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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, I Think I Love You – Allison Pearson (pages 882-1219)

I Think I Love You

So book 2. Which I read in two days. That ought to have given me a big headstart given Under The Dome‘s massive page count. But I’m stuck in the middle of book 3 and am so about a couple of weeks behind.

Anyway.

I Think I Love You is the story of a David Cassidy fan Petra, and the young man, Bill, who has the job of writing Cassidy’s letters for a fan magazine. The first part of the book is set in the 1970s when Petra is 13 and Bill is just starting out on his career – hence the less than glamourous job. The second half of the book takes place in 1998 when, after her divorce and the death of her mother, Petra finds some old letters and makes contact with Bill.
The first half of the book was definitely the more enjoyable. When I first started reading I thought it would be interesting to be in the mind of a 13 year old girl as that’s absolutely not something I am used to. However I quickly realised that the insecurities, anxieties and so on of a teenager girl in the mid-70s were not that different to a boy in the early 80s. But the nostalgia was fun, as was the parallel Petra and Bill story lines.

The second half of the book was good but necessarily had a different feel. It also felt like it meandered a bit. Perhaps that was deliberate – we’re rarely so sure and focussed as we can be as teenagers. Also, if you can’t see where the story is going to end up pretty much from the start of the second part I think you’re not really trying.

7/10 – A bit of nostalgia, some adult angst and a happy ending.

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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, Under the Dome – Stephen King (pages 1-881)

Yay so I finished my first book of 6000 pages 2011. It’s almost April and only one book? Well fortunately it was a long one. A very long one.

This is actually the first Stephen King book I’ve ever read. I may have dipped into Salem’s Lot after it was on TV as a teenager but I’ve never read a full novel. Mostly that was because I didn’t really respond to horror as a genre. Well this isn’t horror (well… but we’ll get to that) and I’d read the blurb and it sounded interesting. Plus M. had read it.

Under the Dome is about a small New England town that wakes up one morning to find that an invisible barrier has been placed all around it. The story then revolves around the efforts of the people in the town to cope with effects of being cut off from the rest of the world. They have to survive with whatever resources – including people – that they have. The book has a lot of different characters but follows about half a dozen closely. Ultimately the question becomes whether they can discover what the Dome is and whether they can get rid of it.

No wait. That’s not ultimately what the book is about. It’s the question we finally get to at the end of it, but the book is really about what happens to these people when they’re forced to survive on their own. And it ain’t pretty. It becomes a sort of Lord of the Flies for adults.

All of which I found quite interesting and fun – for the first 400 pages or so – but in the back of my mind I wanted to know more about the Dome. I decided it was one of three broad possibilities based on what genre this book was part of –

  • the ‘thriller’ answer – the Dome is put there by some shadowy government agency, or foreign power. The reason why here particularly will perhaps be connected to one of the characters’ pasts.
  • the SciFi answer – aliens put it there and by the end of the book we’ll meet them.
  • the Supernatural answer – it’s some ghost or human with spooky powers doing it.

The trouble is that that isn’t what King was interested in telling me about. The Dome is just a macguffin to set up the trapped situation. So whilst he does finally explain where the Dome came from and why, 95% of the novel is not about that at all. Perhaps it’s a tiny  bit of a spoiler to say that but if I’d known that I may not have read the book. (Although it does occur to me now that the fact the book’s called ‘Under the Dome‘ and not ‘The Dome‘ is a clue.)

I also felt that whilst the story of how they folks cope was interesting – it went on too long. An example from early on in the book is the various incidents as people discover the Dome. Mostly these are accidents as people hit the invisible barrier, whether in their cars or on foot. There a wide variety of these recounted in detail. After about 5 or 6 I had gotten the idea – it was a barrier, it caused accidents, it affected a lot of folks in the town – but King describes probably 2 or 3 times that many incidents. It’s like if you were making a movie and in it there’s a scene where a crowd turns nasty. You’d hire a lot of extras sure, and you’d film a few close ups of individuals shouting and baying for our hero’s blood (say) – but once you’d shown a few of these shots cut with wide shots of the crowd you’d have created the necessary impression. No need to labour the point.

King is very good at creating tension in the plot, so you do sort of want to know what happens next. It’s just that a lot of that was about detail and you could sort of see where it was all going.

Without being spoilery there were things about the ending that I didn’t like. It’s like at a certain point he feels he’s done what he set out to do and then thinks “how can I wrap this up quickly?” Well the way he chose was effective, even spectacular, certainly a climax for the novel, but for me personally, a little unsatisfying.

6/10 – there’s a lot of ‘under’ before you get to the ‘dome.

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6000 pages reading

6000 Pages – 2010 Results

So here are the results for the 2010 “6000 Pages” project. I’m referring to it that way because I intend to do it again in 2011 with pretty much the same rules. First a couple of things I need to clarify before I can get on to the fun part – the numbers.

High Fidelity was the last book I completed in 2010 but the rules allowed me to count one book that I was part way through. In fact I was part way through 8 books so I really need to pick one as the one that “counts”. I had not expected for this to be the case but I guess the freedom of starting a new book instead of struggling on with something I wasn’t getting into was too much. However as I re-read the rules from the beginning of the year I see

Only one unfinished book counts. I expect this to be the last one. It means I don’t have to race to finish whatever I happen to be in the middle of on 31-dec (unless I want to)

So the intent was not simply to count an unfinished book to gain extra points, but to count a book I was going to finish anyway. This being the case I’m going to pick not the unfinished book with the highest page count (The Illearth War) but one I intend to finish in 2011 (Solar).

“Some Numbers”
2009 2010
Total reading time 98:23:00 107:38:00
Mins per/day 16 17
Pages/hour 50 51
Pages read 4924 5357
Pages read that count 4924 5050
Pages/day 13 15
Books completed 18 14
Average book length 274 352
One book every … days 20.25 26
Reading days 71 85
Time/reading day 01:23:00 01:15:00
Pages/reading day 69 64.9
Longest gap 54 45
Average rating for book 7 7.6

So you can see that by most measures I did better this year than last – I read more often, read more pages (if not more books), the gaps between reading days were short and spent more time reading.  I enjoyed it more too – which is true both from my overall impressions and from the fact that my average rating has gone up. So I must have scored more points right?

Er not quite.

The scoring rules are quite simple. First we take my “pages that count” score and each 100 pages above/below scores/deducts a point. Well I read 5050 pages so rounding up I can give myself 1 point.

Second take the number of reading days and compare to 85. In fact I read on 85 days so 0 points either added or deducted.

Then I get points for average book length. 352 is in the range 326-375 so I score 2 points.

Giving me an overall score of 3. Which doesn’t compare too well with last year’s 17 for “25 books”.

But hang on I said

the new scoring rules […] are designed to give me a stretch, to hopefully allow a similar score to last year for a similar amount of effort (so I can aim to ‘beat’ my score, even if the basis is entirely different)

and yet my “similar” but slightly better efforts (as shown in the table) give me significantly less. I can only conclude that despite my stated intent I miscalculated. I am therefore retroactively changing the rules so that I start with a “base” of 15 points. That seems reasonable given that I can potentially lose points for all three of the main criteria. And 15 seems fair because it gives me an overall score of 18points – which means I “beat” last year’s score but only by 1 point, which seems to reflect what’s shown by the more detailed figures.

Slightly Revised Rules

So, mainly for clarity, here are the rules for 2011.

1. Start with 15 points

2. For every 100 pages above/below 5000 add/deduct a point. Round up if 50 or above and down if below.

3. For every “reading day” above or below 85 add or deduct 1 point – upto a maximum of +15 or minimum of -10.

4. Round up the average page count to the nearest 5 and:

  • 0-250pages – -1 point
  • 251-300pages – 0 points
  • 301-325pages – 1 point
  • 326-375pages – 2points
  • 375-500pages – 5points
  • 500+pages – 10points

5. Only one unfinished book counts. This book must be finished the following year. Deduct 1 point if the previous year’s unfinished book is not complete.

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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages, High Fidelity – Nick Hornby (pages 4680-4932)

Okaaay…. this could be long, and like my review of A World Out of Time, could be as much about me and my life as the book itself.

Could be, but let’s try to rein it in shall we?

I first read High Fidelity when it came out in 1995. I’ve re-read it a couple of times since but probably not for 10 years or so. I decided to re-read it as part of 6000 pages because I wanted both an easy read and an enjoyable one. The film of the book starring John Cusack is also a favourite of mine and I re-watched it after reading the book.

High Fidelity follows Rob Flemming, a 35-year-old music fan, owner of a failing record shop and something of a slacker. The book begins with the ending of his latest long-term relationship and much of the story is about the relationship between music, fandom and well, relationships.

Do I listen to pop music because I’m miserable or am I miserable because I listen to pop music?

The genius of High Fidelity – and it is genius – is that it perfectly captures what it’s like to be a boy in a man’s body, which is certainly my experience of being male. The incessant making of lists, the obsession with sex as the most important part of a relationship (but not really) and just all this inner insecurity.

15 years ago when I first read it I identified with Rob because of all this stuff – even though he was only temporarily out of a relationship and I was more or less permanently so – the theme of being generally rubbish with women fitted. The fact that I still experience this all these years later – well that’s perhaps the bittersweet side of re-reading this book.

It’d be very easy to just give lots of funny, touching or on-the-nose quotes – and in a way that might be appropriate as it’s the kind of thing Rob would do. However to sum up let me just say that I love this book because it’s not only very easy to identify with the characters but Hornby also makes them likeable, despite some not so likeable behaviour on the way. It has warmth and hope and optimism.

10/10 – a great book if you’re a boy.

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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages, Winter Ghosts – Kate Mosse (pages 4376-4679)

Winter Ghosts

The Winter Ghosts is, unsurprisingly, a ghost story. It concerns Freddie Watson who in winter 1928 takes a trip to the south of France. For the last decade or so he’s been dealing with the guilt of surviving a brother who was killed in World War I. He crashes his car and is forced to take refuge in a remote village. Whilst there he goes to a village festival and meets Fabrissa, who has also suffered loss and grief. However all is not quite as it seems.

OK, I say “all is not quite as it seems”, because it’s one of those trip off the tongue cliches, but in fact if you’re expecting a ghost story (and the title gives that one away doesn’t it?) then you’ll probably see exactly where this is going.

Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy The Winter Ghosts, I did. The predictability is almost comforting in a way, like watching a familiar film on TV at Christmas. It has the feel of one of those classic Victorian ghost stories. Also the Kindle edition which I read had ‘wood-cut’ style drawings as illustrations interspersed with the text and this gave it a nostalgic feel reminding me of some of the books I read as a child e.g. the Narnia chronicles.

(I just found out how to do screenshots on my Kindle – cool huh?)

I’ve read that The Winter Ghosts started life as a shorter story called The Cave and I think it shows. There were times when it feel padded with description. However I did think there was a nice sense of atmosphere and I learnt something about the history of the Cathars in the Pyrenees.

7/10 – a wintry ghost story, perfect for Christmas reading.

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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages, Lord Foul’s Bane – Stephen Donaldson (pages 3847-4375)

Lord Foul's Bane

When I was a student and my finals were approaching I found this book in a charity shop for 10p. I read the back and it sounded interesting and hey only 10p… In those days I was not intimidated by long books. The book is the first in what was then a series of 6 books (now 9 and there’s one more to come). I read the first five and a half in a couple of weeks during the ‘rest breaks’ from my revision for finals. The final half book took me several months.

That says something about something. Either me or the books or both. Anyway…

Lord Foul’s Bane is the story of a man, Thomas Covenant, who is transported to another world – called simply “the Land” – where he bears resemblance to a mythic hero and where his wedding ring is a magical object of great power – not that he knows how to use it. The other thing we learn about Covenant is that he is a leper, and we learn that the key to managing leprosy is a dogmatic vigilance to the dangers around him – he can’t rely on his dead nerves to warn him when he’s injured himself and so must carefully check for minor scrapes and cuts in case they get infected. This leads to a rejection of anything but the harsh realities of life. He can’t afford to think about life the way it was (his wife divorced him and took their son) or how he wishes it were, he must focus on the practicalities of simply surviving.

So when he finds himself in “the Land” – a place of beauty and magic, a place where his leprosy is healed and feeling returns – he rejects it as a dangerous dream. However in order not to be overwhelmed by it he tries to follow the logic of the dream and interacts with the people he finds there as if they were real whilst believing them not to be. This he calls his “Unbelief”.

There are a couple of big hurdles to enjoying this and the other books in this series. The first is that Thomas Covenant is hard to like. For reasons that are understandable he is bitter and tends to be harsh to those around him, even those being kind to him. And when he first recovers his health in the Land he loses control and commits rape. I know of at least one person who gave up on the book at that point – which is several chapters in.

The second hurdle is Donaldson’s prose. He’s not one to use 10 words where 150 will do. He also, to my mind, delves into the psychological motivations of Covenant in excessive detail such that he makes a mockery of “show don’t tell”.

Given this, why read Lord Foul’s Bane?

Well it’s all about story and the story is, I think, a compelling one. At the point where he enters the Land Covenant is given a message from the eponymous Lord Foul for the Lords – the rulers and protectors of the Land. The section of the book – about the first 2/3rds – which concerns Covenant’s journey to deliver this message has a driving energy to it which always gets me. I’ve started this book more times than I’ve finished it, and usually if I’ve abandoned it it’s at the point just after he’s given the message at the Council of the Lords where I’ve floundered.

I almost did again this time. In fact it was perhaps only the fact that having read 300+ pages I did not want them to go to waste because of not finishing the book.

7/10 – if you like fantasy, can overlook an unlikeable hero and plough through the turgid prose then there’s an interesting story in there.

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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages, It’s Only a Movie – Mark Kermode (pages 3527-3846)

It's Only a Movie

So we’re on to book 11 (only 11! It’s November!!) and this is my first non-fiction. In fact it’s my first since I started doing these reading blog projects. The last non-fiction I remember reading was Danny Wallace’s Join Me which must have been pre-2006 and I didn’t finish that.

Mark Kermode is someone I enjoy on the radio on the weekly podcast of his movie reviews with Simon Mayo. It’s Only a Movie is a sort of autobiography. I say sort of only because it’s in more or less the right order but leaves lots out and jumps around – as he often does on the radio once he gets on to a tangent about a particular movie he goes with that.

What you end up with is a series of anecdotes about being a film critic. They are well told and funny and yet don’t seem to add up to a whole lot. Strangely it felt a lot like the radio show but I liked it less. I think the value of having someone to spar with, and someone who drags him back on topic is not inconsiderable.

6/10 – a light entertaining read but not much more.

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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages, Scott Pilgrim – Bryan Lee O’Malley (pages 3239-3526)

Scott Pilgrim vol1 (of 6)

So, before I get into the review proper I need to get a couple of technicalities out of the way first.

Firstly, I read all six of the Scott Pilgrim comic books but I’m counting them as one ‘book’ for the purpose of this blog. Since we’re counting pages that’s largely irrelevant but it means you only get one review.

Second, I decided that the page count needed some adjustment. It would be flattering but a little unfair to count the pages as-is given the comic book form. So I added up all the pages and the time it took me to read and came up with a figure that maintains my approximate pages/hour count – which is 4 Scott Pilgrim pages=1 page from a regular book. Anyhow I’m happy with that and since the whole thing is arbitrary…

Scott Pilgrim tells the story of an early-20s slacker and his friends and their respective intertwined love-lives. As the story begins he’s just started dating a 17-year-old and you get the feeling this is because he enjoys the simplicity of just hanging out with someone who likes him.

He’s also in a band and they feature in the story too.

Of course if you’ve heard much about this, particularly the movie, then you’ve probably heard about is his new girlfriend’s “seven evil exes”. Oh when I say “new girlfriend” I mean the one he dumps his highschooler for not the 17year-old herself.

Oh and then there’s the fact that the story is told with the style and visual accompaniments of a video game.

There’s a lot to like here and I did. I think that when I was the same age as the characters I would have absolutely loved it. Anyway, I particularly like the way that despite some visual slickery and surreal story elements, the characterisation and relationships remain resolutely and realistically complicated. So it’s not in any way ‘dumbed down’ just because it uses relatively youthful pop culture references.

I found the pre-ending a little confusing (it’s better in the movie) but the ending ending was fine – hopeful, optimistic but not unrealistic.

8/10 – makes me wish I were young again (and in love/lust)

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages, The Rapture – Liz Jensen (pages 2898-3239)

The Rapture - Liz Jensen

The Rapture is a hard book to classify, except to say that as usual, it’s not the sort of book I would have once read. Let’s see if I can make at least an attempt at a summary:

Gabrielle a psychologist with her own physical and emotional challenges, is working in a secure hospital with young dangerous adults. One of these, Bethany, is there because she murdered her mother. However there’s something a little different about Bethany, she has apocalyptic visions of destruction. Given that her father is an evangelical Christian preacher this is perhaps not unexpected. Except that when they start to come true…

I really enjoyed this book. It’s told mostly from Gabrielle’s point of view. She’s in a wheelchair from a car accident and that alone – the perspective of someone with those challenges – made the first part of the book interesting. Add to that the unfolding intrigue of Bethany and her visions. Also there’s a man – Frazer the Physicist – who may or may not be a love interest. Then about half-way through – another growing trend – the plot really kicks in and we’re into a fast-paced thriller-cum-disaster epic.

If this was a movie it would be a cross between One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Day After Tomorrow. In fact I think one of the reasons I liked it so much was that it played like a big spectacular movie in head as I read. But it’s a movie I’ve not seen before. It’s big action blockbuster for sure but it’s not dumb. In fact it’s raising issues to do with climate change and has a global-warming related end-of-the-world scenario that I’ve not heard of before.

There are problems with this book – in particular there’s a relationship-related plot thread that’s pure soap opera or cheesey sitcom. It needed to get resolved a lot quicker as it was too obvious where it was going. And yet I forgave the book that because ultimately it was such a wild ride.

9/10 – the end of the world shouldn’t be so much fun.

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6000 pages reviews

6000 Pages, Blacklands – Belinda Bauer (pages 2552-2897)

Blacklands, Belinda Bauer
Blacklands, Belinda Bauer

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.