely recommend it if it sounds like your thing.

I've been a bit better about reading in the past few days, though- I've finally been able to give The Blind Assassin the time it deserves as well, and I'm really enjoying it. It's so hard to describe, and not really what I thought it'd be at all. Mostly it's the story of Iris Chase growing up in the Depression which is pretty fascinating, but then you've got extracts from her sister's novel (the 'The Blind Assassin' within the book) which is sort of a fantasy story within a story... it's odd and interesting and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

In an effort to pick myself up out of my recent reading slump, I started rereading Ready Player One which I read and loved a couple of years back. It's still so good- maybe even better than I remember, as I understand more of the references this time around. Also, I'm terrible at remembering plot intricacies so I can't remember how it ends, which is working to my advantage. In case this one slipped your radar, it's set in the future, where a sort of MMORPG called OASIS has essentially usurped society. When the creator of OASIS dies, he leaves his fortune to whomever can solve the puzzles hidden all around the world. Just everything about this book is so good- the world-building, and all the geeky references and the character. I can't put it down.



In other book-related news, I got my first ever tattoo on Tuesday! I mean I'd been totally sure what I wanted for well over four years, but I finally bit the bullet and got it done.

Yep, I finally have words from Harry Potter branded on my arm forever, and it means so much to me. I've had an obsession with Harry Potter from the age of six, and 'expecto patronum' means so much to me. I've struggled with depression for most of my life, and the Dementors = depression metaphor has always resonated strongly with me. 

Professor Lupin continued, 'The Patronus is a kind of positive force, a projection of the very things that the Dementor feeds upon - hope, happiness, the desire to survive - but it cannot feel despair, as real humans can, so the Dementors can't hurt it.' Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, p. 176

That, tied in with how books have helped me in my darkest times, all basically adds up to words that I'm proud to have on my arm. 

There's also various stuff happening on book blogs in the next few weeks, which I'm looking forward to taking part in. First up, Bex at An Armchair by the Sea is doing another re-readathon, this time over two weeks! I had a wonderful time during the last one, but I'll be taking a pretty casual approach to it this time- I've got library books and I want to finish The Blind Assassin, so I'll be rereading just a little on the side. I'm thinking I'll start with Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and then see how far I can get in the Harry Potter series :)

                                       

Then there's R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril, aka RIP X, which is an event running between 1st September and 31st October encouraging reading gothic/horror/supernatural/suspense etc books. I'm a big fan of seasonal reading, so I definitely want to take part in this to some extent. The problem is, I don't have a whole lot of things on my shelves that would fit into this category! So we'll see what I can rustle up at the library, if anything.

Also, Alice over at the wonderful Reading Rambo is hosting a read-a-long of Matthew Lewis's The Monk! I study 18th and 19th century literature so I've heard a lot about this book and how influential it has been but I've never actually read it, so, time to change that with my first ever read-a-long! Also, the Amazon summary made me laugh out loud (the devil is disguised as a woman disguised as a monk, wut), so there's that.

So yeah, that's all my news! I'll be back tomorrow, hopefully, for Bex's Re-Readathon!

Books I've Read Recently

It's a never-ending refrain with me that I'm permanently busy. Seriously, since exam season it's been basically non-stop, with graduation and house-hunting and job-hunting... then things got crazy stressful for a bit when my housing situation went wrong in the worst way and something Very Bad happened to someone I love within a space of a few days. But things have improved, more so than I could have hoped for actually, and hopefully I'll be able to give this blog a wee bit more love and attention. But then, I always say that, don't I?

Anyway. Here's another of those things where I talk about what I've been reading lately.

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

I'm a relatively recent Rainbow Rowell fan: I loved Fangirl and Eleanor and Park but I was sort of avoiding this one because it seems a bit rom-commy, and I am not a rom-com person. But I picked it up in the interest of broadening my horizons and it was actually really enjoyable- Rowell is so good at making me like and care about characters. Also it was funny and really 90s, and yeah, it was great.

His Last Bow by Arthur Conan Doyle

(My copy was an ugly free ebook, so let's just look at Benedict Cumberbatch instead ;) )

I've been a huge Sherlock Holmes fan for years, and I'm finally getting around to reading the less famous books. This is the last book of short stories I hadn't read yet, boo. This is the last published collection and I sort of didn't expect it to be as good- there is a bit of a decline in quality with the stories towards the end I find- but I was pleasantly surprised. I especially liked "The Dying Detective" and "The Bruce-Partington Plans".



Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny

I've been trying to read more classic sci-fi since reading Jo Walton's Among Others, whose main character Mor is obsessed with the genre, and this is one of the books that gets mentioned quite a lot. It was weird, but I liked it. A man wakes up with no memory of who he is, and discovers he is one of many brothers fighting for the crown of a parallel world. This is a quick read that throws you right in at the deep end, and I'm sufficiently intrigued to want to read further in the series.





Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens

Set in a 1930s boarding school, Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong investigate the death of their science teacher. This was a great little read- I have a thing for boarding school stories and the mystery was well plotted out. I definitely want to read more in the series.









Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn

More of my branching out into romantic comedies- Dash and Lily pass a notebook of challenges to each other around New York, kindling a romance before they ever meet in person. This started out great, but it kind of lost me a bit when they actually did meet up and it all got a bit silly. Still, worth a read, and interesting for its exploration of the idea of expectation versus reality for relationships.






What I'm 

This Week in Books

Hello! I've been pretty much absent since the readathons, as I've been slightly preoccupied with a little thing called finishing my degree. It's been a crazy couple of weeks getting essays finished and doing exams. But my final exam was on Thursday and I am officially done! Which is, weird? And terrifying? Mostly I'm still in a state of disbelief. It's so weird getting up in the morning and realising I have no uni work to do. In theory this should mean I'll be reading more!

So, to sort of ease my way back into the blog, I'm going to do a round up of the last week in books- what I finished, what I'm currently reading, and what I want to read next.

Finished

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins: I've had this on the go, on and off, for a few weeks and I finally finished it. It's such a fun read. It's just packed with Victorian tropes and family secrets and zany characters, which probably make it slightly ridiculous? But only ever in a good way. I think the ending is maybe a little anti-climatic though, only because of all the drama in the earlier parts of the book. But apart from that it's wonderful. It's also really great to reread a book you previously loved and realise that it's still kickass.

Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein. So, I'm basically taking advantage of the last few months of having a university library card, and reading some classics of gender/LGBTQ theory. Kate Bornstein was assigned male at birth, transitioned to female in hir thirties, and then came to realise ze didn't really feel like either gender. Basically the whole book is a take down of the gender as a concept, which is something I've been really interested in these days- what is gender really, except flakey science and a bunch of stereotypes? And trying to figure out how that fits into LGBTQ stuff- like, if gender is just a construct, why bother physically transitioning? And how do you identify as both 'lesbian' and 'not female'? I might write a full review of this; it was a really interesting read.



Currently reading

Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown: This is a history of 19th Century USA from the Indian point of view. I'm interested in Native Americans/Indians and I know next to nothing about them, so this is my attempt to remedy that. Needless to say, it's not a cheerful read. Each chapter deals with a specific incident involving a tribe, and the end result for most of them seems to be Europeans try to take land - Indians resist - Indians are horribly killed. It's maybe not clicked with me quite as much as I'd hoped- I think I can possibly blame the writing style for that- but I'm finding it interesting, if completely emotionally exhausting.



Up next

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood: This is one of those books that I've been meaning to read forever. I'm kind of lacking in the Margaret Atwood department. I read and loved The Handmaid's Tale a while back and enjoyed Stone Mattress which I read recently, so it's about time I read this. I know it involves a dystopia and genetic engineering, two things that make my ears prick up, but that's about it. Looking forward to starting this!

The Trials of Radclyffe Hall by Diana Souhami: This is another university library find. Hall was a lesbian living in the early 20th century whose novel The Well of Loneliness caused serious scandal when it was published in the 1920s. It seems to be pretty much accepted today that The Well of Loneliness isn't actually very good, but I really enjoyed it when I read it a few years ago. From the little I know about her, Hall was an... interesting character, so I'm looking forward to learning a bit more about her. Also, this had a Jeanette Winterson blurb, and recommendations don't come higher than that.