Wordy Birds Reading Challenge - December

The last Wordy Birds' Reading Challenge category of the year was Christmas. I initially attempted Gifts of War by Mackenzie Ford, which starts during the Christmas Day Armistice on the front lines in 1914 with a German soldier asking the protagonist to find his English fiancee and give her a photo of him. The author is primarily a historian, so all the period detail was spot on, and the time was very effectively evoked. However, I had a real problem with the protagonist's attitude to the other soldier's fiancee. Upon meeting her for the first time, he describes her as 'mouth-watering' and decides to pursue her himself rather than passing on the message. During his subsequent encounters with her, he mostly thinks about wanting to sleep with her. Later, when she is recounting an emotional story from her past, he reflects on the swell of her breasts beneath her tight jumper and I just had to give up.

I moved on to Letters From Father Christmas by JRR Tolkein, which proved far more enjoyable. I have to admit I'm rather a traitor to my people when it comes to Tolkein - I read a lot of fantasy, but I've never got on with Lord of the Rings. Don't get me wrong - I'm incredibly impressed with the world-building, mythological background and linguistics, but the characterisation and plotting leave a lot to be desired. Luckily, that wasn't the case with this collection of the letters Tolkein wrote to his children every Christmas from 1920 to 1943. They're delightful, and reproduced in the book as colour photos so you can appreciate the calligraphy, different coloured ink, and wonderful drawings. Father Christmas recounts his preparations for each Christmas, both helped and hindered by the North Polar Bear, who gets into a lot of scrapes. Tolkein had four children, who gradually get added and removed from the letter headings as they get old enough to be included or too old to be interested any more. It's a beautiful book, and a wonderful tradition he maintained for such a long time. I loved it.

Manson, Moon, Magic, Medecine...

Last weekend, I braved a trip to Wembley for a Marilyn Manson concert. I was told to arrive early, which saw me trying to exit Wembley Park Underground station just as thousands of riled up football fans were pouring out of the stadium and trying to get in. So, that wasn't a great start to the evening! Still, I had a lovely dinner at Ping Pong, where I met another couple of people who were going to the gig, and I made it through the queue and security checks very easily. Marilyn Manson was still recovering from his accident in October and had a case on one leg, but that didn't stop him from giving a great show. He started off in a powered wheel-throne, hopped about on one leg quite a lot, and did a costume change between every song! I loved hearing the songs I particularly like from The Pale Emperor, and it was fun to be part of such a huge and enthusiastic crowd.

My audiobook for last week was Artemis by Andy Weir. I loved The Martian, but didn't get on quite so well with this one. It's much less realistic in that it tells the story of a young woman living in a colony on the moon, but still has quite a bit of presumably credible science to back up the ideas. The problem I had was that I didn't really like the protagonist. It was interesting to have a female Arabic narrator, but her motivations were almost entirely selfish, which made it difficult to get behind her when she was engaging in illegal activity purely for her own profit. Still, I liked a lot of the supporting characters, and it moved along at an exciting pace. Bits of it very entertaining - I just would have liked Jas to be heroic for a better reason than her own survival.

Last Sunday, we went to the Chiswick Magic Lantern Festival, which was a trail through the extensive grounds of Chiswick House after dark, looking at very colourful, glowing displays of animals, plants and fantasy creatures. A lot of them seemed to be almost-Disney, but I preferred those that were more generic. I particularly liked the Chinese dragon and pagoda, and also the bird made out of spoons. It was all very impressive and intermittently very beautiful, and made for a good night out with plenty of exercise along the way.

This week, I also read Lobster is the Best Medecine, a collection of cartoons by Liz Climo. Her cast of characters are animals of varying types, who interact in amusing ways. A lot of the jokes were pun-related, but I still enjoyed the book for the most part. The animals were all very appealing, and some of the juxtapositions of unlikely pairings were very silly.