books I have read since coming home
Jun. 24th, 2010 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jade_sabreor, alternate title, Still Not the Graduation Post
anyway I have read some books since coming home! None of them are the books I meant to read. Some of them I read years and years ago (heading into that scary "ten years ago" category that is starting to take over my life), some of them were new to me! One was even a translation of a French YA fantasy novel. They were all weirdly similar, as you will see by the cut tags.
I have discovered that I have trouble picking books off the shelves in the library unless I know the author or have heard good things about the author. This multiplies times a thousand bazillion when I leave the YA section and head for the adult fiction section. (Also, the adult fiction section seems to have more disguised-cover romance novels than previously expected.) I hit the jackpot yesterday--the little itty bitty library near my house had both How to Ditch Your Fairy and Liar, which I have been looking for FOREVER. Now, if only one of the branches would get in some of Maureen Johnson's books...
Anyway, Books I Have Read This Summer, Possible Spoilers Ahead, I Will Try to Warn You
Zel by Donna Jo Napoli
Zel is a retelling of, well, Rapunzel, and I can assure you that the upcoming made-for-boys-lulz Tangled will not resemble it in the slightest. It's a very short novel, but beautifully told, another example of how POV shifts (first to third, third to other third, Mother to Zel to Konrad and back) can work within a novel.
I first read this book in middle school and actually loved it, but failed to understand that it was taking place in Switzerland during the Reformation. So reading it again, it not only stood up to the test of time (one of those scary tests that some books, like QoA, can survive, while things like Hawksong don't quite make it), but was even better than I remembered, thanks to the subtle ways she ties in the surroundings, the seamless way she weaves the magic into the history. And Switzerland! Also the way it made me curious to know what rapunzel actually tastes like.
It is short, not entirely sweet, but very worth the reading.
The Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
Dashti comes to the royal palace an orphan, her mother recently dead on the steppes and her yak sold to earn her a position. She gets swept up to being Lady Saren's maidservant on the same day Lady Saren's father exiles her to a tower for the next seven years, a situation Saren faces with tears and Dashti with spirited ways of killing the rats in their foodstores. Hint: The book covers more than a thousand days, but it doesn't quite reach the 2,500 or so days that seven years would take.
I am still on the fence with this book, and I read it like three weeks ago so I don't remember exact moments that bothered me, but overall it was good. I liked the way Hale used the diary format, and the attention she kept to explaining how and why Dashti had the time to write. The worldbuilding was fun--the nonsense healing songs, the lands each named for a god, and Dashti's strong faith in the gods and her awareness of each of them and their aspects at all time--I really enjoyed that. And I liked Dashti's way of looking at the world well enough, but I didn't really like the prose of the book. Like, on the one hand, the book had everything I needed to love it, and the ideas and worldbuilding and story were great, but overall I thought eh, it is all right. And it wasn't like eh, it is all right but really I am jealous of everything she did here, because while I admired it I just didn't feel wholly caught up in it.
On the plus side, if you buy the book, some of the proceeds go to the Heifer Project. And it really is well-done, my lack of absolutely loving it aside.
Quest for a Maid by Frances Mary Hendry
More historical fantasy, this time in medieval Scotland. Meg, daughter of a shipbuilder, opens the novel with a much-discussed opening line, grows up, and finds herself part of the entourage sent to fetch the rightful heir to the Scottish throne, the little Maid of Norway, which promises to be no easy thing.
A friend of mine made me read this book in fifth grade, and I was scared to reread it because I couldn't remember how it ended (hint: people die), but I picked it back up for the same reasons I picked Zel up, and it more than held up to rereading. As with Zel, I hadn't realized that the book took place in a historical setting--this one, around the same period as the film Braveheart, which led to me going NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO NOT DE BRUS NOOOOOOOOOOOO within the first fifty pages--which made it even more compelling. The pace of the novel is steady, no faster than it needs to be, because Meg's world is whole and complete and everything that happens builds upon itself.
It's a wonderful book well-worth the reading of it,* and I highly recommend it for sinking your teeth into on a rainy day.
*for phrasing issues, see this novel and Rosemary Sutcliff
The Princetta [and the Captain] par Anne-Laure Bondoux
So this review on Amazon.com basically sums up my feelings about this novel, but I will give you my less coherent thoughts about it anyway. Malva, princetta of Galnicia (the only creatively-named location in the book), doesn't want to get married, she wants to have adventures! So she and her maidservant run away. But then it turns out they were betrayed, and so they have to survive a shipwreck, and then they find themselves in the mountains? And the maidservant falls in love with the chief and disappears for over half the novel, while Malva ends up in a harem. Meanwhile there's this guy named Orpheus who thought he had a brain condition that would keep him from being on a boat, but then it turns out his dad was lying about that because he's a treasonous pirate and thought if Orpheus find out he might report the old man to the king, which Orpheus would have done because he's a Nice Guy, so anyway his old man dies and people are sent out to find the Princetta, and eventually they rescue her from the harem and so then Malva and Orpheus and a lot of side characters who have the potential to be interesting have to sail through some mystical archipelago and I just wanted to follow the Hari-esque story of that maidservant that disappeared two hundred fifty pages ago, I'm sorry what's happening? Oh, more people are dying.
I finished this book out of stubbornness, and to see if perhaps the ending would be worth it (hint: Quark would have put it down about fifty pages in and never regretted it). It's about fifty potential novels crammed into one centered around a completely unlikeable heroine who basically abdicates her throne and then still expects to be treated like a princess (hint: they still treat her like a princess, and it never really occurs to her that maybe, just maybe, if she gave it up she should act like it). It was just frustrating to see so many wildly good ideas reduced to what the story ended up being. Although I was comforted to know that the trap of creating a fictional world analogous to this one via changing a couple letters in the names of things is not only an American problem. (Hands-down winner was the twin constellation of Astor and Ollux, I kid you not.) The author couldn't really make any characters into something fully-realized, so while I theoretically cared more about the side characters' storylines, I wouldn't have enjoyed reading about them in the author's hands.
Hey. Sometimes I read so you don't have to.
The Shining Company by Rosemary Sutcliff
Prosper, son of Gerontius, is living in his father's house when Prince Gorthyn rides through seeking a white hart seen on their lands. Drawn to the prince, Prosper follows him to the hall of King Whose Name Has That "Double-D-Means-Th" Thing That I Always Forget, Frickin' Celtic/Welsh/Fffdlyrd Languages, where they discover that King Myndodd...og is mustering a Shining Company of Three Hundred Horseman in case the Saxons attack. Because, as Prosper points out on I kid you not page two, Companies of Three Hundred have had such luck in the past.
Aside from the part where I kept forgetting Prosper's name and am even now still dealing with residual speech patterns in my head, I LOVED THIS BOOK. I've never read Rosemary Sutcliff before because I've never been able to find her books before but oh my goodness, I finished it a couple of hours ago and it was so good. Thick and meaty and, first person but of course he notices the landscape it's not weird that he describes stuff so lovingly, especially when you have the sense that it has been so long since he's actually seen it. It's like sitting down at a tavern and listening to people trading tales to pass the time and then this veteran gets up and tells his story and everyone listens and. The characters and the language and the style and the setting and. I will now go onto the next paragraph, which I wrote earlier and which is more coherent than my non-spoiler-y flailing.
Reading this one, I was aware that it was historical fiction with that touch of fantasy, whereas when I read Zel and Quest for a Maid all those years ago I thought they were both taking place in my favorite kind of fantasy land, perhaps the hardest to achieve: the subtly-shifted reality. Because really, pre-Saxon Britain and medieval Scotland and even Reformation Switzlerand are as fantastic a setting as any made-up country you might create, if they are done well, if the mentalities and details of the people and places and things involved are portrayed in that real, thick, flesh-and-blood way that these three authors portray them. Prosper has side notes explaining why his people are so much more advanced than the Saxons, when it's something like eating oats instead of wheat; Konrad is restless in his castle, music and dancing forbidden by the new religious leaders; both Meg and Prosper accept the side-by-side, mostly peaceful existence of druids and priests, though Meg wonders if her sister may be forgiven, because it is of real concern. Sutcliff and Hendry also both excel at sinking into the language of their characters until I couldn't come away from the novel without minding to watch things or telling off the bairns for their foolishness when there's work that needs doing.
READ THIS BOOK, WHY ARE YOU STILL READING THIS POST.
I did take a detour, as part of my I Will Get My History From Biographies quest, and read
Notorious: The Life of Ingrid Bergman by Donald Spoto
Spoto is very thorough, and I learned all sorts of cool things about Ingrid Bergman (there were home movies of her when she was three, which was, by the way, in 1918. Wild!), and he takes the time to look at situations and hypothesize, based on human nature as well as what her friends said, but occasionally he veers into apologist territory. I mean this is my first biography; we'll see how others go over the summer, as I learn more about the genre.
But anyway I learned more about Notorious the movie that I love so very very much (as does Robert Osborne, judging by how often they play it--Ingrid Bergman? Cary Grant? Alfred Hitchcock? Suspense films? Movies about Nazis? Post WWII movies? Movies that got investigated? IF THEY FIND A CONNECTION, THEY PLAY IT) and, like, it's fun to learn things that back up one's initial intuition of this is a great movie. I mean, I did have to learn how to catch things in it, but the first time I saw it I just knew, in my gut, that it was brilliant. AND THE KEY. CARY GRANT KEPT THE KEY, AND THEN HE GAVE IT TO INGRID, AND THEN THE SCENE IN THE BOOK WHERE INGRID GAVE IT TO HITCHCOCK HAD ME CRYING. Is it weird to cry when reading biographies? I will let you know.
Anyway, I'm an Ingrid Bergman geek, I loved it, it was very readable and accessible, so read it if you like.
I also got about forty pages into
Ranger's Apprentice: Book One: The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan
Note: For the longest time I thought these books were the Rick Riordan series everyone was talking about. Sorry, Rick. You deserve better.
Man I tried to give this book a chance. I gave it like five more chapters than it deserved. I mean, the first sentence is "Morgarath, Lord of the Mountains of Rain and Night, former Baron of Gorlan in the Kingdom of Araluen, looked out over his bleak, rainswept domain and, for perhaps the thousandth time, cursed." I mean, that's a ballsy, full-of-made-up-words opening. I couldn't not give it a shot.
The plot is good generic fantasy, which I am perfectly fine with/a total fan of/one day I will write a fantasy set in a D&D cutout world and you will like it anyway, and the characters are fine, whatever, but the prose just keeps tripping itself up to the point where I couldn't keep going. Most Glaring Example Which Made Me Put Down the Book, I'm Sure There Would Be Others:
The baron looked at the Faceless Protagonist. The baron likes to make jokes. Unfortunately he is the baron so no one ever gets that he is joking!
"Joke," said the baron.
"Sir?" said Faceless Protagonist, confused.
The baron sighed. No one ever got his jokes. "Serious Dismissal."
"Yes sir," said FP. He heard the baron muttering about jokes as he left.
Like, the basic idea that no one ever gets the baron's jokes, that's funny. Just having it happen repeatedly in conversation without ever explicitly pointing it out, ha-ha. Explaining it once, okay ha. But spending a sentence or more on it every time it happens is not funny. Also, why is Morgarath named Morgarath when everyone else in the book is named Will and Jenny and Alix and Bruce? Come on, people.
Anyway, skip it. I just thought I would reiterate that I enjoy Generic Fantasy and would like to write one and feel perfectly fine about it, as long as the prose doesn't get in the way.
phew that took a long time.
on my to-read list are the aforementioned Justine Larbalestier books, Lavinia by Ursula K. LeGuin (overall I am wary of the books my mom checks out, novelizations famous women in history/literature, because they usually turn out to be giant sexfests, but I trust LeGuin--see, cannot pick a book up off a shelf anymore), and Lauren Bacall and Steve Martin's autobiographies (see: Biographies Quest). Oh and I picked up Allegiance because it was made of love and I felt like reading a SW book I knew ended well. Oh and I should read The Great Gatsby. And Jane Eyre. And maybe work on my own novel.
You know, life as usual.
anyway I have read some books since coming home! None of them are the books I meant to read. Some of them I read years and years ago (heading into that scary "ten years ago" category that is starting to take over my life), some of them were new to me! One was even a translation of a French YA fantasy novel. They were all weirdly similar, as you will see by the cut tags.
I have discovered that I have trouble picking books off the shelves in the library unless I know the author or have heard good things about the author. This multiplies times a thousand bazillion when I leave the YA section and head for the adult fiction section. (Also, the adult fiction section seems to have more disguised-cover romance novels than previously expected.) I hit the jackpot yesterday--the little itty bitty library near my house had both How to Ditch Your Fairy and Liar, which I have been looking for FOREVER. Now, if only one of the branches would get in some of Maureen Johnson's books...
Anyway, Books I Have Read This Summer, Possible Spoilers Ahead, I Will Try to Warn You
Zel by Donna Jo Napoli
Zel is a retelling of, well, Rapunzel, and I can assure you that the upcoming made-for-boys-lulz Tangled will not resemble it in the slightest. It's a very short novel, but beautifully told, another example of how POV shifts (first to third, third to other third, Mother to Zel to Konrad and back) can work within a novel.
I first read this book in middle school and actually loved it, but failed to understand that it was taking place in Switzerland during the Reformation. So reading it again, it not only stood up to the test of time (one of those scary tests that some books, like QoA, can survive, while things like Hawksong don't quite make it), but was even better than I remembered, thanks to the subtle ways she ties in the surroundings, the seamless way she weaves the magic into the history. And Switzerland! Also the way it made me curious to know what rapunzel actually tastes like.
It is short, not entirely sweet, but very worth the reading.
The Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
Dashti comes to the royal palace an orphan, her mother recently dead on the steppes and her yak sold to earn her a position. She gets swept up to being Lady Saren's maidservant on the same day Lady Saren's father exiles her to a tower for the next seven years, a situation Saren faces with tears and Dashti with spirited ways of killing the rats in their foodstores. Hint: The book covers more than a thousand days, but it doesn't quite reach the 2,500 or so days that seven years would take.
I am still on the fence with this book, and I read it like three weeks ago so I don't remember exact moments that bothered me, but overall it was good. I liked the way Hale used the diary format, and the attention she kept to explaining how and why Dashti had the time to write. The worldbuilding was fun--the nonsense healing songs, the lands each named for a god, and Dashti's strong faith in the gods and her awareness of each of them and their aspects at all time--I really enjoyed that. And I liked Dashti's way of looking at the world well enough, but I didn't really like the prose of the book. Like, on the one hand, the book had everything I needed to love it, and the ideas and worldbuilding and story were great, but overall I thought eh, it is all right. And it wasn't like eh, it is all right but really I am jealous of everything she did here, because while I admired it I just didn't feel wholly caught up in it.
On the plus side, if you buy the book, some of the proceeds go to the Heifer Project. And it really is well-done, my lack of absolutely loving it aside.
Quest for a Maid by Frances Mary Hendry
More historical fantasy, this time in medieval Scotland. Meg, daughter of a shipbuilder, opens the novel with a much-discussed opening line, grows up, and finds herself part of the entourage sent to fetch the rightful heir to the Scottish throne, the little Maid of Norway, which promises to be no easy thing.
A friend of mine made me read this book in fifth grade, and I was scared to reread it because I couldn't remember how it ended (hint: people die), but I picked it back up for the same reasons I picked Zel up, and it more than held up to rereading. As with Zel, I hadn't realized that the book took place in a historical setting--this one, around the same period as the film Braveheart, which led to me going NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO NOT DE BRUS NOOOOOOOOOOOO within the first fifty pages--which made it even more compelling. The pace of the novel is steady, no faster than it needs to be, because Meg's world is whole and complete and everything that happens builds upon itself.
It's a wonderful book well-worth the reading of it,* and I highly recommend it for sinking your teeth into on a rainy day.
*for phrasing issues, see this novel and Rosemary Sutcliff
The Princetta [and the Captain] par Anne-Laure Bondoux
So this review on Amazon.com basically sums up my feelings about this novel, but I will give you my less coherent thoughts about it anyway. Malva, princetta of Galnicia (the only creatively-named location in the book), doesn't want to get married, she wants to have adventures! So she and her maidservant run away. But then it turns out they were betrayed, and so they have to survive a shipwreck, and then they find themselves in the mountains? And the maidservant falls in love with the chief and disappears for over half the novel, while Malva ends up in a harem. Meanwhile there's this guy named Orpheus who thought he had a brain condition that would keep him from being on a boat, but then it turns out his dad was lying about that because he's a treasonous pirate and thought if Orpheus find out he might report the old man to the king, which Orpheus would have done because he's a Nice Guy, so anyway his old man dies and people are sent out to find the Princetta, and eventually they rescue her from the harem and so then Malva and Orpheus and a lot of side characters who have the potential to be interesting have to sail through some mystical archipelago and I just wanted to follow the Hari-esque story of that maidservant that disappeared two hundred fifty pages ago, I'm sorry what's happening? Oh, more people are dying.
I finished this book out of stubbornness, and to see if perhaps the ending would be worth it (hint: Quark would have put it down about fifty pages in and never regretted it). It's about fifty potential novels crammed into one centered around a completely unlikeable heroine who basically abdicates her throne and then still expects to be treated like a princess (hint: they still treat her like a princess, and it never really occurs to her that maybe, just maybe, if she gave it up she should act like it). It was just frustrating to see so many wildly good ideas reduced to what the story ended up being. Although I was comforted to know that the trap of creating a fictional world analogous to this one via changing a couple letters in the names of things is not only an American problem. (Hands-down winner was the twin constellation of Astor and Ollux, I kid you not.) The author couldn't really make any characters into something fully-realized, so while I theoretically cared more about the side characters' storylines, I wouldn't have enjoyed reading about them in the author's hands.
Hey. Sometimes I read so you don't have to.
The Shining Company by Rosemary Sutcliff
Prosper, son of Gerontius, is living in his father's house when Prince Gorthyn rides through seeking a white hart seen on their lands. Drawn to the prince, Prosper follows him to the hall of King Whose Name Has That "Double-D-Means-Th" Thing That I Always Forget, Frickin' Celtic/Welsh/Fffdlyrd Languages, where they discover that King Myndodd...og is mustering a Shining Company of Three Hundred Horseman in case the Saxons attack. Because, as Prosper points out on I kid you not page two, Companies of Three Hundred have had such luck in the past.
Aside from the part where I kept forgetting Prosper's name and am even now still dealing with residual speech patterns in my head, I LOVED THIS BOOK. I've never read Rosemary Sutcliff before because I've never been able to find her books before but oh my goodness, I finished it a couple of hours ago and it was so good. Thick and meaty and, first person but of course he notices the landscape it's not weird that he describes stuff so lovingly, especially when you have the sense that it has been so long since he's actually seen it. It's like sitting down at a tavern and listening to people trading tales to pass the time and then this veteran gets up and tells his story and everyone listens and. The characters and the language and the style and the setting and. I will now go onto the next paragraph, which I wrote earlier and which is more coherent than my non-spoiler-y flailing.
Reading this one, I was aware that it was historical fiction with that touch of fantasy, whereas when I read Zel and Quest for a Maid all those years ago I thought they were both taking place in my favorite kind of fantasy land, perhaps the hardest to achieve: the subtly-shifted reality. Because really, pre-Saxon Britain and medieval Scotland and even Reformation Switzlerand are as fantastic a setting as any made-up country you might create, if they are done well, if the mentalities and details of the people and places and things involved are portrayed in that real, thick, flesh-and-blood way that these three authors portray them. Prosper has side notes explaining why his people are so much more advanced than the Saxons, when it's something like eating oats instead of wheat; Konrad is restless in his castle, music and dancing forbidden by the new religious leaders; both Meg and Prosper accept the side-by-side, mostly peaceful existence of druids and priests, though Meg wonders if her sister may be forgiven, because it is of real concern. Sutcliff and Hendry also both excel at sinking into the language of their characters until I couldn't come away from the novel without minding to watch things or telling off the bairns for their foolishness when there's work that needs doing.
READ THIS BOOK, WHY ARE YOU STILL READING THIS POST.
I did take a detour, as part of my I Will Get My History From Biographies quest, and read
Notorious: The Life of Ingrid Bergman by Donald Spoto
Spoto is very thorough, and I learned all sorts of cool things about Ingrid Bergman (there were home movies of her when she was three, which was, by the way, in 1918. Wild!), and he takes the time to look at situations and hypothesize, based on human nature as well as what her friends said, but occasionally he veers into apologist territory. I mean this is my first biography; we'll see how others go over the summer, as I learn more about the genre.
But anyway I learned more about Notorious the movie that I love so very very much (as does Robert Osborne, judging by how often they play it--Ingrid Bergman? Cary Grant? Alfred Hitchcock? Suspense films? Movies about Nazis? Post WWII movies? Movies that got investigated? IF THEY FIND A CONNECTION, THEY PLAY IT) and, like, it's fun to learn things that back up one's initial intuition of this is a great movie. I mean, I did have to learn how to catch things in it, but the first time I saw it I just knew, in my gut, that it was brilliant. AND THE KEY. CARY GRANT KEPT THE KEY, AND THEN HE GAVE IT TO INGRID, AND THEN THE SCENE IN THE BOOK WHERE INGRID GAVE IT TO HITCHCOCK HAD ME CRYING. Is it weird to cry when reading biographies? I will let you know.
Anyway, I'm an Ingrid Bergman geek, I loved it, it was very readable and accessible, so read it if you like.
I also got about forty pages into
Ranger's Apprentice: Book One: The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan
Note: For the longest time I thought these books were the Rick Riordan series everyone was talking about. Sorry, Rick. You deserve better.
Man I tried to give this book a chance. I gave it like five more chapters than it deserved. I mean, the first sentence is "Morgarath, Lord of the Mountains of Rain and Night, former Baron of Gorlan in the Kingdom of Araluen, looked out over his bleak, rainswept domain and, for perhaps the thousandth time, cursed." I mean, that's a ballsy, full-of-made-up-words opening. I couldn't not give it a shot.
The plot is good generic fantasy, which I am perfectly fine with/a total fan of/one day I will write a fantasy set in a D&D cutout world and you will like it anyway, and the characters are fine, whatever, but the prose just keeps tripping itself up to the point where I couldn't keep going. Most Glaring Example Which Made Me Put Down the Book, I'm Sure There Would Be Others:
The baron looked at the Faceless Protagonist. The baron likes to make jokes. Unfortunately he is the baron so no one ever gets that he is joking!
"Joke," said the baron.
"Sir?" said Faceless Protagonist, confused.
The baron sighed. No one ever got his jokes. "Serious Dismissal."
"Yes sir," said FP. He heard the baron muttering about jokes as he left.
Like, the basic idea that no one ever gets the baron's jokes, that's funny. Just having it happen repeatedly in conversation without ever explicitly pointing it out, ha-ha. Explaining it once, okay ha. But spending a sentence or more on it every time it happens is not funny. Also, why is Morgarath named Morgarath when everyone else in the book is named Will and Jenny and Alix and Bruce? Come on, people.
Anyway, skip it. I just thought I would reiterate that I enjoy Generic Fantasy and would like to write one and feel perfectly fine about it, as long as the prose doesn't get in the way.
phew that took a long time.
on my to-read list are the aforementioned Justine Larbalestier books, Lavinia by Ursula K. LeGuin (overall I am wary of the books my mom checks out, novelizations famous women in history/literature, because they usually turn out to be giant sexfests, but I trust LeGuin--see, cannot pick a book up off a shelf anymore), and Lauren Bacall and Steve Martin's autobiographies (see: Biographies Quest). Oh and I picked up Allegiance because it was made of love and I felt like reading a SW book I knew ended well. Oh and I should read The Great Gatsby. And Jane Eyre. And maybe work on my own novel.
You know, life as usual.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-24 09:58 pm (UTC)This line does not sound like you at all and I can't figure out why.
"Double-D-Means-Th" Thing That I Always Forget, Frickin' Celtic/Welsh/Fffdlyrd Languages
these languages require more saliva to pronounce correctly than i think the entire west coast of the united states could collectively produce
I couldn't come away from the novel without minding to watch things or telling off the bairns for their foolishness when there's work that needs doing.
i love it when this happens, so much. LEND THIS BOOK TO ME unless it's a library book, in which case dang
I will write a fantasy set in a D&D cutout world and you will like it anyway
you do realize that that's pretty much guaranteed to at least pique my interest, i don't know what all this "anyway" stuff is, man
would you kindly tell me why all my punctuation and capitalization always devolves into nonexistence when i comment on your posts
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-24 10:01 pm (UTC)also probably because I probably stole the line.
also lol they're so much fun.
also it is a library book but it's from bailey cove. also I just renewed it, so you could borrow if you turned it in by the...6thish? idk I'll tell you. :-D :-D
also hahahaha I know. it will be fun.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-25 12:26 am (UTC)I really liked Book of a Thousand Days. Not as much as Goose Girl, though.
Read Eagle of the Ninth! See if it doesn't remind you of A Conspiracy of Kings. Only without the humor.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-27 05:29 am (UTC)I'm relieved to see that other commenters didn't absolutely love Book of a Thousand Days, although it still doesn't help me figure out why I didn't love it. I'd probably have to read it again. And I still have to find Goose Girl.
I will do so!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-25 12:50 am (UTC)I also read Shining Company this past year -- believe I posted about it a while back. For more side-by-side religion of that era, see also Nancy Farmer's Sea of Trolls trilogy and the movie The Secret of Kells.
That's interesting about Book of a Thousand Days. I liked it but didn't love it as much as I expected to. I think Princess Academy remains my favorite Shannon Hale.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-25 04:30 am (UTC)Ooh! I want to see that soooo bad! Our independent theater showed it, but I was out of town that week and I'm so disappointed!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-25 05:44 am (UTC)Also the story is good. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-27 06:27 am (UTC)oh, I will go back and look for the post--I think I skipped it because I hadn't read it.
That's kind of how I feel about 1000 Days. It felt like I should love it, and yet I didn't.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-27 01:09 pm (UTC)http://philia-fan.livejournal.com/69622.html
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-25 12:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-25 01:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-25 01:30 am (UTC)Because it ended so badly. And it was so beautiful.
Maybe my first proper tragedy, actually.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-25 02:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-04 06:06 am (UTC)The Shining Company, though, is definitely in a class of its own.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-25 02:23 am (UTC)and Anachred put my reaction more eloquently than I could.
Also, thanks for reminding me-- could you recommend a 30s/40s/50s era Grant or Hepburn or Tracy or Bergman movie-- you know, something classicish-- that would be good for a feminist film screening + discussion? It doesn't have to be a feminist film, but the idea is for it to be thought-provoking.
(Also we're-- or I am-- thinking of screening an Avatar episode or three as well. Now that I delve into the world of media sexism!fail I realize just how remarkable that show is-- it has, like, MULTIPLE FEMALE CHARACTERS on BOTH SIDES and they have CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT! Any particular recommendations?)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-25 02:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-25 12:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-28 06:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-25 04:28 am (UTC)Hm...may have to track down that one set in Scotland some day. *Scotland love*
I just bought a Rosemary Sutcliff book the other day 'cause so many people have talked them up on Sounis. I don't even know which one it is. It said "Sutcliff" and I bought it. lol
I haven't been able to get into anything since I reread Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Have I recommended that to you before? Because I should have. It's so good. SOOOOO good. I mean, it is slow. Very slow. Like, if this book raced a snail, the snail would definitely win. But you just have to know that going in because it's epic. Fairies. The Duke of Wellington. Lord Byron. The Revival of English Magic. Talking stones. Venice. This book is seriously one of my favorites ever. Read it!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-25 05:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-04 06:08 am (UTC)Also yes do, it is wonderful, and so very Scottish.
Also that is why I picked up this book, and it was SO GOOD. So I suspect all her other books are too.
maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan I have had that book for three years, and not yet actually read it. One of these days. Maybe during next year's commute.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-25 04:47 am (UTC)The Norwegian king (prince? been too long) in the story is the grown up baby saved by the Birkebeiners and immortalized with the Norwegian and American Birkebeiner Ski Races.
(trivia tidbit for today)
I loved reading the entire series of Sutcliff books connected by the dolphin ring. And Mark of the Horse Lords was both wonderful and creepy. Can't argue the ending but ... say it's not so!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-04 06:09 am (UTC)I NEED TO FIND THOSE.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-25 05:59 am (UTC)For this I thank you muchly. I wasn't really interested in the Rangers Apprentice books, because none of the people who I trust for Good Book Recs have mentioned them, but they were so popular when I worked in the bookstore I was a bit curious. I'm not sure why I never looked at the first sentence though... I'm one of those horrible people who won't give a book a chance after a first sentence like that, unless I really trust the person who recommended it.
You're feelings about Book of a Thousand Days were very like mine.
Zel, Quest for a Maid and the Shining Company are on the TBR list. The foreverlong TBR list. Actually, I think years ago I checked out Quest for a Maid from the library and didn't finish it for some reason, I can't for the life of me remember why though.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-04 06:13 am (UTC)they seem to be echoed throughout everyone else, and so I am glad to know that a book that had so many little details that I thought were theoretically so awesome and yet within the novel were merely interesting coming off flat is not something I alone am facing.
(seriously though. I can't figure out why Shannon Hale won't mesh for me. With something like Graceling, it was really easy to pinpoint, but Shannon Hale's books are just...all right for me, and I don't understand why.)
hahaha, I understand. There are so many books I said I would read this summer that are untouched because I keep checking things out, and now everything has been subsumed to my sudden desire to reread my favorite Star Wars books. (Hint: I have read, at last count, over a hundred Star Wars books. Tis a long list.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-25 07:05 pm (UTC)YAY ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF. I was talking to Ro on the phone the other day and how her Lovely Tutor bought her The Lantern Bearers for her birthday and she is yet to read Sutcliff and homg she does a history degree, how has she not read it?! Anyway we freaked out and I decided there are some I need to read and buy and yay!
I read Lavinia. It's okay and not a sexfest at all. But I found it dragged. I think this is because I need funny stuff in books too.
Oh and I have read The Great Gatsby too. I really liked it actually even though I wanted to slap all of the characters ocassionally.
Okay now I am off to search for Lymond books
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-04 06:15 am (UTC)aw maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan I am jealous. I don't know how to hunt down her books, BUT I WANT TO. :-D
I will keep that in mind!
and I have a feeling I will like TGG very much. I mean I liked Brett in The Sun Also Rises, and that is apparently a rare reaction to have to her, so...we'll see.
yes I keep meaning to look for those. And the Lord Peter ones. I get them mixed up.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-28 06:19 pm (UTC)I need to try Sutcliffe again. Last time around I was tired of historical fiction and bounced off them.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-04 06:16 am (UTC)oh yes, do. She was so lovely and rich and thick--definitely one to read on its own, though, and not in a long list of others.