Ren Warom's Blog, page 6

June 19, 2015

2015 Reading Challenge, Book 21: Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Rather excited this week as my book deal was FINALLY announced on Publisher’s Marketplace. WOOT!! It’s a two book deal with Titan Books. The first book, ESCAPOLOGY, will be out in Autumn 2016 and VIROLOGY, the second, will be out in 2017! I’ll be popping up a blog about the whole thing next Monday or Wednesday, so keep an eye out for that!

Onto this week’s review:

I bought this book on the chance spying of a tweet by Jennifer Williams. Her tweet inspired me to go and read the sample and I bou...

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Published on June 19, 2015 05:37

June 15, 2015

MHM Recovery 4: Self Care 2

Talking in this one about pyjamas/relaxing time and how, when you’ve begun recovery from MH issues they can take on unusual significance. Not the normal wearing of pyjamas when asleep, the wearing of them once awake, even when you’re having a lazy day and have nothing left to do but relax.

Thing is, you see, you associate the constant wearing of pyjamas, or any other ‘easy’ clothes as an illness behaviour and illness behaviours in recovery do not feel safe. They feel as if they could send you...

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Published on June 15, 2015 04:16

June 12, 2015

2015 Reading Challenge, Book 20: The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

This was originally lots of interconnected shorts andwas formed intoa collected editionyou can pretty much read as a novel, chronicling several abortive attempts to colonise Mars and the stories of settlers etc. It’s a fascinating collection, with a great deal of brilliant analysis into various topics: treatment of indigenous peoples, racism, censorship, mankind’s attitude to Earth and colonisation in general. But it has a massive problem–for me anyway–the way women are portrayedandexcluded a...

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Published on June 12, 2015 04:32

June 5, 2015

2015 Reading Challenge, Book 19: Leave It To Psmith by P.G. Wodehouse

Wodehouse is brilliant, end of. His are, naturally, set in bubble world fantasies stocked with dapper gents in spats, terrifying matriarchs and wily servants, but they are truly things of wonder. Nothing can make me so instantly cheerful as a Wodehouse novel.

Thisis his usual fare,a comedy of wonderfully disastrous errors which, unlike the later Jeeves and Wooster books never quite reaches Gordian levels of intricacy or Greek levels of tragedy, thoug...

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Published on June 05, 2015 04:28

June 1, 2015

MHM 3: Self Care 1

This week I’m starting my series of ‘self care’ vlogs with a talk on how your ability to give a shit about your physical appearance and cleanliness changes and how odd it is to start caring about that when it’s literally impossible when you are ill. I touch on the outward appearance cultivated during excursions beyond the safety zone of your four walls. The mask worn to hide the inner mess, to distract people from seeing the truth of your disintegration – it never feels as secure as it looks....

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Published on June 01, 2015 02:42

May 29, 2015

2015 Reading Challenge, Book 18: The Three by Sarah Lotz

So I picked this book up as my Book With A Number In The Title because I was intrigued. Everyone’s been raving about it. It’s a paranormal thriller I suppose, though for me the payoff was a little underwhelming. Not that I was expecting massive creepy stuffs, just a little more meat to the ending bites. I compare it to True Detective in the vlog, which is I suppose not massively fair as TD is a TV series, but I wanted to stress that occulty/paranormal underbellies don’t need to be true for me...

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Published on May 29, 2015 05:15

May 27, 2015

Poetic Interlude… Ten Minutes Under A Rainstorm

Within seconds my hair
Drapes down flat, stuck to shirt
Shirt stuck to skin
Sucked to skin
To goosebumps and cringing flesh
Jeans dyed deepergrey
Clammy
I wear these for magic
Myuglysecond skin

Shoes soak, toes swim
Amphibious extremities
But I’m running most unfroglike
Splashing crowns in my wake
Kings and Queens
Elementals
All howling laughter up the backs
Of my legs

Around me world hisses
Rain tonguesthe ground snakelike
Aggressive
There are monsters here
Formed of water
Sea snakes entwine...

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Published on May 27, 2015 04:49

May 22, 2015

2015 Reading Challenge, Book 17: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (based on an original idea by Siobhan Dowd)

It’s my four year anniversary on WordPress today! Weird. And quite cool. Wanted to say WELCOME to all my new followers and I hope you’re enjoying the content here. Please feel free to comment, as I do enjoy reading and answering comments! Now on to the business at hand.

A Monster Calls was written by Patrick Ness based on an original idea by the YA writer Siobhan Dowd, who very sadly passed away at a very young age. Judging by the idea he’s had to build on here she was pretty special, so I’ll...

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Published on May 22, 2015 03:36

May 18, 2015

MHM – Recovery: Intrusive Thoughts

Today on MHM recovery I’m talking about intrusive thoughts. When you’re still very much ill they can slay you, hold you under the water of your MI and prevent you from breathing. In recovery they take on a new role, trying to make you give up, to turn a minor backslide into a landslide back to illness, trying to trip you up, to make you doubt, to keep you caged.

I also have a minor rant about those irritating ‘You’re responsible for what happens to you’ memes, which don’t mean what they look...

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Published on May 18, 2015 06:18

May 15, 2015

2015 Reading Challenge, Book 16: The Death House by Sarah Pinborough

I bought this on my kindle as I’ve heard many many good things about both the author and the. It’s a near future tale of kids held in isolation on an island because they possess a defective gene that will eventually cause a condition that will kill them. The arrival of a new girl disrupts the status quo and sets off a chain of events that lead to revelations and tragedy.

This is a wonderfully written book, with terrific chara...

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Published on May 15, 2015 03:22