Book Chain 2026: Weeks 4 & 5
Feb. 1st, 2026 04:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedanther#6: A book whose title has the same first letter as the name of the previous book's author
James Randi: Psychic Investigator, the companion volume to the 1991 TV series of the same name.
An introductory overview of a topic and a person I was already interested in, so there wasn't much in it that was new to me except in the details, but it was an entertaining overview and an enjoyable refresher, and now there's one less unread-for-over-a-decade book on my shelves.
#7: A book with the same number of words in the title as the previous book
It took me over a week to pick a book for this prompt, because I kept trying to match the previous book to the extent of having four proper words with no articles or prepositions, which leaves a lot of candidates out (anything titled "The X of Y", for a start). In the end, I settled on:
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche in which Psyche's sister decides it's time to tell her side of the story.
Another unread-for-over-a-decade book; as an adult, I've developed a tendency to distrust Lewis. In this case, I'm glad I finally read it.
Orual makes an interesting protagonist and narrator: she's not a nice person, proud and selfish, but it's always clear why the things she does made sense to her at the time. And, balancing the fact that she's ready with a justification for her bad actions, she's also capable of doing signficant good and doesn't always recognise how good she's been. (I was reminded of the saying about how life is like working backstage at a theatre or doing an embroidery from the wrong side, where you're always aware of the messy scaffolding that nobody else can see and only have an indistinct idea of what it looks like to everyone else.)
#8: A book with a cover in the same colour as the previous book
The cover of Till We Have Faces has a full-cover illustration with a very similar colour scheme to the previous book I had for this prompt last year, which would have been a useful thing to notice then but now means that, unless there's another such book lurking unnoticed on my shelves, I'm facing a similar struggle to find something to match it.
James Randi: Psychic Investigator, the companion volume to the 1991 TV series of the same name.
An introductory overview of a topic and a person I was already interested in, so there wasn't much in it that was new to me except in the details, but it was an entertaining overview and an enjoyable refresher, and now there's one less unread-for-over-a-decade book on my shelves.
#7: A book with the same number of words in the title as the previous book
It took me over a week to pick a book for this prompt, because I kept trying to match the previous book to the extent of having four proper words with no articles or prepositions, which leaves a lot of candidates out (anything titled "The X of Y", for a start). In the end, I settled on:
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche in which Psyche's sister decides it's time to tell her side of the story.
Another unread-for-over-a-decade book; as an adult, I've developed a tendency to distrust Lewis. In this case, I'm glad I finally read it.
Orual makes an interesting protagonist and narrator: she's not a nice person, proud and selfish, but it's always clear why the things she does made sense to her at the time. And, balancing the fact that she's ready with a justification for her bad actions, she's also capable of doing signficant good and doesn't always recognise how good she's been. (I was reminded of the saying about how life is like working backstage at a theatre or doing an embroidery from the wrong side, where you're always aware of the messy scaffolding that nobody else can see and only have an indistinct idea of what it looks like to everyone else.)
#8: A book with a cover in the same colour as the previous book
The cover of Till We Have Faces has a full-cover illustration with a very similar colour scheme to the previous book I had for this prompt last year, which would have been a useful thing to notice then but now means that, unless there's another such book lurking unnoticed on my shelves, I'm facing a similar struggle to find something to match it.
