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Self Challenge - Pam's 2016 Read-a-100-books
Wow, how many have you read now Pam?
Ho ho, Desley, thanks for the reminder. I just checked and I've read 101 of 100! Whoops! Well, I have to keep going as I have loads more of my own to read. Unfortunately I've picked up a fair few at the library and a few others from the charity shop, so perhaps I haven't quite read 100 of my own original set of paper books yet anyway.
This is slightly odd - I have this old book from 1976 and according to Goodreads, there is a 'revised' edition. However, that seems to have the same contents. Anyway, here it is Disciples of Cthulhu. It's yet another of the spin-offs from HP Lovecraft's stories.
Thanks Desley - I take it you're referring to the 101!
Also started reading The Earth Witch which so far seems to be a bit of a retread of Alan Garner's The Owl Service.
Pam wrote: "Thanks Desley - I take it you're referring to the 101!"Yeah, not sure I've ever read that many books in just over half a year!
Just realised I didn't say I am also reading Inkheart. A great concept but 255 pages in and it is falling a little flat. Somehow can't believe that having escaped a gang of knife and shotgun wielding desperados, one of the characters goes home which the villains previously invaded and the rest go off for another road trip in the area of the villains' hideout.I've also now realised it is book 1 of a trilogy and am not tempted to get the two follow-ups.
Desley (Cat fosterer) wrote: "Pam wrote: "Thanks Desley - I take it you're referring to the 101!"Yeah, not sure I've ever read that many books in just over half a year!"
Not sure I have since I was a kid - used to get through four books a day from the children's section of the public library. Not quite up to that now but the books are mostly longer now. ;-)
Finished Inkheart by Cornelia Funke, the second dud by her IMO so that's an author I won't bother with again.
Finished a collection of Lovecraft spinoffs from the 1970s - The Disciples of Cthulhu edited by Edward P Berglund
.This suffered rather from the issue I've had with other homages to Lovecraft: some are very literal and drag in loads of characters/invented esoteric writings/Old Ones etc from earlier writings. The two most successful stories for me departed from that and played off the basic idea instead.
Finished The Earth Witch
by Louise Lawrence. By far the best of Lawrence's books that I've read so far - six I believe.
Now reading a classic of early espionage fiction - The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers. I found out incidentally that the author was executed by firing squad in 1922 for being involved in Irish nationalism. The book itself is very well known for raising the issue of possible German invasion and created a big impact at the time (1903), but I hadn't known till now what happened to its author.
Pam wrote: "Desley (Cat fosterer) wrote: "Pam wrote: "Thanks Desley - I take it you're referring to the 101!"Yeah, not sure I've ever read that many books in just over half a year!"
Not sure I have since I ..."
My school library would only let me have 2 a day, so I ended up there most days. I could only go to the public library once a week, and I was limited on how many books I could take until I was 16.
I don't think I ever got much out of the school library, but the public one was walking distance from my primary school so I would go after school and get some out/return them. Also in the holidays of course I could go up in the morning and get 4 which I would've read by teatime!
I enjoyed that trilogy as a child
It's quite a nice read at present. Probably for slightly younger children I think than I at first expected.
Finished Book 1 in Jenny Nimmo's fantasy trilogy for children - The Snow Spider
, and Jambusters
about the contribution of countrywomen organised by the Womens' Institute during WWII. Sadly I was a bit underwhelmed by both of them.
Now on book 2 of the Nimmo trilogy, Emlyn's Moon plus another Flavia de Luce mystery, I Am Half Sick of Shadows.
From the front covers on the Nimmos, it seems the first 2 books were made into TV series by HTV.
Pam wrote: "Now on book 2 of the Nimmo trilogy, Emlyn's Moon plus another Flavia de Luce mystery, I Am Half Sick of Shadows.
From the front covers on the Nimmos, it seems the first 2 books were made into TV ..."
Yes, I'm sure I remember watching them
Finished Emlyn's Moon, the second Jenny Nimmo book.Started Jack of Shadows by Roger Zelazny. Recall loving this years ago so remains to be seen what I think of it now.
Desley (Cat fosterer) wrote: "Pam wrote: "Now on book 2 of the Nimmo trilogy, Emlyn's Moon plus another Flavia de Luce mystery, I Am Half Sick of Shadows.
From the front covers on the Nimmos, it seems the first 2 books were m..."
My copy of the third one isn't a TV tie-in but I see there is one on GR that shows it too was made into a series.
I'm reading two recent books about the Salem witch trials at once - I'd seen one in the library for ages, a weighty tome, but finally got it out when a second book that I've heard about also appeared.I'd heard there were mixed views on that book and that it might be inaccurate so I thought the day by day book would be a good foil that I could cross reference things against.
The controversial one is The Witches: Salem 1692. I've read a short bit and can see what people are saying because it starts off with an account of two women flying to a meeting ... as if the witchcraft is real. The day-by-day one which apparently has a load of research, and cites many original sources, has a useful set of maps of the area and a general essay about the New England community and the political background and Indian wars etc before it gets into the daily account. Also the daily account isn't just a dry recital; there's an attempt to tell a story, as the intro suggests. Although I originally wondered if that book would be heavy going, I'm actually finding it an easier read and have already gone past the other book in terms of the progression of events because I was tempted to read on.
So the day by day account is - The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-day Chronicle of a Community Under Seige
We visited Salem, I loved it. We did a few of the "witch attractions" but the place was also rich with maritime history. There were some "old" houses, which are probably more recent than a lot of British houses.
Also the one thing that caught my attention was the fact that only about (and making this up as I cannot remember) 20-30 people were tried as witches, whereas in Europe the number was in the hundreds if not thousands.Just looked it up and it was 20 in Salem and tens of thousands in Europe.
Joo wrote: "Also the one thing that caught my attention was the fact that only about (and making this up as I cannot remember) 20-30 people were tried as witches, whereas in Europe the number was in the hundre..."That's interesting that you've had the opportunity to see Salem. I hadn't realised till I read these books that there was a Salem Town and Salem Village, separated by some distance. The witchcraft accusations spread out and affected all the communities around. Andover and Gloucester for example were badly hit too.
And I can't resist pointing out that the European thing was over quite a few centuries ;-)
Although only about 20 people were hung, according to what I'm reading, quite a few more were tried and condemned, but the whole thing was halted before they could be, and there were more than 100 people languishing in very filthy, cold and generally awful conditions in what passed for prison. Plus some of them had heavy shackles on.
The problem was that in that era and for quite a while afterwards, prison was just for remanding people in effect until they could be tried and punished, either executed, fined or whipped/branded/ or whatever. They weren't meant for longterm imprisonment though with so many people accused they ended up in there for months. Also in those days you had to pay for everything including shackles and this would be a bill you or your familiy paid when you were sentenced/released. Plus your goods and land could be confiscated as part of being accused of witchcraft - at Salem, the officious sheriff went round seizing everything as soon as people were imprisoned, when they hadn't even been condemned yet, even when this meant leaving dependent children destitute.
And here is the much better second huge tome on the Salem witchcraft persecutions - The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-day Chronicle of a Community under Seige
.Literally what it says on the tin. Not the most easy read because of the sheer weight of facts, but the style itself isn't dry or heavy going, just the number of people arrested/questioned etc. A good background reference book against which to assess others. In fact, on the strength of it, I've ordered another book by the author, Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials
Just finished Jack of Shadows
by Roger Zelazny, a re-read of a book I loved years ago but now can only manage a 3 star 'like' given the flaws that jump out.
I'm quite fascinated with the Salem witch trials
That sounds well worth a read Pam, the Salem witch trials fascinate me too.
I've read quite a few books over the years about it and am always interested to read what people think about the reasons for it.
Well, perhaps rashly I've embarked on a re-read of the first book in the Amber series, I say rashly because it was a top favourite of mine around the time I read the author's Jack of Shadows which I've now discovered I'm not so taken by.
Read the first 2 Zelazny Amber books - Nine Princes in Amber
and The Guns of Avalon
.Well, the first didn't quite live up to my memories of it but I enjoyed the second a lot more, with the threat of the black road that Corwin's curse creates.
One thing that occurs to me now is that the motif of the Shadow worlds as echoes of the 'real' Earth, and all cities taking their existence from the real city of Amber does remind me of the Multiverse and Tanelorn in Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion extended and interwoven multiple series which he began in the late sixties and hence a few years before the Amber books began to be published. So the idea wasn't new with Zelazny at least.
Pam wrote: "One thing that occurs to me now is that the motif of the Shadow worlds as echoes of the 'real' Earth, and all cities taking their existence from the real city of Amber does remind me of the Multive..."I'm not sure there's any such thing as a 'new' idea. It seems to me that if you're widely read, you'll always find echoes of other stories in plot or character, and I don't mean plagiarism here.
I guess so Elizabeth, though every so often in SFF something new does turn up and maybe Moorcock was the first to come up with that idea as opposed to alternative histories which was an old idea going back to at least the 50s and probably earlier.
Finally got to the end of The Riddle of the Sands
by Erskine Childers, not because it was bad as such but it is very dense with description of channels between islands with sandbanks etc and how you have to sail them, in nautical language, plus lots of 'see chart B' footnotes.
Finally finished The Chestnut Soldier
third in the Jenny Nimmo trilogy for children beginning with 'The Snow Spider'.Bit of an oddity as it is aimed at a YA age group really, contrasted with the 8 -11 I would estimate for the earlier books, and deals with some rather iffy behaviour by a 30-something man with two girls, one sixteen and the other no older than thirteen.
Started Sign of the Unicorn and also The Dark Lord of Darkholm by the late great Diana Wynne Jones, one of my all time favourite authors. This one is a black comedy about a planet of wizards etc which has a constant stream of tourist 'pilgrims' foisted upon them by an evil man from a nearby reality who has a demon at his beck and call so they can't refuse even though it is wrecking their whole planet.
Read The Dark Lord of Derkholm and
enjoyed it. Sad that she's no longer with us to add to her works.
Now reading the sequel to Diana Wynne Jones' The Dark Lord of Derkholm - The Year of the Griffin. It's only a sequel in the sense that Anne McCaffrey's harpist series for younger readers was a sequel to the main Dragonflight/Dragonquest etc series because it is on a much smaller canvas and played much more for laughs so far.
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A cosy series I'm currently enjoying is the Flavia de Luce one with the 11 year old girl detective/chemist, set in 1950. Have read 3 of those so far.