Unless you don't know me at all then you will realise that it is a
miracle if I can find time to do anything other than survive most days
what with chasing after the hunter of electrical wires... so when the
diminutive terror is asleep I mainly attempt to contain the chaos. (As
well as other mundane but sadly necessary activities.) In spite of all
this I have managed to find some time to write a few blogs and even read
a couple of books!
One of the books I managed to
read was World War Z by Max Brooks which I got out of my local library
whilst grabbing a few family/baby recipe books to help me feed my little
monkey.
Now I guess I'm a bit weird because I'm a bit squeamish about the idea of death and dismemberment but I do enjoy a
good
zombie book. I don't know why but I guess it's the idea of surviving
insurmountable odds and impossible situations. That and I find the
status-quo of modern life a bit boring so I prefer the drama of dragons,
space battles or just a load of reanimated corpses.
One
of the things that I liked about this book is the narrative style as it
is not just told from one point of view you end up finding out how
people experienced the outbreak in China, America, Cuba, Japan and a lot
of other places. Some stories seemed a bit boring where as others were a
little close to home for me and made me sit up thinking what I would do
with my little one in a crisis situation like a civil war. (My brain
hates me and wants to think about all the things at the wrong times of
night. Annoying brain!)
After I worked out how this
book's narrative worked I ended up getting hooked and reading it in a
few days which is a lot faster than I have managed to read anything
recently. I would recommend this book as it is interesting to look at
the idea of a zombie apocalypse from a number of different perspectives
and it's always good if a book makes you think. Probably not so good if
it gives you nightmares but swings and roundabouts, eh?
The
next book I read was The Long War by Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett
which is a sequel to their previous collaboration The Long Earth.
This
story is set 25 years from the start of the previous novel and the
events of step day are still being felt in the original or Datum Earth
and across the stepwise Earths.
This
book tells the story of the mistreatment of sapient natural steppers
known as the Trolls, tensions between the Datum and the colonists who
have stepped away to other Earths and the people exploring even further
into the long Earth than has previously been managed. While I enjoyed
this book I didn't find it quite as engrossing as World War Z but then
again it is a different type of improbable/impossible scenario... none
the less as the book follows at least four possibly more different
characters it takes time for the situation to be explained.
I
enjoyed the different ways the characters we follow saw the long Earth
and how their adventures intertwined so I carried on reading despite it
seeming like it was taking a long time for the war in the title to
actually happen. I felt like the main event which was foreshadowed was
reserved for the last few chapters to get the readers hooked just like
in the last book, so you will need patience if you're waiting for the
action. Despite the slow pace of this book I want to know what happens
next and read The Long Mars! I wonder how long it will be until the library
gets that in?
So whilst I wait for the library to get
The Long Mars in I'm reading Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett which I
could describe as a guilty pleasure but I'm not po faced.
I
love Terry Pratchett's writing style even if it isn't considered
literature. Then again James Joyce's Ulysses is still sitting on my bookshelf... I
tell myself that I'll finish reading it one day. So that's what I've been reading other than Tabby McTatt & What the Ladybird Heard x 100.