Week One: The Girl With All The Gifts

So I'm back, after a few years (6 years apparently) of amassing more books and finishing fewer than I'd like it's time to start up again.

The Girl With All The Gifts is a Zombie/Post Apocalypse novel/YA/Genre thing by M R Carey and the only reason I ever bought it was the fact that it came with a jacket recommendation by Joss Whedon. A good a reason as any.

Bought it in an airport and read a bit of it on the way home, put it down and struggled to make my way through it. Mostly because it starts well, then the middle 50% of the book is aimless and slow, the point of what they're doing and why is never really clear. So it drags on and I'm not very vested in it, but it had been good and I feel like there is an answer or a way out towards the end so I persevere.

And in the middle section that's a fair estimate of what I'm doing, killing time and turning pages.

Then it gets interesting again and the action and tension of the quoted promises comes to fruition and the story picks up again.

It ends as it should, no happy resolution, but the correct and most logical way that it should.

Where I felt annoyed with the writer in the middle section, it's fully redeemed in the end. It serves the story but not the characters, it serves logic, reason and nature vs right, moral and fitting.

Could have been a lot shorter in the mid section.

Week Fifty Two: The Power of Six

The Power of Six by Pittacus Lore is the sequel to (or continuation of) I Am Number Four - which I read some weeks ago. It all feels very interstitial and disjointed, yet entertaining enough - without being as good as the first, and probably there are many more in the series.

And so the blog project: 52 weeks of reading comes to a close with the 56th book read and blogged, but If I counted the books I have read my son - the Zac Power books each about 60/70 pages long or so you could add another dozen to the total.

What's next?

Next book and last entry in this blog will be Ulysses by James Joyce, I'll start tomorrow and then see how long it takes, I suspect more than a week.

Next project a new blog where I embark on a year of self improvement.

Week Fifty One: Beyond Good and Evil

Beyond Good and Evil by Frederich Nietzsche is the pinnacle of his philosophic works, or so I am told (having not read the complete Nietzsche library). It's been touted as complete self knowledge, a basis for modern humanity, the death of God, the start of the Nazi party and a whole bunch of things good and bad.

There's a reason for this of course, mostly because the man would not shut up. It's aphorism after aphorism, analysis and opinion on many things often contradicting itself and himself because there's just so much stuff in here - like he can't keep up with himself.

At once you can know nothing, yet speak in absolutes. Is it any of the things above? No. It's just words on a page, the power always lies in the reader. No magic potions, no silver bullets and no answers. Just a German who thought brilliantly, but not always correctly - by his own admission and in this readers mind.

Two points of interest: 1 - He's teribly sexist - embarrassingly so, and 2 - He's a snarky bitch. It's like watching a celebrity roast of the famous in philosophy, none are spared the passive aggressive certainty and clarity of the author - but it comes out snarky.

One week to go, one book to go - what will it be?

Week Fifty: The Lucifer Effect

The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil by Philip Zimbardo is two things in one book and has been in progress for me for 3 years now. Firstly it is a first hand and incredibly detailed examination of the Stanford Prison Experiment as conducted by the authour in 1971. And then it's a follow up on the lessons learned and the present abuses of other systems that we cannot understand easily - like Abu Ghraib.

It is a brilliant book and I would recommend anyone to read this, but be warned it is not easy. Apart from the 500 page length and the tiny type filled with big words and not many pictures, it's personally confronting. Not shocking or disturbing even though it is both of those things. It confronts the ordinary origins of "evil" - this is that road to hell paved with good intentions.

I'd like to say I'd be a hero as defined in this book, my ego certainly wants that - but it's confronting because I don't know that to be as true as I once thought. It's easy to conceive what would make me cross moral lines, but impossible to know what won't.

Hard work but ultimately worth it. With two weeks to go to the end of my year of books I'm glad this one is done and dusted.

Week Forty Nine: The Exodus Case

The Exodus Case by Dr Lennart Moller is a book that purports to prove that the book of Exodus is an historially accurate portrayal of the actual events of history.

Spoiler alert - it does not.

There's a LOT of information in this - and it looks scientific - but a cursory glance at the offered proof and backing evidence shows it to be at best misguided or generously the product of belief and not method.

For a writer claiming to be unbiased and to not preach - he does an extraordinary amount of both.

Perhaps best summarised, belief is a matter of faith. If you have faith my opinion does not matter. Then again neither does this guy's.

Next week I'm getting inexorably closer to the end of the Lucifer Effect. (From god to the devil in one easy segue).

Week Forty Eight: Blueback

Blueback by Tim Winton is a modern fable, an old fashioned tale told of a new world for people that don't fit. Not sure whether I liked this or not. It's nicely written, not as dense as his other works and a pleasure to read.

But the subject matter and message - because it feels like there is one - is bordeline Luddite. People who insist that close to nature and returning to the old ways is better annoy me. It shows ignorance and situational blindness.

But as a reminder that crime does exist and that sustainability is needed - it's ineffective and misguided. It's too black and white, while delivered in a grey flannel ordinariness - disguised as battling/old wisdom/nature etc...

Meh.

Week Forty Seven: Infinite Crisis

Infinite Crisis by Geoff Johns et al - is supposedly the be all and end all of DC event Graphic Novels/compilations.

Bollocks.

Overdone, too lofty, too confused and too many mixed messsages.

I've read parts of loads of things this week - but this is the one I had finished. And I started this one months ago - I got it just after I started this Blog and I still found it gruelling work slogging through to the unsatsifying and inconclusive end.

Superman should have fought to the death, Batman should have pulled the trigger - but the Joker wanting to play at the very end was at least a gem. Every thing else seemed pointless.