I feel like buying a book. It needs to be a new-to-me book, fiction, a book that I will consider good, in some nebulous sense of the word good, and a book I will want to reread. Young adult is in, fantasy is in, mystery is probably out, but I’m willing to consider. Children’s books are out, hardcover is out. Ideally this book will not be available at the library, so probably a newer book is better than older.
Any thoughts?
me: oh, but you should read a book called benighted
not me: how come?
me: because it is very good
not me: what’s it about?
me: um. i’m going to say what it’s about, and you’re going to get the entirely wrong opinion of it.
not me: :)
me: so before i say what it’s about, i’ll say it’s probably the best book i’ve read in a year
not me: okay, I’ll give it a chance regardless of what you say
me: but it’s about, um, werewolves. sort of. a world where most people are werewolves.
me: but she never uses the word werewolf
me: and the nons have to chase down the lunes (as they are called) on full moon nights, if they’re not locked up
me: so they’re hated and discriminated against, but they have their own court system, so they have a weird sort of power
me: it’s complicated
not me: you’re right that I wouldn’t have read it if you hadn’t said it was the best you’d read in a year :)
me: see?
In my defense, there’s even this on the website:
[M]y ideas can sound pretty peculiar in the abstract; hopefully they work in the execution, but a short précis tends to sound unpromising – I’m already finding that reviewers and readers who like the book begin by saying, ‘It sounds like a strange idea, but read on and you’ll find it’s not as silly you’d think.
Yes, I will keep mentioning this book until such time as someone else I know reads it. I am hoping to get my grandmother to read it, as she is more open to fantasy than my mother. I bought the book, even. I am not a big book-buyer, usually. (Also bought: Dark is Rising sequence, a book of poetry, and another one or two of the Colour Fairy books, which I am trying to collect.)
A new Susanna Clarke story, read aloud. Called The Dweller in High Places, there’s just under 2 minutes of talking before the story starts.
Via Kit Whitfield, whose book Benighted I would like to continue to recommend; it’s the book I’ve most enjoyed in a while.
I suggested a book at the library, assuming they’d never bother with it — I suggest a few dozen books a year, and mostly I get the ones that everyone suggests, the Alice Munro, the Margaret Atwood, the Ruth Rendell. (I suggest these because then I am automagically put on the hold list when they do get the books.) This one is a fantasy book, so I was sure they wouldn’t buy it. But they did (and shelved it — weirdly — in fiction, probably because people read books that are fiction but not fantasy — everything that’s not explicitly about future worlds or space travel (and a lot that is) seems to be put in fiction).
The book is Kit Whitfield’s Benighted, a mystery, I think, in a world where most people are werewolves. I know, it sounds horrible, but it’s incredibly engaging — I am riveted, more than usual by a book, I can barely put it down. (I am about halfway through it; I started it late this afternoon.) It’s sad, so far; the world is sad and horrible, the social issues are divisive, the people are unintentionally cruel. (In this, it reminds me a bit of China Mieville’s work.) And yet, it’s mesmerising.
I don’t know if I’ll blog this book once I’m done (I’ve more or less stopped blogging books, which I called blooking at first: good word!). But I will absolutely remember — and recommend — it.
Publication Date for Harry Potter and the Deathly HallowsHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be published on Saturday 21st July 2007 at 00:01 BST in the UK and at 00:01 in the USA. It will also be released at 00:01 BST on Saturday 21st July in other English speaking countries around the world.
The announcement actually says that it will be released at 7 or 8 pm in my time zone, the night before (forget about how daylight savings deals with BST), but I assume it’s a mistake and that the book will in fact be released at midnight here as well. (I will not be in the bookstore at midnight.)
When I got home, I found a lovely surprise: a package from Anna Louise. In December, she offered to send anyone who commented (even lurkers like me) a book of some sort. I got the uncorrected page proofs for something called Conversations with the Devil, which sounds a little unpromising, as pre-reviews go, but possibly very interesting. I tend to be wary of Christian-themed books. Anyways, I shall read it and see. I am sounding profoundly ungrateful here, which is all wrong, because I am looking forward to reading the book, and seeing it in my mailbox (well, really on my staircase, where the neighbour who picked up my mail for me left it — but I was no less excited to see it there).
In other news, my scrambled eggs turned out really, really badly. Ick.
His Majesty’s Dragon, Throne of Jade, Black Powder War / by Naomi Novik (8/10)
Lots of fun. But very, very fast reads. Who doesn’t want to read about the Napoleonic Wars — with dragons! (I’m sure some people don’t, but they’re wrong.)
An Easy Mark / by Sheila Kindellan-Sheehan (6.5/10)
I find the writing very clunky, but the mystery is well enough done, and it’s set in Montreal. This is why I read Kathy Reich’s books — forensic anthropology was neat, and it was set in Montreal, but the writing stunk. (I have heard the writing has since improved.) I can’t really recommend it unless you live in Montreal, because it’s got a very weird view of the city.
Before I wake / by Robert J. Wiersema. (6.5/10)
The writing was good. The idea was fascinating. And yet — I still didn’t like it, I feel the ending didn’t really gel, and was sort of too pat. Something about the theology bothered me, though I do not really know why.
A wild sheep chase / by Haruki Murakami (8/10)
I think my expectations were too high for this book. Not that it wasn’t very good: it was very good. Something about the ending disappointed me, though perhaps this is a bit unfair, as the moment I finished it I fell asleep for a long nap, and I’d pushed myself to finish reading it before I could nap. I also feel there’s some cultural connotations to sheep I am missing to properly understand the book.
The other side of the bridge / by Mary Lawson. 9/10
I really liked this book. Someone asked me why, and I’m not sure I can answer. I liked the characters. I was taken with the plot. The writing style — almost, but not quite, spare — fit with the geography.
The thirteenth tale / by Diane Setterfield. 9/10
I didn’t expect to like this book at all. As it turns out, I did, very much. A book about secrets and lies, and what being alone means. Also, sort of a mystery, though I didn’t solve it. I could have, though: the story was fair.
What came before he shot her / by Elizabeth George. 5/10
I think I am less interested in her books than I used to be. I don’t care that they killed off whatshername, but I don’t read her books for a sociological study of what she imagines inner-city London to be like. I *know* that it’s going to end in that murder, and sure, the title tells you the book is all about, so I’m not being fair, but I wasn’t so enchanted. She can still write well, though.
The book of Samson / by David Maine. 5/10
This one would have been good if the philosophy hadn’t been so heavy handed — subtlety is key, here, and integrating it into the story more instead of having it speechified. We’re not reading it to find out what happened — we *know* what happens. On the up side, Samson was a very likable psychopath.
Half life : a novel / by Shelley Jackson. 2/10
I disliked this one a lot. Some environmental something makes a lot of Siamese twins, one of them debates killing her (sleeping for many years) twin. Sounds promising, no? It isn’t.
Why do people seem to be more interested in the title of Harry Potter VII than the release date? It’s not like the last titles have been all that informative, and I’d much prefer a concrete date for an untitled book than a title for an eventual book.
Update: title is now available through a hangman game on JKR’s main site, or approximately 27 million other web pages (as of now, *excluding* Wikipedia), none of which have been indexed on google yet.
Fairest & The Princess Tales, both by Gail Carson Levine
Ella Enchanted is up there on my favourite books list, so I was really excited for Fairest. And as long as I ignored the totally annoying part of making a secondary character in Ella Enchanted the sister of the main character here (it didn’t add to anything, unlike reusing other characters, which did, and staying in the same world, which made lots of sense). This was, of course, a retelling of Snow White, which (a) is not my favourite fairy tale and (b) was already done so brilliantly by Neil Gaiman (Snow Glass Apples) that there is almost no point in ever reading another retelling. But this one was fine.
The Princess Tales are a collection of retold fairy tales as short stories. I was most fond of the princess and the pea, but most of them are good.
Helen of Troy / by Margaret George
So, The Autobiography of King Henry VIII is up there as one of my favourite books ever. Her other books have been ok (Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles), barely ok (Cleopatra), unreadable (Mary, called Magdalene — but she wanted to write about Judas and was told she couldn’t; her chapters on Judas were far and away the best parts of the book), so I was half excited, half trepidacious. I am a fan of Greek mythology, after all.
But in the end, this one won me over. I didn’t always like the people, but I don’t always like non-fictional people, either. And I liked how matter of factly the gods were invoked, rarely doing anything but appearing to people in dreams. I also liked — especially liked — the story of Helen and Menelaus’s life together, after Troy.
I do wonder, though — are there any modern tellings of this story which are not sympathetic primarily to Troy, and which don’t portray Achilles as a sociopath?
The secret river / by Kate Grenville.
I really, really liked this. A lot. About a convict and his family, in London and then sent to Australia. I don’t want to blog much about the main themes of the book, because it will ruin the ending, which, though not a huge shock, is still something you want to be surprised by.
Carry me down / by M.J. Hyland.
This was fine — about a boy who can detect lying, maybe, and his dysfunctional family and inability to understand other people or social interaction. He reminded me a bit of my sister, so it was difficult.