Book 43 of 2012: Break No Bones

I realise that I've probably said this for each Kathy Reichs book I've reviewed on here, but this time I actually mean it; Break No Bones is the last Kathy Reichs book that I've read. Actually, I suppose by the time this is posted this will be a lie (thanks to the wonders of scheduled posting) because I've just started on the next book in the series and I'll probably be finished with it by the end of the week when this gets posted.

In this one Tempe is conducting an anthropological field school on an island currently undergoing development, when they dig up a body which is a little too modern for the course. While investigating this, Tempe's estranged husband shows up in town conducting a little investigation of his own. Then things get a bit messier and her current on/off love Andrew Ryan shows up for a visit as well. Oh yeah, and there's some more murders in there as well.

I'd more or less forgotten this book, though as the series progressed I realised I hadn't read about Pete, Tempe's ex, getting shot so it had to have been in one of the later books that I'd read. And I was right, it was in this one. Aside from that, I remembered very little of the actual cases in this one so it was more like reading it for the first time.

I liked this one more than Cross Bones because it was back to dealing with murder cases and criminal investigations again, however having Tempe, her ex-husband and her current boyfriend all decend on this small town and get involved in the investigation is a little far-fetched. There would have to have been some repercussions in the prosecution if they found out that these extra people had gotten involved.

I was willing to let that go though, because it was a good read. I think one of the main things I liked about it was the fact that I couldn't remember who did it. Not so good for getting sleep as it did mean that I ended up staying up far too late reading; promising myself just one more chapter and then getting to a cliffhanger and thinking 'well I can't stop now'.

One thing that does bug me about the character of Tempe Brennan is her indecision regarding Andrew Ryan. I realise that first and foremost it's a series of crime books, I don't read them expecting romance, but I still remember that moment when they first almost hooked up. I was on the train pulling into Glasgow Central on my way to university and I was hurriedly reading, wanting to find out what would happen before I had to get off and put my book away!

But nine books on, the will they/won't they is beginning to wear a bit thin. I'd like them to either hurry up and make a decision one way or the other. They're both adults and it's been about ten years, cut to the chase already! If they are going to split up and Tempe wants to reunite with her husband, then fair enough, but stop going backwards and forwards. Though, that said, I really don't like the idea of Tempe and Pete as much as Tempe and Ryan.

"I crumbled. "There's a tick in your collar."
Winborne moved faster than it seemed possible for a man of his bulk to move, yanking his collar, doubling over, and batting his neck in one jerk. The tick flew to the sand and righted itself, apparently used to rejection."Pages 7 + 8

Book 42 of 2012: Dracula

Book 42 of 2012 is significant because it’s also the first ebook I read on my Kindle. Having finished Seabiscuit on my way to Glasgow for my final tutorial for my linguistics course, I dug out the Kindle and fired up Dracula. I had been a little apprehensive about actually getting a Kindle because I wasn’t sure how I would feel about not reading a real book, but by the time I started heading home I was well into the format. I also decided that it would be the right text to use for my final assignment, or EMA, which meant that while I was reading it, I was also looking out for suitable extracts to use for an analysis I was sort of needing to start right away.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with the story of Dracula, it’s kind of the original Vampire novel. It’s told through the diaries, letters, telegrams and newspaper articles from the main characters and tells how Count Dracula comes to the UK, while the characters try to track him down and stop him. Okay, I’m clearly over-simplifying here, but Dracula is such a huge cultural icon that when you’re asked to explain what the story is, it’s a little tricky to know what to say; it’s Dracula!
I really enjoyed reading this. I’ve had it set on my shelf, waiting to be read since round about the last time that I reorganised the bookcase. It had been a bit of a possibility for my final assignment and I kept on meaning to read it with a view to using it for the course, but my copy isn’t very practical for carrying around. When I decided I wanted to read Dracula a few years ago (before we went on holiday to North Yorkshire) I just didn’t feel satisfied with a cheap Penguin paperback copy, I wanted something that looked the part. So I splashed out on a fancy hardback copy with red dust jacket and elegant script on the cover. It looks fantastic, but gets rather battered when you’ve been carrying it around for a week. So this made it ideal for eReader material.
The language used in the book, which I did find myself paying rather a lot of attention to, after all, that was what I was supposed to be writing about, is lovely. It was quite useful being able to select certain words and look up the meanings of them. I’ve noticed on occasions, especially when I’ve been reading older books like Sherlock Holmes that there are words which have fallen out of use or which I’m just not sure of the meanings of them. You can usually work out what is meant when you read it in context, and sometimes I might think to scrawl it in the back of my book journal to look up later (by which time I’ve probably forgotten the exact context of the word because it’s been weeks since I jotted it down anyway), so being able to just click on a word and see what it means is definitely a bonus as far as I’m concerned.

That’s not to say that it didn’t take me a while to get used to the electronic format. Generally when I’m reading, I like to measure my progress by how much of the book you can hold in your hands; more pages in the right than the left, you’ve got a long way to go; more pages in the left than the right, you’re getting close to the end. I like to partition the book up into chapters and hold them between my fingers to measure how many I have left to go, or flick through the pages I’ve already read to remind myself of events that have already happened.

You can’t do that with an ebook. Instead I measured my progress through a little figure in the bottom right hand corner of the screen which told me what percentage of the book I had read; and I highlighted sections of text or folded down corners (without damaging the book, I might add) to select passages I might want to return to. I was even able to search for a word or name, like ‘Whitby’ and bring up all the pages which made reference to that, which came in handy when I was trying to narrow down exactly which portion of the text I intended to talk about in my assignment.

I highlighted loads of quotes in it as well. Having been a part of, I think, five Book Trees, I've come to quite enjoy writing little notes in the margins of the books I read. Obviously, I don’t do it for all the books I read, just those in the ‘Tree’s but I do enjoy it. There’s something nice about interacting with the words on the page, rather than just reading them, even if I can’t bring myself to scribble in the margins of my own copies of my books. But with the Kindle I can highlight bits and make notes on them should I wish. There’s also a nice little function there to highlight mistakes in the text (though only in certain books, I should note) and notify Amazon of them; whether or not they actually do anything about them remains to be seen, but the little pedantic bit of me likes being able to do that.

The last time I read Dracula was before I went to Whitby, so I had the story in my mind when I visited. This time I read it with the images of the Abbey and St. Mary’s church in my mind, and it made it quite spooky. I don’t think that I really appreciated what a spooky book it can be when I read it the last time. At one point I was staying up far too late reading and I really creeped myself out, reading about the boat coming into Whitby harbour with the dead man lashed to the wheel and a big black dog running through the town.

When I finally managed to coax myself out of bed I shivered past the framed Victorian newsclipping that hangs on the wall by the stairs (a beautiful picture of Whitby Abbey and some men in a graveyard) and made it to the bathroom. I’d barely been in there a minute when my own big black dog burst into the room and nearly gave me a heart attack. Talk about bringing fiction to life!

“As he spoke he smiled, and the lamplight fell on a hard-looking mouth, with very red lips and sharp-looking teeth, as white as ivory. One of my companions whispered to another the line from Burger’s “Lenore”.
“Denn die Todten reiten Schenll.” (“For the dead travel fast.”)”

Page 9

Book 41 of 2012: Seabiscuit

I'm spamming my blog this week (can you spam your own blog?) because I'm trying to get caught up on my book reviews, especially since I've been receiving free copies of ebooks in return for reviewing them. So I figured it would be better if I could actually review them in the same month that I read them, so this is the final push to get caught up.

Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand tells the story of a racehorse who rose to fame and fortune in America in the 1930s. It’s not the usual book that I would go for, I’m not a big fan horse-racing and I’ve never really been that interested in horses. As a child I didn’t dream of having a pony, I wanted dogs, hehe. I just happened to read it because it was the final book in the set of ten Stranger Than Fiction books I’d got last year.

I have to admit, I was a little surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. Honestly, when I started it I was thinking that I just had to read it because it was the last in the series and that hopefully it wouldn’t take too long to get through. I spent the first few chapters thinking that it really wasn’t for me, but somehow I got drawn in and read it in just a few days.

In fact, I got so into the story, that come the epilogue I was actually a little bit choked up. I was sitting on the train on the way to Glasgow at the time and did feel a little bit ridiculous trying not to cry about a horse. But it is definitely written in a way which is designed to tug at your heartstrings, and it certainly succeeded with me.

Although I did enjoy it, I also had a sense that it could have been edited down quite heavily. Every race that Seabiscuit ran in is heavily detailed which really pushed the page count up, many of the races probably could have been glossed over a little more. There were also loads of people who were only slightly linked to the story, people on the periphery who didn’t really add anything to the overall story. Hillenbrand made use of notes at the end of most chapters and I think that rather than devoting so much time to introducing these characters who might only be mentioned once or twice, they might have been explained in less detail at the ends of the chapters in note form.

One thing which I do think Hillenbrand did very well, was the descriptions of the races. I’ve never been interested in racing so I was expecting those aspects of the book to have been lost on me. But they were full of suspense and had a bit of an ‘edge-of-your-seat’ quality to them. I was aware of the film of Seabiscuit but having never seen it, I had no expectations of what the outcomes of the races would be. When Seabiscuit lost, it came as a shock to me and when he won, it was as though I had watched the whole thing myself.

“When the walk-ups were over, Smith would take the horse back to the barn. Just as always, in the afternoons most of the Eastern Seaboard streamed into the barn to stare at Seabiscuit. Smith didn’t seem to mind. “Can’t hurt a horse looking at him,” he said. Smith probably did think you could hurt Seabiscuit by looking at him. Which is why he made sure that the horse they were all gawking at was Grog.”
Page 306

Book 40 or 2012: Going Postal

It’s strange to think that it won’t be too much longer before I’ve got no more Terry Pratchett novels left to read. I’ve almost completed all of the Discworld series and the batch of remaining books on my bookshelf is getting smaller by the week. Of course, I’ve still got some bonus books to read there The Science of Discworld and The Bromeliad. I’m also hoping to get my hands on a copy of Good Omens at some point as well, so it’s not likely that I’m going to run out of Pratchett-based reading material any time soon, but as I’ve spend over a year dipping in and out of the Discworld, it’s going to be strange to leave it behind.

Going Postal is, by my count, the thirty-third Discworld book. It’s a bit of a fuzzy numbering system because some editions of the books don’t seem to include the young adult books such as The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents or the Tiffany Aching series, I’m not sure The Last Hero is included there as well. I must have at least two books claiming to be the thirtieth Discworld book. I suppose it’s kind of fitting for a series set on such a random world as the Disc…

“‘I don’t touch nails,’ said Dave sharply. ‘Won’t have ‘em in the shop! I’ve got a reputation to think about! Little kids come in here, you know!’
‘Oh no! Strictly pins, that’s me!’ said Moist hostily.”
Pages 74 + 75

It’s the first book featuring Moist von Lipwig, a conman who Vetinari decides to save from the gallows and instead mete out a cruel and unusual punishment; he’s to run the Ankh-Morpork post office. What was once a proud establishment has fallen into disuse with the rise of the ‘clacks’ a sort of telegraph system which operates across the Disc. While somewhat reluctant to take on his new position, Moist comes to use his abilities to cheat and scam for good, enabling the Clacks system to return to its rightful owner.

It’s the last of the most recent Discworld books that I’ve read (meaning that before I started this little project I’d probably gone a good three or so years between Pratchett books). I do remember having Thud! on my bedside table for quite a while, but I kept putting it off in favour of other books. And then that book pile threatened to concuss me each time I turned out my light, so I moved it to another pile and what with one thing and another, I only got around to reading it recently.

“As they stood up, Reacher Gilt leaned across the table and said: ‘May I congratulate you, my lord?’
‘I am delighted that you feel inclined to congratulate me on anything, Mr Gilt,’ said Vetinari. ‘To what do we owe this unique occurence?’”

Page 100

Having only read this once before, there were large portions of the story that I’d forgotten. I’ve seen the Sky adaptation about three or four times, so that was clearer in my mind than the actual original story. Not that it’s a bad thing, the adaptation is very good, easily my favourite of all three of the Sky versions of the Discworld books.

It’s a really funny book. As with all the Terry Pratchett books, immensely quotable which leads to problems when I’ve got to pick just a handful to jot into my book journal (luckily Mr. Click got me a set of magnetic bookmarks for my birthday which I use to mark the pages with the best quotes and then narrow them down from there, but even so, sometimes I’m kind of determined by how small I can make my writing to fit them all in). I think that this one is easily one of my favourite Discworld books.

“The clock in Lord Vetinari’s ante-room didn’t tick right. Sometimes the tick was just a fraction late, sometimes the tock was early. Occasionally, one or the other didn’t happen at all. This wasn’t really noticeable until you’d been there for five minutes, by which time small but significant parts of the brain were going crazy.”

Page 235

Going Postal follows in the trend of the books which immediately preceded it by introducing new characters to the Discworld as well as by introducing some new technology as well. I do love to read about the witches and the Watch, and it’s always good to see the established characters get a mention, but it’s especially good to get to see places like Ankh-Morpork through the eyes of an entirely new character. Moist von Lipwig is a brilliant character, he’s rather flawed but he does what’s right in the end… even if he does do it in his own special way.

“There was a pregnant pause. It gave birth to a lot of little pauses, each one more deeply embarrassing than its parent.”

Page 396

There’s also the wonderful Adora Belle Dearheart, played in the TV adaptation by Claire Foy. When I was reading the book, I couldn’t help but picture her, even the illustration on the cover looks close to the TV version. She’s fleshed out a bit more in the adaption than from what I remember of the book so I suppose in my mind she’s a kind of combination of the two versions of the character. I love her relationship with Moist; Pratchett has a wonderfully subtle way of introducing romance to his novels and it just works really well with these two. I’m quite looking forward to Making Money which’ll be coming up on my list very shortly and I’m hoping that both characters crop up there.

This book shows one thing that Pratchett does very well; the idea of the Clacks were first introduced several books back, just the tiniest of mentions but from that, a whole story has grown up. It makes you wonder what will crop up as the main focus of future books, and it’s kind of exciting to find out what that’s going to be.

“Archchancellor Ridcully thumped the side of the thing with his hand, causing it to rock.
’It’s still not working, Mr Stibbons!’ he bellowed. ‘Here’s that damn enormous fiery eye again!’”
Page 444

The End is Nigh

Actually, the end came and went on Saturday when I finished up my final assignment for the Open University course I've been studying: E301 - The Art of English.

This has been my first Level 3 OU course. My original plan had been to complete the two compulsory Level 2 courses and then move on up to do the two Level 3s, thus making sure I was in the right frame of mind for tackling the higher level.

But my last course was, the now defunct, U211 - Exploring the English Language and so I came to discover Linguistics. I've always been interested in languages and the way that people use words, so that was right up my street. Even now you don't want to get me talking about dialects and accents and how the English we speak today came to be what it is, seriously, I'll never shut up!

So it seemed logical to carry on to the next level of that subject, while I still had the momentum behind me. And now it's pretty much over (definitely not counting it as complete until I've got my final score in, so long as I pass, I'll be happy).

Next up are the two Literature courses that I'm required to complete, the first will be along the lines of Introduction to Literature and then I'm hoping to do the Children's Literature course as my 3rd Level course. I've already done Introduction to the Arts (Level 1) and my optional Level 2 course (Creative Writing) so it's just these last two to get out of the way before I get my B.A. (Hons.) in English Language and Literature.

In a way, I kind of wish that I'd done these linguistic courses before I did the Creative Writing one, I feel much better equipped to write now (though when I'm reading or listening to someone speak I can't help but pick out elements of literariness or creativity). I'm hoping that the types of textual analysis I've been doing during this course will stand me in good stead for the next couple of courses to come.

I'm now well over the halfway mark of the degree now, so I suppose it's time to start thinking about what to do next. Ideally I'd like to get a Masters, though I'm not sure I can study what I want through the Open University, if not, I'm thinking that I might see if I can cash in some of my units from my original (and frankly worthless) degree that I did at university and specialise a little more in language... I'm liking the idea of studying a bit of Latin and maybe seeing if I can build up another degree to keep things ticking over until I work out exactly where I'm going next.

At least I've got another year and a bit to get that all worked out!

Project 365+1: Days 148 - 154

This week has mostly been spent trying to negotiate iPhone contracts and get my final assignment for my OU course completed, so unfortunately, there's relatively little in the way of interesting photographs at the moment. I'm hoping that the weather will hold out for me tomorrow and Tuesday so I can take advantage of a couple of days off to get out with my camera to make up for the poor selection of pictures this week.

Day 148: BritishRedCross

Mr. Click and I started volunteering with the local Red Cross around a year ago and have been involved in a few events since then. Our first was at the Cowal Games in Dunoon and the most recent was just last week. There was a local event organised, the Rainbow Festival, and although due to my shifts that week and other general busy-ness we were only able to do a couple of hours on the Friday and Sunday, it felt really good to be involved.

Pictured above are my polo shirt, pass (which gets you in practically anywhere) and my hi-vis jacket. I've also got a giant beanie hat (which covers my whole head) and a lovely warm fleece (which I shall have to remind myself is only for Red Cross duties and not for wearing to walk the dog in the winter)!

Day 149: Gift Voucher

I managed to win myself a £20 gift voucher which I received on Monday. It came just in time because we were off to Glasgow on Wednesday so I immediately started plotting what I was going to put it towards. Capital Bonds vouchers are a really good idea, you can spend them all over the place, we generally go to HMV because we have a slight blu-ray/DVD addiction. Scroll on down to see what I spent it on.

Day 150: Type 2

Earlier in the week I complained to Mr. Click (which I should add is a fairly rare occurence) because we've had a fantastic heatwave and I've had nothing to wear. Most of my clothes are geared up for typical Scottish weather, i.e. wind and rain. I live in layers so I generally wear long-sleeved tops with shorter sleeve tops over the top, so when the sun comes out and the only t-shirts I have are black, I find my wardrobe a bit limited.

Mr. Click took it upon himself to solve this problem, and ordered me a lovely blue t-shirt (which fills my no-more-black-clothes requirements nicely). We have a bright orange campervan (which a big white roof) and I'm always hinting at the fact that I'd rather have a Type 2 (as though I actually know something about Volkswagon vans), so that's what he got me. It's even got a split screen, and it's my new favourite item of clothing.

Day 151: The Pacific

And that's what I spent my voucher on. We'd bought The Band of Brothers on blu-ray when we got married, I've seen it on DVD before but Mr. Click is yet to watch it. For just £10, plus my voucher, we picked up The Pacific in a matching tin. Both have now been bumped up the list of 'To Watch' series and we've decided to go for them after we've watched Tales of the Unexpected.

Other contenders were the X-Men films (in a funky blu-ray boxset) and Game of Thrones on blu-ray (which I very nearly went for). As we started watching The Pacific when it was originally on TV but never managed to finish it I'm quite glad we went for this, I'll just have to work extra hard to get some more vouchers towards the other sets we want.

Day 152: Logo-ed

Well, obviously, if I was going to have a Volkswagon t-shirt, then my husband needed one too. And this is the one he chose. I've given him very strict instructions that we're not to wear them both on the same day because we're not needing to be too matchy, hehe. He isn't normally shy, but he insisted on me not catching his face in this picture, I'll have to get one of him with a headshot later on.

Day 153: Dusty Shelves

This is a lovely shot of my dusty bookshelf. I swear, it's not normally this bad. If we notice it's just got a bit dusty we'll grab a duster and sort it, clearly, the second shelf down has been slightly neglected. Anyway, this has been my reading material for the week (or rather, for three days of this week because I pretty much sailed through it). This shows just how close I am to finishing reading the Discworld series of books (just have to get myself a copy of Snuff). Though if you look to the right hand side of the photo you can see I still have quite a bit of Pratchett-based material to keep me going on with.

Day 154: Early Night Nibbles

Yesterday we came out to my in-laws' house in the evening but Tara was restless and we decided to bring her back early to walk her, which of course meant that she had her last walk much earlier than she would normally do. Once we'd done all the last-thing-before-bed things like feeding the girlie!rats and emptying the washing machine, there wasn't much else left for it.

So we retreated to bed with books and a box of Celebrations (narrowly avoiding a marital discussion over who should be allowed to have a Teaser, ;-D). It kind of felt like a Sunday having had Friday off work, so it was a pleasant surprise when I realised that I didn't need to set the alarm (not that we ever really need to set an alarm, Tara takes care of that for us).

Now my target for the week is to actually take some decent photos of actual things, especially if we have some nice weather. I'm planning some wanders around the grounds with my camera because there are some wonderfully striking yellow and purple flowers which I need to catch before they go over. If I don't have photos of them up by next Sunday, you have my permission to nag!

Book 38 of 2012: Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles by Kim Newman was originally recommended to me by my friend Mark. His book tastes tend to run similarly to Mr. Click's so when he mentioned a book featuring Sherlock Holmes' rival, Professor Moriarty, I had a funny feeling that we would be onto a winner.

It's a series of short stories, written in a similar style to the original Sherlock Holmes stories. The twist being that they follow the dastardly plans of Moriarty and are recorded by his version of Watson, Moran. There's a heavy bit of name-dropping, mentioning characters from other book series (such as our good friend Raffles) as well as people who feature in the original Sherlock Holmes stories.

I thought it was very well done. It was clever how it linked to other classic stories which were set around the same time period. There was a collection of notes at the end which added to this and made it feel a little like it was discussing real people, rather than a group of fictional characters.

The stories all have titles based upon Conan Doyle's stories, personally the first three were my favourites; A Volume in Vermilion, A Shambles in Belgravia and The Red Planet League. As a narrator, Moran is clearly not a nice person, he's got no scruples and spends most of his time bragging about his hunting prowess or lusting after women.

All the same, he's pretty funny. The book is full of little asides and thoughts from Moran which are kind of hilarious. Mr. Click drove me crazy reading this, he'd sit there sniggering to himself but hardly ever telling me what it was that he found so funny. It was good to finally get my hands on the book and find out for myself!

Mr. Click finished reading it on my birthday during my birthday picnic, so I started it that evening and finished it in around a week. The book is comprised of a collection of short stories but some are slightly longer than others, divided into chapters. One thing I do like about this format is that it means you can just pick it up and put it down, reading in little bitesize chunks. It's ideal for reading in my breaks at work and during breakfast.

I've noticed that Kim Newman has also written a book called Anno Dracula which I'm thinking I'll need to pick up at some point. Mr. Click's not so sure himself, though if it's in a similar style I'm sure he'll enjoy it.

"As I entered our reception room, a slicing noise alerted me. A stick slashed at my head. I arrested its arc with a quick grab. As part of an unending 'testing process', Moriarty often tried to catch associates off guard. Some, not having my jungle-honed instincts, got broken heads."Page 137