books

Terra & Terra’s World, by Mitch Benn

by

Yesterday, I did another round-up of the audiobooks I’ve been listening to recently, save for two. I singled out these two as they’re both by the same author, and are both fiction. Now I’m not a big reader of fiction, as my wife, ex-girlfriend and parents will testify. So what made me read these books?

The two books are Terra (Amazon link – sponsored) and Terra’s World (Amazon link – sponsored), part of a series with recurring characters by Mitch Benn. Benn is best-known as a musical stand-up comedian. He has performed on BBC Radio 4’s The Now Show for many years and regularly tours his shows. Indeed, I’ve seen him perform live four times now:

  • In Leeds, at the wonderful City Varieties, with his band The Distractions.
  • In Leeds (again), at the rather less wonderful Carriageworks Theatre, with his show Mitch Benn is the 37th Beatle (also broadcast as a standalone Radio 4 show).
  • In Halifax, at the Square Chapel, with the Don’t Believe a Word show that he has just finished touring.
  • In Hebden Bridge, at a comedy club night at the Old Gate where he was the headline act.

I also follow him on Twitter, where he is very active. So you could say I’m a fan.

Anyhow, as well as being a successful stand-up and radio performer, Benn has also written the two aforementioned books. I would probably describe them as ‘young adult science fiction’ – not too challenging to read, but enjoyable stories. And they’re good books, with good reviews of them both.

Terra tells the story of a baby girl, whose bickering parents accidentally leave her behind, when fleeing from the car after an encounter with an alien spacecraft. The spacecraft’s pilot, having seen that the baby had been abandoned, takes her back to his home planet. He names her ‘Terra’, and brings her up as if she were his own daughter.

Terra’s World follows the first book. The story is told partly from the perspective of Billy, a new character who befriends Terra after her return to Earth in her adolescence. The planet that Terra grew up on is in trouble.

For me, Terra’s World was the better of the two books, but you’ll need to read (or listen to) both in order to understand the plot and who the characters are. I would also recommend the audiobook – Mitch Benn read his own work very well, especially the pronunciation of the names of the alien characters. Plus, he has composed the music that accompanies the books.

The epilogue to Terra’s World implies that Benn plans a third book, although I understand from Twitter that he doesn’t yet have a publisher for it. I hope he’s able to find one – I thoroughly enjoyed these first two books.

Listening to books, part III

by

It’s been six months since I last wrote about listening to audiobooks. In that time, I’ve listened to seven more books, and today I’m going to write about five of them.

Animal

Sara Pascoe’s book Animal (Amazon link – sponsored) is part-autobiography, part-anthropological look at the female body. It’s not a textbook – whilst Pascoe has clearly researched it thoroughly, it’s written with appropriate humour. Pascoe is, after all, a stand-up comedian.

More academic readers, especially those with an anthropology background, might take issue with some of Pascoe’s work, but I found it very enlightening. Reading… sorry, listening to it shortly after the birth of my daughter was timely, as it covers childbirth, and why human offspring are born so helpless when compared to other animals.

It can be a difficult read/listen at times, but I would heartily recommend it to everyone – not just to women, but to men and anyone who doesn’t fall into those two categories.

The Actual One

You will, by now, have noticed a trend – that I listen to a lot of memoirs by female stand-up comedians, and The Actual One by Isy Sutie (Amazon link) is yet another. Sutie, as well as doing stand-up, is probably best known for her role as the character Dobby in the Mitchell and Webb sitcom Peep Show.

The book’s title refers to Sutie’s search for the ‘actual one’ – the one person that she wants to spend the rest of her life with – but at the same time refusing to grow up whilst her friends get married and have kids.

Sutie reads her book well and it’s a charming story, but I didn’t enjoy this book as much as others.

Shrill

Lindy West isn’t a stand-up comedian, but she is a feminist and her book Shrill (Amazon link – sponsored) is a memoir about being a loud woman who isn’t afraid to take up space in society. Or, at least, not now – she wasn’t always like that and she discusses her upbringing in the book, as well as her career as a journalist.

It’s a good book, although not such a good audiobook. West is a great writer but I think her delivery could be better; I put this down to having listened to several previous books read by those who perform on stage.

The Girl with the Lower-back Tattoo

Continuing with American feminists, I listened to Amy Schumer’s book The Girl with the Lower-back Tattoo (Amazon link – sponsored) next.

I haven’t really followed Schumer’s career, but this book was recommended to me. It charts Schumer’s life, from being born into a wealthy family that lost almost everything, to living paycheck to paycheck in New York to becoming the household name that she is today.

I really enjoyed it. Schumer sounds like the sort of person I would love to be friends with – a definite guest at my imaginary celebrity dinner party, along with Felicia Day and others. Again, there are difficult sections that deal with non-consensual sex and abuse, and Schumer talks candidly about the shooting at a cinema in Lafeyette, Louisiana where her film Trainwreck was showing at the time. Schumer reads the book well and I heartily recommend it.

Bad Science

I bought Dr Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science (Amazon link – sponsored) last summer, when it was on offer on Audible but before I’d re-subscribed. It’s a long book – about twice the length of most of the other books that I’ve mentioned today – and it’s not autobiographical. Shock horror!

I’ve followed Dr Goldacre’s work ever since he was a columnist in the Guardian, writing a column of the same name. A number of the topics that he wrote about in his column crop up again in this book, with whole chapters on Gillian McKeith, Andrew Wakefield, various nutritionists and the media. Whilst it is about science, it’s an accessible read, and I say this as a relative layperson. You’ll even learn about how to spot bogus or overstated science stories in the media, such as the ‘most depressing day of the year’ story that seems to re-appear every January.

Dr Goldacre doesn’t read the audiobook himself – instead, it is read by voice actor Rupert Farley, who delivers a good performance.

Up next

I’m currently listening to From Frazzled to Fabulous (Amazon link – sponsored), the spin-off book to the popular ‘Man Who Has It All’ Twitter and Facebook page. Imagine a self-help book for women, telling them in a patronising way how to be successful whilst managing a family, but gender-flipped. It’s a comparatively short book, and was offered for free on Audible recently.

After that, I’ll be listening to:

Plus there are a couple of other feminist titles on my wishlist. Tomorrow, or whenever I get around to it, I’ll write about the two other books that I’ve listened to recently.

Listening to books, part II

by

Back in 2012, I signed up for Audible and listened to a couple of audiobooks – ‘How to be a Woman’ by Caitlin Moran and ‘God Collar’ by Marcus Brigestocke. And then cancelled my subscription, as there wasn’t anything else that I wanted to listen to at the time.

Fast forward to the beginning of this year, and I started to realise that I was missing out on books that had been written by public figures that I liked. An Audible subscription made sense again, and there was a good offer on, so I signed up again.

You’re Never Weird On The Internet (Almost)

The first was You’re Never Weird On The Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day (Amazon link – sponsored). It’s a memoir that chronicles her life, but especially her early acting career, and how she came to write and star in the ground-breaking web series The Guild. I came across The Guild towards the end of season one, but enjoyed every subsequent season as the episodes came out, and I’ve regularly watched Felicia’s YouTube channel.

Felicia talks candidly about her issues with anxiety and gaming addiction, and how these have affected her career. Whilst I’m lucky to not suffer regular anxiety attacks, I found it enlightening how Felicia dealt with them. It was also interesting to hear about someone who was educated outside of the mainstream schooling system, but who subsequently went on to excel at university.

The audiobook includes PDF with photos from the book, so that you can get the references.

A Book For Her

I followed with Bridget Christie’s A Book For Her (Amazon link – sponsored). The title satirises Bic’s ‘For Her’ (sponsored link) range of pens that were also ridiculed by Ellen DeGeneres.

Like ‘How To Be A Woman’, ‘A Book For Her’ is a book about feminism that would sit in the comedy shelves of a book shop. It’s not a laugh a minute, and deals with weighty subjects like female genital mutilation with the seriousness required. Bridget talks about her life and upbringing – leaving school at 15 – and the difficulties she encountered in her early years as a stand-up comedian.

Bridget’s humour is very sarcastic, and this extends to her narration. As a listener, you are frequently chastised for being too lazy to read the book, and that you’ll miss out on some of its illustrations. For this reason, I would suggest reading the book and listening to the audiobook, as both offer some things that the other doesn’t.

And I think most people will come away from reading/listening to it having learnt something, like how feminists have never actually burned bras. They weren’t allowed to, due to health and safety.

Cheer Up Love

This book (Amazon link – sponsored) is subtitled ‘Adventures in depression with the crab of hate‘ and is about author Susan Calman’s issues with chronic depression. The aforementioned ‘crab of hate’ is the antagonist of the book, and is the manifestation of Susan’s bad thoughts. It’s also a memoir (you may be detecting a trend here) and chronicles Susan’s life and career, first as a lawyer and then as a stand-up comedian. (Christine and I went to see her in Hebden Bridge in 2014)

If you suffer from depression, then I think you’ll get some mileage out of this book, as Susan covers how she’s able to deal with her condition and her coping mechanisms. If you don’t, then you’ll still get something out of it – the title, ‘Cheer Up Love’, is a listed example of a phrase that well-meaning people say to her that really doesn’t help. But there are some tips for dealing with a friend or loved one who suffers with mental health issues.

Back Story

‘A book by a bloke, at last!’, you may think. I haven’t specifically gone out of my way to listen to feminist memoirs – it’s just happened that way – but the latest book that I’m listening to is Back Story by David Mitchell (Amazon link – sponsored). Yes, it’s another memoir; David tells the story of his life whilst on a walk from his flat in Kilburn, north London into the city. The title refers to the problems he has had with a bad back, and how walking has been one of the few non-medical interventions that has helped relieve the pain.

I’m only about an hour in so far, having started listening on Monday, but if you’re used to David’s monologues from his Soapbox web series or work on 10 O’Clock Live, then you’ll know what to expect. You’ll also find out that David isn’t quite as posh as he’s made out to be, especially on shows like Would I Lie To You? on BBC1. Yes, he was privately-educated, but his parents encountered significant financial hardship to be able to do so. And yes, he went to Cambridge and is on TV, radio and has a newspaper column, but at the time that he wrote the book he was still renting a flat and didn’t own a house.

I’m a fan of David’s work and so it’s not surprising that I’m enjoying the book so far.

Up Next

I still have three more books to listen to after I’ve finished Back Story:

It takes 2-3 weeks to get through each one so it’ll be a while before I’m looking for any more books, but if anyone has any suggestions then I’ll be happy to hear them.

Listening to books

by

Those who know me well know that I don’t ‘do’ books. I’m never find reading a book – it’s always either a magazine, or, most likely, a phone or computer screen. And I particularly don’t do fiction – what I read tends to be factual, news, or opinion pieces.

However, this does not mean that I completely ignore books. One or two books have come out recently that have intrigued me, but I don’t really have the time to read them. Thankfully, someone came up with the idea of the audiobook; you can listen to someone – usually the author – read the book to you, so you don’t have to.

This may seem lazy but there are times when having your head in a book is impractical – like walking to work, or at the gym. This is why I’m growing to like audiobooks – you can do something else whilst listening (although, in my experience at least, nothing that requires a large amount of concentration).

I’m only on my second audiobook so far, which I’ve downloaded from Audible, Amazon’s audiobook store. The first was ‘How to be a Woman’ by Caitlin Moran (Amazon Link). You may wonder why a heterosexual male like me has any interest in a semi-autobiographical feminist book, but I would call myself a feminist, since anyone who believes that men and women should have the same rights and opportunities can call themselves a feminist, whether they themselves are male or female. Plus, it’s a very good read – or, listen, in my case – and may have you laughing out loud.

Having finished that, I’ve started on ‘God Collar’ by Marcus Brigstocke (Amazon Link), another lefty-liberal book, but this time on religion and atheism in particular. So far I’m only around half an hour into it, but as someone who enjoys Marcus’ stand-up routines I’ve not been disappointed.

Both books are around the same length – about 8 and a half hours – and the first took me exactly a month to listen through. Unfortunately, some days I can only fit in around 20-25 minutes of listening as I walk to and from the railway station, so it’s only when I go to the gym that I get to listen in longer stints, which hasn’t happened as often as it should lately. In fact, Saturday was the first time I’d been to the gym since, um, February. Ooops.

With this in mind, I’m on Audible’s 1 book credit per month package at the moment, whereby you pay a monthly subscription and get one free audiobook included with it. Subsequent books bought in that month cost extra, and that can be a big extra cost – although there’s a sale on, to buy ‘How to be a Woman’ at full price would set you back over £20, as opposed to £7 for the dead-tree actual book and only £3.67 to read on a Kindle. That said, the 1 credit package is £8 per month – cheaper than £20, but still quite a bit of money to pay every month. If I’m able to get through one audiobook a month, and don’t run out of things to read, then I suppose it’s worth it, but it’s not cheap. I’ll see how I go.

Playing back audiobooks from Audible can be done in a couple of ways. Support for Audible’s .aa format has been built into iTunes for a few years now and so audiobooks can be played back on almost all iPods, including those that don’t run on iOS. For those that do run on iOS, you can either use iTunes, and play the audiobooks in the Music app, or you can install the Audible app which runs on the iPhone and iPod Touch (but not the iPad as yet). The app lets you manage audiobooks on the device without having to involve iTunes, and has a few advanced features like stepping back 30 seconds if you get briefly distracted. It doesn’t, however, let you purchase more audiobooks from within the app – presumably because Amazon doesn’t want to give a 30% cut of its sales to Apple.

So, that’s me and audiobooks. If you have any suggestions for other books that I should be listening to, let me know in the comments.

My first Amazon purchase

by
The cover of the book 'Just for Fun' by Linus Torvalds.

Call me strange, but despite having been an internet user for over 4 years now, I have never bought anything from Amazon (sponsored link). Until now.

I ordered the book “Just For Fun” (sponsored link) by Linux creator Linus Torvalds last night, and it’s due to arrive tomorrow morning. I’ve read bits of it in bookshops (although nowhere in Bradford appears to sell it) and decided to go out and buy it. After all it is my birthday on Sunday.

Talking of money, now that I can get back into my PayPal account (after my two week hiatus), you can now donate money to me, if you are feeling generous. Although I’m on track to finish the year with at least £600 in my current account, any extra will be gladly accepted.

Okay, I’ll stop begging now 🙂 .