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maribouSo I just got back from visiting ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eeyorerin yesterday. The hospitality was superb, the food superber, and the company most superb of all. I also spent a lot of time lazing about with a book in my lap, .
The Hounds of the Morrigan, by Pat O'Shea
This is the best kids' fantasy novel I've read in years and years. That puts it ahead of a lot of excellent books, too. I can't believe I didn't read this as a kid - it was first published in 1985. The protagonists are winning, the writing can be both hilarious and mythical, and a perfect balance is struck between the ennobled and the thoroughly creepy. Also it's enormously long, but I never wished for a more demanding editor. Highly recommended. So Much Fun.
(52/200)
Out of the Silent Planet, by C. S. Lewis
Well, I thought this was nifty, but I'm so awfully (if somewhat ambiguously) fond of C. S. Lewis that that was only to be expected. The debt to Wells is obvious and acknowledged; the writing makes me hum; the story can be a bit clunky; the theological assumptions sometimes make me wrinkle my nose; at heart, the book is strong and sure and Good. I'm looking forward to Perelandra.
(53/200)
Svaha, by Charles De Lint
I went into this expecting urban fantasy and instead got science-fiction-thriller-with-a-side-of-fantasy. Which was actually a better fit to my mood, so it all worked out (the joys of spending all day in airports...). Anyway, very good, originally published in 1989 or so(?) - I was impressed by how little the last 15 years of actual history have messed up his projected future.
(54/200)
Stiff, by Mary Roach
Soeeyorerin basically made me read this book. I mean she didn't tie me down, prop open my eyeballs with toothpicks, and start turning the pages, but she made it very clear, when I was perusing her shelves on the first night of our visit, that I very much wanted to read this one first. And she was right. She's clever like that. It's awfully interesting, and I really like the rawness and thoughtfulness and gallows humor of the book. Could not put it down except at the end of a chapter. Wish she would write more. Norton has lately made my "Publishers/Imprints to Which I Am Emotionally Attached" list.
(55/200)
The Matisse Stories, by A. S. Byatt
I like Byatt's novels rather better than her short stories. The difference is between "OMG U R TEH ROXOR" and "Ah, yes, quite nice." But I have a definite preference for her novels. The novels seem more interested in immersion and the short stories in building to a epiphanic moment. And it's odd, but I feel as though her short stories could almost all have been written by a character in one of her novels - which has something to do with a remove from reality, perhaps? That said, the last story in this triad is really lovely and quite immersive. The other two are acceptable but ultimately unsatisfying.
(56/200)
Dubliners, by James Joyce
Speaking of ephiphanies... Some of these stories I loved and some I was utterly indifferent to. "The Dead" is as good as it was cracked up to me to be, and I was pleasantly surprised by several of the pieces. Others felt pointless to me. However, I was handicapped by a heavy dose of anti-ear-popping drugs and a previous reader of my copy who had written in the most idiotic and misspelled marginal notes I've ever had to try to ignore.
(57/200)
The Stone Angel, by Margaret Laurence
Still in love with Margaret Laurence. Really liked this book. Impressed by the skill with which she makes a fundamentally unsympathetic first-person narrator both plausible and beloved.
(58/200)
eeyorerin yesterday. The hospitality was superb, the food superber, and the company most superb of all. I also spent a lot of time lazing about with a book in my lap, .The Hounds of the Morrigan, by Pat O'Shea
This is the best kids' fantasy novel I've read in years and years. That puts it ahead of a lot of excellent books, too. I can't believe I didn't read this as a kid - it was first published in 1985. The protagonists are winning, the writing can be both hilarious and mythical, and a perfect balance is struck between the ennobled and the thoroughly creepy. Also it's enormously long, but I never wished for a more demanding editor. Highly recommended. So Much Fun.
(52/200)
Out of the Silent Planet, by C. S. Lewis
Well, I thought this was nifty, but I'm so awfully (if somewhat ambiguously) fond of C. S. Lewis that that was only to be expected. The debt to Wells is obvious and acknowledged; the writing makes me hum; the story can be a bit clunky; the theological assumptions sometimes make me wrinkle my nose; at heart, the book is strong and sure and Good. I'm looking forward to Perelandra.
(53/200)
Svaha, by Charles De Lint
I went into this expecting urban fantasy and instead got science-fiction-thriller-with-a-side-of-fantasy. Which was actually a better fit to my mood, so it all worked out (the joys of spending all day in airports...). Anyway, very good, originally published in 1989 or so(?) - I was impressed by how little the last 15 years of actual history have messed up his projected future.
(54/200)
Stiff, by Mary Roach
So
eeyorerin basically made me read this book. I mean she didn't tie me down, prop open my eyeballs with toothpicks, and start turning the pages, but she made it very clear, when I was perusing her shelves on the first night of our visit, that I very much wanted to read this one first. And she was right. She's clever like that. It's awfully interesting, and I really like the rawness and thoughtfulness and gallows humor of the book. Could not put it down except at the end of a chapter. Wish she would write more. Norton has lately made my "Publishers/Imprints to Which I Am Emotionally Attached" list.(55/200)
The Matisse Stories, by A. S. Byatt
I like Byatt's novels rather better than her short stories. The difference is between "OMG U R TEH ROXOR" and "Ah, yes, quite nice." But I have a definite preference for her novels. The novels seem more interested in immersion and the short stories in building to a epiphanic moment. And it's odd, but I feel as though her short stories could almost all have been written by a character in one of her novels - which has something to do with a remove from reality, perhaps? That said, the last story in this triad is really lovely and quite immersive. The other two are acceptable but ultimately unsatisfying.
(56/200)
Dubliners, by James Joyce
Speaking of ephiphanies... Some of these stories I loved and some I was utterly indifferent to. "The Dead" is as good as it was cracked up to me to be, and I was pleasantly surprised by several of the pieces. Others felt pointless to me. However, I was handicapped by a heavy dose of anti-ear-popping drugs and a previous reader of my copy who had written in the most idiotic and misspelled marginal notes I've ever had to try to ignore.
(57/200)
The Stone Angel, by Margaret Laurence
Still in love with Margaret Laurence. Really liked this book. Impressed by the skill with which she makes a fundamentally unsympathetic first-person narrator both plausible and beloved.
(58/200)
