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I'm Caitlin and this is where I talk about books.

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February

I didn’t read much this month. I started a new job and moved house and went out and actually SPOKE to OTHER HUMAN PEOPLE and there was very little time for reading. I started a whole bunch of books, as is my wont, but none have been finished yet. Hey, whatever, I don’t need to justify myself, this is my blog! My very poorly-maintained blog. I’m four books behind schedule on Goodreads. There is…

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A belated January 2017 roundup

A belated January 2017 roundup

In my wildly unrealistic imaginings, I’d have read about ten books by the end of January, and I’d post enthusiastically about them at the stroke of midnight as January turned into February. It’s February 7th. I read three books in January. Three books is still fine. As a bonus, they weren’t all YA, which is an accomplishment and a half in this particular incarnation of Caitlin’s Brain. CALL ME BY…

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2017: titles are the hardest part of writing blog posts, right?

2017: titles are the hardest part of writing blog posts, right?

Whoops! Bit of a gap in posting for a while there. If you read the previous post then it’ll probably become quickly apparent that more than anything else this break was a break of the Mental Health variety. Now that it’s 2017, two months out from the Hellection, I feel…well, if I’m honest, same-but-worse. But a) something inspirational about not letting stuff get me down and b) this is a blog…

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NaNo week two: doom, gloom, and the triviality of writing

NaNo week two: doom, gloom, and the triviality of writing

As I write this blog post, I am around 5000 words behind in my NaNo novel, which amounts to three-ish days in NaNo time. The miracle is that I’m not further behind. I didn’t write for about four days after the election. I barely ate or slept either. (I’m still barely eating or sleeping, to be perfectly honest.) This week, I’d write a sentence and then just think “What am I doing? This is the most…

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NaNo update: end of week one!

NaNo update: end of week one!

End of week word count total: 11,759 (on track and a tiny bit ahead! Miracles!) There’s my graph, going up like a nice little set of stairs. (Ignore Day 8; that’s today, and I’ve been slacking due to Hell Election Stress and general job-and-life fatigue. I’ll catch up later.) When I think back to the first couple of days of this week, the phrase “pulling teeth” comes to mind. Day 1 especially was…

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OCTOBER READING ROUNDUP

October’s over. (You have no idea how hard I just resisted making some Octover/over pun, like October’s octOVER, because I’m terrible.) I thought a nice thing to do would be to make a list of books I’ve read each month, with some short & snappy reviews attached, which will inevitably get longer and longer and more and more frantic as I battle my Goodreads challenge. I’m eleven books behind, so…

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NaNo 2016

So. I’ve decided to take part in NaNoWriMo this year. I’ve participated once before, back in 2011, when I was seventeen and hadn’t written anything longer than half a short story, because I thought hey, that sounds like fun! Spoiler alert: it was not fun. I “won”, in the end, but my “novel” was padded out heavily with random song lyrics (in all caps, for some reason – maybe desperation?), flowery…

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#PRHJobHack, or, the day I discovered my dream job

Living in Scotland when you want to work in publishing can be disheartening. Sure, there are publishing houses here and there, with some great opportunities, but the hub of publishing is indisputably London, at least when it comes to “big names” like Penguin Random House and HarperCollins. As a broke twentysomething, London’s not exactly ideal. So it was with great excitement that I spotted a tweet about an event in Glasgow called JobHack run by Penguin Random House (or PRH for those ~in the know~) approximately 10 seconds after it was posted. (I’m constantly glued to publishing-related Twitter feeds. It’s a problem. Or, in this case, a blessing!)

I banged out a frantic and hopefully sparkling cover letter, updated my CV, agonised over my 100-word “stand-out” – I’m naturally long-winded, so this was torture – sent off my application, and waited to hear if I’d snagged one of the thirty places. I mean, I obviously got in, because otherwise this post would be pointless and tragic.

Cut to: the 14th of October, in the coolest middle-of-nowhere brewery I’ve ever visited. (Yes, this post is a week later. I’ve been working and also I had to read my free copy of The Martian more than I needed to do anything else in life. More on the FREE BOOKS later!) Some lovely people from PRH greeted us, we picked up our free Penguin tote bags (mine is the cover of Here Lies by Dorothy Parker, which I need to read before I carry it in public for fear of being branded a Fake Poser) and chatted a bit before our ice-breaker exercise (gulp) which was a round of Human Bingo. I did not win, but I did admit that I do in fact know every word to “Shake it Off”. But who doesn’t? Right?

After that, and a frankly baffling (to me) ordering-the-publishing-process exercise, which was highly educational, we started on the serious (but still fun) stuff: workshops. Each person from PRH led a workshop on their area of expertise, so the day was essentially a tour around the various departments, like marketing, digital publishing, recruitment, and so on. Each group had a bit of time to work on their pitches – for ad campaigns, for apps, for entire book concepts (eek) – and then we presented our ideas. None of the groups I was in won any prizes, but it was the participation that counted. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself, as I grumble quietly to myself about the advanced book-proofs I so coveted. The digital publishing workshop was particularly interesting: ebooks, apps, and virtual and augmented reality are all increasingly popular technologies, and the overview of the new Stephen Hawking app made me want to spend actual money on an app – no mean feat! It looks amazing. A Brief History of Time was one of the free books I picked up, and the app is for people like me without a doctorate in theoretical physics who want to begin to understand some of the really cool stuff about space that Stephen’s been writing about – so basically everyone.

My favourite part of the day, though, was probably the speed networking that concluded the event. We got the chance to ask questions about different routes into publishing, the day-to-day nitty gritty of working in various areas of publishing, how and where to apply to places to give yourself the best chance of getting a job, and other pressing questions. The point of the event was to demystify publishing and bring publishing to places outside London, and that’s what it did. I’m going to keep applying to work experience and internships and every entry-level job I can find, I’m working on applications for postgrad courses (which I almost definitely can’t afford, but it’s a solid Plan B if I don’t manage to get an entry-level job? Probably?) and I’m so happy that I’ve managed to confirm that publishing is the industry for me. Somewhere where everyone likes books! Paradise!

Seriously. Look at those cute M&Ms. And those beautiful covers! And that bag! I love you, PRH.

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In lieu of a better title: HALLOWEEN READS

It’s less than a fortnight until Halloween. There’s a pinch in the air. It’s reading season again. By which I mean: when it’s cold and grimy outside and you’ve got no other obligations, there’s nothing stopping you from setting up a nest in some warm corner like a chilly magpie, gathering the essential and valuable materials from around the house (hot drink of choice, snacks, cushions, blankets, comfy trousers so you can achieve that perfect “curled into a tiny cosy ball” shape without entirely cutting off circulation to your lower legs (secondary parentheses to say I hate you, skinny jeans)). That sentence got away from me. ANYWAY: here’s a list of some things that you could read when you’re not sure if it’s the wind or a werewolf howling outside. Spooky.

JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL, Susanna Clarke

This is a brick of a book. It has the heft of a Serious Read; it weighs as much as a small cat, or maybe my arms are just weak. Either way, it seems like a heavy undertaking. Especially when you learn that big chunks of it are about the Napoleonic Wars, because if you’re like me – which of course I’m assuming everyone is – books about wars in this day and age just don’t provide the kind of escapism you want from this day and age, where everything is on fire and it’s horrifying and rage and terror fill your entire being 24/7. Maybe you’re not like me, though. It doesn’t really matter, though, because this book is fun. It’s got mystery and magic and political intrigue and actual real history all tangled up with made-up history. It has beautiful illustrations by Portia Rosenberg, which create the kind of eerie, uncanny atmosphere that make this a perfect October read:

Also, I learned a lot, but perhaps I internalised some of the fake history along with all the real political stuff. There’s magic in England, right? There’s a terrifying fairy roaming around the place called The Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair?

WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE & THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, Shirley Jackson

Okay, so I’m incredibly biased towards Shirley Jackson because I wrote my final year dissertation on these two books (and another, which I don’t like quite as much, but if you’re interested and contrary, it’s The Sundial). The Haunting of Hill House is a straight-up supernatural horror, if you’re after ghosts and unseen spooky things and haunted houses and haunted people. It’s funny, too, but it’s dark – really dark. Same goes for We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which was the last book Shirley Jackson wrote, and it’s not supernatural but its atmosphere is Halloweeny. It’s not scary, it’s creepy. It’s dark. Here’s a little extract – the first paragraph of the book, actually – to convince you:

My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenent, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.

Merricat Blackwood is one of the most compelling characters I’ve ever encountered, because she’s so unpredictable. Shirley Jackson writes interesting women. Also, Merricat has a little black cat as a familiar, which I love. I worried more about the health and wellbeing of that cat than anyone else in the novel, because that’s how I am.

STATION ELEVEN, Emily St. John Mandel

This is a book I didn’t expect to love as much as I ended up doing. It’s post-apocalyptic, which always sets off “formulaic YA” alarm bells for me, but it’s a) not YA, not that YA is a bad thing, I love well-written YA, and b) it has a plot drawn on an epic scale that incorporates such unusual and disparate elements as an extinction-level virus, comic books, prophets, and a travelling company of Shakespearean actors on an endless journey across the post-apocalyptic USA. It’s wild. It’s incredible. I sobbed my way through it, but I sob my way through most books that aren’t expressly written to be funny. It’s just what I do. It has echoes of the kind of sci-fi Margaret Atwood writes, which is sci-fi that’s warm and human and brilliantly written. Also, I love Clive. Clive is my favourite.

PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING FROM THE DEATH SERIES OR THE WITCHES SERIES, Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett is pretty much my favourite author, so any recommendation from me will be “inhale the entire Discworld canon as rapidly as possible and then come and talk to me about it forever thanks”. Nothing he writes is traditionally scary, but I’ve gone for two classic Halloween, um, things, which are Death, as in the Grim Reaper, and witches, which remain the sole costume I have ever dressed up in for Halloween because I apparently have no imagination at all. Also, witch costumes are cheap. I wore the same costume for like four years and then grew out of it, which was a sad day. I had to put down another five pounds to replace all the components. Imagine!

ANYWAY… the Death series starts off with Mort, and runs for five books until Thief of Time, and because I’m That Kind of Person I’d recommend reading them in chronological order of publication, but you do you. On your own head be it, as Granny Weatherwax might say, which brings me to the Witches series – also great. It’s all great. The Witches series is probably the closest to Essence of Pratchett for me, because they have heaps of heart, although I have a special place in my heart for the wizards of Unseen University, and especially Rincewind, because they’re all terrible and obnoxious and highly inept and I love vain, inept wizards (Howl Jenkins from Howl’s Moving Castle is my #1 Terrible Magical Boy, but the Pratchett wizards run a close second).

There’s a few drawings of Granny Weatherwax, my favourite witch, by Paul Kidby, who is the Official Discworld Artist. So these are canon. They’re basically as good as photographs, is what I’m saying.

A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS, Lemony Snicket

I mean, obviously. Not scary as much as dark, but on second thoughts, when I was tiny I was terrified that Count Olaf would come and set fire to my house. The villains are all kid’s-book truly evil, which is good and refreshing when you’re used to feeling empathy for villains that are actually “antiheroes” or “morally grey”. Sometimes you just need someone to root against without worrying about their internal lives, which is where Count Olaf and Esme Squalor have your back. I can’t pick a favourite from this series, which is good because I don’t need to. For a list with five items on it, I have utterly cheated and recommended a grand total of…about thirty books. I lost count halfway through. Even if you read two of my recommendations every single day (good luck with Jonathan Strange, by the way) you still couldn’t get them all finished by actual Halloween.

The books all have beautiful, dark illustrations by Brett Helquist, which I used to gaze at for long stretches to really see all the little details, which often consist of references to preceding or following books in the series, something I ate up as a tiny Snicket fan.

Also, these books taught me, among other things: how to make puttanesca sauce, what herpetologists and mycologists do, the names of characters from Poe and Salinger and Herman Melville, how auctions are conducted, what the legend of Damocles entails, how Isadora Duncan died, a lot of obscure vocabulary words (Sunny is incredibly intelligent for a monosyllabic infant), to embrace my bookishness, because Klaus made it seem cool and interesting rather than weird, and also that I wasn’t straight, because Violet Baudelaire existed and I was all about that. Which is fine because at the time I was ten and Violet was a mysterious, fictional older woman, at the venerable age of fourteen.

And that’s my list! Yes, it involves over thirty books, but it only has five actual list entries so it’s technically short and snappy. Bite-size. Happy Halloween! I’ll be thinking of these books longingly as I serve pints of ale to drunk vampires until the early hours of November 1st. Eat some pumpkins. Have some fun. Read these books.

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Hello!

As a prolific and alarmingly veteran blogger (I’ve reblogged with wild abandon on various Tumblrs since 2009, which is arguably pre-Twitter? Probably not, but I was definitely unaware of it back then) I’ve decided to finally put all this practice to good use. So here goes. My thing is books. And writing, but only occasionally, because I’m undisciplined and a terrible perfectionist. Words and paper in general, I love ’em. So instead of just writing about the things I read and writing the things I write on actual physical tree-sourced paper, where only I can see them, I’ve decided to inflict my opinions on the entire internet. (Cut to: one year later, follower count still resolutely sticking at zero. Maybe one or two spam blogs.)

So: hi! I’m Caitlin. I’m a book blogger now, I suppose. Great. (This sounds sarcastic, but “Great!” also sounded sarcastic, so you can’t win, really.) Let’s see how this shakes out. I promise never to write “see how this shakes out” ever again.