Chicks Dig Time Lords by Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea (editors)

A combination of anecdote and analysis, this was an interesting read. Most of the entries were relatively light-weight, concentrating on the authors' experience of Who fandom, but there were a few more in-depth essays delving deeper into topics of women and Doctor Who.

Chicks Dig Time Lords
Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea (eds) 
7/10
Read: 14-4-10 to 21-4-10

Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale (The Final Chapter) by Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook

I loved the first half of this book when I read it (before the second half was added for the reprint), but this time I just wasn't in the mood.

I wonder if it was because the new series has started and we have a new Doctor now and all this fussing about the old Doctor didn't seem so to-the-point.

Or maybe I've just had enough of the ups and downs of RTD now I'm watching Stephen Moffat.

Or maybe I'm just in a reading slump, which my lack of reading any other books right now does seem to suggest.

Anyway, I find I don't really want to keep reading.

All the same, I highly recommend the book, as I loved it the first time I read it, so check out that review instead of this one.

Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale (The Final Chapter)
Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook
DNF
Read: 29-5-10 to 14-6-10

Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale by Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook

From Goodreads.com:

A fascinating look at the creative life of the hit BBC series, Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale is executive producer Russell T. Davies' personal tour of the Doctor's universe. A unique collection of correspondence between Russell and writer Benjamin Cook, the book explores in detail Russell's work on Doctor Who Series 4, revealing how he plans the series and works with the show's writers. Fully illustrated with script pages, personal notes, and never-before-seen photos and artwork, The Writer's Tale is a love letter to television, and a fitting tribute to one of the most popular family dramas of all time.

This is another book I discovered thanks to the internet (there seem to be a lot of those, which is probably why my TBR pile is so out of control). This time it was discussed on one of the Doctor Who podcasts I listen to. I don’t 100% remember which one, but I think it was the DWO WhoCast. I listened, thought the podcasters’ comments were interesting and didn’t think much more about it. A few weeks later, we were in the library and my husband saw it on the new books stand and pointed it out to me. What the heck? I thought, grabbed it and brought it home with me.

When we got home, I opened it to have a look at what it was like and just kept on going until I was finished, some time the next day. I was surprised at how fascinated I found myself by the whole thing and I happily read my way though to the end and then found myself wanting to start watching season four of the new Doctor Who all over again.

This book is mostly the emails between Russell T. Davies (showrunner for the first four seasons of the modern Doctor Who) and writer Benjamin Cook. As I understand it, Cook suggested that Davies might like to email him about the writing of season 4 and what started off a little nervously soon became a no-holds barred look at the mind and personality of Davies as he worked.

While I have happily enjoyed watching Doctor Who over the last five years, I haven’t always been happy with some of the episodes Davies has written. I can easily enjoy them on a first watching, but when I think back on them, the story can be seriously lacking. After feeling exactly this way about David Tennant’s swan song, The End of Time, I finally figured out with the help of a friend that Davies is an emotional writer. It’s all about the emotion with him and how to pack the biggest emotional wallop into the story. So when you stop and think about it, the story can have next to no plot at all, or have a totally stupid plot, but it sure has the emotional moments. As someone who likes both, not all of Davies’ stories work for me. (Indeed, this is why I’m looking forward to seeing what Steven Moffat does with the show, as he seems to be much more plot based than Davies.)

Reading The Writer’s Tale only confirmed this for me. Davies seems to live his entire life by his emotions (and very exhausting it seems to be too). He seems to spend a lot of his time despairing that he will never write anything, or that what he has written is rubbish. He pushes every deadline to the limit and yet constantly pulls it off at the last moment. I certainly wouldn’t want to live with him (but that’s okay, because I’m sure he wouldn’t want to live with me either) but it certainly makes for interesting reading at a distance.

It was fascinating to see his ideas progress from the places each one began to the final product we eventually saw on screen. It was particularly fascinating to see him slowly creating a new character to be the companion in season 4, only have have Catherine Tate return to reprise her role as Donna and see the changes that made in the developing scripts.

I enjoyed reading this – it’s a great balance of information about the show and Davies himself, pretty photos from the show (I like pretty photos), large sections of scripts in progress and even cute cartoons penned by Davies. It also contained some interesting words of wisdom that I wanted to share.

On writing and creativity (p.77):

It is not a democracy. Creating something is not a democracy. The people have no say. The artist does. It doesn’t matter what the people witter on about; they and their response come after. They’re not there for the creations.

Right on, Russell! Say it again. I would always far rather a writer be true to their vision than be swayed by the fans. Fans don’t have a clue what they want and too many cooks are sure to spoil the broth. I can choose not to like the artist’s choices, but I’d rather they stuck to the truth of their creativity.

Oh dear. I had a couple of other quotes I wanted to share, but I can’t track down where I wrote the relevant page numbers. I’ve tried flipping through the book, but I still can’t find them, so I’m just going to stop the review here.

If you like Doctor Who, this is a very fascinating read. (If you’ve never seen the new Doctor Who, don’t even consider this one as you’ll be totally lost.) I enjoyed it far more than I expected to when I started and I’ve got my name on the hold list for the follow up volume that looks at writing the 2009 television specials.

And roll on Easter and the new season and new Doctor. I can’t wait.

Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale
Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook
9/10
Read: 4-2-10 to 5-2-10

Weekly Geeks: Book Podcasts

Wow, it’s a long time since I did a Weekly Geeks post – or much of anything at all on the blog really. But this was a topic that I felt I could make a useful post about, so here I am.

Dewey worded it this way, "find and review a link to a book podcast." I'm modifying this just a bit and am asking you to share with us a podcast you love, preferably book related, but not necessarily so. Give us the link, of course, and share with us details about that podcast and why you enjoy it so much. If you have a couple or three favorites, share them all!

I’ve skimmed around the blogs that have responded and neither of my favourite book podcasts have shown up, so I’m going to share them here.

• Dragon Page: Cover to Cover
  Your hosts, Mike and Mike, cover fantasy and science fiction, with author (and occasionally publisher) interviews, book reviews, commentary, feedback and a library section. Both are very into ebooks and developing technologies, so those are often discussed which, personally, I find fascinating. I don’t always agree with them, but they’re always interesting to listen to.
• Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing
  As the title suggests, another SF podcast, although fantasy is equally covered. Your host, Sean, has recently moved and taken on a new job, so episodes are currently sporadic, but always worth the time it takes to listen.

I also listen to a bunch of other podcasts that are not book related and two good ones are Astronomy Cast, which is excellent and Cadmium2 where three friends discuss British Cult TV and Film (with a particular focus on classic Doctor Who) amidst a fair bit of banter and laughing. These two are very different, the first fairly formal and the second definitely not, but both are very enjoyable.

Blah

I'm not sure that it feels like it, but my health has made some progress. I had the most awful anxiety as a side-effect of the anti-depressants. After I tried to tough it out until it went away, the doctor and I eventually agreed I needed some anti-anxiety medication to get me through it. Now I have a mild, annoying but not incapacitating anxiety sitting at the bottom of my stomach.

The only possible upside to the anxiety was that since I couldn't relax, I was keeping up with keeping the house tidy and various jobs around the place. Now the anxiety is reduced, I've calmed down a lot and now I'm just tired and flat and blah from the depression. Sadly, that means the laundry pile has got bigger and Marcus' mess is starting to accumulate. I guess there are positives and negatives to everything.

I'm not stitching at all. I've been putting the odd stitch into The Bookshelf from Little House Needleworks but it doesn't really count of stitching at all in my book. I've altered some of the authors' names to ones that are more familiar to me than in the original and I'm going to change one of the book titles. I have never been able to read Wuthering Heights and after some comments I've heard about it, I don't think I ever will. So the scene of a house beside a wild sea will be changed to something else. I know what, I just have figured out how I'm going to do the wording (feel free to guess, but no prize for a correct answer I'm afraid).

Speaking of Little House Needleworks, I see the designer has started up a blog and is revealing snippets of her new release to be called The Library. I'm being suitably teased and have just added her to my feed reader so I don't miss out of anything. It's here for anyone wanting to take a look.

I am doing some reading, although not with as much enthusiasm as I would like. Back in March, a friend gave me the book Do Polar Bears Get Lonely? for my birthday. It's a compilation of answers to questions posed in New Scientist's Last Word column where readers ask strange and/or interesting questions and other readers answer them. I thoroughly enjoyed the book - even if I didn't understand all of it and probably forgot most of it. Dave picked up the other two from the library, Does Anything Eat Wasps? and Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? and I am enjoying those, having already finished the first one and started on the second. (For the record: No, polar bears don't get lonely being solitary animals and all sorts of things eat wasps including fish, frogs, many types of birds and other wasps.)

I have also stared Silent on the Moor by Deanna Raybourn. I wasn't blowled over by the first two in the series, but I did enjoy reading them, so I shall give it a go.

Sticking with books, I updated two of the widgets on my sidebar today, to use the provided GoodReads versions for "Current Books" and "Recently Read". Using GoodReads means I don't have to manually update either. Especially, I don't have to constantly find and upload book covers of my current reads. GoodReads does it for me and that makes my life a lot easier.

I've been in a Doctor Who phase as I work through the anxiety, and have been listening to a lot of podcasts (I'm especially enjoying Cadmium2's story by story casts from the beginning, although I'm only up to The Space Museum, while they are about thirteen episodes ahead of me). I've also listened to a few Big Finish audio plays, mostly from the Eight Doctor range, as Paul McGann remains my favourite doctor, despite his very short time in the role.

I've been very slowly watching Torchwood: Children of Earth over about the last 10 days. I watched episode four today and I hope to finish it tomorrow, although that will depend on just how my day goes. I had been warned about the bad thing that happens in episode four, so at least I wasn't shocked and could just appreciate the way they played it all out. I thought it was a lovely ending in a very-sad-lovely kind of way. Now just one more hour to watch.

So all in all, I'm no longer terribly anxious, but remain flat and blah with a general feeling of not-rightness. Still the specialist told me it took me 14 months to stabalise last time, so I just hope it doesn't take that long this time, as it's only been a bit over four.

Okay, time for me to head for bed. Early nights and the best sleep possible are my friends right now.