Little Penguin Monsters
May. 24th, 2008 08:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maribouThe Monsters of Templeton, by Lauren Groff
A glorious book. Lush and rambly and realistic and fantastic and funny and sad and ... Much like _Ahab's Wife_ (where you didn't need to have read Melville), you don't have to have read any Cooper to love this one.
(88/300)
The Penguin Book of Modern Irish Short Stories, edited by Ben Forkner
There were some brilliant stories by authors I'd not read before in here - Sean O'Faolain, Somerville & Ross, Seumas O'Kelly, Mary Lavin, Benedict Kiely - as well as some old favorites like Joyce, Yeats, and Stephens. But even most of the less-amazing stories were fun to read because of the way Irish people talk, and how it's translated to the page. See, I grew up in a very Irish/Scottish kind of place and so all my neighbors talked that same way (*especially* the old ones) and so the lilting, rambling, word-wallowing style used in most of these stories makes me all warm and fuzzy inside, no matter the content of the story.
(89/300)
Little (Grrl) Lost, by Charles De Lint
This was alright. I really like de Lint, but somehow most of his YA stuff doesn't click for me to the same extent that the things marketed as adult do. Honestly, I don't always buy his version of 'modern adolescent girl', I think, and because I *do* like his stuff so much in general, I have a higher standard for him than for most people. The magical bits of this were lovely and actually once the protagonist had stuff to do other than sit around and angst, she was mostly great - just the beginning was a little twee, or something... dunno. I did like it, just - when you are used to someone hitting it out of the park most of the time, it's hard to be impressed by a double.
(90/300)
A glorious book. Lush and rambly and realistic and fantastic and funny and sad and ... Much like _Ahab's Wife_ (where you didn't need to have read Melville), you don't have to have read any Cooper to love this one.
(88/300)
The Penguin Book of Modern Irish Short Stories, edited by Ben Forkner
There were some brilliant stories by authors I'd not read before in here - Sean O'Faolain, Somerville & Ross, Seumas O'Kelly, Mary Lavin, Benedict Kiely - as well as some old favorites like Joyce, Yeats, and Stephens. But even most of the less-amazing stories were fun to read because of the way Irish people talk, and how it's translated to the page. See, I grew up in a very Irish/Scottish kind of place and so all my neighbors talked that same way (*especially* the old ones) and so the lilting, rambling, word-wallowing style used in most of these stories makes me all warm and fuzzy inside, no matter the content of the story.
(89/300)
Little (Grrl) Lost, by Charles De Lint
This was alright. I really like de Lint, but somehow most of his YA stuff doesn't click for me to the same extent that the things marketed as adult do. Honestly, I don't always buy his version of 'modern adolescent girl', I think, and because I *do* like his stuff so much in general, I have a higher standard for him than for most people. The magical bits of this were lovely and actually once the protagonist had stuff to do other than sit around and angst, she was mostly great - just the beginning was a little twee, or something... dunno. I did like it, just - when you are used to someone hitting it out of the park most of the time, it's hard to be impressed by a double.
(90/300)
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-24 04:19 pm (UTC)Over time a lot of his plots felt more and more contrived to me. The moral tone was a little too consistent, and (for me) kind of tending towards the trite. He writes so well about myth and mystery... and yet when he writes about child abuse, or drug use (or BDSM, or a lot of what he writes about different subcultures) I get all *stabbity stabbity!!!!* (Okay, a lot of authors do that to me when writing about child abuse. Because the current dominant cultural tropes about child abuse really, deeply and personally piss me off. Still.)
no subject
Date: 2008-05-24 05:10 pm (UTC)I think I'm so used to authors' ways of framing certain issues being alien to my own that I *mostly* tune that part out ...