Booklog #21

I must begin with an apology - once again I wasn't able to post last Wednesday, but unfortunately I can't really tell you why.  I'll just say that all my spare time at the moment is going towards dealing with something going on here and little writing is likely to be done on Wednesdays for an undetermined period of time.  I'll still (hopefully) post my booklogs every Sunday, but don't be surprised (and please don't abandon me!) if I'm not able to get anything up on Wednesdays.  Fingers crossed that normal service will be resumed asap! 

This week I finished:

* The Game ~ Heather Killough-Walden
Continuing my journey through unexplored Kindle fantasy cheapie books, I sampled this mixture of dystopian sci-fi/Norse mythology (yes, you read that right) and was pleasantly surprised.  I'll admit that I didn't exactly love it at the start - our heroine, Victoria Red, is a team leader in something ominously known only as the Game.  The Game has been played for thousands of years and can never end or something unspeakably terrible will happen, and once Players are in it they do not age but also can never leave to go back to the outside world.  I thought it was going to be really techie and violent, without much emotional substance, but I was wrong.  Victoria despises her opposing team leader, Victor Black, but he has a proposition for her that leads them and their team members to places they've never been (or have they..?) as well as life-or-death encounters with Norse gods and the Game Lord himself.  The characters are very distinct (often a failing I've found in sci-fi is that I can't remember who is who because they're so similar) and the way relationships develop and change throughout is handled really well.  There's a little bit of Mills & Boon style sauciness as well, which I wasn't expecting!  For the fact that it takes a good basic idea and builds a convincing world around it, I give it 4/5

* The Parthenon ~ Mary Beard
Yes - at last!  It's over!  I finally pushed through and got to the end...  I really did want to like this - I've seen Mary Beard present TV documentaries about Pompeii and such and she made the subject so accessible, so I assumed this book would be the same.  It is easy to follow, but it's so terribly dry...I was just utterly bored throughout.  I had expected (perhaps unreasonably) that it would focus on the Parthenon in terms of its creation and original function within Athens, but the majority of the book is actually about what happened to it since then - how it was used as various different things by different groups occupying the area (Romans, Turks etc), how it was wrecked and pillaged by people right up until quite recent times and whether the artefacts removed should be given back to Greece.  I bought it to use within an Open University essay (for which the first chapter served wonderfully), but as a general read for interest it doesn't do very well.  I'd have preferred one chapter at the end to brief me about all the post-ancient-Athens events, but as I say it occupied most of the book and I found it a real slog to get through.  Perhaps my expectations were wrong, but I can't change how I feel about it now, so: 2/5

* How to Give Up Shopping (Or At Least Cut Down) ~ Neradine Tisaj
Before I start I must point out that I'm not a compulsive shopper (unless you're looking at Kindle downloads), but I was interested to find out how to tweak my habits to become a bit more thrifty.  This is quite a short book (just over 1000 Kindle 'locations') but I don't think that matters, as it's written in such a chatty and personable style that it feels more like a one-way conversation with a friend.  Tisaj writes from personal experience (and shares some extremely personal information at the end) which is good as it makes you feel a bit less silly about some of the same things that you might have done yourself (e.g. buying the same item twice because you forgot you already had it - I've done this with books!).  Her advice is fairly obvious, but sometimes it needs somebody else to say it to you before you really 'get' it.  Because it is rather short and I'd have liked to read more, I give it: 4/5

This week I started:

* Rattle His Bones ~ Carola Dunn (the new book club read) 

I'm still reading:

* Crime and Punishment ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
* Take the Monkeys and Run ~ Karen Cantwell

Till next week then, happy reading! 
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