The book blog

I had all these grand ideas about blogging every time I finished a book, but (as ever) this hasn’t happened . . . what you now have is a catch-up blog, written at 00.43am on a day that I had technically declared off, but had still intended to do more with than I actually did in the end. Oh well. Perhaps we all need to have do-nothing-at-all days.

This is more to keep track of what books I’ve been reading than a review opportunity, especially as I’m pretty tired. I hope I don’t miss any books out here. If I suddenly remember any, I’ll add them in next time – this doesn’t necessarily have to be in order.

1. What I talk about when I talk about running – Haruki Murakami.
My favourite author is a very unique, and very reclusive man, and this is probably the nearest to an autobiography that we’re ever going to get out of him. So I enjoyed it for all the little anecdotes about his life, and his usual wise words and unusual ponderings, but this was a book primarily about his relationship with jogging, and I don’t have a huge interest in running, so I didn’t find this to be one of his best. Seeing as he’s the world’s greatest author (ok, imo) it was still better than 99% of the stuff out there.

2. Her Fearful Symmetry – Audrey Niffenegger.
I’m hoping to review this on my Youtube channel at some point in the near future, so I don’t want to go into a lot of detail here . . . safe to say that it was very different from what I was expecting. The supernatural element was unexpected (although if I had bothered to read the blurb it wouldn’t have been), and it wasn’t up to the standard of ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’ – but that TTTW is about as perfect as a book can be, so that was no surprise. There were a lot of things going on, and a lot of great ideas, but it felt like she had perhaps been rushing for a deadline, and hadn’t quite got the balance between them right. And most of the characters were a lot more difficult to sympathise and empathise with this time round. Having said that, as a study of the complexities of female ‘friendships’ it was very accurate, to a slightly terrifying degree. I liked how you were never quite sure who you were meant to like and who you weren’t. And the whole storyline about the agoraphobic man and his wife was beautiful – I only wish she had saved it for another story, it would have simplified things.

3. Robin of Sherwood – Michael Morpurgo.
It breaks my heart that this book is out of print. It is wonderful on so many levels, and should be a classic, not something that you have to hunt out on Amazon second hand book dealers. Review on Youtube.

4. Dead Until Dark – Charlene Harris
Umm, yes, Vampire chick-lit. But very well-written vampire fiction, which makes it ok, right? :) This is the first out of the novel series that the TV show ‘True Blood’ is based on, and as the show is one of my TV guilty pleasures, I thought I might as well try out the books (my cousin has the whole series) . . . . this is basically X-rated Twilight. Ok, that is way too harsh – this was published a few years before Twilight, and contains too many similar plot-features to be ignored (vampire-human-werewolf love triangle, telepathy, first-person narrative of unusual heroine, who longs for her hunky, gentlemanly, very old vampire boy), so Twilight is basically the tweeny fanfiction of this. This was actually pretty different from the TV show, it wasn’t quite as . . . shocking, and there’s a whole main character and her storylines that make up a major part of the show, but didn’t appear in any way in this novel. The book was much more focused on the central couple, rather than being an ensemble metaphor about equality like the TV show (which is one of the reasons I like ‘True Blood’ so much). But, for all its differences, I still enjoyed the book, mainly because the central character, Sookie, is brilliant and feels very original, the writing was pleasantly quirky, the murder mystery elements played well, and it was genuinally scary in places. The TV show really managed to capture the characters well. My cousin says this book series actually gets better as it goes along (again, opposite to Meyer’s Twilight), so I might have to stick with this one . . . not something I should really admit to, though :)

I’m sure I’ve read more than four books this year, but I can’t remember any other titles . . . anyway, I really need to step up this reading if I want to make 100 by the end of the year. You’ll hopefully hear more from me soon :)

January . . . and the beginning of February :-s

Wow. What happened to the whole 'I'm going to blog more regularly this year' idea? Yes, it has been over a month. January must have been one of the fastest-passing months in memory. It seems like I was busy all the time . . . and yet didn't actually do all that much. Hmmmm. That was another of those things that I was trying to avoid this year.

So . . . here is a summary of what took up my time in the last five weeks:

* Dissertation. Thinking about doing the dissertation, worrying about the dissertation, talking to people about how I really needed to be getting on with the dissertation, opening up the word document for the dissertation and then going on facebook/youtube/dailybooth/making a cup of tea, rearranging the notes for dissertation, re-reading the notes for the dissertation. Generally faling to do the dissertation. Emailing supervisor on several occasions to ask for an extension for the deadline of handing in the first draft of the dissertation, to which he always said that there was no problem, that I could take my time, and then I'd always set myself another deadline with him that I then failed to meet. Ho hum. Anyway, working at a speed of about 400 words a day for the first two weeks of term, I actually managed to hand in 12,000 words that I was vaguely ok with, and he seemed to quite like it. It still has a long way to go, but there's a whole host of stuff that he's recommended I look into (he really is an amazing guy, I have been very, very fortunate in my choice of supervisor), so I think it's going to be ok.

* Being creative - which is very unlike me. I can't remember doing much creative since I left high school, but these past few weeks, largely in an attempt to avoid the dissertation, I seem to have been inspired. Inspired by the birth of the baby of a hero of mine, I made a little dry-wipe board animation for my youtube channel, which I was really pleased with. I might actually do another on something completely different sometime soon. And I wrote a short story and entered it into the college writing competition - I doubt that it'll get anywhere, but it was an achievement for me to actually write something with a beginning, middle and end, and something that I can read back and be pretty happy with the way that it turned out, so that's big progress. There's a couple of other ideas for stories that I think I might try and send in to a camus-based undergradute writing magazine that's published once a year - again, no big hopes at this stage, but it would be good to have something to aim towards. I can't write without some deadline breathing down my neck.

* Being vaguely sociable - which is, again, quite unlike me. It's nice to realise that, if I wanted to (which I sometimes don't) I could be out of my room every night of the week these days. Not doing anything major, but just watching dvds, or going to see a film, or cooking or talking with one or the other of five or six good friends. That's a big improvement on first year.

* Lots of other academic stuff - this is the crazy term. I always knew that it would be, and part of it is my own fault for not getting the dissertation done over Christmas when I knew that there would be several other things on the go during these eight weeks - I tend to have 200+ pages to read for one paper, a few bits of books for another, six or seven books to read and an essay to write for the main paper, and the dissertation brewing in the background every week at the moment. It's still nowhere near as much work as friends in other subjects are doing, but seeing as History is the dossy subject here, and I've got use to that dossy kind of workload, it's come as a bit of a shock.

* Japan interview - the interview itself only took up half a day (and another half if you count my trip to find the location a couple of days beforehand), but I did do a bit of reading, and a fair bit of thinking about it, in order to prepare. I don't know how I did, I never do with these things. I would really love to go to Japan next year, but if it doesn't work out then it doesn't work out - there are other exciting things out there, and perhaps I could reapply sometime in the future.

* Internet procrastination - which has, you know, probably taken up more time than the rest of these things put together. Which, of course, leads to the question of why I can't find time to vlog or blog when I spend so much time doing nothing online . . . I think it's partly to do with being passive or being active - mindlessly flicking through wikipedia, or watching youtube videos, or trawling through gossipy news articles doesn't require me to think, and I can still do that whilst thinking about the fact I should be doing my work. More 'active' things, that require talking or typing, have to have time set aside for. Still, I'm trying to improve on this. Today I wrote a list, and most things on it have been crossed off. Writing a blog post was one of the things on it, so that soon will be too. Lists may well be the future.

I'm not going to commit to how regularly I update this blog. I use Dailybooth every day at the moment, and seeing as I'm beginning to use the blurb on there to talk about how my day has been, that has almost beome a mini, more interactive and colourful version of this. Still, sometimes I do like to look back at my week and remind myself what I did (or didn't) do, so I'm going to do that at least a couple of times a month on here. I think I might also make this the main place for me to keep track of what books I've been reading, because I'm aiming for a hundred this year, and will never be able to keep count if I dont have some type of system. I'll try and do little reviews, and links to my youtube reviews when I do them, every time I finish a book.