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Ransom My Broken Chalice
Dec. 2nd, 2008 10:23 pmChalice, by Robin McKinley
I very much enjoyed this although it did feel a bit stiff in a couple of spots. But the idea of honey magic and how that gets played out, and the natural way the rather unnatural events unfold, and the heroic actions of the protagonist NOT being combat / aggression, for once ... yup, McKinley's still got it. I was kinda weepy at the end, too.
(239/300)
Ransom My Heart, by Meg Cabot posing as her character Mia Thermopolis (ARC)
The Princess Diaries series is one of my fluff pleasures (or used to be, since I preferred listening to the audiobooks and quit listening when I started hating the new narrator ... I'll get back to them eventually), so I was enthused about the conceit of a romance novel supposedly penned by the titular Princess. Having read said novel, the narrative voice makes it totally plausible as Mia's senior high school project, which is amusing, but wouldn't have been enough to make it worth my time. As a romance novel, it hits every freaking cliche on the playlist (and mocks some of them along the way), but it was still a hoot. It's not a High Quality Historical Romance novel by any standard I might use to measure such things (I have a few, and they conflict) - but it was kind of nice to see someone let their (figurative) hair down, pretend they'd never heard of the "thou shalt nots", indulge in a Mary Sue character, and RUN WITH IT, unabashedly. So, it was fun. No complaints from this satisfied reader. Oh wait, I did have ONE minor quibble: the adjective tip-tilted should not be used to describe the same anatomical feature more than once in one novel. It's too odd of a word, and so it took me out of the story the second time.
(240/300)
How Beautiful It Is, and How Easily It Can Be Broken, by Daniel Mendelsohn
Mendelsohn writes so fluidly and so persuasively that I love to read everything he writes - even when I strongly disagree with his theses. He also has a completely endearing knack for starting an essay about a current play or movie or book with a digression - a pages-long digression - onto some seemingly unrelated piece of Classical esoterica, and then moving to the actual object of his review, and then tying everything together so that it is quite obvious what the seemingly unrelated college-lecture about some wacky lost piece of Greek literary history has to do with the subject under discussion. It's pretty nifty. Furthermore, he has re-enthused me re: wanting to catch up on my lack of Ancient Greeks and Romans.
(241/300)
I very much enjoyed this although it did feel a bit stiff in a couple of spots. But the idea of honey magic and how that gets played out, and the natural way the rather unnatural events unfold, and the heroic actions of the protagonist NOT being combat / aggression, for once ... yup, McKinley's still got it. I was kinda weepy at the end, too.
(239/300)
Ransom My Heart, by Meg Cabot posing as her character Mia Thermopolis (ARC)
The Princess Diaries series is one of my fluff pleasures (or used to be, since I preferred listening to the audiobooks and quit listening when I started hating the new narrator ... I'll get back to them eventually), so I was enthused about the conceit of a romance novel supposedly penned by the titular Princess. Having read said novel, the narrative voice makes it totally plausible as Mia's senior high school project, which is amusing, but wouldn't have been enough to make it worth my time. As a romance novel, it hits every freaking cliche on the playlist (and mocks some of them along the way), but it was still a hoot. It's not a High Quality Historical Romance novel by any standard I might use to measure such things (I have a few, and they conflict) - but it was kind of nice to see someone let their (figurative) hair down, pretend they'd never heard of the "thou shalt nots", indulge in a Mary Sue character, and RUN WITH IT, unabashedly. So, it was fun. No complaints from this satisfied reader. Oh wait, I did have ONE minor quibble: the adjective tip-tilted should not be used to describe the same anatomical feature more than once in one novel. It's too odd of a word, and so it took me out of the story the second time.
(240/300)
How Beautiful It Is, and How Easily It Can Be Broken, by Daniel Mendelsohn
Mendelsohn writes so fluidly and so persuasively that I love to read everything he writes - even when I strongly disagree with his theses. He also has a completely endearing knack for starting an essay about a current play or movie or book with a digression - a pages-long digression - onto some seemingly unrelated piece of Classical esoterica, and then moving to the actual object of his review, and then tying everything together so that it is quite obvious what the seemingly unrelated college-lecture about some wacky lost piece of Greek literary history has to do with the subject under discussion. It's pretty nifty. Furthermore, he has re-enthused me re: wanting to catch up on my lack of Ancient Greeks and Romans.
(241/300)
