The book post!
Nov. 17th, 2007 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timerippleMy friends, I have been reading a lot of books lately.
- Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. Shiny history detective novel! Am I the only person in the world who actually likes the Wars of the Roses?
- Dragon of the Lost Sea by Laurence Yep. I read one of his books as a child and loved it passionately. Twelve years later, our heroine begins a quest that will take her through the untold depths of children’s literature to confront her past... and forge a future! (dun dun dun) Oh, right, I was talking about this book. Um, so, there’s this dragon, right, and some kid, and some sorcerer named Monkey, and they have to fight this sorceress, right...
- Trickster’s Choice by Tamora Pierce. I like this even better than the Alanna quartet, which would have been wonderful if I’d read it twelve years ago but sort of got on my nerves a few times. For instance: Alanna names her horse Moonlight. Moonlight. How did no-one guess she was a girl?! This one is fun though.
Sorcery and Cecelia and The Grand Tour by Patricia Wrede & Carolyn Stevermer. The first one was a lot better. The second suffered from what I shall henceforth call “After-Happily-Ever-After Syndrome”. The part at the end was kind of cool, though, because in the first chapter of The Golden Bough whassname discusses various incarnations of worship at that site. Have I mentioned that The Golden Bough is hilarious? I think I only made it through the first couple of chapters, but seriously, it’s a scream... okay, shutting up now.
- The Throme of the Erril of Sherill by Patricia McKillip. *cries* I loved the part where the little girl jumps on Caerles’s stomach, and he’s all, yeesh, the things I have to put up with! Also his mouse-colored boots, and his carefully-brushed hair. And how he hates it when trees drop things on his face when he’s trying to sleep outdoors. And, and, and! Why are her early books so much more memorable than her recent ones? The Changeling Sea is heartbreaking. Ditto The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. Ditto Riddle-Master. I will forever be a little bit in love with Rood. And Raederle is totally kickass without ever actually hitting anybody. She is far more awesome than Morgon, who is no slouch himself. Even if he does have a silly name.
- The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner. The last one is probably the best, but the first one is my favorite because the plot twist is just so gleeful. In the other two you know something’s up, and you have a pretty good idea of what it is and who’s behind it, because you’ve read the first one. In the first one, you know something’s up, but you really don’t know what’s going on until one perfect line of dialog turns everything on its head and it all makes sense. I have learned a lot about Reasons Behind Point Of View from these books. There is no way that the last two would have worked in the same first person as the first one.
Also, the last one especially confirmed my suspicions about a certain aspect of storytelling. Stories about, say, royalty and political intrigue are often a lot better if told from the POV of, say, a farmboy or Random Soldier No. 5 who gets caught up in Ye Olde Affaires of Ye Empire instead of the Empress of the Galaxy (see also Star Wars prequels vs originals. Even when people turn out to be key figures, they often start out as seeming incidentals). Thoughts? Counterexamples? (I do love a good counterexample.)
- The Hollow Kingdom by Claire Dunkle. Pretty good, I thought, but with serious reservations about the second half. I gave up on the sequel about two pages into it.
-Firebirds, edited by Sharyn November. Some good, some less good.
- An Earthly Knight by Janet McNaughton. Yet another Tam Lin retelling. Kind of boring. Our Heroine spends more time worrying about what to wear to impress the king’s brother than she does falling in love with Ye Olde Disinherited And Oh, By The Way, Also Ensorcelled By Fairies Hero. Goats and herrings, is there for neither love nor money a single copy of The Perilous Gard in this entire country? Ditto Komarr.
Have also been occasionally doing a few lines of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I can’t seem to get into it. I prefer my Latin in prose and, really, Greek is just cooler anyway. Also going slowly through The Forsyte Saga. Poor, poor Soames! He just doesn’t get it.
Recommend me things? Hint: I am totally on a goblin kick right now. I’ve re-read The Princess and the Goblin for the millionth time. The Hollow Kingdom has goblins, but I cannot subject myself to the sequel just yet. Any other good goblin books?
- Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. Shiny history detective novel! Am I the only person in the world who actually likes the Wars of the Roses?
- Dragon of the Lost Sea by Laurence Yep. I read one of his books as a child and loved it passionately. Twelve years later, our heroine begins a quest that will take her through the untold depths of children’s literature to confront her past... and forge a future! (dun dun dun) Oh, right, I was talking about this book. Um, so, there’s this dragon, right, and some kid, and some sorcerer named Monkey, and they have to fight this sorceress, right...
- Trickster’s Choice by Tamora Pierce. I like this even better than the Alanna quartet, which would have been wonderful if I’d read it twelve years ago but sort of got on my nerves a few times. For instance: Alanna names her horse Moonlight. Moonlight. How did no-one guess she was a girl?! This one is fun though.
Sorcery and Cecelia and The Grand Tour by Patricia Wrede & Carolyn Stevermer. The first one was a lot better. The second suffered from what I shall henceforth call “After-Happily-Ever-After Syndrome”. The part at the end was kind of cool, though, because in the first chapter of The Golden Bough whassname discusses various incarnations of worship at that site. Have I mentioned that The Golden Bough is hilarious? I think I only made it through the first couple of chapters, but seriously, it’s a scream... okay, shutting up now.
- The Throme of the Erril of Sherill by Patricia McKillip. *cries* I loved the part where the little girl jumps on Caerles’s stomach, and he’s all, yeesh, the things I have to put up with! Also his mouse-colored boots, and his carefully-brushed hair. And how he hates it when trees drop things on his face when he’s trying to sleep outdoors. And, and, and! Why are her early books so much more memorable than her recent ones? The Changeling Sea is heartbreaking. Ditto The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. Ditto Riddle-Master. I will forever be a little bit in love with Rood. And Raederle is totally kickass without ever actually hitting anybody. She is far more awesome than Morgon, who is no slouch himself. Even if he does have a silly name.
- The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner. The last one is probably the best, but the first one is my favorite because the plot twist is just so gleeful. In the other two you know something’s up, and you have a pretty good idea of what it is and who’s behind it, because you’ve read the first one. In the first one, you know something’s up, but you really don’t know what’s going on until one perfect line of dialog turns everything on its head and it all makes sense. I have learned a lot about Reasons Behind Point Of View from these books. There is no way that the last two would have worked in the same first person as the first one.
Also, the last one especially confirmed my suspicions about a certain aspect of storytelling. Stories about, say, royalty and political intrigue are often a lot better if told from the POV of, say, a farmboy or Random Soldier No. 5 who gets caught up in Ye Olde Affaires of Ye Empire instead of the Empress of the Galaxy (see also Star Wars prequels vs originals. Even when people turn out to be key figures, they often start out as seeming incidentals). Thoughts? Counterexamples? (I do love a good counterexample.)
- The Hollow Kingdom by Claire Dunkle. Pretty good, I thought, but with serious reservations about the second half. I gave up on the sequel about two pages into it.
-Firebirds, edited by Sharyn November. Some good, some less good.
- An Earthly Knight by Janet McNaughton. Yet another Tam Lin retelling. Kind of boring. Our Heroine spends more time worrying about what to wear to impress the king’s brother than she does falling in love with Ye Olde Disinherited And Oh, By The Way, Also Ensorcelled By Fairies Hero. Goats and herrings, is there for neither love nor money a single copy of The Perilous Gard in this entire country? Ditto Komarr.
Have also been occasionally doing a few lines of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I can’t seem to get into it. I prefer my Latin in prose and, really, Greek is just cooler anyway. Also going slowly through The Forsyte Saga. Poor, poor Soames! He just doesn’t get it.
Recommend me things? Hint: I am totally on a goblin kick right now. I’ve re-read The Princess and the Goblin for the millionth time. The Hollow Kingdom has goblins, but I cannot subject myself to the sequel just yet. Any other good goblin books?
