Alzheimer’s sucks.

My third book for Cannonball Read 7 is the latest Discworld novel, Raising Steam, by Sir Terry Pratchett.  For those not in the know, the Discworld is a world, shaped like a disk, carried on the back of four elephants balanced on the shell of a giant celestial turtle.  It is a world of magic and fanciful creatures, but filled with events that mirror our world.  There’s also a lot of delightful wordplay going on.  It’s good stuff.

This latest foray chronicles the beginning of the Disc’s steam age.  A young man named Dick Simnel has harnessed the power of steam and built Iron Girder, the first locomotive.  He enlists the help of a well-liked entrepreneur  to fund his railway, which gets the attention of Lord Vetinari, the ruler of the city of Ankh-Morpork, who sends out his best diplomat/confidence man to grease the wheels (so to speak).  At the same time, there is a faction of dwarfs that are trying to undermine a treaty between them, humans and trolls.  Like I said, things in the Discworld mirror things in our world; in this book, those are progress and racism, respectively.

The story is lovely, but there’s a lack of structure.  All the chapters (if you can call them that) tend to run together and the point of view switches seemingly at random.  Of course, this is likely due to Pratchett’s declining health.  This is the first Discworld book I’ve read that was written after his diagnosis.  Sadly, that means that these issues are likely to get worse with each book he puts out.

This series is one of my favorites, I highly recommend it.  You don’t need to read them in order, however, if you’re planning on checking them out, I would suggest starting with some of the earlier books.

It’s a love-hate kinda thing.

I am so behind!  I’ve read 8 books for Cannonball Read 7 and I’ve only done one review so far.  So,here’s my second, for Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.

It’s Nick Dunn’s fifth wedding anniversary and his wife is missing.  Signs point to foul play and increasingly to Nick, himself, being the perpetrator.  What could have happened to Amy Elliot Dunn?  If you get sucked in as quickly as I did, it won’t take too long to find out.  For the most part, I really enjoyed this book.  The writing really grabs you and the first half of the book alternating chapters with Nick’s point of view in the present day with Amy’s point of view in the past (through diary entries) is really effective.

When it comes to characters, this book has done the impossible.  I normally have a hard time enjoying stories where I don’t like any of the characters, and that was definitely the case here (with the exception of attorney Tanner Bolt’s wife, she seemed pretty cool).  Nick is an asshole, his lawyer is slimy, Amy’s parents are too cloying.  We’re supposed to like Nick’s twin sister, Margot, but she’s too much of a one-of-the-guys-cool-girl for me (they toned this down in the movie, which made her more likable).  As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize how fucked up it is that many women are conditioned to not like other women and deride them and their likes.  Amy does this as well, to an extent. with her derision over women who treat their husbands like “trained monkeys”, although at least she does have friends that are women.  All that said, the characters were so well-rounded and believable,  it wasn’t a turn off.

Now, the next part is a huge *****SPOILER******, but as it’s my main beef with the story, I’m going to talk about it.  You have been warned.

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Okay, so we should all know by now what happened to Amy on her fifth wedding anniversary, but I want to talk about the Tommy guy she only dated for a short while.  You know, the guy she framed for rape, to prove how meticulously vindictive she is.  This just didn’t sit well with me, at all.  Even though false rape accusations occur in very small percentages, 2-8% according to the FBI (however, this stat includes cases where there just wasn’t enough proof to go to trial and times where the victim decided to recant because of pressure from police  or just because they didn’t want to subject themself to the pain that comes with a trial), many people believe it happens all the time (some people believe it happens most of the time).  I’d rather stories don’t perpetuate that myth, no matter how well crafted they are.