Lost: 2.4lbs
Lost so far: 28.3lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 2.6lbs
Weight: 266.4lbs (19st)
So almost but not quite under the 19st barrier. Still 2st in 11weeks is still good going. Remember that target for the year is 5st so I’m 2/5ths of the way there with about 1/5th of the time gone.
So, another crime novel and another book from the TV Book Club list.
Having said that, this is not your typical crime novel. It’s the story of a young boy, Stephen, whose uncle, Billy, was killed by a moors-murderers-style serial killer. Understandably this had a devastating effect on his mum, Stephen’s grandma, not least because the body was never found. Stephen’s mum, Billy’s sister, has grown up in the shadow of someone who was the favourite anyway but who she can now never compete with.
So Stephen’s family has some issues and he believes the way to fix things is find his uncle’s body. This leads him to start writing to the killer in jail.
I did really enjoy this book. I think it’s more about the impact this sort of crime has on a family long term rather than the usual trying to catch a terrible killer plot. So in that sense it’s not your normal crime novel. A couple of specific differences stand out: despite being quite gruesome the details of the crimes are not dwelt on as they sometimes are in books like this, also the killer is very definitely clearly “evil”. At first I thought this was a weakness of the book, thinking the characterisation was too simplistic. However as I read on more about his past was revealed and I think the line the author takes is to never make him a sympathetic character, to refuse to compromise on the idea that he did terrible things. Of course to some extent you do at least follow his story, so there’s a little sympathy/empathy there, but it’s very restrained which I think works in the end.
But the character in the book that I most enjoyed following was Stephen. Smart for his age and having had to take on a lot more than he should, you cheer on his efforts even perhaps when they are misguided – like writing to the killer. There’s some stuff about his family that felt it was laid on a little heavily, but overall it was well done.
8/10 – a gripping read. You’ll be anticipating the next letter as much as the characters.
Lost: 1.8lbs
Lost so far: 25.9lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 2.6lbs
Weight: 268.8lbs (19st 3lbs)
1.8lbs is a nice respectable loss but I have to admit it feels a little low at the moment. Mind you I wonder if there’s some carry over from last week in there, and if there is maybe next week will reflect some of this week’s hard work.
Whatever. It’s going in the right direction and I’m still ahead of schedule.
Last time I was at this weight I was complaining about “my bony ass” – not something I have a problem with at the moment. I wonder if that’s to do with the fact that I’m not doing the morning sit-ups I was doing last time around. At some point I think I will resume those but not just yet.
It’s going to be hard to separate a real review from a personal, autobiographical account of this book. I’ll probably not try.
This is, uniquely since I started 25 books much less 6000 pages, a re-read. I felt I needed something familiar, something I knew I’d enjoy.
There’s a section in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity where he talks about listening to the Beatles because it’s music that he first heard as a child and it isn’t (for him) associated with love, loss and chasing girls, it’s associated with a more innocent, less complicated time and as such it’s comforting.
A World Out of Time is a little like that for me. I didn’t first read it when I was a child. In fact I was 22. Although…
OK. Let’s go back to when I was a child – 11 or 12 – and first discovered book shops. I knew I loved to read but faced with a choice, my own choice, of what to read I was a little stumped. So I went with what I knew. I knew I liked Dr Who so I figured that meant I liked SciFi so I went to the SciFi section. I’d already devoured HG Wells and some other classics so I wanted something a bit more up to date. What I eventually chose was a book of short stories by Larry Niven. I must have enjoyed them because over the next several years I read most of his “Known Space” books including the Ringworld ones.
Anyway one of the stories was called “Rammer” and was the story of a man awakened from frozen sleep to discover he’s being trained to be a spaceship pilot. A World Out of Time’s first chapter is a slightly modified version of this story.
What I like about this book is its ideas. A lot of science (which may well have been superceded since it was written). It has a huge scope – the main character travels to the centre of the galaxy and back and his story spans 3,000,000 years (though his personal timeline doesn’t due to relativistic time effects). There’s discussion of how in this future the solar system was adapted by moving planets around. Red Dwarf played this for laughs but here it’s done seriously with what looks like a plausible stab at the science needed.
It’s also a rolicking good story. The earlier part of the book is about Corbell’s exploration of the galactic hub and his return to what he believes is earth. The later part is almost one long chase scene. Certainly I found (then and now) that the pace keeps you interested.
The characterisation isn’t much to write home about. Emotionally it’s a little cold I guess. Corbell and the other few characters act mostly in ways dictated by logic. And the logic is applied to these huge events such as what will happen if/when the earth is moved again. But I can forgive it that. I’m not looking for insight into the human condition here. What I get is a good story, interesting scenery and big ideas.
Also – maybe this is not entirely irrelevant – the plot of the later part of the book concerns the hunt for immortality. The scientific secret of which has been found but lost.
I can’t necessarily recommend this unless you have the same set of idiosyncratic tastes as me, but it is a guilty pleasure.
7/10 – good old fashioned ‘hard’ scifi. Full of ideas.
Here’s a book I couldn’t imagine myself reading until I actually did. A story of nuns in 16th century Italy.
But it came highly recommended in two book clubs – the Ship of Fools one and the TV one. I guess I was looking for something a little different and it’s certainly that.
So a bit of a gamble – did it pay off?
Yes. This is a really enjoyable book. It opens up a world I never really knew existed. I knew of course the convents existed. I hadn’t realised that in those days the existence of dowries meant that well to do families could usually only afford to marry off one of their daughters and so convents became dumping grounds for the others – the less good looking, or more independently-minded or intelligent, or generally just less marriageable. Dumping grounds is a little unfair but what it meant was the the convents were full of women who hadn’t so much chosen a vocation as become resigned to a fate.
And it turns out it could be not such a bad one. Inside the walls of the nunnery there was a certain amount of freedom and independence. A fraction of the money that would have gone to a husband’s family went to the convent and this meant they were in some way indebted to powerful families – so that conditions for those nuns at least were kept tolerable.
The shadow in the background is the coming of a tightening of restrictions based as a consequence of the Council of Trent. Santa Caterina, the convent of the novel, has so far avoided this clamping down but the desire not to draw undue attention to itself is one of the motivations for a key character in the book.
For about the first half, the book is mostly scene setting and getting to know the characters. I’ve seen people describe this as slow but I didn’t find it so. We follow Serafina, a new novice, who has joined very much against her will, and through her eyes we learn about the world of the convent. We also follow Suora Zuana – the convent’s dispensary sister. She’s a fascinating character – she has in many ways a more modern, sceptical, rational outlook but she is still a product of her age.
About half way through a major incident occurs and what follows in a gripping thriller, the pace quickening and not letting up until the end.
9/10 – a surprisingly gripping read, and a glimpse of another world.
Lost: 4.4lbs
Lost so far: 24.1lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 2.7lbs
Weight: 271lbs (19st 5lbs)
Well, I lost back all I’d gained plus a little more. Still I had to push myself quite hard to achieve that. Maybe next time I’ll try to not put it on in the first place!
This is a flash piece I wrote almost a year ago. I believe the prompt was “concrete”.
They found me in the shade of the car-park overhang, all eager smiles and hard eyes. The sounds of breaking glass tinkling through the warm air were my first warning.
“Oi. Fairy!”
I looked for an escape route but it was sunny and I wasn’t desperate enough. Yet.
“C’mere. Got a present for you.”
Present? I doubt it. No future that’s for sure. I cursed them under my breath. Not that it meant anything now. Not like the old days.
They came at me running, with chrome-plated boots and shards of mirrored glass. They call them the shiny boys. Fancy themselves scourge of my kind.
My kind. Once held in wonder, and fear. Mystery was our habitat but their kind destroyed it, along with the rain forests and polar ice-caps. Their pushing inquisitiveness, their blunt weapon of science forced us out of the shadows, out of dark corners, out from the fringes and edges, into the light.
Now they know us and our weakness.
They flashed their mirrors, reflected rays slicing and spearing me. I pushed back against the wall of stone behind.
But it wasn’t stone, nothing so natural.
Wondering why they hate us I felt myself sink into it. Perhaps we bring to mind half-remembered notions that they feared. Or longed for.
Suffocating in the steel reinforced pillar I realise: we make their worst nightmares, and best lost dreams, real.
Flimsy as my body is — even light will pierce it — it’s too concrete for them.
Lost: –3lbs
Lost so far: 19.7lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 2.5lbs
Weight: 275lbs (19st 9lbs)
So, a gain. A not unexpected gain but one which was not as bad as I feared. Which in itself is both good and bad. Good for keeping the motivation going but bad in that I’m thinking in terms of a gain being acceptable this early on.
I’m 8 weeks in. By comparison, 8 weeks into Lesamy I’d lost 34lbs and never gained. Or if you take a start point of a similar weight (week 4) I lost 26lbs without any gain ‘blips’. Actually 26lbs down is about where I’d be if I’d stayed level the two times I’ve put on weight (though of course we know that some of the subsequent loss is losing that ‘new weight’ – easy on/easy off in a way at this stage).
So reasons to see good and bad. I’m a glass-half-empty kinda guy but I must be holding on to some good or my glass would be full of something not conducive to this whole exercise.
I thought about this a little today. To do this, to keep going, you have to have some sort of inner core of will power. Something you focus on. Something you tell yourself when you want to give in. Last time it was the idea, somewhat vague, that things would be ‘better’ when I reached my target. I’d be fitter, healthier, better looking and people would like me more. It was sort of true (people respond positively to what they see as a positive change with encouragement and that feels like they like me more for being thinner even if it’s not that simple in practice). The thing that caused the metaphorical glass to shatter on that illusion was when I realised that I was almost certainly going to have ‘loose skin’. Suddenly the secret dreams of being “better looking” seemed false.
After this, I’m naturally nervous about the fact that I’ve started the process again and I don’t seem to have the same level of drive/motivation. I seem to have simply decided to start again, what, if anything is my ‘core’ this time? I guess it’s this: that if I don’t move forward I will slip backwards. And quickly. The time it took to regain the weight (not all but most) was scarily fast. More importantly I was soon back noticing the same thing that started me off the first time (which I sort of lost sight of with all my dreams of youth and beauty), the thing that has become not the core itself but my slogan for it:
If don’t keep going I’ll soon be back at the place where I’m out of breath climbing the stairs.
Lost: 6.6lbs
Lost so far: 22.7lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 3.2lbs
Weight: 272lbs (19st 6lbs)
So that’s an impressive loss right? I might be tempted to think it’s too good if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve had a couple of non-stellar weeks and that I know this week won’t be great for losing weight. I’m spending a long weekend with M. and it’s nice to think that I won’t have to worry too much about ‘being sensible’.
Something I’ve been thinking about.
I used to write a diary, a journal really. It was sporadic and intermittent – occasionally years would go by unnoticed. The last time I did so was back in 2006. Since then any urges toward self-expression have tended to go here on my blog. So let’s compare and contrast:
Not sure how that tots up, or how to score it. Just put down some of the thoughts I’ve been having about it. I think I’m going to try keeping a journal again.