The Silmarillion, by JRR Tolkien; Wolfskin, by Juliet Marillier

[maribou]

Okay, so this time I went at The Silmarillion by audio recording. I have to confess that as it is my 3rd time reading it, I did sort of zone out occasionally during things like endless strings of begats, but the best parts - the stories and the people - remain compelling. The recording was really well done - it's always sort of jarring, though, with things like this, to discover that the way a certain non-real word sounds in your head and the way the reader thinks it ought to sound are completely different.
(72/200)

Wolfskin got me with the beauty of the language right away, but I spent the first third of the book or so not particularly charmed by the story or the characters. It got a lot better. The protagonist is a Norseman, the other protagonist is a made-up Orcadian from ever so slightly pre-Norse times. Really a wonderful tale. Juliet Marillier does mythic fiction, heavy on the myth, better than most people. Like Tanith Lee, only less stark. (I should note that starkness and body count somehow do not equate at all in my head.)
(73/200)

Comments

[cow.livejournal.com]

Juliet Marillier is not nearly as nifty in person as I'd hoped she'd be. :(

Although I did meet Jacqueline Carey at that booksigning. So it wasn't a total loss. :D