Friday, October 23, 2015

Classics Club Spin - MacBeth

Oh well...
I'm not done.  I'm at about half.  I underestimated how long it would take me to read not just MacBeth, but also the last two books I read.  Oh well.  When it's done, I'll post about it and link to the Classics Club.  Still, I am enjoying my Spin book and as always, am happy to participate in the Spin as it motivates me to keep going on my Classics List.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Do My Book Covers Need To Match?



No?  Yes?  Sometimes?

Let's use examples.

Last week, I would have said, no, I do not need my covers to match. I own Stephen King's Dark Tower series and the covers do not match.  I have a mix of paperbacks, trade paperbacks and hardcovers. The designs on the covers themselves are different. I bought the first three novels years after they were released, when I first started the series.  I got others in the series at different points after their release. It didn't matter to me that the covers didn't match, I just wanted the stories. I have a couple other series like that.

Recently, I read The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde and loved it. I had to find out about the other books. I believe there are currently seven books in the series with one more set to be released. I don't know why, but I really wanted the cover of the second book to match the first. Do I just like the look of it better than the others? Yes, I think so, but like The Dark Tower it shouldn't matter, I should just want the stories. I looked at different sites and checked my local bookstore. No copies of the second book were at the bookstores in town. I looked at four different sites. I found the cover I wanted, at a pretty good price too. Why was this so important to me? By the time I purchase the last book, will the editions have changed? Will the covers I have now match the others I'll get in the future? Maybe, maybe not.

I guess I don't understand why it was important to me this time around. Maybe it's just this series, just these covers.  I don't know.  I guess I'll find out the next time I buy a book for a series I'm reading.

* There were more than just the three covers.



Sunday, October 18, 2015

Birthday

Today is my birthday.  I'm in my mid-thirties and I cringe whenever I think about it.  You know what made me feel better.  Two days ago, I got ID'd at the liquor store!  Wahoo!  Legal drinking age in Ontario, Canada is 19!  What!?


Sometimes, it's the little things that make you feel the best.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Library of Souls

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.

I was glad that the story focused on Jacob and Emma. It was always Jacob-focused, as the story is told in first-person, but it was just him and Emma, without the crowd of the other children.  I liked all the other Peculiar children, but at times I had a hard time remembering who was who and after more than a year, I felt like that might be my problem again.  There were other secondary characters, Sharon (who was great) and Bentham (who I might talk more about later), Mother Dust and Reynaldo, and more, but they didn’t occupy the same space in my mind that the children did.  They also came in at specific times and weren’t a constant crowd. Also, by focusing on just Jacob and Emma, we got to see their relationship develop.  It also really let us have a connection with Bentham and Sharon, who were important to how the story turned out in the end.

See that guy? Wouldn't you
want to put him in your story?
I think that Ransom Riggs used less photographs this time. In the first novel, they were fascinating.  I loved them, I loved how they must have inspired the author. In Hollow City, I thought there were too many. In Library of Souls, there was the perfect amount. They didn’t overtake the story, they enhanced it.  Just looking at the photos, the ones Riggs decided to include, the ones that must have inspired him, I can see how collecting them could be a passion. So many of them are curious, all are unique and I wonder about the story behind them.

The real story, the one that stayed at the focus of the novel, was freeing the Peculiar children and their Ymbrynes.  Even with all the things that could distract them, Jacob and Emma stayed focused. They’d rather break away than wait and delay.  There were so many times they could have been sidetracked, by curiosity, by morals, but they had to rescue their friends and that was it (I won’t get into all the distractions, as those would be spoilers).

No jacket. So pretty.
– This part will be a little spoilery – I wasn’t super happy with the final battle.  I thought there should have been more Jacob.  It’s like he did his bit and the other guys took care of the scary part.  It lost a sense of urgency. Why couldn’t he have battled more, fallen in the pool or something?  I also thought that Bentham could have either seemed more sinister or not flip-flopped so much. It was okay though.

What I really liked was the very end.  All that stuff with Jacob and his parents, I thought was great. I would have thought his father was more understanding, but nope. I also liked the decision Jacob made when he was presented with an opportunity to make it all go away. He wanted to work through it with his parents, instead of the more obvious/conventional/expected choice, to just stay in the peculiar world.  His reasoning was sound though, who would want to be 16 forever?  The very end though, I would have loved to see that conversation, with the adults, with the very old children. - That's it for spoilers. - 

I loved Ransom Riggs’ series and the Peculiar world. I loved the old photographs and I love how they inspired so much of these novels. I wonder what is next for Riggs and if we’ll ever visit the Peculiars again.