Quickie update about 6000 pages.
Well as you can see I’m now over 6000 pages so I can quit reading until January if I want 😀
Actually, since I’ve read 17 books now I’d quite like to get to 25. However that’s a book a week for the rest of the year. I might manage that for December but not while I’m doing Nano.
20 is a nice round number and also higher than my highest I’ve done since I started this malarkey.
I was ill this week, had a cold, which involved spending the best part of two days in bed. As such I didn’t do much other than sleep, eat and read. Also I wanted to re-read something I knew I’d enjoy.
So, Expecting Someone Taller, is comfort food reading for me.
I first read it when it came out which was whilst I was a student. I’ve re-read it a few times since, once in the last few years (but before the blogging of every book modern obsession). I have to say that the first time I loved it, at mostly because of the ending. Subsequent reads I enjoyed it but certain flaws jumped out at me. It’s thoroughly in the category of guilty pleasure.
Expecting Someone Taller is the story of Malcolm Fisher who hits a badger with his car one evening. As he watches it die he discovers that it’s not just a badge but a shape-shifting giant. The giant gives Malcolm a helmet that allows him to become any person he wishes and a very special Ring. This sets off a series of events where a catalog of mythical characters, apparently real, are after Malcolm and more especially the Ring.
This is very much a comic fantasy in the Terry Pratchett mould. It does for Wagner’s Ring Cycle what Discworld does for fantasy in general.
It’s basically a rom-com with the fantasy elements thrown in. Malcolm, a nobody who’s just been dumped by his girlfriend, is suddenly in possession of the most powerful magical item of all. How will he cope and will it help or hinder his (theoretical) love-life?
I’m not sure I ever found this laugh-out-loud funny but it’s definitely amusing and light and warm-hearted. The main character is likeable, most of the time. As a younger man I enjoyed the rom- part of it and the associated happy ending. I guess I still do though with a slightly more cynical eye – except when I’m ill in bed and wanting a comforting view of the world.
8/10 – mythical nonsense and jolly good fun.
Lev Grossman’s The Magicians is a tricky book to review, at least in as much as it’s hard to know how much to reveal. One of the things that I have most to say on is something that is based on a turn of events about 2/3rds of the way through. On the other hand it’s mentioned (briefly) on the back cover.
OK so if you consider back cover blurb spoiler then don’t continue reading this review. Otherwise…
The Magicians has been called a grown-up Harry Potter and you can see why – the first section of the book concerns the hero, Quentin Coldwater, being selected for and training at a magical school, Brakebills. However he’s college age not pre-pubescent and the book doesn’t shy away from descriptions of sex, and drug-taking which you wouldn’t find in even the later HP books. Also, whilst graduating from Brakebills takes 5 years (a little less for Quentin as he gets put forward a year) we’re taken through it all in this book rather than the book-per-year of the Potter novels.
Having said that it being a magical school with exams, practical lessons and even a magical sport (Welters) it’s hard not to compare with HP. This is done knowingly and when one of the characters drunkenly refers to Welters as Quidditch and talks about Owl mail you know Grossman’s not unaware of the parallels.
So I think the HP comparisons are superficial and come almost automatically from having the very idea of a school for magic. Magic in this book by the way is another difference from the Potterverse. Performing a spell is a matter of mastering complicated and precise hand movements coupled with particular incantations (in one of several languages) and possibly strange ingredients. It’s also something where the exact manner of casting depends on the conditions – pointing your wand and shouting ‘Expelliamus’ might work in New York on a still day on a Tuesday in June but not on a windy Friday in London in December for example. So whilst it’s not a science, it’s a very finicky art-form that requires lots of practice, hard work and memorising of exceptions.
But the main difference is that because the characters are already more mature it deals with a more psychologically realistic view of the world. What it might feel like to be in this scenario. Not as an exciting schoolboy adventure but as something you’re doing because you can’t really find meaning in normal life. Well that’s true for Quentin any how. The other characters have different motivations and aspirations and distractions.
One of the ways in which Quentin’s inner life is demonstrated is through the Fillory books. These are the series of magical stories that he read as a child about a land called Fillory that a family of English children go to and have various adventures in. Whilst in the world of The Magicians nearly everyone reads the Fillory novels as children, Quentin never grew out of them and will re-read them as a kind of comfort food equivalent.
And it turns out Fillory is real and Quentin and his friends go there.
And it’s this section of the book that gave me most pause for thought. Because Fillory is quite obviously and deliberately a parallel to Narnia and so the time spent there can be read as either a parody, or a fairly scathing critique of those books. I guess it was wondering whether Grossman wanted me to take some kind of a message away about this that gave me some trouble.
In the end what I decided was that he was just taking a kind of Narnia-like world seriously and how that would play out with his characters and his rules about magic and the story he wanted to tell. So I stopped worrying about whether the books I loved as a child were being made fun of[*] and enjoyed the book.
There’s a couple of other sections to the book and an interesting ending that I won’t go into. What I will say is that again I went back and forth between two opinions – that the book was uneven in tone and that was a weakness or that yes it was but because different tones were appropriate to the different sections.
I’ve read other reviews which found Quentin himself too downbeat or melancholic a character. Personally I empathised with his struggles, with life, magic and relationships and it was him (and the other characters) that kept me interested through some of the ups and downs.
Finally all I will say because it’s probably not clear is that I did enjoy this book and will read the sequel (eventually).
8/10 – It’s Magic Harry but not as we know it!
If you recall I’m not really supposed to go on to a new book when I haven’t written up the previous two. Well I’ve completed three since the last 6000 pages update, and NaNoWriMo’s going ot be taking a lot of my time, so in order not to get too far behind I’m catching up:
Anya’s Ghost is another graphic novel, this time an actual graphic novel i.e. written and conceived as a single story rather than issues of a comic book. It’s relatively short (though remember I use the metric 4 comic pages = 1 regular page). I bought this book because it popped up in my Amazon recommendations, the ‘see inside’ preview looked interesting and it has a Neil Gaiman quote on the cover.
I say all this only to justify myself and mitigate my review because I’m not really the target audience for this.
Anya is a high school girl in an American private school. She comes from a Russian immigrant family and is painfully aware of her differences and wants to fit in. She also has the usual teenage hopes and dreams such as whether the cute boy in her class likes her.
Then one day she meets a ghost, a girl of a similar age who died nearly 90 years ago. She befriends the ghost and together they navigate some of the trials of high school. Only maybe her new best friend is not quite all she seems…
As I said above, I am really not the target for this book. So when I say that whilst I thought it was well-drawn and competently told the story was a little too straightforward and predictable, and the issues it dealt with (self-acceptance, peer pressure etc) a little cliche, then I am aware that I’m being unfair. On its own terms and for the market it’s aimed at it works well. For me it was enjoyable but just ok.
6/10 A fun halloween read for a younger person than I.
NaNoWriMo that is.
I’ve tried twice before – 2006 and 2008 – and both times I quit after a few days and a couple thousand words or so. To be fair in 2006 my laptop died 4 days in and although I had other computers to write on (and eventually bought the laptop I’m typing on now) it rather took the wind out of my sails.
I’ve avoided it since then despite feeling a ‘tug’ every Oct/Nov. It’s a seductive idea – give yourself to something completely for 30days and at the end have something, a novel, to show for it. The argument against is that any novel I write under those conditions won’t be very good and may not even be salvageable in the edit.
However I’ve decided to do it anyway because what is life without attempting things that might not work. And even if the end result isn’t the best I’m going to try to make the process fun.
So I’ve joined the forums, added buddies from the Ship of Fools, added NaNos to my Google+ circles and downloaded and installed some new software.
My big plan to succeed this year is to actually have a plan this year rather than simply an idea and then start writing (known in NaNo-speak as a ‘pantser’) and in order to facilitate planning I’ve installed Scrivener which has a special NaNo trial version that expires 7th Dec. It also has a Linux Beta which works really well. So far I’m loving it.
So expect a series of updates on progress. Not sure how frequent. Possibly I’ll do a daily word-count check-in on G+ and a weekly report here.
Here’s my NaNo profile if you want to add me.
Another good week loss-wise. However today, and just today, I’ve got a cold and I feel a bit crap (not terrible just a bit crap).
Should I indulge in a few extra calories? If so what? I’ve already done my exercise walk – which almost wiped me out. I may just curl up in bed with a lemsip and my kindle.
Lost: 2.2lbs
Lost so far: 49.2lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 1.54lbs
Weight: 255lbs (18st 3lb)
Usually when I have not much to say it’s because I had a bad week and can’t face a long analysis of it. But this week I lost weight. And it’s not even that I’m disappointed by the amount, I wasn’t expected a big drop after last week so this week’s loss was as it should be and I am pleased.
I just don’t have much to say about it.
Lost: 1.2lbs
Lost so far: 47lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 1.52lbs
Weight: 257.2lbs (18st 5lb)
OK not actually asleep but not focussing on the job in hand.
First the good news:
Lost: 6.8lbs
Lost so far: 45.8lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 1.53lbs
Weight: 258.4lbs (18st 6lb)
So in a single swoop (week) I’m back down to well over 3stone lost, under 40BMI and my lowest weight of L3. Good eh?
Well yes – and you know this is coming, glass half-empty man that I am – but there’s a big part of me that’s saying “what took so long?”. Because another way to look at it is to say it’s taken 10 weeks to lose less than half a pound. Let’s quickly summarize the last 10 weeks:
| Week | What happened | Result |
| Week 21 | W/e at home plus worry about my Dad | put on ~3.5lb |
| Week 22 | Normal Week | lost ~3 lb |
| Week 23 | games night + short break with M. | put on ~5lb |
| Week 24 | still off work, so stayed off diet | put on ~1lb |
| Week 25 | “Friday Pizza” | put on ~3lb |
| Week 26 | good week, “lost it” a little at w/e | lost ~1.5lb |
| Week 27 | normal week until last 2 days, then “Eat Your Calories” | lost ~3lb |
| Week 28 | Week of “Eat Your Calories” | stayed the same |
| Week 29 | “Friday Pizza” | put on ~1lb |
| Week 30 | Normal week | lost ~7lb |
I should probably explain what “Friday Pizza” is since I’ve had a couple of those. It’s when I decide on a Friday evening that I’d like to have a night off the diet and have something nice. So in itself not so disastrous you might think, but what has happened is this:
So I’m thinking that if/when I do this again I need to make sure I get the pizza after my walk and that I stick to a small one.
Anyway looking back over the last ten weeks I see that I under-estimated how long my planned diet holiday was going to be and how long it would take to get back on track. I assumed that I would just have that one week (week 23) and that even after that became 3 that I would lose it back in a couple of weeks. I still think that it was not entirely unreasonable to have a week or two off, taking the longer view, but that having put on 10lbs I needed to lose that back and more before relaxing again. It possibly wasn’t test out an untried theory like MFP’s eat your calories either.
Anyway I feel I need to get a few weeks of normal diet and exercise under my belt again before any major departures.
Y: The Last Man is a comic book series. Note it’s not a graphic novel IMHO because although you can buy it in different collected forms it was written as a series of 60 comics over about 6 years and it definitely follows a episodic serial narrative.
It’s probably worth mentioning something about the comic book form here. It’s something I only really came to as an adult – yes I read the Beano and 2000AD but not beyond about 13-14 and both of those were weekly comics. I never had the experience of buying monthly comics under what I think of as the US model. Which are aimed more at adolescents and which come out less frequently. They feature on-going stories but also have ‘arcs’ that typically last 4-6 issues. So the “full” story of Y: The Last Man takes 60 issues and 6 years to play out but is comprised of maybe 10-12 story arcs within that. This feels like an odd, slow way to consume a story to me but I guess real comic book fans have several series on the go at once.
There’s another oddity (to me) which is the timing. It takes maybe 5-10mins to read an issue. So if like me you sit down after the fact and read them in long 1-2 hour stretches like you would a novel, then you get a lot of story, a lot of setup-conflict-resolution or whatever in that time. It’s also true that Although it may take 10mins to read there’s often a lot of visual information on the page that’s adding to the story so it sometimes feels like a much more ‘dense’ experience.
I guess for me it’s most similar to watching serialised TV like Buffy – on-going seasonal arc but with shorter episode–length stories. You get the same sense for example of building up to an ‘act break’ which on TV is an ad break and in comics the end of an issue. However the comic book form feels so much more condensed that these occur relatively more frequently.
Anyway, with that in mind, how was Y: The Last Man?
It’s the story of a man, Yorick, who appears to be the last male human left alive on earth after a mysterious plague wiped out all the other men. I’ve explained the premise to people and the usual reaction is “so it’s basically porn, then?”. Well it’s not, but fair comment I suppose. Actually, possibly in reaction to this there’s almost no sex in the first third of the story. This at first is ostensibly because Yorick is on his way to find his girlfriend who was in Australia just before the plague hit. A little later we find out he has “issues” relating to sex which may explain why he’s not taking advantage of his unique position.
In the mean time we get a sort of standard post-apocalyptic survival tale with a twist. Society hasn’t completely broken down but it has significantly changed. Because certain professions have a very high level of men in them (e.g. airline pilots) this has an effect in how the post-plague world operates. Even without a large gender disparity, all the male car drivers suddenly dying (the plague hits quickly and takes effect in minutes) makes a mess of the roads in a way that takes months to sort out.
The book tries to explore what a female only world would look like. What happens in politics, art, commerce, religion, warfare, law enforcement – all these are touched on. It’s quite interesting although at time it borders on preachy/exposition-dumpy to do this. It also tries to have its feminist cake and eat it. Whilst its heart appears to be in the right place it can’t quite avoid the wider comic book traditions of female depiction (ridiculously attractive with gravity-defying boobs). To be fair different artists[1] vary in this respect and the main comic is usually more balanced than the covers.
It’s not just the physical characteristics of the women either. I don’t think it’s entirely unproblematic that we get lots of violence in this book. It’s a very violent book and there is a certain section of the population that just enjoys seeing women laying into one another, whether with weapons or hand-to-hand. On the one hand in a world of only women, women are inevitably taking up all the positions of the moral compass, on the other it can feel at times fetishistic. Overall my feeling was: heart in the right place, occasional uneasiness in specific depictions.
That aside I will say that I enjoyed it. The story lines develop in interesting and unexpected ways. The dialogue had a wit and knowingness that reminded me of Buffy. The ending was not quite what I might have hoped for but not entirely unsatisfying. (I think I read that some were very disappointed. I wonder if I’d have felt more strongly about it after following the characters for 6 years.)
8/10 – Y? Y not? (sorry!)
Well this was supposed to be the week where going back to my old regime got me back down to something more reasonable. And it was all going so well until Friday. Friday I decided to have a pizza and a bottle of wine. Both of which carried over into the weekend as I couldn’t finish them all in on night. So I find myself having gone back up again.
Which makes the last 3 months a sort of bumpy plateau. Plateaus do happen in dieting and there are reasons why this happens to do with how your body reacts and changes the way it processes food and responds to exercise. But I’ve been here before and I know this plateau. It’s caused not by any of that stuff but by me getting bored/tired and breaking out of the diet regime.
PONR? Well it’s not really a Point Of No Return so much as it is that I’m doing this now, and will be in some form, from now on. That’s good in one way – it means I don’t panic over the slips. In another I need to be wary of always putting off the getting back on the horse and knuckling down to it.
Lost: -1lbs
Lost so far: 39lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 1.43lbs
Weight: 265.2lbs (18st 13lb)