Books vs. Music

One of my least favourite questions when meeting and getting to know people is, 'what kind of music do you like?'. I have never, ever given a satisfactory answer to this question, and I don't know what to do or say in response, except for some kind of shitty little shrug.

My confession: I don't really like music.

There, I said it.

It's not so much that I dislike music, and more that it just isn't that important to me, but when I try to trace the cause of this apathy, I draw a massive blank. My dad is very into music and plays guitar, as do both my brothers. I even learned to play the piano for over a decade, so I can't possibly hate music. I guess it would be more accurate to say that I just don't really get it. I struggle to understand the effect it has on people who are passionate about it. I can listen to music, but more often than not, I prefer silence - if it's some background noise I'm looking for, I would sooner put on a DVD and half-listen to the dialogue than to an album. I find music too distracting. I find it requires genuine effort to sit in a room with music playing.  It doesn't move me or evoke much in me. It's too foreign to my ear.

I didn't always 'dislike' music. The first album I ever got on cassette was Michael Jackson's Thriller which I played obsessively, and I remember loving the Spice Girls in their heyday. During the days leading up to a long car journey with my family, I would partake in an elaborate ritual which involved making various mixtapes from dozens of other tapes to play on my Walkman, which helped with my chronic my motion-sickness. These days I drive a car of my own, and listen to music when I'm in it, though there are only about four CDs of miscellaneous songs which I have on rotation (occasionally I will borrow a real CD and play it over and over again until I can't bear it any longer). I find that I only really listen to them because I dislike the radio even more than I dislike music.

One of my hesitations with music is the way it divides people. People are defensive of their favourite bands the way that they're defensive of their favourite football team, or their religion. Things get heated. Music-lovers make judgements on people based on what they proclaim is a great album. What it really comes down to is: are you cool or not?

It might shock you to learn that I am not cool.

I definitely feel self-conscious about my lack of knowledge, which is not easy to admit. With books or films, I'm relatively confident that I can at least back up my opinions, and not care what someone else thinks. I know that my musical exposure is limited, but I don't like to be judged as stupid, so I tend to keep quiet about it, or just smile blankly when the conversation shifts that way, which is a habit I loathe. I never want to be that girl who giggles and nods even though she has no clue what the hell anyone is talking about - even if you disagree with someone on their taste in music, at least they have a fucking opinion. Because I have such difficulty admitting I'm a musical newb, I can't participate completely in these exchanges and I tune out. Subsequently, I'm never exposed to music through conversation with people who might actually help me learn.

I feel un-knowledgable, which makes me feel vulnerable, but moreover, I feel like a fraud. Perhaps my lack of musical inclination not only means that I'm not cool, but more importantly, that I don't have a soul. What kind of hollow, empty creature doesn't listen to music? It's embarrassing, and it bothers me because music is universal to pretty much all cultures, unlike writing and film. Am I missing something fundamental from the spectrum of human experience? I don't feel dead inside, but I do wonder sometimes if I'm missing out on great culture and on connections with my fellow humans.

I often say to people that I'm more into books and films than music, and that's true, rather than a deflection from the question. The only comparison I can think to make is that the way someone feels about their favourite song, I feel about my favourite book. I don't know what the fuck I'd do with my top five desert island discs for my only entertainment on an actual desert island.

Probably the largest factor that continues to keep me estranged from music is how daunted I am by the whole thing. There is so much out there, and it changes so rapidly, that I just don't know where to start. I'm 25 now, so when it comes to my peers I've got 25 years of music to catch up on, and that's only if you're counting good music that was released while I've been alive. There's also the shitty music that I would have to sift through. And the decades before that which I also have no clue about. And stuff from all over the world.

I'm left helpless and overwhelmed. The task is too big for me. I must have missed a crucial developmental stage in my adolescence when most people are starting to learn what kind of music they like. In several cases of children raised by wolves, scientists found that after a certain age, children permanently lose the ability to pick up human language. It's too late for me too: I fear that I'm a less tragic version of these feral children, doomed to remain tuneless forever.

186/111 - How To Be Alone by Sara Maitland

I bought this book after reading a piece by Sara Maitland in the Guardian. I've read a couple of the books from this series so far and I really like them. I think they are charmingly designed, and they cover a range of topics that I'm interested in exploring. They are all published by the School of Life, who also run courses out of their centre in London. I would love to attend one, as I'm sure they are probably all thoughtful and interesting areas to look at. I also have another one of Sara Maitland's books, A Book of Silence, which I have had for years and never read.

This book is for people who are interested in solitude and being alone, which is why I was interested in it. I consider myself to be mainly an introvert who is able to display extrovert qualities, and being not-alone around others drains my energy. When I take annual leave, as I have done this week, it is partly to be away from people. There are times that I have spent a lot of time with others and really enjoyed myself - I live with my boyfriend, for one; and I have been on several holidays with good friends where I am surrounded by them all the time - but there are more times where I can recall being in a situation and having had enough of being around others. I don't see anything wrong with this, although my lack of extroversion can make me feel like I'm missing out sometimes, but more often than not I just want some peace and quiet.

When I was taking it home, both my boyfriend and my boss asked me what I had bought, and they were both together when I took it out and showed them the cover. I pitched it as a sort of philosophy book, of sorts. My boyfriend made a jokey 'should-I-be-worried' face and they laughed it off. So people can be mildly uncomfortable with the idea of solitude, which is fine. I understand that for most people, being alone all day is not what they would consider fun, but I love it.

I'm not sure where this tendency in me comes from. I grew up with both my parents around, and I have a brother who is 13 months younger than me, so we were close in age growing up and spent a lot of time together. My parents are both only children and we have a small family as a result. No big get-togethers with dozens of cousins, aunts and uncles. My mother is also from France which means that her extended family are farther away than usual. I think my parents are both pretty introverted - there are regular small gatherings but no huge raucous parties. I was always more of an introvert growing up, too. I always tended to feel on the outside, and I think I still do to a large extent, but I have learned to mask it in order to get by in life. That does tend to come at a price - I end my days much more tired than if I worked somewhere quiet and on my own.

I really enjoyed this little book, although for me personally it didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know, it was more a good gauge to affirm some things that I already knew to be true - that there is nothing wrong with wanting to be alone; that some people find it healthy to spend a lot of time in their own company; and that being alone for extended periods of time might actually be really blissful. Maybe I'll get the chance to try it one day.

185/111 - The Circle by Dave Eggers

I received this book as a present for either my Christmas or birthday this year, I can't remember anymore. I requested it because I have never actually read any Dave Eggers before, despite him being a rather influential literary figure (or so I'm told) but also because I was really intrigued by the premise of the book. The reason for my intrigue was that this is about a young woman who starts working for a powerful organisation called 'The Circle', which is the world's most powerful company, dabbling in the internet, social media, surveillance, social change, all sorts. And it therefore reminded me a little of the work that I do, in that it's a global and very desirable brand, but that's pretty much where the similarities end.

Mae is kind of down-and-out and only gets the job at The Circle when referred by her old college roommate. She starts out in customer experience, at the very lowest rung of the ladder, and starts out by treating the job like a 9-5. When she receives a reprimand for unknowingly snubbing a co-worker, she starts to realise that the demands of The Circle go far beyond her initial expectations. They expect total participation and total transparency, ranking the Circlers' in a public setting based on many different criteria. As Mae becomes more and more entangled in The Circle, she finds more and more areas of her life under scrutiny. Eventually things reach a head when, caught stealing, she volunteers to open up her life to total transparency by wearing a camera at all times. Mae becomes more shallow.

On the other side, her former boyfriend and her parents become alarmed quickly by the changes in Mae brought on by her joining this organisation that starts to resemble a cult / totalitarian state. Eventually, Mae becomes a monster, a truly detestable character.

I really enjoyed this. I was reading it during the week that I was working in Basingstoke, so I rather enjoyed having a short commute each morning on which to read this, as normally I'm stuck in traffic so no reading takes place (much to the relief of other drivers, I think). This is quite a chunky book, or maybe it just felt that way because it was a hardback and incredibly dense, but at no point did I feel like I was having to trudge my way through. It was a relatively easy read for such a large book. There is so much to it - it's both funny and frightening, and as much as it's unlikely to happen it also doesn't seem totally outside the realms of possibility. Very interesting indeed.

My own relationship with technology is pretty nonchalant, even though I use it every day and I have mobile devices coming out of my ears. I don't really use social networking all that much, mainly because I feel like it's kind of silly to do so. I have all the accounts (well, Facebook and Twitter - what else is there?) but I don't participate much in it all. I'm pretty sure that most people don't really care much what I have to say about a sandwich that I ate or how my commute to work was, so I tend to keep that kind of thing to myself. The idea of the opposite, of total transparency, is pretty unbearable - I would hate to have my every move watched and judged. There's no way that my everyday life is interesting enough for that kind of nonsense.

184/111 - I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron

This is the book that has been holding me up. I actually read this at the end of January, which was ages ago now, however until now I couldn't be bothered to gather my thoughts on it. In fact, I still can't but I want to be done thinking about this one now so I'm going to write about it and then just move on. The reason that I haven't written about it yet is that there was too much to think about with it, and I'm still not sure I've articulated it that well.

I downloaded this collection of essays after reading a snippet of one somewhere else and decided that they might be nice and insightful to read. The passage which initially enchanted me was about "rapture of the deep", and I read the entire essay and it was wonderful. This is the passage which was really magical:

"There's something called rapture of the deep, and it refers to what happens when a deep-sea diver sends too much time at the bottom of the ocean and can't tell which way is up. When he surfaces, he's liable to have a condition called the bends, where the body can't adapt to the oxygen levels in the atmosphere. All this happens to me when I surface from a great book."

Here is another from a different essay entitled Blind as a Bat:

"Reading is one of the main things I do. Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on…Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss."

What I really love about these two passages is that they totally sum up how I feel about reading. When I'm reading something good, something really good, it's almost like I'm having an affair, or that I have an exciting secret. Or that I'm falling in love. I think about the book all the time; I look forward to when I can next spend time with the book; I want to go to bed with the book; I want to tell everyone around me about it and I don't understand how people can be walking around not in the same obsessive haze as me. When I'm not reading a good book, or when I am reading something very bad, much like a bad date, I don't want to read any more books for a little while while I get over the trauma of the previous one. When I start to read a book and I am not totally enthralled by it, I feel horribly disappointed and cheated.

Books bring meaning to my life. I don't know what I would do without them. I spend my waking moments either reading them or thinking about reading them, and fewer of those moments writing about them. I think this might be a topic that requires some further dissection, so watch this space.

183/111 - Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

This book is very much on the opposite end of the spectrum to the Veronica Roth books. This is grounded in our world with real characters facing real problems, and it was funny, and sad, and believable and totally incredible. I absolutely loved this and I read the entire thing in one sitting. The most amazing thing about this is that it made me feel something other than wanting to roll my eyes.

Eleanor is the new girl at her school, she is large with red hair and an odd fashion sense and generally doesn't fit in. She is also from a poor family who are constantly scrounging to make ends meet, and her mother is a browbeaten woman who is beholden to Eleanor's awful stepfather. Park, on the other hand, comes from a loving family and doesn't want for anything. He is quiet and enjoys reading and listening to music. They meet when Eleanor sits next to Park on her first day of school, and even though he initially doesn't want to be associated with her, a sort of alliance forms between them in the shape of comic books and mix tapes passed between them. Before you know it, they are on speaking terms, then on hand-holding terms, and then on kissing terms. The whole thing is just so tender and sweet, totally the opposite of the books I read earlier that week.

The book alternates from both of their perspectives as they gradually become closer, and the whole time I felt exactly what they felt - tense, anxious, excited, all of it.

There are also lots of topics in there that are pretty uncomfortable to deal with, such as the poverty that Eleanor's family seems to be stuck in - so poor that they don't even have a door to their bathroom and Eleanor is forced to take baths with her mother watching out for her in case her stepfather comes home and catches a glimpse of her. There are some moments in there that made me feel such pity and sadness for Eleanor and her family, and such frustration at some of their actions.

And the ending - so sweet and hopeful and sad. It was just perfect. So good, I don't know what else to say. I was with them the entire time, which in my mind made this such an excellent book.

182/111 - Insurgent by Veronica Roth

As I mentioned, I was really swept up in Divergent and although I had a lot of problems with it, I actually blasted through it in one evening. I enjoyed the momentum and I do love speculative / dystopian fiction.

So then I began to read Insurgent in spite of my doubts, which is where it really started to unravel. It picks up immediately from the ending of Divergent, but I found that I couldn't really suspend my disbelief any further, and no longer being swept up in the pace of the first book, Insurgent just didn't hold up in the cold light of day. I was bored of reading about serums and hallucinations, and I didn't understand why Tris would keep company with some of the more unsavoury characters who were so obviously up to no good. It was either stupidity on the part of the character or just poor plotting. I think I was just bored of the whole thing.

Next, I was being introduced to more and more characters which is when I started to realise that I just didn't care anymore. There are times in my life where I'm doing something, like getting out of the shower and drying off with a towel, or using a particular item in the kitchen and when I'm done with my towel or the item, I just let it drop out of my hands and I walk away and abandon it completely. I'm done with it. It's not a conscious decision to relinquish the item, it's more that I'm hypnotised by the process that I'm engaged with, which might be getting ready for work, or cooking my dinner, and I'm already thinking about what I'm going to do next, and when I'm finished with that step there is this slightly mechanical ending before transitioning to the next step. That's how I felt about this book. I was reading it, and then a moment later, I was not. I abandoned it. Something in me just switched off and I knew it was over.

Kind of a shame, but it wasn't for me, so now I'm moving onto the next great book. And it really is a great one.

181/111 - Divergent by Veronica Roth

I picked this book up recently after hearing that it was going to be made into yet another film trilogy. I had heard that it had a similar feel to it - a dystopian future with a lead female character, not too much mushy crap like in Twilight - so I thought I'd give it a try as that sort of thing is right up my street. I will tell you now that I have given up approximately halfway through Book 2 as I was not enjoying it enough to continue, which I will expand upon next time.

The main character and narrator in Divergent is a teenage girl called Beatrice Prior. She is a member of one of five factions which exist in this Dystopian future, with each faction having slightly different personality traits. The idea is that you fit into one of these factions homogeneously upon turning sixteen, however Beatrice is what's known as 'divergent' because she shows an aptitude for more than one faction.

She decides to leave her old way of life behind in a sect known for their selflessness and charity to go to a faction known for their violence and bravery and become an initiate there. She now has to compete with others to get a permanent place in the faction, which involves all sorts of things like learning how to beat each other up and how to throw knives and jump from moving trains, for some reason. They really love to jump from moving trains, and I found myself baffled as to why there were so many descriptions of this act.

While this is all going on there are rumours of impending war between the factions, and Beatrice (who has renamed herself Tris) is making some friends and some enemies and also catching the eye of her instructor, whose name is Four (like the number). So there's loads going on. Oh, also she can't let anyone know that she I'd divergent because they are considered to be dangerous traitors.

I was hoping for this trilogy to be more Hunger Games-esque however sadly I didn't enjoy this nearly as much, for a variety of reasons. Divergent seemed to highlight for me some deeply rooted problems I have with fiction aimed at teenage girls:

• The puritanical nature of the characters and the repression of sexual desire. Yes I know these books are aimed at teenagers and so they can't be all sex and violence, but why can't the girls in these books ever just be allowed to admit that their feelings are sexual without it being some sort of taboo? I'm not suggesting full-on erotica, but there was a sense of shame that I felt very keenly with Tris and her feelings for Four that made me feel really uncomfortable. There's also a scene in which she is groped by some of the other initiates and rather than admit what has happened, Tris can't even bring herself to say where she has been touched which came across as immature. Lady, if your characters can't even bring themselves to name basic human anatomy, then you probably shouldn't be writing about sexual assault. The sexual repression in these books really seems to deny something which is inherently tied in with the experience of being human and the experience of being adolescent.

• I hate hate HATE the self-deprecation of the girls in books like this. They never think they are good enough, they are self-conscious, they sacrifice themselves, they are overly clumsy, they never think they are beautiful. I get that that's natural and they have a struggle to overcome and be reborn or whatever, and I can't claim to have been a particularly secure teenager, but the insecurities in some of these characters are just too much. I wonder which is the bigger taboo - a female character who acknowledges her sexual desire, or one who has some confidence and character, and isn't just an empty vessel waiting to be filled (metaphorically) by the next cute teenage boy that comes along.

I haven't read that widely when it comes to YA fiction, but some of these trilogies are so popular that they seem like a potentially good barometer of the kinds of messages that teenage girls are receiving. And I hate the messages - suppress your sexuality (Divergent) or have someone do that for you (Twilight) or make sure you choose between one of two men (basically any other series, take your pick) because god forbid you choose neither, or find another path to walk. The Hunger Games was less guilty of the former of these because Katniss is a resourceful and talented female character in her own right, but I was still deeply disappointed by the lame love triangle in which neither of the choices were that appealing. I was also disturbed by how she has to perform at being feminine with all the stupid dresses and fluttering eyelashes in order to get the public to like her. The trilogy closes on her with the eternally dull Peeta and a couple of children running around in a field or something. Tragic, if you ask me.

The pace was fantastic in this book, and had it been the first YA trilogy I read, I probably would have thought of it more favourably, but the frustrations that have built up from other series' have sadly clouded my enjoyment of Divergent.

Queue!

I have a queue of eight posts waiting to be written, as I read 15 books in January and have just finished my first book of February, so 2014 is getting off to a great start.

I don't know why particularly but I've just felt so much more inspired to read, and I try not to focus so much on the number these days as much as the experience and being in the flow of the books.

More to come soon.

180/111 - The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer

I bought this book last week with my Christmas book voucher, along with a couple more that I'll be reading shortly. It seems to have stretched further than I expected because all of these books were on special offer, and I had some points collected and I had one of those Waterstones loyalty stamp cards which also gave me another tenner. Score.

The reason I bought this is that it won the Costa prize last week, and so I decided to jump on the bandwagon. I very nearly bought this from a bookshop in London when I saw it available in hardback over the summer. The cover alone was lovely enough that I thought I might like to read it, but I already had an armful of books and I could ill afford to carry another hardback home with me with the wonderful burden I already had. I still like the paperback cover I suppose, but it's not as majestic as the hardback cover, and the effect is a little spoiled with the big Costa prize sticker on the front.

I also wanted to read this after the grand claim from the judges that it's "so good as to make you a better person", or something similar. So naturally I had to get involved.

This story is told from the perspective of Matt following the accidental death of his older brother as he grows up. He struggles to come to terms with the loss of his brother, as do his parents, and he gradually becomes more and more unwell with schizophrenia. He gets pulled out of primary school and is kept at home with his depressed mother, and later when he returns to school he ends up dropping out of school and moving in with a friend and living in squalor. He then starts to get obsessed with atoms and the idea that memories are made of atoms, so if he outs together the right combination of atoms then he can bring back his brother. Really interesting idea. He eventually ends up in hospital and then runs away and then comes back again etc. I guess the idea is that his disjointed thinking is reflected in the telling of the story, which works really well. This is also achieved through the different mediums used, such as the letters, Matthew's own thoughts, his stories written on the computer and the typewriter.

Overall I really liked this, very touching in places like when you can see the sadness in Matthew's mother, and then thoughtful and funny in others, and a little dark and raw in others. Really enjoyable, and I would read more.

I also liked the sections the end of this book which has a little Q&A with the author, which I really liked. He comes across as really humble and likeable, and it was interested to learn that he is trained as a mental health nurse which gives some context to the subjects covered in the novel.

179/111 - Raven Girl by Audrey Niffenegger

This is one of the book I received from Luke for Christmas. I guess from friends and family I asked for books that I wanted but that I wouldn't necessarily buy for myself, and this is a perfect example of this. A gorgeous little hardback, wonderfully illustrated, silver accents on the cover and the pages, and I also somehow got given a signed copy, which was an additional delight that I hadn't noticed until I opened it up to read earlier today. Yay!

I don't have a great deal to say about this as it was very short. It's basically a little fairy tale about a postman who falls in love with a raven, who then have a daughter who is the raven girl. She longs to be able to fly and finds a doctor who is willing to transform her so she can fulfil her dreams of being a real raven.

Short and sweet, and a lovely book. This is the kind of book that I don't think you could ever really enjoy in the same way on an electronic device as on paper.

178/111 - Season To Taste or How to Eat Your husband by Natalie Young

I downloaded this book onto my iPad very recently as I knew that I wanted to read it as soon as it came out. There's been loads of hype about this book and I couldn't wait to get my hands on it.

Lizzie Prain has killed her husband Jacob, and not wanting to go to prison decides to dispose of his body by eating him piece by piece. All the while we are given glimpses into their relationship and Lizzie's plans for her new life.

Sadly I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would. I am partly going to attribute this to the fact that I read this on my iPad, with a headache and just as I have started wearing new glasses, which has made reading the text a little annoying. However there was plenty about he book itself that also irritated me. I didn't like or really empathise with Lizzie at all, and I didn't really understand why she killed her husband, so maybe I missed something? I didn't like the way the present tense narrative was mixed with bits of the past. I didn't really like the numbered 'list' format of her thoughts and feelings while cutting up and cooking her husband's remains, although I understand why it was there and presented that way. I guess I was hoping that this would be a little bit more like a mixture of Tampa (which has a disturbing theme and yet a narrator who I really enjoyed reading and empathised with, to a certain extent) and Like Water for Chocolate (which incorporates human emotions and relationships with cooking with a pinch of magic realism).

I really wanted to like this but I feel like I maybe didn't 'get' it. I've read a couple of other reviews where people talked about the humour of the book, whereas I didn't get that at all while I was reading it.

I'm not disappointed in the book, it was really well written, and it made me squirm in places when Lizzie describes eating the various parts of her husband, which was sort of enjoyable. I was more disappointed that I didn't like it. Even though everything pointed towards me loving this book, I don't think it was for me, for some reason.

I guess you can't win them all.

177/111 - In Great Waters by Kit Whitfield

This is another book that I bought recently with a gift voucher from Christmas. I remember seeing it often on the shelves of Waterstones when I worked there and being kind of intrigued by the cover however I never ended up picking it up to read the blurb or the first few pages. I recently came across something online which mentioned it and I downloaded a sample onto my iPad, read it, bought the book and the rest is history.

This book is set in an alternate world where there are people who live in the sea as well as those who live on land, and they are split into landsmen and deepsmen. Angelica comes out of the ocean and marries a landsmen, becoming queen, in exchange for the protection of the deepsmen along their shores. Then, for the next generations, the countries of the world are ruled by the descendants of this deepsman queen. Generations later, a bastard washes up on the shores of England to be raised in secret with the hope that he will overthrow the throne, and in the royal household, the youngest princess is raised under very different circumstances.

I really enjoyed the first parts of this, getting to know Henry (the bastard) and Anne (the princess). The story opens with Henry being cast out of the sea by his mother to be rescued by Allard who takes care of him. Having never been out of the sea, Henry cannot walk or talk, has never eaten food other than crabs and fish, has never worn clothes, has never been in a building. I really loved seeing the world through his perspective as he starts to get to know the world of the landsmen. Anne's world is similarly confusing - her father who is to be King, dies in battle and she rarely sees her stern mother, and is not told that she has a sister who is potentially in line to the throne. S life is very confusing for both of them as they grow up. And then there is the world of the deepsmen, who the hybrid royals also have links with. They periodically go into the eaters to commune with them, and they send their dead to burial at sea, where they are eaten by the deepsmen.

Eventually this turns into a sort of political plot as Henry has been groomed forcefully take the throne, so this part of the story unfolds, which I didn't find as interesting. I think this was partly because it strayed a little too much into a historical/ political story about kings and queens, which doesn't really interest me as much. Moreover, whilst I really enjoyed seeing Henry and Anne grow up, once they became teenagers I found them kind of dull. Henry's stubbornness and dislike of the culture of the landsmen became a little repetitive, as did Anne's praying and crying and yearning for her mother. I definitely liked Anne better, but I didn't really care too much about Henry by the time the end of the book came around. But I really enjoyed the world it was set in, and I loved the descriptions of the deepsmen and their language, their culture, their movements etc. which were all really interesting ideas.

Next: The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer

176/111 - Wastelands edited by John Joseph Adams

I actually received this book for Christmas 2012 however during one of my stays at home over Christmas I dug this out because I realised that I hadn't read any of it!

This is an anthology of short stories, all with the theme of the end of the world / apocalypse, which I adore. Also very apt to read during the first couple of weeks of 2014 - start as you mean to go on and all that jazz.

There are stories in here from authors I recognise, such as Stephen King (whose name I think I recognised on the cover which then prompted me to ask for this collection as a gift), Orson Scott Card and George R.R. Martin, however there were even more authors whose names I didn't recognise, so this was a really nice opportunity to read some works from new people. It was also a great chance to read some genres that I'm not used to reading. Although I love sci-fi on film and television (albeit I am a fairly casual consumer) I don't really read much of it. I want to call it 'pure' sci-fi, and what I mean by that is that it contains worlds or characters that aren't recognisable to me, that they have deliberately futuristic technology or biology or something like that. I can find that I'm a bit out off by some of this fiction as I find that some of it focuses too heavily on the creation of the worlds rather than the story or the characters, and I also find myself really annoyed by overly-odd names for people or places as it trips up the rhythm of my reading, which isn't as pleasurable. However I was really pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed some of the more hardcore sci-fi and I'll definitely read more in future. Some of my favourite stories are below:

The End of the Whole Mess by Stephen King - this is the only story in the collection that I've read before, so I knew I was going to enjoy it again. Great story, and one where I think the use of 'dialect' actually enhances it.

The People of Sand and Slag by Paulo Bacigalupi - this story is set in a wasteland where humans have evolved almost beyond recognition, and a group of them come across a dog. Really weird but brilliant and I've been thinking about it for days since reading it.

How We Got In Town and Out Again by Jonathan Lethem - revolves quite heavily around virtual reality, and with this one I really liked that the narrator keeps going back to visit a lonely snowman character. I just found it really endearing.

When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth by Cory Doctorow - I work with lots of IT departments for different companies, and there are also some people I work with who fit this very meticulous sysadmin personality, so I really enjoyed it from this perspective. I also really liked the idea of people prioritising saving the internet above all other infrastructure, partly because it's important but also it's the only thing that makes sense to them.

Speech Sounds by Octavia E. Butler - In this world a sort of plague has occurred which prevents people from communicating via speech or writing. Really interesting and haunting story.

There were loads of great stories in this collection, which makes me think I should probably read more sci-fi and fantasy, as I'm bound to find some post-apocalyptic and dystopian gems in there. Why haven't I read more of this in the past? Silly me.




I actually received this book for Christmas 2012 however during one of my stays at home over Christmas I dug this out because I realised that I hadn't read any of it!

This is an anthology of short stories, all with the theme of the end of the world / apocalypse, which I adore. Also very apt to read during the first couple of weeks of 2014 - start as you mean to go on and all that jazz.

There are stories in here from authors I recognise, such as Stephen King (whose name I think I recognised on the cover which then prompted me to ask for this collection as a gift), Orson Scott Card and George R.R. Martin, however there were even more authors whose names I didn't recognise, so this was a really nice opportunity to read some works from new people. It was also a great chance to read some genres that I'm not used to reading. Although I love sci-fi on film and television (albeit I am a fairly casual consumer) I don't really read much of it. I want to call it 'pure' sci-fi, and what I mean by that is that it contains worlds or characters that aren't recognisable to me, that they have deliberately futuristic technology or biology or something like that. I can find that I'm a bit out off by some of this fiction as I find that some of it focuses too heavily on the creation of the worlds rather than the story or the characters, and I also find myself really annoyed by overly-odd names for people or places as it trips up the rhythm of my reading, which isn't as pleasurable. However I was really pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed some of the more hardcore sci-fi and I'll definitely read more in future. Some of my favourite stories are below:

The End of the Whole Mess by Stephen King - this is the only story in the collection that I've read before, so I knew I was going to enjoy it again. Great story, and one where I think the use of 'dialect' actually enhances it.

The People of Sand and Slag by Paulo Bacigalupi - this story is set in a wasteland where humans have evolved almost beyond recognition, and a group of them come across a dog. Really weird but brilliant and I've been thinking about it for days since reading it.

How We Got In Town and Out Again by Jonathan Lethem - revolves quite heavily around virtual reality, and with this one I really liked that the narrator keeps going back to visit a lonely snowman character. I just found it really endearing.

When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth by Cory Doctorow - I work with lots of IT departments for different companies, and there are also some people I work with who fit this very meticulous sysadmin personality, so I really enjoyed it from this perspective. I also really liked the idea of people prioritising saving the internet above all other infrastructure, partly because it's important but also it's the only thing that makes sense to them.

Speech Sounds by Octavia E. Butler - In this world a sort of plague has occurred which prevents people from communicating via speech or writing. Really interesting and haunting story.

There were loads of great stories in this collection, which makes me think I should probably read more sci-fi and fantasy, as I'm bound to find some post-apocalyptic and dystopian gems in there. Why haven't I read more of this in the past? Silly me.

175/111 - A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

I bought this on a whim with a gift card from Christmas as I heard they were making a film out of this this year. I've also read a couple of Nick Hornby's book in the past and enjoyed them. I've read High Fidelity and also seen the film, and I guess I enjoyed them both but I have mixed feelings about it because I really think Rob is a scumbag. I also found that I had complicated feelings about the characters in A Long Way Down in that I didn't really like any of them, but unfortunately I also wasn't really rooting for any of them. Of the four main characters, I guess I liked Martin the best as I found him quite funny.

The story starts out on New Year's Eve with Martin heading to the roof of a tower block intending to throw himself off the top. He has pretty much ruined his own life; a disgraced ex-television show host who has recently spent time in prison for sleeping with an underage girl. Quite the mess. As he is preparing to throw himself off, the story shifts to Maureen's perspective, as she too is making plans to end her own life due to the struggles of caring for her severely disabled son. This story keeps shifting perspective from one character to another, and soon two more characters (Jess and JJ) join them on the rooftop, also having planned to kill themselves. The four strangers end up coming to an agreement hat they won't kill themselves until valentines day a few weeks away and that they will meet up regularly in the meantime to see if they still feel like it. They end up going on all sorts of hijinks, including going on holiday, pretending that they've had a religious experience and going on a talk show.

This book was okay, I didn't love it, and I think it was the fact that nine of the voices really spoke to me. I would have liked to have one person to really get behind, but I didn't really care too much about any of them unfortunately.

Best of 2013

I'm reading a lot of different book blogs at the moment and everyone seems to be putting out some thoughts on their favourite reads of 2013, or best books, or something along those lines, so I'm jumping in on the action since the year has drawn to a close. I was reflecting on all the posts I made in 2013 and making a list on my phone of some of the books I wanted to mention, and I thought to myself, 'I'll keep it to around ten books or so, that should be a nice round number. After all, I only read 52 books last year.'

For my top books of the year, I have 20 out of 52.

So I guess I'll start out this way - I really enjoyed a lot of the books I read last year, and that warms my cockles because I'm all about the enjoyment. However for the purposes of this post I would like to single out the books that really obsessed me this year. I recently came across from Nora Ephron which I think sums up the way I feel about reading books like this perfectly:

“There is something called the rapture of the deep, and it refers to what happens when a deep-sea diver spends too much time at the bottom of the ocean and can't tell which way is up. When he surfaces, he's liable to have a condition called the bends, where the body can't adapt to the oxygen levels in the atmosphere. All of this happens to me when I surface from a great book.”

Here are the books which rapture-ised me this year:

Wild by Cheryl Strayed - I absolutely loved this memoir and everyone who I've passed it onto has also really enjoyed reading it. I just loved it. There's a film out later this year, so hopefully they do a good job with it.

20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill - this book of short stories blew my mind. I read the majority of it on a car journey to France with my family. Normally I get terribly car sick and can't read at all in the car, so it's a testament to how good these stories are that I just couldn't stop myself reading them.

Tampa by Alissa Nutting - this book kind of crept up on me, and I didn't realise just how addictive it was going to be, until I started reading it and then couldn't tear my eyes away. Much like 29th Century Ghosts, I had to sacrifice some sleep to get deeper into this book. Totally worth it.

Joyland by Stephen King - I really enjoyed this book for the story and the characters and all the usual reasons, however I also find myself looking back at this book with a particular fondness because of the circumstances under which I read it. It was perfect. I was in the gorgeous Cornish countryside, in pretty much total solitude with Luke. Totally at peace and the perfect circumstances under which to fully immerse myself and enjoy this book.

Honourable mentions go to: The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits; The Round House by Louise Erdrich; We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver; N0S-4R2 by Joe Hill; Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk and Doctor Sleep by Stephen King. I loved all of these books but they didn't quite suck me in as much as the books above, for whatever reasons.

I'm feeling really excited about reading in 2014 - I've received some wonderful books for Christmas and my birthday, and there are some really great new books that I'm looking forward to getting my hands on, as well as some older books that I'd love to re-visit. So many books and so little time! If there was a job out there where I could become some sort of professional reader, I'd be set for life. I'd love to take a year off work and spend it caught up in my own rapture of the deep...

174/111 - Road Rage by Joe Hill and Stephen King

I downloaded this on a whim the other day whilst I was looking for Joe Hill's new short story Wolverton Station, which I don't think is available yet in the UK (sad face) so I downloaded this instead, which is a series of two comics about trucks inspired by Richard Matheson.

I don't have a great deal to say about this because they were both very short - the first comic, which was written by Joe Hill, was about a tribe of bikers who upset a truck driver who then tries to seek his revenge. The other story, by Stephen King, is about a travelling salesman who encounters a slightly mad trucker while on the road and how he deals with the confrontation.

Both of the stories had different artists with different styles, and I liked both. I'm a big fan of the short stories of both of the authors and I think the comic book form works really well for this.

173/111 - Black Box by Jennifer Egan

I downloaded this onto my iPad and iPhone recently as I started using Twitter again (mainly for finding interesting things to read and to expand my horizons) and I read that Jennifer Egan had written a story which was published entirely through Tweets. This download gathered everything into one volume so it could be read all at once.

I wasn't sure what to make of this at first and I was a little worried I wouldn't enjoy the story, but I found that it really quickly sucked me in and I wanted more from the narrator, but I was only going to get these delightful little 140-character nuggets. From what I could gather, this is sort of sci-fi - the narrator is some kind of spy who is trying to gather information from a powerful man by posing as an unassuming 'beauty'. The story reads a little like a set of instructions so seems quite distant and disjointed at times, but the coldness of the instructions makes some of the more brutal aspects sharper. The narrator appears to have a series of high-tech gadgets built into her physical body, such as a camera which can be triggered by pinching her ear, or a distress beacon which she can activate by tickling the back of her knee. It soon unfolds that her body itself is a black box for all the information she is gathering.

We never find out much more about the narrator other than that she has a husband somewhere waiting for her, and that she is acting to protect the USA. She encounters some danger, but ultimately seems to survive the encounters, although she will be forever changed.

I really liked this - it was the perfect length to devour in one sitting and I really liked the atmosphere of the story. I have several other Jennifer Egan books which I'm looking forward to reading in future.

172/111 - Evil Plans by Hugh MacLeod

This is one of the books I received for my Christmas and birthday bonanza this year (that is what it shall be known as from here onwards, as is mostly received lovely books). Its tagline is 'escape the rat race and start doing something you love' which is partly what attracted me as I'm open to new ideas on what to do with the rest of my life.

The book is made up of cartoons written and illustrated by Hugh himself, as well as advice and thoughts on a variety of topics to do with finding what you want to do in life. These points are usually illustrated by some personal anecdote or a story from a friend or business mentor of Hugh's. I found this really easy to dip into and read, as all of the snippets were fairly short and digestible, and I guess it was pretty much what I expected. It was a little unusual in that it seems to be categorised as a 'business' book, however doesn't really have a business-y feel to it.

One of the parts that really shook me up was quite early on in the book when he is talking about forming your so-called 'evil plan', which is named for the fact that others will potentially see it as evil because you will be defying the status quo:

"...you're supposed to clock in every morning after a lousy commute, just like the rest of us. You're supposed to hate your job, just like the rest of us. You're supposed to be stressed out and beholden to the system, just like the rest of us."

I think some of that comes on a little strong for me - I wouldn't say I 'hate' my job, although there are parts which wear me down and I definitely take more of it home than I should (metaphorically speaking). I don't have a particularly bad commute each morning, unlike if I were to transfer to a more powerful position in, say, London. I do, however, feel beholden to the system and stressed out. I feel like I have to continue working at my job and doing well, not because I like it or because it touches a particular passion of mine, but because it 'looks good'. It looks great on my CV, it's great experience and I'm learning loads, but sometimes I think, what for? It's not my company, and although I'm proud of the results I get and the work that my team does, it's fairly shallow in comparison to the satisfaction I imagine I could get from working for myself. At the end of the day, the results I get in my job are just another thing for me to try and 'achieve' or 'win', and they don't touch me in any particular way, other than the feeling that I have proved myself 'useful' to the company, which makes me feel increasingly hollow.

So I'm beholden to a system in which I feel pressured to keep a good job, so my CV looks good and that I might have a hope of getting another good job in future, or of getting a good mortgage so I can buy a good house and ultimately buy into the whole rat race, which seems really unsatisfying. I'm not sure I'm making a whole lot of sense here, however is think that it was probably a good idea for this to by my first book of 2014 so that I can reflect on some possible changes to make for the year ahead, whether that's a change in lifestyle or career, or a change in attitude.