Rereadathon #5 is coming!

Well, here we are more than halfway through January already. The festivities of Christmas and the New Year feel like a long time ago now, but (in the Northern Hemisphere) winter stretches out ahead of us for another month or two of dreariness. It's time for a little bit of self-care and indulgence, and if you're a bookish sort of person, a readathon is just the ticket. Bex's rereadathon is a particularly cosy event, because it gives you the excuse to put aside all your other obligations and return to the fictional worlds that you know are going to welcome you home. Whether you are a habitual rereader or someone who would just like to go back to an old favourite if only you had the time, the rereadathon gives you that permission. There are no rules, and no obligations. You can devote all your time to rereading, or pick up an old favourite alongside something new; retreat for a week in a fort made out of duvets and books, or just snatch a few pages in your lunch break. It's entirely up to you.

I've been enjoying the rereadathon since it started, and this year I'll be co-hosting the event alongside Bex and Gee. The Rereadathon takes place between Sunday 5th and Sunday 12th February, and to make it a social event for the unsociable, we invite you to share your thoughts and pictures on your blogs and social media. We'll be running reread-themed blog post prompts and challenges, and also a Twitter chat (time and date to be confirmed.) You can sign up to take part in the linky below, just link to a tweet, instagram picture, vlog or blog post saying you're going to take part. The more the merrier, of course, but even just a few people can make the rereadathon brilliant if we join with each other to chat and compare notes.

Sign up here:

Sci Fi Month: Introduction and Top Ten SF Books.

Hello and welcome, whether you're one of  my handful of regular readers or if you've come to this blog because of Rinn's event. This is the fourth year of Rinn's Sci-Fi month, but it's my first time taking part. A month-long inter-blog celebration of all things science fiction? I couldn't resist, despite it clashing with National Novel-Writing Month, so I'm having to be very organised for a change and these posts written and scheduled ahead of time.

So, for those of you who don't know me, my name is Katie and I live on the Isle of Wight. I'm a relatively new fan of science fiction, although I've been reading fantasy since I was a kid. I started watching Doctor Who when it was relaunched back in 2005, but it wasn't until my best friend showed me Joss Whedon's cult classic TV show Firefly that I really got hooked on all things in time and space. And there are no half-measures for me; if I become interested in a thing, then it takes up a lot of room in my imagination.

Over the next month, I plan to post twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, with reviews of sci-fi books, films and TV, discussion posts and general fangirling. Next week will be Star Trek week, in celebration of the franchise's fiftieth anniversary earlier this year. But today, let me start off with a top ten list of my favourite science fiction books.

10: The Girl With All The Gifts - M. R. Carey. I think it's best to read this book without knowing too much about it, although now there is a film adaptation out there, I don't know how possible that is. It's a tale of human survival in an uncertain future, of hope, and an unusual but very important little girl.

9. Terra - Mitch Benn. By comparison, Terra is a happy little book, the tale of a human girl adopted by aliens and brought up on another planet; a celebration of cultural diversity and finding similarities in apparent differences. 

8. Sleeping Giants - Sylvain Neuvel The third in a row where a novel's catalyst is a small girl. When Rose Franklin is a child, she makes a discovery that will shape not only her own future but that of the whole world, and possibly beyond. But what shape will that future take? Is every scientific discovery doomed to bring the human race closer to destroying itself, or can it be saved from itself?

7. The Time Machine - H. G. Wells. The book that started all modern time-travel stories. Written in the Victorian age, The Time Machine reads as though it were written this year; with a humorous protagonist, science that even I can make sense of, and a surprisingly spooky ending. Without this book, the worlds of science fiction would be very different.

6. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke. I saw the film of this first; a very strange movie, slow-moving with a weird beginning and a freaky ending, and (aside from the bits of music you associate with the film) the most unearthly, terrifying soundtrack imaginable. Not one to watch at midnight in an empty house. I was on edge throughout the "Beyond the Infinte" section! But the film made a lot more sense after reading the book, which was written alongside the screenplay and explains a lot of the weird stuff you see on the screen. It also reminded me in a roundabout way about how when I was seven or so, I was obsessed with my space encyclopedia and used it almost as a travel guide, mentally planning which planets I most wanted to visit when I was grown up and space travel was as common as getting on a bus. (My inner seven-year-old is still mad we haven't even sent anyone to Mars yet.)

5. Redshirts - John Scalzi. You know in Star Trek, whenever Captain Kirk and the main characters beam down to a planet on an away mission, they always have a few unknown crew members come with them in order to die horribly and create a sense of peril for the characters who must survive? Redshirts is their story. Very tongue-in-cheek,"recursive and meta," and snort-your-drink-up-your-nose hilarious. Use caution when reading in public.

4. Ready Player One - Ernest Cline. A wonderful treasure-hunt story set almost entirely in a virtual-reality universe, a celebration of gaming and geek culture, and especially that from the 1980s. You don't have to know all the references - of which there are multitudes - although every recognition adds an extra layer of insider-enjoyment. A fabulous page-turner.

3. The Martian - Andy Weir. If an astronaut got accidentally stranded on Mars, how could he possibly survive long enough for another rocket to come back for him? Answer: with a quick-thinking scientific mind, a twisted sense of humour, and the first potatoes grown on Mars. I took my time getting into The Martian on my first reading, but by the end I was gripping the book tight, desperate to know what happens next. An intelligent, believable but often comical sci-fi novel. It has also been made into a movie, in which, once more, Matt Damon is in need of rescuing.

2. 11.22.63- Stephen King. You probably think of Stephen King as a horror writer, but he is so much more than that. 11.22.63 tells the story of a man who is shown a door that will take him back in time to 1958. The same day, every time, always resetting back as if it was the first time that day came around. His mission is live in the past for five years, in order to prevent the assassination of president John F. Kennedy, then come back and see how the world would be changed as a result. But his task is complicated when he becomes attached, and meanwhile, time itself seems to be fighting back. 11.22.63 is not a horror story, more a historical novel than anything else, with a new approach to how time-travel works. I enjoyed losing myself with Jake in the '50s and '60s, and forming a life for himself there, just as much as the suspense-filled main plot. Stephen King makes you care about his characters, and then fear for them. There was a TV adaptation earlier this year, but while it kept the shape of the story roughly the same, the details were different, and most of the little things that I loved about the book were either passed over or changed. It's a beast of a book, about 800 pages, and yet it never drags. It is a book you can enjoy spending time in.

1. The Long Way to a Small Lonely Planet - Becky Chambers. Anyone who has been book-shopping with me this year will not be surprised to see this book at number one. Just as Stephen King took a new approach to time-travel, so Becky Chambers (the only woman on this list - shocking!) has given us a fresh look at the space-opera genre. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is, as the title suggests, the story of a small crew on a journey; not a military vessel, nor even a starship on a noble quest for knowledge (albeit heavily armed for self-defence) but an unarmed engineering ship building wormholes. The setting is a space alliance between many planetary cultures, but unlike Star Trek's Federation, Star Wars'  Empire or Firefly's Alliance, humans are a very new and insignificant addition to the Galactic Commons. The crew of the Wayfarer is vastly diverse, both among the humans (who are still the majority on this ship) and the other members. It is a story of relationships between people who have to work at close quarters together, and it's absolutely gorgeous. I've been recommending it to everyone I know with an interest in sci-fi and they've all loved it. 

Rereadathon the Third: Part two - Saturday 26th - Wednesday 30th March

Saturday:

I finished American Gods yesterday, and although I've read it several times now, I'm feeling a hint of a book hangover; I can't get Shadow and Laura, Wednesday and Mr Nancy and all the rest out of my head. I spent the evening yesterday at a 50th birthday party, which was a really lovely evening, and read most of the stories in Through the Woods, a collection of gothic fairy tales in comic-book form. I left the last one until this morning, however. I remembered being really creeped out by one of the illustrations, and didn't really want that to be the image left in my mind after lights out. Yes, I'm a wimp.

And today I've got stuck back into Anne of Green Gables. If I must buy lots of different editions of my favourite book since childhood, it's only right that I read each one, and I've got a lovely collector's library, pocket-sized with gold edges and illustrations. I know that book inside out. If I found myself in the dystopian world of Fahrenheit 451, where books are banned and live on only because people memorise them word for word, Anne would be mine. I don't know it word for word,  and yet I can identify it from a half-glimpsed sentence on an e-reader screen. I can tell if the wording is slightly different from one edition to another. This copy I'm reading today has Marilla saying she didn't want a "Barnardo boy" instead of "'home' child," which was the wording I knew from my existing three copies. When was this changed?

It really struck me today how little legal protection orphans had back in the nineteenth century, when Anne of Green Gables was set. For one thing, Marilla and Matthew just decided the night before, that if Mrs Spencer was going over to the orphanage in Nova Scotia to adopt a child, she might as well pick one up for them too at the same time - like she's running grocery errands for them. There's no paperwork, they don't even need to go to the orphanage themselves to be assessed (hence the mix-up when they wanted a boy and got Anne instead.) Yes, Matthew and Marilla are good people, but they could be anyone. Mrs Spencer doesn't even take Anne all the way to Green Gables, but drops her off at the Bright River railway station in a strange place where she knows no one.  There's no follow-up; once Anne's off the hands of the orphanage trustees, we never hear from them again. If it weren't for Marilla's change of heart, she could have been fobbed off onto the awful Mrs Blewett and worked half to death, and no one would have any record of where she went or what happened to her. It's all rather sombre to think of what could have happened, if the story had gone differently.

Saturday Stats

Books read from: Through the Woods - Emily Carroll

Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery

Pages read: 202

Books finished this week: 2

Favourite reread so far: American Gods. 

On the menu: tuna couscous pot, apple, easter egg

Sunday and Monday

Although it's currently quite sunny, the last couple of days have been very temperamental weather-wise with Storm Katie hitting yesterday evening. (I had nothing to do with it, I swear!) So the usual Easter walk has been postponed, and I spent most of yesterday afternoon finishing Anne of Green Gables. What makes Anne stand out from the other children's books of the late 19th and early 20th century, is the way that L. M. Montgomery captures the spirit of childhood in a rural community. Anne is neither sickeningly good, nor do the scrapes she gets in read as though written as a moral lesson to the reader. Montgomery gently laughs at Anne's eccentricities, but does not diminish the soaring highs and crashing lows that might seem mundane but are important to the child. Anne is one of life's optimists, but you read enough sorrow between the lines to keep the sweetness from becoming cloying; the down-to-earth humour keeps Anne's precociousness from becoming twee. She's a bright, sparky child who has survived a tough life - having to care for her former foster mother's eight children (with twins three times in succession) while little more than an infant herself - through the escape of books and imagination. So it's heartwarming to see her delight as she discovers the simple pleasures: eating ice cream, sleeping in a spare-room bed, and to finally discover people who love her unconditionally. 

I've no idea how many times I've read Anne. As a child I would read the same books over and over and over again, and a family friend's enduring image of me is reading that book, with my hair in pigtails and wearing a straw summer hat. But it still has the power to make me laugh and love and cry. I cried twice yesterday, once when the uptight, repressed Marilla half-grieves that Anne has to grow up, and the other time - well, you know which part!

Today, (Monday) I switched off my alarm and let myself sleep as late as I liked (which was pretty late) although the weather outside gave me some strange and frightening dreams. As I've already said, I've been getting into a routine even on days when I'm not working, but bank holidays are different. Today I ought to take a break from the rereadathon to catch up with The Stand for this week's readalong segment with Judith (which reminds me, I need to type up last week's notes.) But I also want to get started on my reread of The Charioteer. 

Sunday Stats:

Books read from: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery

Pages read today: 267

Total books finished: 3

Favourite reread so far: American Gods and Anne of Green Gables tie

On the menu: hot cross buns, Easter egg (seeing a theme here?) apple, sour cream and garlic Graze crostini snack

Monday Stats:

Books read from: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Pages read today: 220
Total books finished: 3
Favourite reread so far: American Gods and Anne of Green Gables tie, but The Charioteer is up there too. Look, they're all excellent! That's why I'm rereading them.
On the menu: Bit of Rocky Road Easter egg, caramel shortbread, apple, Graze snacks.

Tuesday and Wednesday:

It's the last evening of the rereadathon, but I could quite happily do another week, and maybe I will, unofficially; I've still got Monstrous Regiment and Miranda Hart's autobiography, as well as others which got added to my mental list after the books I did read - notably, Anne of Avonlea and Anansi Boys. Yesterday (Tuesday) I spent the evening away from the rereads, as I was a bit behind on my reading of The Stand, although I came back to The Charioteer for another chapter before bed, and over breakfast this morning. The problem with having two books on the go at once - especially when they are two good books - is that you can't choose which one to pick up. But for now, I think I'll aim to finish The Charioteer by the end of today. I'm feeling a little sleepy, however, and might fall asleep quite early.

(Later)

I finished The Charioteer at about 11PM, and I think I'm more satisfied with the ending on the second reading. Although I've concluded it is a happy ending, I find myself wondering about how the story will continue past the last page, and how much of a rollercoaster ride the characters are in for when the book is closed. I don't think that their problems will go away as easily as they, or we, would like. But they will endure the storms together, of that much I'm sure.

I am writing about these ink-and-paper people as if they are real, alive today, and that the next page is tomorrow, despite The Charioteer being written in the 1950s and set in the 1940s. That's the power of books, and why we like to return to books we've already read - to reacquaint ourselves with old friends, and try to know them better. When I was about 17, I read an author's afterward for a novel I studied at school, where they wrote something along the lines of, "People keep asking me what happened to the characters after the events of the book. Nothing happened! It's a story! They don't exist off the page!" I'm certainly misquoting this author's words, and probably misrepresenting what they were trying to say, but it was the message I took away, and I've never quite forgiven that author since. 

Tuesday Stats:

Rereadathon books read from: The Charioteer - Mary Renault

Rereadathon pages read today: 31

Other reading: The Stand - Stephen King

Total books finished: 3

Favourite reread: Anne, American Gods (see above)

On the menu: Apple, Bit of Easter egg, Graze cheesey corn snack

Wednesday Stats:

Rereadathon books read from: The Charioteer - Mary Renault

Rereadathon pages read today: 168

Other reading: The Stand - Stephen King

Total books finished: 4

Favourite reread: See above

On the menu: Special K cereal, chocolate brownie bites.

Final summary:

Books read: American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Through the Woods - Emily Carroll
Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Pages read: 1592
Best reading day: Sunday (267 pages)
Average: 159 pages per day

Thanks again to Bex for hosting the rereadathon. I've really enjoyed it. Another one in the autumn perhaps?