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Musings on the self-help industry

August 13, 2010 //
2

I’ve been reading parenting books to give myself the illusion I am slightly more in control and prepared for giving birth, and some of the advice and language to do with interacting with your toddler or child (I read ahead) was repeatedly striking me as very familiar.

At first I thought it was from my days working in an office and doing various communication courses, but then, in my browsing through the ‘other people who looked at this book bought…’ suggestions, I came across a book to do with keeping your relationship happy once you have a baby, and from there (it being a lazy browsing day) I fell right into the self-help relationship field. And then I knew, from having read a few of these sorts of books some ten or more years ago and skimread others more recently, why the parenting books seemed a bit familiar. Read the rest of this entry »

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Categories Book reviews

Gimmick non-fiction

August 2, 2010 //
0

I’m fond of a certain type of usually-humour writing which I catagorise as ‘gimmick non-fiction’, or maybe a little more generously, ‘quest memoirs’ — where someone, usually a young(ish) man, sets out on some oddball undertaking often involving physical discomfort, some travel, and/or embarrassment and other social difficulties, and often for a period of a year.

The undisputed master of this type of thing Read the rest of this entry »

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Categories Authors, Book reviews

Book review: A Tapestry of Spells by Lynn Kurland

June 1, 2010 //
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Resistance cover image
Title: A Tapestry of Spells
Author: Lynn Kurland
Year of publication: 2010
Genre: Fantasy
My rating: 2.5 stars or D

This is the first failure of my new reading policy: it sailed past my 50-page test, but with about 100 pages to go, I was weighing up whether to bother finishing it. I did, and I regret it: this should have been a DNF.

It starts out promisingly enough. Read the rest of this entry »

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Categories Book reviews, Reading fiction

Book review: Resistance by Owen Sheers

May 25, 2010 //
0

Resistance cover image
Title: Resistance
Author: Owen Sheers
Year of publication: 2007
Genre: Literary alternate history
My rating: 4 stars or B

Just days after news of the invasion came crackling through on Maggie’s wireless…the men, lit by a hunter’s moon, met at William’s milking shed and slipped out of the valley. Moving in single file they walked through the higher fields and up over Hatterall ridge; an ellipsis of seven dark shapes decreasing over the hill’s shoulder, shortening to a last full stop and then nothing, just the blank page of the empty slope.”

Resistance is set in a 1944 where the D-Day landings have failed and the German have invaded Britain. A young woman in a remote Welsh border valley, Sarah, wakes to find her husband gone. She soon discovers that all seven of the men in the valley have disappeared, leaving their wives and children behind, with circumstantial evidence to suggest they’ve become resistance agents (as per real plans laid in 1940). When a small German patrol appears on a mysterious mission and becomes (deliberately) trapped in the valley for winter, the women must come to an accommodation with the enemy to keep their farms running and their sheep alive through the harsh weather.

I admit to a certain impatience with this book for the first third Read the rest of this entry »

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Categories Book reviews, Reading fiction

Book review: Wicked Gentlemen by Ginn Hale

May 18, 2010 //
0

Wicked cover image
Title: Wicked Gentlemen
Author: Ginn Hale
Year of publication: 2007
Genre: Steampunk romance
My rating: 4.5 stars or A-

I pick my way through relatively little-known books in the hope of finding gems like this one. Wicked Gentlemen is two novellas that work as one. In the first, Mr Sykes and the Firefly, we are introduced in the first person to narrator Belimai Sykes, who is a Prodigal, descendant of fallen angels who came out of hell three hundred ago for redemption on Earth. He’s a bit of a tortured soul (literally), what with his addiction to ophorium and his self-destructive tendencies. Then he’s hired to find a missing high-society wife by her husband, and more importantly, her brother, Captain William Harper of the Inquisition, the religious-based police force. In the course of solving the mystery, Belimai and Harper become prickly ‘drunk fuck’ lovers.

The second novella, Captain Harper and the Sixty Second Circle, picks up about two months after the first, Read the rest of this entry »

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Categories Book reviews, Reading fiction

Book Review: White Star by Beth Vaughan

May 11, 2010 //
0

Star cover image
Title: White Star
Author: Beth Vaughan
Year of publication: 2009
Genre: Fantasy romance
My rating: 3 stars or C-

Orrin is a man with a dark past. His evil overlady the Baroness is dead and he must surrender himself to save his men. Lucky for him, they recently took captive Lady High Priestess Evelyn, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the usurper (though Orrin doesn’t call him the usurper, as you would expect given he’s on his side) and he can use her as a bargaining chip for the lives of his men, though he accepts his own imminent execution. He and Evelyn have more than a little bit of a thing for each other, which comes into play as her goddess tells her to save his life and he takes steps to atone for his past behaviour by going zombie-fighting.

This book did not work for me. Read the rest of this entry »

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Categories Book reviews, Reading fiction

Book review: Perdido Street Station by China Mieville

April 20, 2010 //
4

Perdido cover image
Title: Perdido Street Station
Author: China Miéville
Year of publication: 2000
Genre: Mixed — SF Fantasy Horror
My rating: 4.5 stars or A-

New Crobuzon is a sprawling, messy, dark city in which, since I only recently finished reading Peter Ackroyd’s London, I couldn’t help but see the echoes of that great metropolis during the Industrial Revolution. But Miéville’s imaginative power in authentically re-creating such a city in another universe, a city full of non-human races trying to make a living, honestly takes my breath away, and that’s speaking as someone who normally can’t stand a lot of description in her reading.

The story opens with Isaac and his non-human lover, Lin (alien, as in actually alien, not Star Trek alien — she has a giant insect for a head) both receiving unusual commissions. Read the rest of this entry »

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Categories Book reviews, Reading fiction

Mini book reviews: my YA reading binge

April 13, 2010 //
2

I don’t read a lot of young adult fiction, but I don’t dismiss it out of hand either, since I find it tends to pay more attention to the elements I like most in my reading (well-developed characters, humour, witty dialogue, romantic sub-plot and/or attention paid to relationships, some darkness but generally happy outcomes), which adult fiction trying to impress adult critics often doesn’t bother with. Recently, as I gradually clear my to-read list, I went on a binge of YA fantasy fiction, so I thought I’d run through a few.

Lexicon cover imageThe Demon’s Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan was by far and away my personal favourite of the batch of YA books. Read the rest of this entry »

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Categories Book reviews, Reading fiction

Book review: Soulless by Gail Carriger

April 6, 2010 //
0

Soulless cover image
Title: Soulless
Author: Gail Carriger
Year of publication: 2009
Genre: Mixed — Steampunk paranormal romantic comedy
My rating: 4 stars or B+

Given it features both vampires (boo!) and werewolves (slightly smaller boo!), and is the first in a new series (biggest boo of all!), it took a bit for Soulless to make it on to my reading list. However, a romantic comedy with an overbearing spinster lead set in the steampunk Victorian age was too much to resist.

Alexia Tarabotti is soulless, but that’s the least of her problems: she’s also past the age of marrying, an outspoken trial to her family, and descended from the wrong father (he’s Italian. At least he wasn’t Read the rest of this entry »

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Categories Book reviews, Reading fiction

Book review: The Heroines by Eileen Favorite

March 30, 2010 //
0

Heroines cover image
Title: The Heroines
Author: Eileen Favorite
Year of publication: 2008
Genre: Fantasy — Literary
My rating: 3 stars or C

Penny’s mother runs an isolated boarding house with a difference…amid the usual run-of-the-mill guests, the occasional heroine from literature will show up, beautiful and distraught and needing a break from her narrative. They don’t know they’re in a narrative, and Penny’s mother is adamant that the storylines can’t be interfered with. All they can offer is tea and a shoulder to cry on before the heroines disappear back into their books, usually to meet some tragic fate.

But Penny is frustrated and feels neglected by her mother. When she runs off into the woods, she finds out that the heroines aren’t the only ones escaping the pages — but is this stranger a hero or a villain? Read the rest of this entry »

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Categories Book reviews, Reading fiction
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