Looking back: 2014

How can it possibly be the end of the year already? It seems like just a few weeks ago that I set myself some admittedly vague goals for the year: to do new stuff. So what have I managed to achieve this year? It certainly doesn't feel like much has changed in the last twelve months. I'm still single, still living at home, still in the same job - and still haven't had a single driving lesson. It's been a fairly pleasant year, if not a very eventful one.

I've been on a few excursions and holidays: In June I took a mini-holiday on my own, first to Oxford, and then on to the Peak District for a couple of days, and in August my best friend and I finally went camping in the Lake District, which we had been meaning to do for years.

After having really struggled with writer's block for a very long time, I came up with the beginnings of a story idea just in time for NaNoWriMo, and despite setbacks, I hit my 50 000 word count with an extra day to spare!

I attempted to get my to-read pile under control, not allowing myself to buy, borrow or otherwise acquire more books than I read in the year. However, as I did not take into consideration rereads, my pile is now three piles and I am in desperate need of replacing my tall bookcase with a tall extra deep bookcase, in order to shelve them in two rows! This self-inflicted rule did, however, change the way I do book shopping: I am more likely to buy single books that I really want to read, than to take advantage of multi-buy offers. I've also noticed the number of hardbacks I buy increasing too - and I think that can be put down to other bloggers' recommendations. When I bought myself a new smartphone, I downloaded the Kobo app, despite my loyalty to ink-and-paper books and discovered that... I really really am not an e-book person at all. I've downloaded a few previews, free books, and one out-of-print children's book, but it does not fool me that I am reading a book at all. It's like reading internet articles or fanfiction. No, I will stick to the physical books that are taking over my bedroom, thankyouverymuch.

In the autumn, I took one day trip to Coventry to visit at the newly-opened Big Comfy Bookshop, and I also met Cary Elwes, who is best known as Westley (or the Dread Pirate Roberts) in one of my favourite films of all time, The Princess Bride. He's very charming, polite, still handsome - but despite being English, his accent has more than a hint of American in it, which was a bit odd.

Top 10 books read in 2014

11.22.63 - Stephen King

 You really live within these pages, grow to care about the characters, and I would have been quite happy reading 750 pages just about Jake's day-to-day life in [the town of] Jodie, with Sadie. Everything seems wonderful - or at least, mostly a success; despite the past's resistance to Jake's every move, he seems to be mostly victorious. But through it all is an undercurrent of foreboding, thanks to the prologue in which a horrified Jake laments, "What have I done?" We can't quite forget, much as we'd like to, that some terrible consequences must come as a result of Jake's meddling. 

The Martian - Andy Weir

The Martian is a rollercoaster ride (or rover ride, perhaps) of victorious success and catastrophic setbacks, and each obstacle asks the same question anew: how can Watney possibly survive this?

N0S4R2 - Joe Hill

At nearly 700 pages, N0S4R2 requires some commitment, but it is a twisty page-turner, an unusual and attention-grabbing thriller. Each chapter takes the story in a new direction. In some ways, I was hesitant to read much of the book in one sitting, for fear of what might lie in store for the characters, but that was continually overridden by the desire to get caught up in this adventure and spend my time in the world of the novel.

The Explorer - James Smythe

The story of a doomed space mission, The Explorer shows us the last survivor on the spaceship Ishiguro, and how he found himself in this unienviable position. A claustrophobic thriller set in a not-too-distant future.

The Charioteer - Mary Renault

The Charioteer is[...] a thoughtful, intelligent and compassionate work of art that is way ahead of its time.

The Miniaturist - Jessie Burton

The Miniaturist explores the role of a woman in the seventeenth century, the expectations of a merchant's wife, and Nella's quest to make a place for herself in this unfamiliar new world [...] there is a sense of a fate neither escapable nor quite understandable until it is too late.

Terra - Mitch Benn

The world of Fnrr is a society evolved quite apart from ours, even perhaps a utopia, but one which reflects so much that is to be celebrated about people (whether human or not.) I came away from Terra smiling.

The Silkworm - "Robert Galbraith"

The investigation into the novelist's murder involves the unravelling of the cryptic caricatures in his would-be masterpiece, and I love a mystery which involves the cracking of a code [...] "Galbraith" does not cheat the reader, revealing enough information to make us feel smart, but holding back enough to keep us guessing, finishing up with an epic revelation at the end.

Kindred - Octavia E. Butler. 

It was curious; although I am very familiar with time travel stories, it was while reading Kindred that I realised how different the past can be. Then was then, now is now, but through Dana's eyes I had a sense of the two eras existing simultaneously, like two pictures drawn on tracing paper and placed one over the other.

Attachments - Rainbow Rowell

I admit it: I loved Attachments because I'm nosy. Aren't we all? [...] We get to know Beth and Jennifer through their emails, which reveal them to be people who are a lot of fun to hang out with, sharing their relationship and family woes, quirks and insecurities, and a deep abiding friendship.

Honourable mentions:

Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore - Robin Sloan
Sputnik Sweetheart - Haruki Murakami
The Shock of the Fall - Nathan Filer
The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion
It - Stephen King (also The Shining, but that was a reread.)
Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
The Girl with All the Gifts - M. R. Carey

Boxsets

As always, I am very far behind the times with my TV watching, my major discoveries being - for the third year in a row a Joss Whedon series - Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Finally I understand what made this show a big deal, why no one could ever shut up about it when I was a teenager.

I was also very surprised this year to fall in love with Fringe, a weird-science show that I knew nothing about when it was shown on TV, full of twists and shocks and such wonderful characters. Although Fringe took its time to win me over, it is well worth sticking with, and by the first of many many major revelations in the final episode of season one, I was hooked!

I also watched the first two and a bit seasons of Heroes, although my attention started to peter out a bit when I realised I didn't like very many of the characters very much (except Sylar, Hiro and Ando) or understand the plot. Fringe's plot was a lot more complicated, but the storytelling made it make sense. Heroes seemed like the writers made it up as they went along. I've also been steadily working through Star Trek: The Next Generation, where I am up to season six's famous "Chain of Command" episode, in which there!! Are!! Four!! Lights!!

Lucky No. 14 reading challenge

I only signed up for one all-year reading challenge in 2014: Astrid's Lucky No. 14 challenge, of which I managed to read books in twelve of the fourteen categories:

1. Visit The Country: Read a book that has setting in a country that you really want to visit in real life. Make sure the setting has a big role in the book and it can make you know a little bit more about your dream destination.
2. Cover Lust: Pick a book from your shelf that you bought because you fell in love with the cover. Is the content as good as the cover? Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer
3. Blame it on Bloggers: Read a book because you’ve read the sparkling reviews from other bloggers. Don’t forget to mention the blogger’s names too! N0S4R2 by Joe Hill, recommended by Hanna, Laura and Sarah.
4. Bargain All The Way: Ever buying a book because it’s so cheap you don’t really care about the content? Now it’s time to open the book and find out whether it’s really worth your cents. From A Buick 8 - Stephen King.
5. (Not So) Fresh From the Oven: Do you remember you bought/got a new released book last year but never had a chance to read it? Dig it from your pile and bring back the 2013.  The Cuckoo's Calling - "Robert Galbraith
6. First Letter’s Rule: Read a book which title begins with the same letter as your name. Ketchup Clouds - Annabel Pitcher
7. Once Upon a Time: Choose a book that’s been published for the first time before you were born (not necessarily has to be a classic book, just something a little bit older than you is okay. You can read the most recent edition if you want to) The Charioteer - Mary Renault (first published 1953
8. Chunky Brick: Take a deep breath, and read a book that has more than 500 pages. Yep, the one that you’ve always been afraid of! 11.22.63 - Stephen King
9. Favorite Author: You like their books, but there are too many titles. This is your chance, choose a book that’s been written by your fave author but you haven’t got time to read it before. The Sleeper and the Spindle - Neil Gaiman
10. It’s Been There Forever: Pick up a book that has been there on your shelf for more than a year, clean up the dust and start to read it now :) The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan.
11. Movies vs Books: You’ve seen the movie adaptation (or planned to see it soon) but never had time to read the book. It’s time to read it now, so you can compare the book vs the movie. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg (link leads to review of the film.)
12. Freebies Time: What’s the LAST free book you’ve got? Whether it’s from giveaway, a birthday gift or a surprise from someone special, don’t hold back any longer. Open the book and start reading it now :D We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler (birthday present from Ellie.)
13. Not My Cup of Tea: Reach out to a genre that you’ve never tried (or probably just disliked) before. Whether it’s a romance, horror or non fiction, maybe you will find a hidden gem! The Coldest Girl In Coldtown - Holly Black (Vampire fiction)
14. Walking Down The Memory Lane: Ever had a book that you loved so much as a kid? Or a book that you wish you could read when you were just a child? Grab it now and prepare for a wonderful journey to the past :) Comic books or graphic novels are allowed! 

15 Day Book Blogging Challenge: Days Nine and Ten

Day 9: Why do you blog about books?

Quite honestly, I blog about books, because most people get tired of me talking about my latest read long before I'm finished with the topic. My English Literature degree taught me how to analyse books, take them apart and study the bits, and believe it or not, this actually enhanced my enjoyment of reading, rather than destroying it. But if I try talking about symbolism, symmetry, foreshadowing, themes, tropes and archetypes as an answer to "what are you reading?" my average acquaintance's eyes start to glaze over. I think fondly of the summer after Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was published, talking for hours with my friend Hannah (another English major) analysing Snape's every action and searching the text with a fine-tooth comb to try to puzzle out the mystery of his motives. But such friends, such conversations, are quite few and far-between, here on the Isle of Wight.

I used to haunt the Lord of the Rings forums, which were great for discussing the works of J R R Tolkien, but less so for Anne of Green Gables or Enid Blyton. I'd find forums, but the posts might be one sentence long, updated maybe once a month. I wanted to talk in depth about Rilla of Ingleside but also Twilight, and also about Neil Gaiman; I had my feet in many fanbases that did not overlap. So I set up the blog, in the hope that other people would find my posts and contribute to the discussion. And when writing blog posts, I can edit my thoughts as I write and so, I hope, my reviews make a bit more sense than my incoherent and rambling fangirling.

Day 10: How do you choose what to read next?

Quite simply, I read whatever I'm in the mood for at the time. My to-read pile has quite a variety of genres: non-fiction, romance, thriller, horror, science fiction and fantasy, as well as the hundreds of books on my shelves. If I have a library book due back, or if I've had a book borrowed from a friend for too long, I'll read that. I don't very often accept free books from authors or publishers, because I don't want reading to become a chore. I'd rather have the freedom to read what I want, when I want, and decide whether or not I have enough to say about it to make it worthwhile reviewing.

Bout of Books: Friday

11.25AM

Good, errrrr, (checks clock.) morning, people. As it was my first day off work in readathon week, it was some time after 10 when I stumbled out of bed - too late for breakfast, perhaps, and too early for lunch. CAKE TIME! (with a small cup of coffee, naturally.)

My plans for today are few: first off to finish Alex Woods. It's clear how this story is going to end, in broad terms - after all, it started at the end, and as soon as it was revealed which country Alex was returning from when he was stopped at Dover, I knew why. But this is a character story, rather than a plot-centred one, and I'm enjoying spending time with Alex and Mr Peterson. The Universe Versus Alex Woods is by turns funny, heartbreaking, intelligent and inspiring. Alex has such a strong narrative voice that you get to see the world from inside his mind, feel what he feels and get very indignant when everyone else misunderstands his motives.

I've set up my old "book chair" book stand so that I can read and knit at the same time. Double productivity! (or it will be if I get off this wretched internet.)

1.30PM

I finished The Universe Versus Alex Woods just in time for lunch. There were moments in the last fifty pages or so which felt like a nail-biting race against the clock, which was a completely inappropriate way to think of what was going on. Author Gavin Extence combines serious subject matter with a sometime uncomfortable humour, which I suppose is what life is - neither comedy nor tragedy, but both, side-by-side. It was interesting to compare my impression of Alex at the beginning of the book (and end of the story) with its ending. He is a fairly distinctive personality even in the first chapters, but the bulk of the book fleshes him out more fully to demonstrate how he became who he is.

Memorable quotes:

 I tried to look up 'celibate' in the dictionary, I couldn't find it. It certainly wasn't where I expected to find it - in between 'seller' and 'sellotape.'Rest assured: by the time I was ten, I had managed to find out what my mother meant. She meant that as far as our family was concerned, only the cat had a sex life.

I knew how many zeroes there were in a quintillion, but I thought that algebra lived in ponds.

Order and chaos are slippery concepts. They're like a set of twins who like to swap clothing from time to time.

We tolerate a certain amount of incompetence in our politicians and public servants, but we should not tolerate it in the death business.

Challenge: Resummarise a cover - hosted at Queen Ella Bee Reads

Today I've decided to take part in a challenge to decide, based only upon the cover, what a book is all about and write a blurb for it. I chose The Age of Miracles, because I had already thought that the hardback and paperback designs gave off different impressions of the book's genre. Personally, I thought that the hardback was a better representation of the novel, while the UK paperback looked more like a Jodi Picoult novel. So here is my new version of The Age of Miracles based upon that cover:

For Nancy and Joe Jennings, the move to a new town is the start of a new life, an escape from a past that threatens to unravel their perfect family. But for their eight-year-old daughter Dana, it is the beginning of a nightmare. Painfully shy, she is plunged into the centre of attention on her first day at a new school, after a playground prank goes horribly wrong. At school, Dana dreams of disappearing, but at home all she wants is for her parents to notice she's there. So she makes a plan...








8.30PM I took advantage of the bright if patchy weather this afternoon to wander around the town, where I avoided the bookshops and bought groceries, socks, knitting wool and more chocolate than I care to divulge, especially since I ate it all. Before starting the walk home (I live uphill from the town) I settled down near Sainsbury's, where there's a friendly green space and a duckpond, and made a start on Watchmen.

It's a bleak story, that much is clear from the start. A lot of the narration comes from the diary of a character named Rorschach, a masked and hate-filled figure in a universe that is subtly but significantly different from our own. Superheroes have come out of the pages of the comic books and into reality, but that's all in the past now. They - more like costumed vigilante figures than the likes of Superman and the Avengers - have fallen out of favour and retired, for the most part. But many have come to sad ends, and Rorshach is convinced that someone is targeting the former costumed heroes, to destroy them all.

Books read today: The Universe Versus Alex Woods - Gavin Extence

Number of pages read today: 175

Number of books read in total: 2
Books finished: 2
Today #insixwords: 

My Blog Takes A Holiday

Looking at my blog posts over the last few months I notice my reviews and even meme posts have become very few and far between. The autumn months at work are the most tiring of the year, as the "Christmas season" in retail begins as soon as the kids have gone back to school after the summer holiday. My inclination to read, and to write about what I've been reading, has slowed down. Books have taken me longer than usual to finish, and more often than not I haven't found anything to say about them - not enough to turn into a review, at any rate. I've been wanting to blog, but just haven't found the words.

The less I've been reviewing, the more I feel guilty. And the harder I scour books for something to write about, the less I actually enjoy reading them. That's not what blogging ought to be about. It's certainly not what reading should be about.

As November dawns, my workload gets heavier and I made the decision to compete in NaNoWriMo - to write a novel in a month, or, in my case, add another 50 000 words to an existing story. Seeing that the blog is likely to suffer even further from neglect, I've made the difficult decision to send it on holiday for a month, to give myself permission not to update. Knowing my contrary mind, and the creativity of NaNoWriMo procrastination, the chances are I may end up blogging anyway, with mini-updates or short thoughts. But I'm not going to force myself to do this.

I will still be reading other people's blogs and can be contacted through email at kae.bookworm at gmail dot com or found on Twitter under the name of KatieWhoCanRead.  I'll also be haunting the NaNoWriMo website and forums - finding endless ways of not writing my novel - where I'm ScribblerK80. (Fellow NaNo-ers feel free to say hi!)

Have a great November and I'll see you next month!

Why Stories Are Important

A few times over the last year I've found myself questioning whether, or why, my love of reading is worthwhile. Back at the end of last year, when the British government announced their plans to treble university tuition fees, a newspaper comment on the subject suggested that students wanting to study "worthwhile" subjects such as medicine and teaching, should pay substantially reduced fees, while those who chose to study the arts must pay the whole lot. The sentiments I got from this letter were that studying non-essential subjects were a selfish indulgence and ultimately useless.  Now, my degree is in Creative Writing with English Literature, and so far it hasn't got me very far. I could have been in my current job with a handful of GCSEs, and I've had to move back home - something that I am very ashamed of. While the student protests went on, and the government and general public all had their own opinions on the matter, I found myself in a dark place questioning my own worth. All I was good at was reading or writing stories, and a bit of singing. What was the point of me? I'd always valued reading highly, but why, exactly? What was the point of stories?

Books like Harry Potter and Twilight are often praised, not so much for their literary value but because they've got people reading who wouldn't otherwise have picked up a book. But why is this important? What is it that makes reading a virtue?

The first purpose of stories - and really, I'm including films, TV and the theatre as well as my medium of choice, books - is simply entertainment. A good story will take you away for a little while, and you spend time getting to know characters and care for them, wanting to know "what happened next?" Reading fires the imagination and opens the mind to infinite possibilities and may inspire great ideas of your own. Or it may simply distract you, if perhaps you're not in a great place at the moment. Simply put, a good story makes people happy - and surely that can't be a bad thing.

Secondly, stories enlighten, and teach empathy and compassion. I've found myself reading books from the point of view of a character who reminds me of someone I'd never liked, or sympathised with. Sarah Ockler's titular Delilah was externally a high school delinquent, a trouble-maker and probably someone I would have avoided if she was one of my classmates. But seeing her from the inside out and learning what made her tick, I came to understand her real-life counterparts and realised that maybe we weren't so different after all. Or a a book might show the life of someone from another culture, another country, place or time, a story you might not find in your back garden, but the human experience nonetheless.

Finally, stories make sense of the world, and show readers that they are not alone. I know when I find myself in a situation I don't know how to handle, I find myself thinking of my beloved characters, their good and bad decisions, and that in turn helps me to understand my own emotions and actions. Even bad role models have been known to help here. When I was dumped by the Ex-Vampire, Bella of New Moon was a wonderful model for How Not To Act. I refused to think my life was over just because of a bloke. Maybe I felt like it - but I was not going to let the next six months pass like blank pages. Doctor Who's Donna Noble was living at home and working dead-end jobs when she was considerably older than me, before she was whisked away by a madman in a box to see the universe and finally realise her potential. (For the purpose of this article, let's ignore how that adventure ended!)

And I'm fortunate in that these were the first examples I could think of from my own life. Last autumn's Speak Loudly campaign, and a backlash against a Wall Street Journal article today, have demonstrated that books can offer a way out of despair. Fictional characters can offer hope to readers in comparable situations, and show that they are not alone, not the only person who has been there, done this or felt like that, and that there is a way out.