Author: latepaul

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Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 13: Remix – Lexi Revellian

Remix is another “indie”. I bought it for I think 99p when it was in the top 10 kindle books.

Caz Tallis makes and repairs rocking horses in her London flat. She’s somewhat surprised one morning to discover what looks like a vagrant and his dog on her roof-top patio since he must have climbed up there somehow. She’s even more surprised when she realises this is Ric Kealey, lead singer of the band The Voices, not least because he supposed to have been dead for the last three years.

After this intriguing opening what follows is a crime thriller that focuses on Caz trying to help Ric sort out some issues from his past and discover exactly who is responsible for some of the things he was accused of.

Remix is not a bad book. It’s certainly very readable and the plot has enough questions and diversions to keep you interested and guessing. I’d say the pace is a little sedate at first but the nearer the end you get the more things pick up. There’s quite a bit more violence toward the end of the book than the tone of the writing before that point might lead you to suppose.

I also felt like some of the characterisation was lifted from a chick-lit novel and placed in a crime story. It may be that was deliberate and the target audience was people who enjoy both those genres but for me the setting up of the two rivals for Caz’s affections and their relative character qualities felt a bit too cliched. Having said that it didn’t dominate the story and it wasn’t wrapped up as neatly as I’d expect in a pure romantic novel (I did wonder if that was to make space for a sequel).

7/10 – a fun easy read.

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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 12: Perfect People – Peter James

So I’m a little behind on my write-ups. And this is a bit of a problem because I tend to forget the details of a book I’ve read quite quickly. Also I’d like to catch-up today so expect multiple short posts.

Perfect People is one of those books that has a SciFi premise but is not written by a SciFi writer or in a SciFi way. I’m thinking of things like Children of Men. The premise here is that of “designer babies” i.e. that it will be possible to control and select the genetic traits an embryo has before implantation.

John and Naomi have recently lost their four year old boy to a genetically inherited condition. The idea that they can exclude this possibility from a further child is obviously hugely attractive, however the doctor they approach for this offers them far far more than simply avoiding disease. Looks, intelligence, athletic ability even temperament are on the menu. And then there’s more unusual traits such as the ability to survive on less sleep and calories than a regular person. As you can guess things don’t go exactly as they expect.

Perfect People is quite a fun read though I think it’s a little long. The first part of the book is largely set up, explaining the ideas and setting out the scenario where by the genetic shenanigans can take place. After they become pregnant and have the offspring it becomes very much like Midwich Cuckoos. There’s also a sort of thriller element in that an extremist religious group has taken exception to this tampering with nature and they are hunting the couple.

It definitely has its moments and the premise is interesting. It explores the ideas a little but a more serious examination would probably require a less fantastical version of what exactly is possible. The characters are subservient to the plot and things like the state of their marriage, a supposed infidelity and so on seemed to take centre stage when needed but fade into the background at other times.

6/10 – not perfect, not bad.

 

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diet L3

A Year of Insanity or Just Slower Wonkier Progress?

You’ll have noticed there hasn’t been a whole lot of L3 mentioned in the last few weeks. Well time to bring you up to date, because today marks a year since the start of L3.

My current weight is 263.6lbs which means I’ve lost 40.6lbs in that year.

Sounds good when you put it like that. But most of that weight came off in the first 5 months and then I lost and put back on. In fact I’ve been trying to lose weight since Sept 2008 and in that time I have lost 53.4lbs in total but it’s been the same pattern – a period of dieting Lesamy, Less is More, L3 followed by a period of “giving up” and putting weight back on.

So this brings me to thinking about that old cliche of the AA definition of insanity being repeating the same actions but expecting different results. How many times am I going to keep trying to diet, be successful for a few months and then get disillusioned and give up again? Each time I start I feel like I’ve next to no real motivation that my conviction/will-power is wafer thin – but I always have something, a thought or a mantra that keeps me going. This time it was simply the idea that really there’s no alternative and so that this would be the last time I went on a diet. I might have lapses but I’d always return in the end because what choice do I have?

I suppose the alternative is to try to come up with a different plan – a better diet, a more sustainable/enjoyable exercise regime – something I could realistically see myself continuing as a lifestyle change indefinitely. I know myself though and I don’t know that it would make a lot of difference. I’d still feel that sense of wanting to break out of the routine occasionally.

Of course another way to look at this, just looking at the figures, is that it’s a success. That I am losing weight. It’s not happening smoothly or quickly but over time it is happening. If I lost another 50-odd lbs over the next few years then I’d be pretty much at my (initial) target weight. Of course all the sensible advice would be that diet and binge is worse for you in the long run.

Maybe I’m destined to die a fat man and I need to make peace with that and try to be healthy rather than slim[*].

So what will I do? Not sure yet. Watch this space as they say.

[*]not a new idea, and my ‘answer’ in the past has always been that starting from where I am it takes as much effort/radical change to switch to a healthy lifestyle so I may as well lose the weight too.
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reviews

TBR Madness

OK, so remember how I said my TBR was 189 then I read a couple of books and it went up to 190 (because of re-org) but that it would definitely be below 190 by the end of the month?

That’s possible but looking unlikely. See I was counting incorrectly. I was just counting my To-Read list on Goodreads – which once I’d sort out the ‘wishlist’ issue was fine, except – I also need to add in the Currently-Reading list. Especially since I’ve added three to that list. (that’s right setting aside going on)

So my current TBR is 192. Of course if I retrospectively apply the same measure then my TBR was 193 before I read The Courtyard. And since I’m expecting delivery of a book I pre-ordered last year it’ll soon be back up to 193.

Anyway – long story short I’m going to stick with 192 being my current TBR and stick with 189 being the figure to beat for March. Which would mean 3 books after the one I’m reading now.

Possible but unlikely.

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Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 11: Alan Moore’s the Courtyard – Alan Moore, Jacen Burrows

When I bought this I was in a mood to read a graphic novel/comic but didn’t know much about the medium (still don’t really). I confess I bought this because it had Alan Moore’s name on it (and I liked Watchmen) and it was relatively cheap.

So bear that in mind.

The reason it was cheap was probably because it was short, just 48 pages I believe. Which of course made me dither about whether to include it in my RED list without feeling like I cheated. But, well, it’s listed as a book on Goodreads and so it’ll come off my TBR total and will be added to my list of books for the 2012 challenge on Goodreads, so…

Anyway even though it’s short it is rather beautifully drawn and so there was a chance to linger over the artwork.

The story – well it reads like a short story in that it’s leading up to a very specific ending, punchline, whatever – and that’s OK. Except I felt it wasn’t as strong an idea as it needed to be (or possibly I’ve read too many short stories). It may help if you’ve read H.P. Lovecraft[*]

6/10  not a total classic but not bad as a story and nice to look at

[*]though I haven’t and I sort of got the references[**]
[**]well I got that there were references to get and that they were Lovecraftian.




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reviews

RED March

So 2 months in and I’ve read 10 books. Goodreads tells me I’m 2 books ahead of my 50 book target but I also note that I only read 3 books in February so I’m coasting a little. Also I’m not Reading Every Day, but I am reading more often and well, just more.

TBR wise – I was supposed to get my list down to below 189 wasn’t I? Well it’s at 190. Not, I hasten to add because I have bought any new books but because I split some collected volumes. When I joined Goodreads I entered my paper books using the ISBNs on the back – which included a couple of trilogies and so on. Now that I use GR as my master list of what I’ve got, what I’ve read and what I’m going to read it makes more sense to split it into actual books – so I can marked The Big Sleep as read even though there are two more books in that physical volume not read yet.

So a little re-org on the lists meant my TBR went up but not really. Am I going to use that technicality to allow me to get some new books? No. I think/hope that by 1st April I’ll be well below 190 so I am going to keep adding to my wishlist but not to my kindle and/or shelf. (Just remembered there will be one book arriving in March that was ordered a long time ago but apart from that…)

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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED book 10: Death Notice – Todd Ritter

Death Notice is the second of the two books I read for my Goodreads february book group. It’s another indie/self-pub and so I’ve decided to read through my current set of indies (which number about 6 or 7 at the moment). So expect to see some more soon.

Death Notice takes place in a small town with virtually no crime. The local cop is a single mum who at the beginning of the book considers it a big day when she has to investigate a van stolen from the local florist. In a back room in the offices of the town newspaper works a man called Henry who writes obituaries. He receives the “death notices”  (name, date, time and place of death) from the local funeral homes when someone dies, so he’s not surprised when he receives a fax one day with the notice for a local farmer. Not until that is he finds out it was sent before the man died.

I really enjoyed this book. It had its weaknesses – the prose itself was pretty flat and uninteresting and the dialogue was ok but either very matter of fact or cliched. However the book did manage to create characters that I cared about and was interested in, and what it really did well was plot. The plot was put together with immaculate precision. It had just the right amount of twists and turns, lulls and surprises. It’s possible that the ending might not work for some people on a purely plausibility level –  there’s a question of medical possibilities shall we say – but honestly I was more than prepared to give the book the benefit of the doubt and go with the story.

I’d say if you like crime thrillers and you’re not afraid of a bit of gore (the killings are nasty) then this is quite a lot of fun.

7/10 – a read if you like a good story with strong characters and don’t mind a bit of blood.




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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED book 9: Bet you can’t… Find Me – Linda Prather

Bet you can’t… Find Me is one of the February books on my Goodreads Kindle UK group. I chose it because of that and because I liked the sound of it, which is to say it sounded like a good crime thriller with a supernatural twist.

The story concerns Catherine Mans a professional psychic who helps the police solve murder cases. However she herself becomes the focus of an investigation when a series of murders with a connection to her past occur. She’s the prime suspect but the real killer, a much more powerful and dangerous psychic, starts taunting her and threatening those she loves. So it becomes a race against time to find the killer, face her past and protect her friends.

Bet you can’t… Find Me is my first completed “indie” ebook and it’s fair to say they have a somewhat dubious reputation. It is now easy for anyone to effectively self-publish through Amazon or iTunes or Smashwords and I’ve heard horror stories of novels which are full of typos and bad formatting and worse grammar. However I honestly approached this as just another book that I’d hopefully enjoy. It has a great looking cover, the reviews and ratings are positive and its premise is one I find intriguing so I started reading with no reason to think it wouldn’t be great.

Unfortunately… well it wasn’t great. And I don’t just mean it wasn’t my cup of tea. I really think it just wasn’t very well written. It would be very easy to slip into more of a writing critique than a review but I really don’t want to do that. Too much.

I think the biggest things for me were:

– Some fairly big plausibility problems. The police and federal agents act in a way I found hard to believe. Also, whilst it’s no problem for a novel to be set in a world where psychic powers really exist there was remarkably little scepticism about them so I wondered whether this was supposed to be a world where everyone knows they’re real – like vampires in the Anita Blake books for e.g. – but towards the end of the book characters do start expressing doubts. However by that stage we’d had a whole swathe of plot points essentially around the fact that the authority treat rogue psychics as a very real threat.

– And the plot itself whilst not really that complicated per se felt convoluted because of the way that it’s told. I definitely lost my place in some of the back story and its relevance to what was happening in the present.

– I thought the characterisation was ok at first, a bit stock but in a plot driven book that’s not too big a problem. However whenever love or attraction raised its head it felt like a lurch into a very different and much more sentimental place. Formerly fierce and feisty women and hard-bitten all-about-the-job cops suddenly become a bit gooey. There was a lot of blushing and fighting back of tears (when the object of affection was in danger). In fact even an attempt at a buddy-cop camaraderie fell into this problem.

I could go on listing problems but I don’t have the heart. I did finish the book but more because the spirit of RED is to finish pretty much every book. Plus it was a bit of a slog. I do think there’s potential here, lots of ideas but it needs work on the execution.

3/10 – a decent blurb and a great cover in search of a better book.




Categories
flubbage

On (Not) Writing and the Frustrations of iTunes to the Professional Procrastinator

The thing about not writing is that sooner or later I get back to thinking that I want to again. I felt so burned by NaNoWriMo that I’d pretty much decided I wasn’t a writer and to stop trying to pretend I could be one. However last night I felt like maybe I wanted to write something, just for me, just because I felt I wanted to.

The thing about me though is I’m a classic procrastinator and I always find a task related to what I’m supposed to be doing to do instead. Oh, it’s not intended to be instead, just before – but somehow it always seems to take all the time available. So I end up re-organising my bookcase/ebook library instead of actually reading, or the usual one for writing is re-organising my writing folders.

This time it was something else, it was music.

I’ve been listening to this a lot:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbFzQ65V-fc]

and it occurred to me that this was the perfect music to write to – calming, pretty and instrumental (lyrics distract me and tend to find their way into what I’m writing). In fact it was as much the fact that this would be perfect to write to as any desire to write per se that made me want to do it.

So I sat down to write. But first I decided I was going to get the album this guy did. I checked and it wasn’t available on Amazon or 7Digital – which was a shame because those are generally easier to use. Instead I had to go to iTunes – which was a frustrating experience. To be fair most of that was not really Apple’s fault.

First in order to run iTunes I needed to boot into Windows and though I have Windows on my main laptop the one with my iTunes account set up is on my netbook. And my netbook is great for certain things, but it’s fiddly to use if you need to do a lot of clicking and it’s worse somehow in Windows. Not really Apple’s fault – except in that they refuse to support Linux.

Second problem was that my credit card details have expired. So I had to go find my wallet and do the necessary.

After that while it was downloading I used the time to… not write, God no, I tried to install an up to date version of Scrivener. Which either means the Windows version under wine (works quite well with a few quirks) or the Linux beta (they’re time-limited and I couldn’t find the download for a version that hadn’t expired).

Finally once the album had downloaded I transferred it from netbook to laptop using… Dropbox. Because I’m stupid and I can I used a method that took ~30mins instead or 3mins using a memory stick.

After I finally had the tracks on my laptop I imported them into Banshee and played whilst I re-read all the stories I’d written for Slingink’s 2011 Story Slam (formerly Eurofiction). Then Melissa rang and that was my evening.

As an aside, the reason I re-read those stories was because I hadn’t looked at them since I wrote them, hadn’t talked about them. The reason for that was that after Nano I was feeling a bit brusied but didn’t want to just give up on Story Slam so I forced myself to finish it but resented the time I spent writing. A couple of them ended up being a bit weird because of that.

Anyway, here’s another track from Acoustic Labs:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ-FTJhwmuw]

Album available here (warning: iTunes may cause frustration!)

Categories
Read Every Day reading reviews

RED book 8: Soon I Will Be Invincible – Austin Grossman

Soon I will be Invincible is one of those books I have had around for a while but haven’t read, or at least finished. I recall wanting something different to read and browsing through Amazon. I think I was checking categories or related links or something. Anyway that’s how I came to buy this book.

Soon I will be Invincible is the story of a supervillain, Doctor Impossible and his quest to become, well, invincible. Actually it’s really his quest to triumph over his various enemies. Trouble is Doctor Impossible’s one of those guys that not only has to win, everyone else has to lose. So that pretty much means taking over the world.

I should say straight away that this is not quite a spoof of the superhero genre but it’s definitely tongue in cheek. It’s also in the somewhat crowded space of ‘de-constructed superhero stories’ – from Watchmen to Mystery Men, from The Specials to Doctor Horrible’s Sing-along Blog, this is well-worn territory. Where it’s almost unique is that it takes place in a world where there are 1600+ “meta-humans” some on the side of good and some not, and in fact all the characters in this book are either superheroes or supervillains.

The story begins with Doctor Impossible in prison. He’s soon to break out and pursue his goal of world domination, meanwhile his arch-nemesis and leader of the superhero team The Champions, a truly invincible individual called CoreFire whose origin story is intertwined with the evil genius’ own, has gone missing.

The book is told with alternate chapters narrated by Doctor Impossible and Fatale, the newest member of the New Champions (they just re-formed after CoreFire’s disappearance) a cyborg with a past she can barely remember and powers she never asked for. She also has some sort of connection to the Doctor and is trying to work out what it is.

I found this book a slog to read. Having given up on it once I was still somehow convinced it was a light read. I still feel it may be. Maybe the slog element came from having read 7 books in January and generally having less enthusiam for reading. The story feels not convoluted but dense. Every superhero/villan we meet – and there are many – gets some form of origin story and that starts to feel like overload, especially for the more minor characters. Also whilst I quite liked Fatale, there was another female character I’d’ve quite liked to give the second pov to. I understand why not – that other character needed to have a sense of mystery, and had secrets which would not have worked as well if we knew what she was thinking – but as it was Fatale felt a little too far from the true centre of the story.

Having said all that I found myself liking this story a lot more having finished it then I did whilst I was slogging through the final third. I think that’s because whilst I was bored with so many origin stories and the capital-P Plot was only mildly intriguing, I did like the characters. Grossman manages to get you to feel like these titans, these heroes and villains are almost victims, certainly they’re ambivalent about their powers and position. There’s a sense of melancholy, of being strange and an outside, of a longing for things to just work out this once. But in world where almost everyone has powers then the story of trying to take over the world can easily seem like a drama about a frustrating day at the office – which is both a good and a bad thing.

7/10 – worth a look if you like superheroes.