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| Oh well... |
I was so excited to read Library of Souls. I saw it there, on a table of books, surrounded by Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and Hollow City, announcing its arrival. (There were other books on the table too, but I couldn’t tell you what they were.) I love the excitement of seeing a book on a table, one that you’ve been anticipating for a year. Then I had it, it was mine, I couldn’t wait to read it. |
| See that guy? Wouldn't you want to put him in your story? |
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| No jacket. So pretty. |
I loved The Eyre Affair. I am totally hooked on Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series. I love Thursday. She was amazing. Thursday was a grown-up. Just a couple years older than me. It's been a while since I've read a book with a main character that was my age. Everyone has been in their twenties or a teen lately. I really related to Thursday and was happy to see a woman in her thirties taking charge, fighting the bad guy and dealing with relationships. Thursday was a complex character, like a real person.
I loved all the fun character names Fforde came up with. There were a lot though, and there was a point, while in the middle of the novel, where I couldn't read for a couple days and I kind of forgot who was who with some of the minor characters. Thankfully, Wikipedia helped me out with that... Not that there were too many characters or anything, you just have to pay attention while reading. I loved Thursday's Dad and the whole Next family. I am a little iffy on Landen. I think I liked Bowden better. I think I know what Hades was, I just wish there was more confirmation in the book. I liked Spike and Victory Analogy, Mycroft and Polly. So many wonderful characters. I wonder who we'll see in the next novel.
The alternate 1985 was intriguing. The English war with Russia. Wales having independence. The Battle of Waterloo. Winston Churchill. Literature is revered. People battle over Shakespeare. There is an entire investigate branch of the government devoted to the preservation of literature. The LiteraTecs are amazing. I loved Jane Eyre. I loved everything about her novel and Rochester's involvement in Thursday's life. I love the idea of entering a piece of literature, whether it is a novel, like Jane Eyre or one of Wordsworth's poems. Everything in Thursday's world is so different from ours, yet still similar. It's just that priorities changed somewhere in history (or altered by the French Revisionists). I love the tidbits of history and altered history that Thursday's Dad is always talking about.
I have a book that was left at my house... around the time I graduated high school. I won't tell you how many years ago that was. A classmate and I were working on a project and she forgot it. I tried to give it back, but she didn't want it. Maybe she left it on purpose because she knew I liked books, or maybe she just wanted to get rid of it. I've read the synopsis. It's a slim little thing. I honestly have no interest in reading it. I've dragged it around with me because of my book hoarding tendencies, but I think it is time I let it go. Though I fee guilty. I've never read anything by this author, but in all this time, if I can't muster enough interest to even eye the first page, I don't think I'll read it. Yet, guilt. How can I give away something I haven't read yet?
I mentioned recently that I had a lot of "first books" and that I should start reading them. The sequel to the The Diviners was just released and I wanted to know if I would want to purchase it. The answer is, yes, I would like a copy of Lair of Dreams stat. There are so many unanswered questions. I want to know about Sister Walker, Sam's mother and James. I want to know what Will is trying to protect Evie from. I want to know more about Memphis and Isaiah. I want to know if anyone is going to find out about Blind Bill. Octavia has to know something about those boys, right? If not, I feel like she'll eventually be a casualty. I want to know about the eye and the dreams. I kind of want more back story on Henry too. Also, I'm a little torn between Sam and Jericho. I think I like Jericho better, but I feel like Sam might win in the end. Also, what does that guy want with Mabel?! Though the beginning took its time introducing us to all these characters, it was worth it. I want to know more about all of them. I want to know about their lives and if they survive the oncoming storm.
Libba Bray notes at the end of the novel, the research that she did to come up with this world. You can tell that the details were all thought through. The streets, the sounds, the people feel concrete, like they were real places, like Bray had been there. I enjoyed the cabs, the car with a crank, the outfits. Each detail made the world of The Diviners more real. It's nice to find a little reality in my fantasy. I'm so happy and excited that I read The Diviners and I'm eager to read not just Lair of Dreams, but more my Bray.
How do you feel about Omnibuses? I understand why they are created, popular trilogies (or quartets and quintets) are collected into one volume and sold at a good price. People buy, read, it's great. Sometimes they replace the individual novels.
Recently, I read Mansfield Park, which once completed meant I had read all of Jane Austen's novels. I know there are other works I could read, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to, they are all either unfinished or Austen did not submit them for publication. After reading Carol Shields' short biography of Austen, simply titled, Jane Austen, I'm definitely more curious about the other works. Though one of the things Shields' biography taught me was that Austen was an avid reviser, leaving manuscripts for years, then going back to them and revising, after having already made several revisions previously, before sending them for publication.
Shields' writing is fluid and insightful. The book is structured around Austen's writing life, as Shields tells us about what was happening in Austen's life while she was creating her various novels. I like that Shields didn't just record everything chronologically. I like that the focus of the book was her writing and what affected it, the inspiration behind it, as well as the frequency in which Austen wrote. It's a little sad, her early life, but once she finally had Sense and Sensibility published, she was happier. The end was sad too. It's interesting through her letters, accounts of her health, and the way her aunt and cousin died, people guess that Austen died of breast cancer. At least, that's the theory that Shields ascribes to; there are others. Austen died too soon, with works left unwritten, unfinished. I wonder if she would have revised Persuasion* more if she had the time. Shields gives the impression of Austen racing to finish the work before the end. 
I recently changed the entire first page of my work-in-progress and that got me thinking of first sentences. The first one that popped into my head was from Pride and Prejudice, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." While I enjoyed Jane Austen's most famous work, part of the reason I thought of this quote was because that line gets a lot of air play. Then I wondered, what were the first sentences of some of my favourite books...
The servants called them malenchki, little ghosts, because they were the smallest and the youngest, and because they haunted the Duke’s house like giggling phantoms, darting in and out of rooms, hiding in cupboards to eavesdrop, sneaking into the kitchen to steal the last of the summer peaches. – Shadow and Bone, Leigh Bardugo
A few years ago it dawned on me that everybody past a certain age – regardless of how they look on the outside – pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives. - The Gum Thief, Douglas Coupland
I am just going to assume that people have read Mansfield Park or seen one of the movies....
I am finally finished Mansfield Park. I shouldn't say "finally" like it is a bad thing. I enjoyed Mansfield Park, it just took me longer to read than other books. I was eager for the ending, because I have come to know Jane Austen and I knew in this story, it would be the unrequited love fulfilled. Though, I was eager for the ending, I loved the beginning and middle too. I found it all very interesting. How could one sister have 10 children, another have only 4 and the third have none? (I know how someone could have no children, it was more the 10 to 4 thing.) It sparked an interesting discussion with my husband. Fanny Price's mother had more children than she knew what to do with. Her sister, Lady Bertram, married much more advantageously, and offered to take one of the children. Mrs. Price assumed it would be their oldest boy, William, but instead the sister asked for the oldest girl, Fanny. Mrs. Price, who favours the boys over the girls, was surprised, but sent her off; one less mouth to feed. I think it was kind what Sir Thomas did for his wife's relations. Fanny and William are much better off for having such an uncle, who showed them this kindness, as the Bertrams did help William also. It is Mrs. Norris, the childless sister, who drove me crazy, as I think she was supposed to do. She was so awful to Fanny and I'm glad Sir Thomas finally saw her true colours.
I was really hoping for a little more build up to Fanny and Edmund. I've read the other five main Austen novels and there is always some kind of movement, moments, before we get the final couple. Not with Fanny and Edmund. Instead, it felt as though the Crawfords would get paired, as so much of the novel was spent on those relationships. Thinking back on it, maybe Austen was making sure that we knew how unsuitable these relationships would be. For a minute, I thought Fanny would soften towards Crawford, just enough so that his betrayal would hurt her more, but nope. She was a rigid heroine. I liked her though. I feel like Fanny had a real sense of who was around her and how they all really felt towards her and each other.
I hated Mary Crawford. She was so insipid. She played at friendship. I feel like I've known people like her, who don't make a choice exactly, yet spin things in their favour, but it is something in them that has thoroughly skewed their judgment and they just don't see that they are wrong. I felt a little bad for the Bertram sisters, too much ruled by emotion and not enough by rational though. Crawford was a cad, he was Wickham and Willoughby, but worse. He was an awful "flirt", though I do think he had genuine affection for Fanny. Crawford lacked patience. If he had waited, he (and his sister) might have ended up with the people they desired. I still wish that everyone, especially Edmund could have, could have seen what Fanny saw.
This will be vaguely spoilery, but I think a lot of people by now have seen The Maze Runner....
I kind of loved how shocked all the boys were to see a girl. Some of them have been in the Maze for over three years. That means seeing only boys for a long time. Not that it looked like these boys needed a girl (or even an adult), but just having one around or more than one, would have made for a different and more diverse three years. Though I suppose the introduction of a girl at the end was representative of the change that the community of boys was about to go through.
I know I'm a little late to the party, but I finally saw Man of Steel. Strange for a nerd like me, but for whatever reason it just didn't happen when everyone else saw it. I heard about the changes, the controversy, the nonstop destruction, and was worried. I loved the old Superman movies with Christopher Reeve as a kid. I enjoyed the Lois and Clark series as a teen. I know things change and have to adapt as we move forward, but I was concerned that I would be disappointed. Maybe I wasn't disappointed because my expectations were not that high. Is that bad to say? I watched Man of Steel knowing that it was good enough to warrant a sequel and that it would not be like any of the previous Superman movies.
As soon as it happened though, I can see where the controversy came in. Superman is always been held to an ideal and maybe he did not necessarily live up to that in this movie. Would that be really realistic though? How else would Zod have been defeated? There was no kyptonite, there were no more ships, he was as strong and perhaps more skilled than Superman. He was about to murder a defenseless family, what could Superman have done differently? I think also DC is trying to do what Marvel has done, they are trying to place their heroes in the modern world, isn't that what they did with the first Iron Man movie? These heroes are going to have problems we can relate to and have to deal with consequences. Isn't that what Superman v Batman is going to be about, the consequences of Superman in the world and what he means to everything. 
