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2013 Reading Wrap-up/2014 Goals (part 2)

So I’ve been doing this reading-and-blogging-about-it thing for five years and I usually get excited toward the end of the year to both wrap-up and report the results for the existing year and lay out the targets for the new.  This year I’m not feeling that. The reasons for that are not reading related so I’ll skip them here. 

So I intend to do a quick 2013 wrap-up and present the new goals in one post. I’m not going to do a very detailed post of the numbers, nor am I going to do the “Melissa Awards” – but I reserve the right to do those later if I feel like it.

The headline result of 2013 was that I read 28 books. This is below my target of 40 and way below what I was projected to hit early in the year. There’s a couple of reasons for this. First is that when certain life events hit I didn’t feel like reading. I don’t like this. I’d love to be one of those people for whom a good book is an escape (I’d even more love to be someone for whom writing is) but sadly it takes just enough effort to read to put me off when I’m feeling down about other stuff.

That’s only half the story though. The other big theme was not finishing books. I read 26 of those 28 by the middle of August which makes it look like I hardly read in the second half of the year. However this year I read 9918 pages but only 8862 of those were from completed books. In other words I read 1056 pages in books I started but didn’t finish. In fact I started another 17 books, a couple of which I was more than 50% through. This was partly due to a dogged and frankly ill-advised attempt to keep up with the S&L book club. But it was also a habit of not reading for a while and then when I came back to pick up something new. 

As for goals well I already said I’d joined the Triple Dog Dare thing, which means TBR books only until April and if I can I want to focus on books I’m already in the middle of. Not necessarily just those 17 either but any that I’ve got significantly into in the last few years and always meant to get back to.

I’m repeating my overall book goal of 40 books. I have a few extra “sub-goals” which are nice-to-have but I’m not going to be slavish about:

  • reduce TBR by 20 (1 Jan 2014 TBR is 327)
  • read exclusively from TBR in Jan/Feb/Mar (i.e. Triple Dog Dare)
  • finish 4 of the 6 abandoned books that I was more than 10% through
  • try to choose books I’ll enjoy and increase my average score above 2013’s 7.0/10
  • read 2-3 short stories a month

I’d really like to recover some of the joy of reading though. I don’t think is something you can do by setting goals. I think you just have to read and hope it “catches fire” again. Some people think you can squeeze the joy out by goal-setting but I know for me if I don’t do that I’ll probably hardly read at all. 

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book reading reviews

Lot Beta – Tom Merritt

I came across this book because Tom Merritt is one of the presenters of the Sword and Laser podcast to which I subscribe. More specifically I also follow the S&L group on Goodreads and it was there he posted a link to a book trailer video. I followed the link, was curious… and here we are.

The story of Lot Beta is a space opera set in a part of the universe controlled by a vast mining corporation. The hierarchy of the corporation is interesting in that it is, for the most part, hereditary, especially the senior positions. This is supposed to be because of the way the colonization process took place with people leaving behind their home planets on generation ships. I think there’s another reason as well but maybe I’ll come back to that.

Anyway a senior position opens up on “Sat A” by the death of the previous head of this unit*. Normally of course he would be succeeded by his child but this particular COO did not have one. Or did he?

And so begins a tale of a boy with a hidden past who is suddenly thrust into a position of power by a birth right he didn’t even know he had.

He says in the front matter that this was a NaNoWriMo book. I think that this shows, and not necessarily in a bad way. It’s short and has a big central idea but a lot of the avenues it could have taken aren’t expanded on, especially toward the end. Whether that was because the author was “pulling to the finish line” or simply he didn’t want to major on those parts of the book I’m not sure. What I do know is that a lot of the first half of the book is full of corporate politics and bureaucratic wrangling and power plays. Which may appeal to some but I found I was over it relatively quickly. It was well done I think just not really my thing. How our main character uses the vagaries of the supply trade agreements to assert himself over central control was cleverly worked out but for me, not as interesting as some of the later passages about space battles, mining settlement trouble-shooting and dealing with smuggling issues. In other words the action-heavy versus the talky-heavy sections of the plot were not evenly distributed.

At this point it’s probably appropriate to point out something important about the structure of the book. Which is that it’s based on a well-known myth but set in space. The author himself has mentioned this elsewhere on Goodreads but not in the book description so I feel I’d be spoiling to point out exactly which myth it is. I can see how this idea would be the sort of thing one might come up with for NaNoWriMo. It gives you a ready made plot outline to work to. It did make me think at times though, once I realised just how closely to the source he was sticking, whether he would have done certain things if he hadn’t been following this pattern. A couple of the analogues he found were quite clever {spoiler} but then there were sections I think don’t make sense at all unless you realise what it’s based on {spoiler}

It was fairly enjoyable overall. Short and readable.

6/10 – The legend of … in space!

Oh nearly forgot. The title alludes to something in the book which is a set up for a truly awful pun. {spoiler}

*I was never 100% sure whether a “sat” was an artificial satellite like a space station or a natural one like an asteroid. Plus I think there were planets but whether they had a different designation and how they fit into the corporate structure was unclear, or I simply missed it.
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A Study in Scarlet – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle


OK so this one I read only a month ago…

And it was for a book club and it was relatively short so I thought why not.

Do I need to give much background or a synopsis? This is the first Sherlock Holmes story. I’d never read any before. Of course I’ve seen lots of different adaptations – or bits of ones. I’ve certainly seen the modern version with Cumberbatch and Freeman, the first episode of which was based on this story and re-titled “A Study in Pink”

In fact I might have enjoyed this more if I hadn’t seen that because they were so faithful to the original that I pretty much knew who the murderer was and how he did it all along.

Having said that this book has an odd structure worthy of note. About the first half is the introduction of Holmes to Watson and then the story of the investigation of the murder, up to and including the capture of the guilty party. The story then switches suddenly to several years earlier in America and we get a sort of western with some Mormons and small town politics and power struggles. This eventually gives us the back story and motive for the killings. I quite enjoyed this section even if the portrayal of the Mormon culture was clearly a harsh caricature.

It’s odd for a modern reader because in any current crime story – especially on film or TV I suppose – the unveiling of the killer, the reasons for the crime and how the detective solved it would all appear in quick succession. Here we get the first, the ‘American interlude’ for half a book and then the other two. That felt odd.

Well it was an OK read and I can say now I’ve read Sherlock Holmes. Not sure I feel the need to read any more though.

6/10 – reasonably good, especially in the second half.

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The Never List – Koethi Zan

I’ve been a bad boy – I read this book almost two months (TWO MONTHS!) ago and I’m only now writing it up. So sorry. Here we go:

I picked this book because it’s written by the wife of one of the presenters of one of my favourite podcasts – The Slate Culture Gabfest. She was on the show to talk about the book and it sounded intriguing. It was the kind of book I might read anyway and it was just about to come out so I thought I’d give it a go.

The Never List is the story of a woman who was abducted and kept in a cellar for years. However the story begins a decade after she was freed and her kidnapper was imprisoned. Now he’s up for parole and she wants to make sure he doesn’t get it. He’s also been writing to each of his victims and she believes this could be more than the apparent remorse it purports to be. This sparks the beginning of an investigation and an uncovering of a much bigger intrigue. It seems her abductor may have had connections to a crazy cult and may even be trying to direct events on the outside. Determined to stop him she sets off to find out more.

So this book functions on at least two timelines. We have the story of the investigation in the present but then we’re given flashbacks to what happened years before. So what is happening now and what had happened are both suspense parts of the novel.

I did enjoy this book. It was well written for the most part. I think the early sections especially work really well. Later on the plot takes over and it becomes a little implausible. Zan spends time telling us about how the hero became a virtual recluse, working from home and rarely venturing out, only opening her door to a very select few. She has to overcome this fear of the outside world in order to go on her investigative journey and whilst initially we see her struggling with this psychologically, it gets a little forgotten. She’s soon taking planes, renting cars, sleeping in hotels and generally running around the country as if that’s the most natural and easy thing in the world for her. Maybe not quite but it felt like her agoraphobic tendencies had been a bit forgotten.

The other thing that stood out to me was that there’s almost no description of what he did to his victims. It seems to have been physical torture rather than sexual abuse, although they are kept naked, but I’m not sure whether we’re meant to infer a combination of both. When I read Blacklands I said how I like the fact that the author respected the victims enough not to glamourize the perpetrator. I guess Zan may be doing the same her but given the genre it felt a little coy.

Finally there were some law enforcement issues that stretched credulity – an FBI officer who handed over sensitive information virtually on request.

So I guess I thought I was going to get a harrowing psychological examination of the impact of a crime, and it started out that way, but it eventually turned into more of a what-will-happen-and-how-will-they-catch-him thriller. A fairly decent one, plausibility issues aside, but a different book than what I was expecting. What I was expecting was the ending which I guessed so that was a shame.

7/10 – a pretty decent thriller.

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Orkney – Amy Sackville


This book was an Amazon ‘deal of the day’. I’ve become quite addicted to checking (usually just after midnight) and sometimes I just like buying a new book. This has of course done my TBR list no favours. Still it’s a relatively harmless vice (ebooks tend to be cheap).

This book may have cured me of the habit.

Orkney is the story of a married couple who arrive on an Orkney island for their honeymoon. They are a strange couple because there’s forty years difference in their ages. He is an almost-retired English professor who expected to end his days single and not discontented among his books. She was a student and has some strange attraction to the north and the sea.

The book follows their two-week stay on the island, with a few flashbacks to their earlier life.

This is a short book – 61,000 words – and yet I struggled to finish it. In fact I put off reading other books because I was determined to finish it first but was finding it hard going. This is actually the exact opposite of The Guiding Principle for this year but in my defence:

  • I have abandoned a few books and I felt like I needed to finish one
  • it was short and that kept tempting me to just finish it in a day or so
  • I went through a period of not feeling like reading so I may as well not be reading a book I didn’t enjoy as one I did (but might remember with sadness for other reasons)

So no, I didn’t enjoy it. It’s not that it’s a bad book. I think that it does something I’m not that interested in. Despite the shortness of the book, the story is even shorter. The bulk of the bulk is about evoking a sense of place, a tone. There is a dreamy, ghostly, ethereal quality to the writing. I can imagine some people reading it and just soaking in the images the prose creates and loving it. For me, and this is as much a deficiency in me as anything, it was a book in which not much happens. And what does happens is rather melancholy.

Nevertheless this is my blog and this review is my impression of the book.

5/10 – well written but not for me.

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A Working Theory of Love – Scott Hutchins

This is a book I bought because it either came up as Amazon ‘deal of the day’ or it was a ‘you might also like’ recommendation. Either way this was not a book I’d otherwise heard of or knew of the author. But the premise sounded interested.

Neill works for a tech start-up in Silicon Valley. But he’s not a computer programmer. He was hired because the company is trying to create an AI – artificial intelligence – and to give them a head start and sound grounding information they’re using the diaries of Neill’s late father. As an ‘expert’ in the material it’s Neill’s job to train the AI, ‘talk’ to it and correct its missteps and stumbles on the road to self-awareness – if such a thing is possible.

Alongside this we get Neill’s own story. How he’s faring after his divorce. He’s met a new woman, two in fact, but it’s not all plain sailing and he needs help. That’s when he hits on the idea of asking his “father” to help. Together they try to put together A Working Theory of Love.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I read this book. It’s not overly fascinated by the AI technology although there’s enough detail for that to seem plausible. There’s more in it about Neill’s past, his real father, his mother, his current life and loves than a purely SciFi story would have had. I found it an enjoyable, easy read. Some of the themes are relatively serious – his father is dead and he’s trying to figure out ‘love’ after all – but it was never weighed down by that. I suppose if I had a complaint it would be that there seemed to be a bit of meandering before the novel got to where it was going. However it wasn’t an overly strenuous diversion so that wasn’t a problem.

7/10 – some interesting musings, and some interesting computer-human conversations.

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Started Early, Took My Dog – Kate Atkinson


As I mentioned when I reviewed Life After Life I’ve had Started Early, Took My Dog on my TBR for a while. After Life After Life I re-read The Servants and then I read Started Early…

That was two months ago.

I know I go on a lot about my memory but it really isn’t that great. So I’ve had to go back and refresh it a little by skimming the book. I’ll also have to try to avoid comparing it/confusing it with the TV adaptation which I watched.

The story starts in the 70s with a young policewoman witnessing the aftermath of a brutal killing. This is around the time of the Yorkshire Ripper and later this crime becomes part of that investigation although at this stage no-one’s had the chance to make that connection yet. In the present day this woman is now retired from the police but making a living as a security guard. One day on a whim, she intervenes to help a small girl. The book is then the story of what happens next and how it connects back, through various characters, to what had happened in earlier times. Of course Jackson Brodie becomes involved too. He’s travelling the country trying to find a place to settle and has landed briefly in Yorkshire, where the novel is set.

I enjoyed this book. My main impression of it is how different the Brodie in the book is the the one played by Jason Isaacs. He seems a little tougher. He may be a little older – his daughter is – and he’s a little more damaged. He also becomes the custodian of a dog to which he becomes quite attached.

I enjoyed this book because I enjoyed Brodie. The writing was good but it was also unobtrusive. Not that Life After Life was overly ‘literary’ but this was definitely less so.

7/10 – Good, and some not-so good, people doing perhaps bad things.

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A Bit of a Ramble and an Apology

Apology

Been a long time since I posted here – sorry about that.

What to Do?

I’d’ve tweeted this if I could get it down to a (series of) pithy comment(s).

I’ve got 2 book reviews outstanding (sorry again!). I’ve got a book I’m 44% through, which is short and I’m determined to finish (still a slog though). I’ve got household chores. I’ve got techy projects (well ideas for). I’ve got journal entries I could write. I’ve got ideas for fiction I could at least write down. I’ve got faith stuff to ponder.

Somehow I feel like I’ve got nothing I want to do and a whole day ahead of me.

Where to Do It?

It’s weird how different social networks/online presences have different feel to them. Twitter feels like a place to be witty (if you can) and to find/follow interesting people. My twitter has some people I know but lots of celebs/writers/creative types. Facebook is mostly people I actually know – work, family and friends. Writing on Facebook always has the feel of “would I like my mum to read this?” (my mum’s not online though recently she seems to be getting reports of what’s on FB from my sister). There are forums on which I’m semi-anonymous and that’s ok but I only get to share parts of myself there – related to the forum topic.

This – my blog – feels more like my personal space to express things. Although I’m aware that it’s mostly read by people linked through one of the other places.

A Thought About Not Doing Stuff

This occurred to me whilst running the other day (I run now, how weird is that?):

I used to think that I often didn’t do the things I knew I should be doing for one of two reasons – too scared or too lazy. Now I’m genuinely not sure what the right thing is a lot of the time.

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Life After Life – Kate Atkinson

I’ve had Started Early, Took My Dog on my TBR list for a while. I bought it after I watched and enjoyed the TV adaptation of the other Jackson Brodie books (“Hello to Jason Isaacs” btw). Somehow or other it was one of those books that never rose to the top of the pile. However when I saw this book was being released – it was by the same author, but was stand-alone and  had an intriguing premise – I thought I’d get it and read it.

Life After Life‘s premise is the idea of living a life over and over until you get it “right”. Ursula Todd was born during a snowstorm in Feb 1910 to a middle-class English couple living in the suburbs of London. In this book we see various “versions” of her life – which sometimes is cut short very soon and sometimes takes us through both the first and second world wars. It’s a bit like the movie Sliding Doors in that whilst we get to see what could have happened if different paths were taken we don’t really know why it’s happening. This is not a fantasy or supernatural book about the process of re-living lives, it’s a book comparing various versions of the same life.

It’s well-written and I did enjoy it but I think my initial impression on finishing it was “is that it?” I suppose I’d let the idea of the premise lead me into thinking that there would be some final payoff, that there would be a version of her life which was clearly “right” and clearly “the best” and so on. And there sort of was and sort of wasn’t. Maybe I just had the wrong idea about what was the “best” and maybe that’s what the book is exploring.

Along the way there’s some great writing and I liked several of the characters. You also get to see them grow and change – several times. I felt slightly sad that her mother – whose POV you tend to follow when Ursula herself is very young – seems to start as a vibrant, interesting woman with her own definite ideas about life and turns into a crotchety, slightly superior and disapproving matron. But again maybe that’s the point.

There’s also a lot of suffering in this book. We go through the wars as I said, more than once and from more than one side and as well there are just the usual vicissitudes of life. Which can make for a tough read (I kept thinking of the title of one of her Brodie novels “When Will There Be Good News?“). Occasionally I felt that none of this suffering mattered anyway because it would be wiped out in the next go around – but that happened less than one might expect which is to the credit of the author.

7/10 – overall a good read, glad to have read it, pleased it’s over.

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Dragonflight – Anne McCaffrey

Dragonflight was S&L’s April book pick. I’d long been aware that there was this series with dragons in it that looked interesting. However when I was younger and more liable to read such a book there just seemed too many to start. Anyway this gave me a reason to check it out.

Dragonflight follows Lessa on the planet of Pern. At the start of the book she’s a lowly servant girl, a “drudge” in the hold once owned by her family but which was taken by force when she was ten. She’s now twenty-one and a chance for revenge occurs when the hold’s new lord arrives for a visit. He brings with him a couple of dragon-riders. One of these, F’lar, will soon become an unwitting tool of her plans but also she becomes interesting to him in another way. Pern is overshadowed by the Red Star – another planet whose orbit brings it close to Pern once every few generations. So close in fact that there’s a threat from the Star, a threat that Pern’s dragons are uniquely suited to protect against. However the dragon numbers are down and the riders are no longer held in the respect they once were. F’lar believes Lessa could be the key to restoring the dragon-riders’ fortunes and saving Pern itself.

One interesting thing about this book that I’ll get out of the way first is whether or not it’s fantasy or not. Of course it is – dragons! – but it’s set up in such a way that many consider it SciFi. It begins with a prologue that tells how Pern was colonised from Earth but that the colonists have long since lost any contact with or knowledge of their home planet. Also their technology and society have regressed to medieval levels. I see this merely as a way to clear the decks. Sure it’s also saying that this world could exist (apparently in later books explanations are given for some of the more fantastical elements including dragons themselves) but really it’s just saying this is the way it is, deal with it. Similar to “A long time ago in a galaxy far far away…”

I have to say I wasn’t very taken with this book. There were things about it I liked. There’s a certain puzzle element to the way the plot resolves that’s quite pleasing, I liked the logic of it. The descriptions of dragon lore and how the society was organised were interesting too.

However the sexual politics of the book were questionable. To be fair this book was written in the 60s when it was probably seen as forward-looking and even radical. But some of the attitudes felt off to me. Yes it’s a medieval hierarchical society with defined gender roles – but it’s that way because that’s the way she made it up so that doesn’t immunise it from all criticism. Having said the thing that bothered me most was the way the characters were written. Lessa was clearly stated to be a woman in her early twenties but she behaves and is treated like a young teenager. You could see her I suppose as an independent woman making her own way with her own agenda and unwilling to be cowed by male authority, but she does it in a rebellious and mainpulative manner rather than hit opposition head on. Meanwhile F’lar treats her like a child. He berates he for the actions she takes to find things out but deliberately keeps her in the dark about what’s happening to her. He teaches her about dragons and lore but only as much as he thinks she needs and he disciplines her if he thinks she needs it. His favourite way of making an emphatic point seems to be to shake her.

In the end because it was hard to like either of these characters I think it hurt my enjoyment of the book. I do wonder if I’d read it when I was 12 whether the sheer fact of dragons and my naivety would have meant I liked it more.

6/10 – dragons are cool but you need more for a good book.