Book Chain, weeks 10 & 11
May. 25th, 2025 03:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedanther#14: Read a book with something on the cover that was also on the previous book’s cover.
Noose: True Stories of Australians Who Have Died at the Gallows by Xavier Duff. The subtitle is kind of inaccurate: many of the chapters are stories of crimes that led to someone dying at the gallows, but while the crimes can be recounted in detail, for most of them the historical record lacks the details that would allow the story of the person to be told. I didn't enjoy it, and I didn't feel like I was learning much that was new. (At least in the sense that everything it talked about was something I was aware of in general terms as a kind of thing that happened, though I admit that many of the details were new.) (And unpleasant.) I don't know if it's really the book's fault; it may largely be just that true crime isn't really my idea of fun reading.
#15: Read a book that has a spine that's a different colour from the previous book.
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. It was long overdue for a re-read, and I got a nudge from somebody I know organising a buddy read on StoryGraph. It's just as good as I remember, and a nice relief from all the darker books that I've been reading lately.
#16: Read a book that was published in a different decade than the previous book.
I decided to keep the Diana Wynne Jones train rolling and read House of Many Ways, a sequel to Howl's Moving Castle that was published a couple of decades later, and which I'd only read once, back when it first came out. (There's another sequel in between, but I have re-read that one before, and there were bits of it that I wasn't in the mood to revisit.) I don't love House of Many Ways as much as Howl's Moving Castle - it's less... I think maybe "ambitious" is the word I'm after? - but it's a fun read.
Noose: True Stories of Australians Who Have Died at the Gallows by Xavier Duff. The subtitle is kind of inaccurate: many of the chapters are stories of crimes that led to someone dying at the gallows, but while the crimes can be recounted in detail, for most of them the historical record lacks the details that would allow the story of the person to be told. I didn't enjoy it, and I didn't feel like I was learning much that was new. (At least in the sense that everything it talked about was something I was aware of in general terms as a kind of thing that happened, though I admit that many of the details were new.) (And unpleasant.) I don't know if it's really the book's fault; it may largely be just that true crime isn't really my idea of fun reading.
#15: Read a book that has a spine that's a different colour from the previous book.
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. It was long overdue for a re-read, and I got a nudge from somebody I know organising a buddy read on StoryGraph. It's just as good as I remember, and a nice relief from all the darker books that I've been reading lately.
#16: Read a book that was published in a different decade than the previous book.
I decided to keep the Diana Wynne Jones train rolling and read House of Many Ways, a sequel to Howl's Moving Castle that was published a couple of decades later, and which I'd only read once, back when it first came out. (There's another sequel in between, but I have re-read that one before, and there were bits of it that I wasn't in the mood to revisit.) I don't love House of Many Ways as much as Howl's Moving Castle - it's less... I think maybe "ambitious" is the word I'm after? - but it's a fun read.
