Author: Nicky

#ReaderProblems Tag

Posted February 24, 2020 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Imyril did it, and I’m a dirty thief.

You have 20,000 books in your TBR, how in the world do you decide what to read next?

Currently, complete and utter whim. I’ve borrowed the Wimsey family motto — “as my whimsy takes me” — and applied it to my reading. When I start feeling like I “should” read something, I distrust it. Making reading into an obligation sounds less than fun.

If there’s nothing that immediately strikes my fancy, I’ll go with book club choices, stuff I’m due to review, random number generators, or holding the bunnies up to the shelves to pick for me. They mostly take this philosophically.

You’re halfway through a book and you’re just not loving it. Do you put it down or are you committed?

I’m trying to put them down a little more often. I’ve trained myself into accepting a book won’t be for me, lately, but it takes work to remind myself there’s no obligation here.

However, there is a sort of grey area where for whatever reason a book isn’t living rent-free in my brain, even though I’m mildly enjoying it, and I’ll accidentally start something else instead, get distracted, and come back six months later having forgotten half the story. These books live on the shelf above my desk, and I’ve never really got the hang of how to deal with them.

The end of the year is coming and you’re behind on your reading challenge, do you try to catch up? And if so, how?

I’m trying not to be too attached to reading challenges, lately. It helps that I’ve more or less quit Goodreads, since they have a bug causing my books to sort wrongly and have admitted they’re never going to bother fixing it or even applying the temporary fix for me. (They’ve told me I can do it myself, but with 4k book records, I’ll pass, thanks.)

The covers of a series you love do not match, how do you cope?

Actually, this is another thing I’ve tried to let go of. If I’m collecting a series because I already know and love it, I’ll go to some lengths to get matching covers, but mostly I have books to enjoy and not to obsess over how they look. Uniformity pleases me, but I’m not unduly worried.

(I have literal, as opposed to convenient “oh I’m so OCD!” obsessive-compulsive tendencies, so it’s never wise for me to let myself get caught up in something too much. Hence I’ve also broken my habits of only stopping reading after even-numbered chapters, for instance.)

Everyone and their mother loves a book that you do not. Who do you bond with over your shared feelings?

I mostly don’t care. If it’s abjectly stupid about Arthuriana or Wales in general, I might DM Lynn O’Connacht, or rant about it to my twitter following. My mother comes in for some texts of outrage, as well, especially if the book is pop-science. Otherwise, my wife is the usual suspect; I have referred to her as my “auxiliary processing unit”, and that holds for literature as much as anything else.

You’re reading a book in public and you’re about to start crying. How do you deal?

I’m not sure this has ever happened to me. I’ve only just learned to cry again after medication for anxiety and depression evened me out so much I couldn’t, though. I’d probably just power through it and ignore my eyes stinging.

The sequel to a book you loved just came out but you’ve forgotten a lot of what happens. Are you going to reread it?

Yep! I love rereading, and will sometimes reread the first book of a series many many times if the series goes on a long time. This doesn’t bother me; if I’m sticking with the series, I probably really like it.

If it’s the sequel to a book I just liked, then I may actually never read it because I don’t want to spare the time to reread the first. I’m not a “plunge in and hope I remember” type.

You do not want anyone to borrow your books, how do you politely say no when someone asks?

I don’t. I am very bad at saying no. Hence my mother still has my original copy of Kerry Greenwood’s Blood and Circuses after two or three years, and I’ve simply ended up replacing it! My mother and I have a serious disagreement about the creasing of book spines, so I try to get her the ebook instead when I can.

You have picked up and put down 5 books in the last month. How do you get over this reading slump?

I probably read The Goblin Emperor or Strange Practice, or pick up a non-fiction read to clear my palate. Or sometimes I just ride out the slump and wait for my mojo to come back. Nobody’s paying me to read, it’s not my job.

There are so many books coming out that you are dying to read, how many do you end up buying?

However many my budget allows. That can be a lot; I know myself well and allocate a good chunk of each month’s budget to books.

After you purchase all of these books that you’re dying to read how long do they sit on your shelves before you get to them?

It can be years. There are some books that have been on the TBR since 2011. I actually just did a massive clear-out, and am trying to adhere a bit more to one of Marie Kondo’s statements about books: “For books, timing is everything. The moment you first encounter a particular book is the right time to read it.”

Obviously I don’t follow through to the end of the quote, which recommends curating a very small book collection — mine is 300+ books now, even after a massive cull. But lately I’m trying to engage that when it comes to new books, and prioritise them so I can capture the spark of interest that made me buy it in the first place.

Alrighty. Who’s surprised by any of this? Interested to know if I defy any expectations! Or maybe I’m an open book…

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Review – Fell Murder

Posted February 23, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Fell Murder by E.C.R. LoracFell Murder, E.C.R. Lorac

Another British Library Crime Classic! Lorac’s work, as republished in this series, has been solidly satisfying for me, drawing sensitive portraits of people and places that make you care about the solution of the murder. It’s not a mere puzzle, as it can be in other crime fiction of much the same period. Fell Murder is solidly set in a particular landscape, which Lorac clearly loved and described in beautiful detail, so you can almost smell the hay and the damp earth and — yes — the cow sheds. It’s idyllic, even romanticised, and the characters are made sympathetic through their love of the land and their whole-hearted hard work. Even the crotchety old head of the family is dignified by his hard work and his fairness, despite his ruthlessness.

I found this a little slower than Lorac’s other work; I think because I could see who the killer must be far too soon, and thus didn’t appreciated the beating around the bush. In the final chapters of the book, I rather disliked Macdonald’s little gambit about Charles and Malcolm; what a needless risk, with more evidence due to turn up!

It wasn’t bad, and it definitely had its high points, but it didn’t totally work for me.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Five

Posted February 23, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of The Five by Hallie RubenholdThe Five, Hallie Rubenhold

I didn’t really expect to find this riveting; it really isn’t my period of interest whatsoever, and I’m not hugely into murder stories. But, after all, this isn’t about the Ripper, but about his victims, and Rubenhold brings sympathy and painstaking research to the task. I’ll admit I haven’t fact-checked her on anything (given that it isn’t my period), but assuming she’s done the work — and the bibliography certainly suggests that she did — then it’s a wonderful window into the lives of five women who are only remembered because of their brutal murders, whose real lives and attributes were eclipsed by gossip and sensationalism.

That said, I have a serious issue with the way Rubenhold frames all this. Her urgent mission throughout — restated countless times — is to assert that almost none of the five victims of the Ripper were actually prostitutes. She states again and again that they weren’t prostitutes, that we’ve eclipsed their real lives and motives and struggles in our remembrance of them as such. Which is fair enough; the correction of the record by sketching out their actual lives is a welcome one. But, I got the strong impression that Rubenhold feels that the women are worthy of more attention because they weren’t prostitutes (apart from Mary Jane Kelly, who clearly was, and who gets perhaps the least attention in the book; not coincidentally, perhaps).

And that’s bullshit. If they’re worthy of understanding and remembering, it’s as whole people, and that would be true whether they slept with no one or half the population of London. They’re not more important because they weren’t prostitutes, and Mary Jane Kelly isn’t less important because she was. They were people, and no one has any right to murder anyone regardless of how they earn their money.

For the most part, Rubenhold is sympathetic to the plight of the women, noting where things went wrong for them and points where things may have turned around. (I’ll note again that she did not do the same for Mary Jane Kelly, who was actually a prostitute.) She details their everyday lives with pity and care, and she writes well. But I’m left just a little bit uncomfortable about that constant implication that it matters whether they were prostitutes. At the time, it did, because it shaped their whole lives, and their deaths as well, and because it may well have mattered to them. I can understand rehabilitating them for that reason.

But even if every single one of the five was a prostitute, they should still be interesting to us now for the exact same reasons as they are interesting to Rubenhold. It speaks poorly of her if she thinks that sex workers are automatically less interesting than everyone else, and that is very much the impression I got.

Rating: 4/5

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Weekly Roundup

Posted February 22, 2020 by Nicky in General / 4 Comments

Welllll, that was an anxiety-inducing game and a very disappointing outcome. If any of you visiting here are French and follow rugby… let’s not talk about it.

Anyway, it’s been a quiet week around here, but I got some new books!

Books acquired:

Cover of When the Dogs Don't Bark by Angela Gallop Cover of The Great Pretender by Susannah Cahalan Cover of The Five by Hallie Rubenhold

Reviewed this week:

–Small Robots, by Thomas Heasman-Hunt. Just delightful. 5/5 stars
–Heartstopper vol. 3, by Alice Oseman. Adorable as ever, though not pure fluff; the boys have a lot to deal with. 5/5 stars
–One Corpse Too Many, by Ellis Peters. Love the historical setting and the way it shapes the mystery; loved a character I did not expect to love. 4/5 stars
–When the Dogs Don’t Bark, by Angela Gallop. Interesting, though a bit unfocused. 3/5 stars

Other posts:

–WWW Wednesday. This week I talked about E.C.R. Lorac’s Fell Murder, Angela Gallop’s When the Dogs Don’t Bark, Brother Cadfael, and Susannah Cahalan’s new book.

What’s everyone been reading?

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Review – When The Dogs Don’t Bark

Posted February 22, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of When the Dogs Don't Bark by Angela GallopWhen the Dogs Don’t Bark, Professor Angela Gallop

I picked this up on a whim because it looked like it could be my sister’s thing, and I never object to more random information about all kinds of topics. Angela Gallop is a well-known forensic scientist who has worked on several famous murder cases; this is a sort of professional memoir, barely touching on her personal life, but digging into her opinions on forensic science, her part in expanding forensic science services in the UK and eventually worldwide, and her involvement (sometimes tangentially) in various cases.

It’s a little bit of everything, really: she talks about setting up her business, and that butts up against the horrible details of bloody murders and the less than fascinating references to board meetings. It feels rather unfocused, sort of like there’s the kitchen sink at all: there’s certainly plenty of interesting anecdotes, but the wealth of examples sometimes bogs down her theme. Where you expect her to be contrasting two cases, they turn out to be remarkably similar and prove the same point. It’s not terribly written, but I’d tighten it up ruthlessly and make her add in an organising theme.

She does have something she wants to say about forensic science: “it’s more complicated than you think, it needs funding, it needs to be impartial, and it needs to be done in context”. But those cautionary notes for the understanding of and the future of forensic science get a bit lost when suddenly she’s complaining about the perils of borrowing money to start a company and how things could have gone wrong there. The book’s neither fish nor fowl; it’s not just about digging into the story behind investigating specific crimes, but it’s so heavy on those details that it feels like maybe that was the original point.

That said, the details are interesting and her style isn’t bad, just a bit flabby. I mildly enjoyed it, but felt it could’ve been more impactful if it knew what it was.

Rating: 3/5

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WWW Wednesday

Posted February 19, 2020 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

The three ‘W’s are what are you reading now, what have you recently finished reading, and what are you going to read next, and you can find this week’s post at the host’s blog here if you want to check out other posts.

Cover of Fell Murder by E.C.R. LoracWhat are you currently reading?

Fiction: Fell Murder, by E.C.R. Lorac. Normally I quite like Lorac’s books, as far as I’ve experienced them from the British Library Crime Classics reissues, and this one is appealing in several ways. My brain just isn’t doing fiction right now.

Non-fiction: When The Dogs Don’t Bark, by Professor Angela Gallop. It’s kind of bitty and disorganised, though roughly chronological through her career. I’m finding it interesting, but wouldn’t say I recommend it, because it’s pretty shallow and in some ways repetitive.

Cover of One Corpse Too Many by Ellis PetersWhat have you recently finished?

The second Brother Cadfael book, which was a reread. I don’t think I’ve read the third book, so it’s all-new territory from here. I think. I do enjoy the historical setting of it, the fact that it could only be set exactly when it is. I don’t know how accurate the portrayal of anybody real might be, but it worked for my level of knowledge.

Cover of The Great Pretender by Susannah CahalanWhat will you be reading next?

I don’t know, but I picked up Susannah Cahalan’s new book this week, so that’s a possibility. The Great Pretender is about a famous study of psychiatric wards by a guy called Rosenhan, which portrayed the wards as a place where perfectly sane people sounded mad. Cahalan was curious about how the study participants felt about it, but found that she couldn’t find them… and eventually concluded they may not have existed. A lot of people on Litsy seem to hate it, which gives me pause; I guess it depends on how she presents the relevance of this study now, for me.

What are you currently reading?

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Review – One Corpse Too Many

Posted February 19, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of One Corpse Too Many by Ellis PetersOne Corpse Too Many, Ellis Peters

The second Brother Cadfael book is more deeply rooted in the historical period it’s set in, with everything in it being touched by the civil war between Stephen and Matilda. We see quite a bit of Stephen in this book, in fact, since he is actually in command of the forces that enter the town and kill the garrison. Cadfael gets himself involved first by sheltering a daughter of the local nobility (dressed as a boy and acting as a novice) and then by investigating the murder of the mysterious extra corpse hidden among the bodies of the garrison.

It’s an interesting and nuanced vision of the time; Cadfael is pretty non-partisan (which I believe was actually very difficult to maintain at the time, but he’s a fictional monk, so he can do as he likes) and ends up aiding both sides of the fight through his interest in individual people. I shouldn’t say too much about the characters, because it deliberately takes quite a while to figure out where everyone stands: I ended up feeling very affectionate toward one particular character, in a way that’s very cleverly done.

The idea of a monk solving mysteries sounds kind of gimmicky, perhaps, but the strong roots in the time help make it feel realistic and serious. Both mysteries so far have been uncontrived — a crime of passion in the first book, and this one in a historical framework where the death makes sense and the only wonder is that someone cares — and Cadfael getting involved feels natural. There are so many books in the series that of course it could get a bit Daisy Dalrymple-ish, but it helps that in Cadfael’s times everyone was closer to the fact of death.

(I don’t mean to pick on Daisy too much, because I genuinely enjoy Carola Dunn’s books, but by this point my only explanation for how many independent murders she manages to involve herself with is that some mastermind is tugging the strings to involve her “accidentally” in dozens of otherwise unconnected murders. I somehow doubt that Daisy has a Moriarty, though.)

Definitely enjoyable, and I do rather hope to see some of these characters again.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Heartstopper Volume 3

Posted February 16, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Heartstopper volume 3 by Alice OsemanHeartstopper vol. 3, Alice Oseman

This series is just so more-ish and adorable. I can’t help but love both Charlie and Nick and their relationship. It’s not always perfectly fluffy and happy — bullying is a theme, and there are several instances of homophobia; in this volume, there’s also disordered eating and references to self-harm. But the two of them are great to each other, even as they’re feeling their way through a serious relationship for the first time, and navigating issues with parents, siblings, school friends and teachers.

This particular volume also features more development from some of their friends, including Tao and Elle… and also a cute little snippet of another potential love story between two of the teachers. None of the characters are perfect; they make mistakes and do stupid things… but they’re good, they show up for each other and they think over their issues and they learn. Even when they get things wrong (as Tao does in this volume, and arguably as Charlie does in trying to handle several situations), they’re not monsters… and even the worst characters have the potential to learn. It has such heart.

It’s also kind of nice to read something British, because the experience is close in some ways to what I had. Not all — I went to a tiny private school, and had no particular friends there… but still, there are things in common that are… not nostalgic, for all kinds of reasons — if I say everything I thought about my old school they’d probably want to sue me — but sort of like that. Study leave! School trip to France!

Rating: 5/5

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Review – Small Robots

Posted February 16, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Small Robots by Thomas Heasman-HuntSmall Robots, Thomas Heasman-Hunt

I helped to crowdfund this so was very excited to see my copies arrive yesterday! Small Robots is a Twitter account which regularly posts drawings of robots designed for very specific tasks. For instance, Booksbot swoops in and hides your new books so you don’t have to feel guilty about adding to the pile of books you already have waiting on your TBR! Teabot brings you tea (and only tea). Guestshowerbot helps you figure out the arcane controls on your friend’s shower.

This book contains 100 robot friends, along with crochet patterns for two of them (I haven’t tried the patterns yet). The drawings are adorable and often funny; sometimes the bots are uplifting (like Hopebot) and sometimes they’re bizarre (Bingliesbot); this collection includes commentary on their purpose and designs which is also often adorable and/or funny. It’s a chunky little book and one which can be dipped into at will.

True story: my copy fell open at Booksbot when I first picked it up, and given I hadn’t even previously been aware of this bot, it felt like fate. I need a bookmark with this friend on, at the very least…

Rating: 5/5

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Weekly Roundup

Posted February 15, 2020 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

G’day, folks! This has been a much quieter reading week, but that’s also fine. I’ve been busy with work and with playing video games, and that’s fine. I’m still working on not criticising myself when I feel less like reading — it’s not like yelling at myself makes me read more, it just makes me unhappy.

Books acquired:

Cover of Heartstopper volume 3 by Alice Oseman Cover of Small Robots by Thomas Heasman-Hunt

Books read this week:

Cover of Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski Cover of Gilded Cage by KJ Charles Cover of That Could Be Enough by Alyssa Cole Cover of Heartstopper volume 3 by Alice Oseman

Reviews posted this week:

–Sword of Destiny, by Andrzej Sapkowski. I didn’t think this was as good as The Last Wish; it’s more a collection of stories in the world, though it does sort of move towards setting up the novels. 3/5 stars
–Gilded Cage, by K.J. Charles. I wasn’t convinced I was going to enjoy this because I didn’t love Templeton Lane, but I trust Charles and she didn’t steer me wrong. 4/5 stars
–That Could Be Enough, by Alyssa Cole. I didn’t really believe in the relationship here. It was okay because it’s so short, but more and I might’ve given up. 3/5 stars

Other posts:

–WWW Wednesday. The usual weekly check-in, mostly about a book about Byzantium, one of E.C.R. Lorac’s British Library Crime Classics, and K.J. Charles.

Out and about:

–NEAT science: ‘All about that base.‘ A friend asked me to explain why humans have butts. I had a go.

And that’s it! How’s everyone doing?

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