tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45287860540463418432024-02-06T18:35:24.488-08:00Beth's Bookish ThoughtsBeth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.comBlogger204125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-66433042088166213432020-10-05T20:11:00.001-07:002020-10-05T20:12:20.444-07:00I Have Moved to WordPress!<p> I will see if I can update my links for FrightFall #Readathon and I think I might leave the blog up (why not?) but future posts will be at WordPress! Please come find me & comment there!</p><p>https://bethsbookishthoughts.wordpress.com/</p>Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-16315825298629039802020-09-21T10:08:00.001-07:002020-09-21T10:08:33.988-07:00Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15783514" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1497098563l/15783514._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="The Ocean at the End of the Lane" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15783514">The Ocean at the End of the Lane</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1221698">Neil Gaiman</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/753553682">5 of 5 stars</a>
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Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel (2014)<br /><br />A man visits his childhood home after many years away. His old house is gone but the farm at the end of the road is still there along with its pond. He remembers an eleven year old girl named Lettie Hempstock who lived there, and who had claimed that the pond behind her house was an ocean. He met her when he was seven years old and had since forgotten how they met and what happened when a sinister woman named Ursula Monkton came to look after him and his sister while their parents were away. Everything he has forgotten starts to come back to him. <br /><br />I listened to the audio this time (read by the author) and really loved the narration. I ended up listening to it twice. Here are some of my favorite quotes:<br /><br /><i>“Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.”<br /><br />“Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't.”<br /><br />“Nothing's ever the same," she said. "Be it a second later or a hundred years. It's always churning and roiling. And people change as much as oceans.”<br /><br />“I saw the world I had walked since my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger.”<br /><br />“Peas baffled me. I could not understand why grown-ups would take things that tasted so good raw, and then put them in tins, and make them revolting.”</i><br />
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Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-6875384592282860752020-09-16T13:52:00.003-07:002020-09-16T14:00:27.490-07:00Review: Four Weird Tales
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6993207" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Four Weird Tales" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347256946l/6993207._SX98_.jpg" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6993207">Four Weird Tales</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/38840">Algernon Blackwood</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3545803407">4 of 5 stars</a>
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Algernon Blackwood (14 March 1869 – 10 December 1951) was an English novelist and short-story writer best known for his stories of the supernatural. Many of his stories are in the public domain and online. I have previously read <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1335601.The_Willows" rel="nofollow noopener" title="The Willows by Algernon Blackwood">The Willows</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2916266.The_Man_Whom_the_Trees_Loved_" rel="nofollow noopener" title="The Man Whom the Trees Loved by Algernon Blackwood">The Man Whom the Trees Loved</a> (online and as Librivox audio recordings). This is another Librivox recording: <a href="https://librivox.org/four-weird-tales-by-algernon-blackwood/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://librivox.org/four-weird-tales...</a> I started the collection <a href="https://librivox.org/john-silence-by-algernon-blackwood/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">John Silence</a> but decided not to finish it at least for now; maybe I will try it some other time.) The readers are pretty much professional quality and I highly recommend it. All four stories are variations on a theme: the protagonist sets out to discover the secrets of the universe. <br /><br />The Insanity of Jones -- A man seeks revenge for injustices suffered in a past life. Or maybe he's just crazy; take your pick. <br /><br />The Glamour of the Snow -- My favorite! A fine ghost story. Like <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1335601.The_Willows" rel="nofollow noopener" title="The Willows by Algernon Blackwood">The Willows</a> this story deals with the terror and awe of the natural world. one of my favorite bits: <br /> <i>The world lay smothered in snow. The châlet roofs shone white beneath the moon, and pitch-black shadows gathered against the walls of the church. His eye rested a moment on the square stone tower with its frosted cross that pointed to the sky: then travelled with a leap of many thousand feet to the enormous mountains that brushed the brilliant stars. Like a forest rose the huge peaks above the slumbering village, measuring the night and heavens. They beckoned him. And something born of the snowy desolation, born of the midnight and the silent grandeur, born of the great listening hollows of the night, something that lay 'twixt terror and wonder, dropped from the vast wintry spaces down into his heart—and called him. Very softly, unrecorded in any word or thought his brain could compass, it laid its spell upon him. Fingers of snow brushed the surface of his heart. The power and quiet majesty of the winter's night appalled him...</i><br /><br /><div>The Man Who Found Out -- A man discovers the secrets of the universe and then wishes he hadn't. This one fell a bit flat for me. But there's a good post about it as part of The Lovecraft Reread, a project at Tor.com about HP Lovecraft, writers (like Blackwood) who inspired him, and writers who were inspired by him.</div><div><br /><a href="https://www.tor.com/2018/02/21/you-wish-it-were-forty-two-algernon-blackwoods-the-man-who-found-out/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.tor.com/2018/02/21/you-wi...</a> <br /><br />Sand -- The protagonist travels to Egypt and joins two other travelers exploring the desert. This is the longest story in the collection. I liked the beginning, but I think this one is a bit too long and slow. It drags a bit.<br /><br />
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3545803407">View all my reviews</a>
</div>Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-15897023732412881742020-09-12T14:32:00.004-07:002020-09-12T14:41:57.268-07:00Review: The Stone Sky (reread from 2018)
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31817749" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Stone Sky" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1478547421l/31817749._SX98_.jpg" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31817749">The Stone Sky</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2917917">N.K. Jemisin</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2474781571">5 of 5 stars</a>
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**reread 9/5/2020** Hmm. . . I thought I would have more to say about this conclusion to the trilogy when I reread the series. It was definitely worth rereading, and <u>The Stone Sky</u> certainly makes up for my slight disappointment with <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26228034.The_Obelisk_Gate__The_Broken_Earth___2_" rel="nofollow noopener" title="The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2) by N.K. Jemisin">The Obelisk Gate</a>. But contrary to what I was hoping for when I started this reread (June), I don't have much to add. I was more emotionally invested this time because keeping track of the plot didn't take up so much of my attention, so that was satisfying. <br /><br />Here are some of the highlights:<br /><i>"Say nothing to me of innocent bystanders, unearned suffering, heartless vengeance. When a comm builds atop a fault line, do you blame its walls when they inevitably crush the people inside? No; you blame whoever was stupid enough to think they could defy the laws of nature forever. Well, some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place."<br /><br />"What he offers, and what she has finally realized she needs, is purpose. Not even Schaffa has given her that, but that's because Schaffa loves her unconditionally. She needs that love, too, oh how she needs it, but in this moment, when her heart has been most thoroughly broken, when her thoughts are at their least focused, she craves something more... solid.<br /><br />She will have the solidity that she wants. She will fight for it and kill for it, because she’s had to do that again and again and it is habit now, and if she is successful she will die for it. After all, she is her mother’s daughter—and only people who think they have a future fear death." <br /><br />"There isn’t a single evil to point to, a single moment when everything changed. Things were bad and then terrible and then better and then bad again, and then they happened again, and again, because no one stopped it."<br /><br />"But there are none so frightened, or so strange in their fear, as conquerors. They conjure phantoms endlessly, terrified that their victims will someday do back what was done to them – even if, in truth, their victims couldn’t care less about such pettiness and have moved on. Conquerors live in dread of the day when they are shown to be, not superior, but simply lucky."</i><br /><br />**review 9/19/2018** I suspect these books would benefit from rereading. It would be interesting to read them again knowing what's going on and how things resolve, but at the same time I don't know if I loved these books quite enough to want to reread them. Now that I've finished the trilogy I think <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19161852.The_Fifth_Season__The_Broken_Earth___1_" rel="nofollow noopener" title="The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1) by N.K. Jemisin">The Fifth Season</a> is probably the best of the three. There’s just a lot going on in these books, and the first book is the one that does the best job of balancing the focus on the characters with other aspects of the story, I think. In the other two I felt less connected to the characters, but I still definitely recommend reading the whole thing. I don't read very many series, but this barely feels like a series to me because the books are so closely connected. <br /><br />So I'm left a tiny bit unsatisfied, but still — as someone who rarely reads epic fantasy (or post apocalyptic sf — and these books are a little of both) I am very impressed. I haven't read anything else quite like this. <br /><br />I'm having a hard time writing a real review for this one, but here are some longer reviews that I thought were insightful. <br /><br /><a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/08/19/542469223/in-the-stone-sky-some-worlds-need-to-burn" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.npr.org/2017/08/19/542469...</a> (a very good discussion with only minor spoilers) <br /><br /><a href="http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-stone-sky-by-nk-jemisin.html" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/20...</a> (major spoilers, don't read if you haven't read the book)
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Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-67696434934292266632020-09-03T17:14:00.002-07:002020-09-03T17:14:14.424-07:0015 Books of Summer update<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCsiYK2tjFFqHtDgzz4a83FtrIc84ijapIgE8jftSPfPzwBnicCv8k6-fPS1IYhV34kADnJ2jZhbvKI2sd4WiMlsqmJ6V5AZ8q-IpIZrYFJz5aLXSzomw59lJxSv8LWOfM1SeIVFTDEQg/s320/20-books-3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="314" data-original-width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCsiYK2tjFFqHtDgzz4a83FtrIc84ijapIgE8jftSPfPzwBnicCv8k6-fPS1IYhV34kADnJ2jZhbvKI2sd4WiMlsqmJ6V5AZ8q-IpIZrYFJz5aLXSzomw59lJxSv8LWOfM1SeIVFTDEQg/s0/20-books-3.png" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>I read: </p><p><u>A Canticle for Leibowitz</u> by Walter Miller </p><p><u>The Sheep Look Up</u> by John Brunner I may not get around to reviewing these sorry </p><p><u>The Hobbit</u> by JRR Tolkien (reread) <a href="https://bethsbookishthoughts.blogspot.com/2020/08/review-hobbit-or-there-and-back-again.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">review</a></p><p><u>The Road to Wigan Pier</u> by George Orwell finished this in August still need to review it</p><p><u>The Lais of Marie de France</u> <a href="https://bethsbookishthoughts.blogspot.com/2020/08/review-lays-of-marie-de-france_27.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">review</a></p><p><u>The Obelisk Gate</u> by NK Jemisin (reread) <a href="https://bethsbookishthoughts.blogspot.com/2020/08/review-obelisk-gate_24.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">review</a></p><p><u>Haroun and the Sea of Stories</u> by Salman Rushdie <a href="https://bethsbookishthoughts.blogspot.com/2020/08/minireviews-drawing-of-darkharoun-sea.html">review</a></p><p><u>Hyperion</u> by Dan Simmons <a href="https://bethsbookishthoughts.blogspot.com/2020/08/minireviews-drawing-of-darkharoun-sea.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">review</a></p><p><u>The Drawing of the Dark</u> by Tim Powers <a href="https://bethsbookishthoughts.blogspot.com/2020/08/minireviews-drawing-of-darkharoun-sea.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">review</a><br /></p><p><u>The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch</u> by Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean (reread) I'm not sure if I will review this one but it will get a review eventually - maybe next time I read it</p><p><u>Bartleby the Scrivener</u> by Herman Melville - I still need to review this</p><p><u>The Einstein Intersection</u> by Samuel Delany <a href="https://bethsbookishthoughts.blogspot.com/2020/08/minireviews-drawing-of-darkharoun-sea.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">review</a></p><p><u>Brown Girl in the Ring</u> by Nalo Hopkinson review upcoming</p><p>13 of 15 books read</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-64257501125033009902020-08-27T12:04:00.002-07:002020-08-27T12:05:24.187-07:00Review: The Lays of Marie de France
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23108965" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1492927520l/23108965._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="The Lays of Marie de France" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23108965">The Lays of Marie de France</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/69010">Marie de France</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2534678564">5 of 5 stars</a>
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The Lays of Marie de France are a series of twelve short lays (narrative poems) in Old French. I read this translation as a library ebook, but it turns out that it is also available under a Creative Commons license:<br /><a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://www.aupress.ca/app/uploads/120228_99Z_Slavitt_2013-The_Lays_of_Marie_de_France.pdf">https://www.aupress.ca/app/uploads/12...</a><br /><br />The translator, David R Slavitt, writes: <br /><i>Marie who? A number of suggestions have been proposed for the identity of this wonderful twelfth-century poet. Marie, Abbess of Shaftesbury, the illegitimate daughter of Geoffrey Plantagenet and half-sister to Henry II, King of England, is a plausible<br />candidate, but Marie, Abbess of Reading, Marie I of Boulogne, Marie, Abbess of Barking, and Marie de Meulan, wife of Hugh Talbot, are all possibilities. There were a lot of Maries, after all, but only a few who could read and write in English, Latin, and Anglo-Norman French. It is not inappropriate, however, for her to be a bit mysterious and even emblematic as the author of these strange, suggestive, and intriguing poems. One important thing we do know about her is that she also translated the Ysopet, a collection of 103 Aesopic fables, which could have influenced the<br />Lais but at least suggest something about her taste in literature. There is a fabulous quality to these poems, which are at one and the same time childish and very knowing, innocent and sophisticated.</i><br /><br />From the first tale: <br />A good story deserves to be<br />well told. My gracious lords, Marie<br />understands her obligation<br />on such a fortunate occasion<br />when an interesting story<br />presents itself. And yet I worry<br />that any show of excellence<br />invites envy of women’s or men’s<br />achievements. Slanders, insults, and lies<br />attend me. Everybody tries<br />to sneer at whatever one composes —<br />they joke and even thumb their noses.<br />They are cowardly dogs that bite,<br />mean, malicious, and full of spite.<br />But I refuse to be deterred<br />as, line by line and word by word,<br />I do my best to compose my lay,<br />whatever the jealous critics say.<br />I shall relate some tales to you<br />from Brittany that I know are true<br />and worthy of your attention. In<br />a friendly spirit, let us begin.<br /><br /><br />The highlights for me were Bisclavret (one of the earliest werewolf stories!) and Lanval. Lanval is (I think) the only one set in king Arthur's court and I think I will want to come back to it after I have read Malory. Arthur holds a feast for the knights where he gives them all rewards for their great deeds but he forgets about Lanval who later sets out on a journey. He is wooed by a fairy lady who makes him rich, and must promise not to reveal her existence. I'm sure you can guess that a promise like that is going to cause problems for him down the road, but that would be telling! Ultimately it's a fun reversal of the traditional damsel in distress tale where a knight rescues a lady, but I'm not saying any more than that. Just read it. <br /><br />There's also a very short lai concerning the romance of Tristan and Iseult. This one is so short that it was a little unsatisfying, but it made me want to read the longer version/s. I'm not sure when I will get around to it. <br /><br />
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Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-91545569203898330652020-08-26T21:38:00.005-07:002020-09-01T18:47:56.187-07:00#Frightfall Readathon Sign-up<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl66pVQZD9VOru53TEiP4J4tQ4srt8GK1cPJw3kTqkS8Z_nZ8gVqtlLBNuuE6Ieq6U5fyBDQPHx72kx-ErqScw9ZIn9dxZEYS1ded5rZbzmy-53Q750vVLNfr5ZtTk__EoidP4OXylW04/s640/%2523FrightFall+Readathon+Sept_Oct+2020.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="640" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl66pVQZD9VOru53TEiP4J4tQ4srt8GK1cPJw3kTqkS8Z_nZ8gVqtlLBNuuE6Ieq6U5fyBDQPHx72kx-ErqScw9ZIn9dxZEYS1ded5rZbzmy-53Q750vVLNfr5ZtTk__EoidP4OXylW04/w400-h225/%2523FrightFall+Readathon+Sept_Oct+2020.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-size: large;"><span>#FrightFall Readath</span><span>on is all ab</span><span>o</span><span>ut scary b</span><span>o</span><span>oks!</span><span> </span><span>Looking forward to it!</span></span><p></p>Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-1392604405430945862020-08-26T13:55:00.008-07:002020-09-03T17:09:41.366-07:00Minireviews: The Drawing of the Dark/Haroun & the Sea of Stories/Hyperion/The Einstein Intersection<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0pPZATaL2nFT_i9wAcTu-R4vvm65lmjmby9xCz6_WdXjQ0HKHB2OaXqMXz0xbeXWOYIJhv-P5NMR4_auWldaN6-79L2f1fzL6s_UF5_VxPd5GYWaCKNY_XJWgG1fWh3Hjl7IixcOy4cQ/s475/12039893.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="306" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0pPZATaL2nFT_i9wAcTu-R4vvm65lmjmby9xCz6_WdXjQ0HKHB2OaXqMXz0xbeXWOYIJhv-P5NMR4_auWldaN6-79L2f1fzL6s_UF5_VxPd5GYWaCKNY_XJWgG1fWh3Hjl7IixcOy4cQ/w129-h200/12039893.jpg" width="129" /></span></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><u style="text-decoration-line: underline;">The Drawing of the Dark</u><u> </u>by Tim Powers *** 3 stars</span></div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">This is one of Tim Powers's early novels and the first of his secret histories: several books with the shared premise that something supernatural is going on behind the scenes of history as we know it. It is set before and during the 1529 Siege of Vienna. Irishman Brian Duffy is working as a "bouncer" at an inn there when the siege begins. The first few chapters really drew me in, but the middle drags a bit (it is much shorter than <u>Declare</u> but doesn't feel like it) and the book as a whole didn't really come together for me. I might give </span><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/142296.The_Anubis_Gates" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #00635d; font-family: merriweather, georgia, serif;" title="The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers">The Anubis Gates</a><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> another try (I didn't finish that one) and I want to try </span><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/417656.The_Stress_of_Her_Regard" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #00635d; font-family: merriweather, georgia, serif;" title="The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers">The Stress of Her Regard</a><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> at some point. I was much more impressed with Declare (my <a href="https://bethsbookishthoughts.blogspot.com/2019/05/review-declare.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">review</a>)</span></span><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNe2IL4vYje6Gh46oN9fdJjfaEgMshuGz8K7Q7GO7L3aedTqcPL8ZbjGNr7pd9-8QDolCcijNCr4f0U2qNAl31z523ERyiQU16_Wou6Evw7YB8Oy0WFtUnzdcdDNWKf_-tMF27f1nlyoc/s475/471966-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="308" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNe2IL4vYje6Gh46oN9fdJjfaEgMshuGz8K7Q7GO7L3aedTqcPL8ZbjGNr7pd9-8QDolCcijNCr4f0U2qNAl31z523ERyiQU16_Wou6Evw7YB8Oy0WFtUnzdcdDNWKf_-tMF27f1nlyoc/w130-h200/471966-1.jpg" width="130" /></span></a></div></blockquote><p></p><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span face="" style="color: #181818;"> </span><u style="color: #181818; font-family: merriweather, georgia, serif;">Haroun and the Sea of Stories</u><span face="" style="color: #181818;"> </span><span face="" style="color: #181818;">by Salman Rushdie *** 3 stars</span></span></div></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span face="" style="color: #181818;">A reread of a book I first read in 2012. I probably won't read it a third time but it was fun to revisit this. Haroun & the sea of stories begins in the country of Alifbay in a city ”so ruinously sad that it has forgotten its name.” Haroun is the only child of the storyteller Rashid Khalifa, and one day his father gets up in front of a huge audience, opens his mouth, and finds that he has run out of stories to tell. Harun sets out to fix that and discovers that the source of all stories is endangered by the villain Khattam-Shud, the Arch-Enemy of All Stories.</span><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> </span></span></div><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMVxiMqxpFhE8GCBFrtEsG4k56buz_XqszzrNLMwrhQvQnIHWixWGpZ0QU4BkB5jHAxgk4hdDroygjN8jCeu9YIF79XyWx_dpAbPZzyLgp3YrmUa8DaOpIXzEENnTPlAHY3xs9wJ6XKg8/s346/36073085.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="230" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMVxiMqxpFhE8GCBFrtEsG4k56buz_XqszzrNLMwrhQvQnIHWixWGpZ0QU4BkB5jHAxgk4hdDroygjN8jCeu9YIF79XyWx_dpAbPZzyLgp3YrmUa8DaOpIXzEENnTPlAHY3xs9wJ6XKg8/w133-h200/36073085.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent;"><u>Hyperion</u> by Dan Simm</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; text-align: left;">ons *** 3 stars</span></div></span><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="" style="color: #181818; font-size: large;">A Hugo Award Winner (1990) about six people on a journey to the planet Hyperion. In the style of the Canterbury Tales, each character tells a story explaining why they are going to Hyperion. I liked the scholar and the poet best I think. And maybe the detective. The soldier's tale is the only one that didn't really do much for me. The book has frequent allusions to John Keats, including the poem Hyperion, which is based on the lost epic poem the Titanomachy, which is about the struggle of the Olympian gods to overthrow their predecessors the Titans. That gave me a hint about some of the things that happen in the book. I don't like it enough to read the sequel right away but I will probably try it at some point.</span></span></p><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span>People <a href="https://www.tor.com/2009/05/27/better-to-travel-hopefully-dan-simmons-hyperion/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">disagree</a> about whether to stick with the first book, stop after the second book or read the whole series</span><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">. </span></span></div><div><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrrDRhTi6QS4Hvg9k7b7WVDV1U1TWnJAZu9YqIrKOldy4o_WGWNXuCr3gc390ONimUy1YTonF5xD-nXhhGQ8xxOf71qU38vKKsuhC3pe95d0FmWGRpXFoGfHSAJO4qWCUS06AAlrOSanQ/s424/48581689._SX318_.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="424" data-original-width="318" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrrDRhTi6QS4Hvg9k7b7WVDV1U1TWnJAZu9YqIrKOldy4o_WGWNXuCr3gc390ONimUy1YTonF5xD-nXhhGQ8xxOf71qU38vKKsuhC3pe95d0FmWGRpXFoGfHSAJO4qWCUS06AAlrOSanQ/w150-h200/48581689._SX318_.jpg" width="150" /></span></a></div><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-size: large;">I think I liked the other Delany books I have read better (Babel-17 and The Ballad of Beta-2 / Empire Star).</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-size: large;"><div>Here is what Neil Gaiman said about it in <u>The Sandman Companion</u>:</div><div><i>"My original plan [for The Song of Orpheus] was to do the equivalent of a series of jazz riffs, all on Orphic themes, spinning off of stories precisely like The Einstein Intersection. It would have been much weirder and more interesting than what I ended up writing."</i> He says he kept hearing that people weren't familiar with the original story, so the story he wrote for Sandman was a more literal retelling.</div><div><br /></div><div>Huh. Now that I've read <u>The Einstein Intersection</u> I can say that knowing the Orpheus story ahead of time (I finally read Metamorphoses in its entirety last year) didn't help. I will probably read something else by Delany someday (maybe Tales of Nevèrÿon but I am not a huge fan of his so far.</div><div><br /></div><div>I listened to the audiobook read by Stefan Rudnicki from the library service hoopla digital. This book won the 1967 Nebula Award for Best Novel.</div></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div><div><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><p>
</p><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"><br /></span></p>Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-24044346683596399312020-08-26T10:14:00.004-07:002020-08-26T10:28:10.384-07:00Review: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (repost from GoodReads 2017)
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15943193" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1346439179l/15943193._SX98_.jpg" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15943193">Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/27276">Robert Charles Wilson</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1710904772">5 of 5 stars</a>
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This is a great adventure story - funny, dramatic, and bittersweet - and my favorite SF novel that I've read this year. The old-fashioned tone is completely convincing and switches easily between humorous moments and serious ones. The exposition is really well done, in such a way that it's probably quite accessible to people who don't read much SF (although it doesn't seem to be well known enough to get much of that readership). <br /><br />Set a century and a half after a combination of peak oil + disease + economic collapse reduces modern civilization to Civil-War-level tech, this book takes place in a future North America where Canada is part of the United States, the presidency has become dynastic and is ruled by the Comstock family, and true political power is in the hands of the religious authority known as the Dominion. The post-apocalyptic society in the book emulates the 19th century, but it has all the American 19th century's flaws, without some of its key virtues; the actual 19th century was a time of overall progress, while the society in the book is clearly in decline. Oh, and the United States is at war with the Dutch over control of the Northwest Passage. <br /><br />The narrator, Adam Hazzard, is a young writer. Adam makes friends with the president's nephew, Julian Comstock, whose life is loosely inspired by the life of Julian the Apostate. They get conscripted into the army while Julian is hiding his identity. Eventually Julian becomes a war hero and at the celebrations that follow, his actual identity is disclosed. <br /><br /><a href="https://www.tor.com/2010/04/07/julian-the-apostate-on-a-gunboat-robert-charles-wilsons-julian-comstock/" rel="nofollow">This review</a> says that <i>"Wilson himself described it by saying he was reading a US Civil War memoir called “Frank on a gunboat” and thought that was good as far as it went, but it would be better if it was Julian the Apostate on a gunboat and that's what this book is."</i> Like the historical Julian, his goal is to reintroduce earlier traditions, but in this case, that means reimposing separation of church and state as public policy. Also, he wants to make a film about Darwin.<br /><br />Along with <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416327.Eifelheim" rel="nofollow" title="Eifelheim by Michael Flynn">Eifelheim</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/126502.Michael_Flynn" rel="nofollow" title="Michael Flynn">Michael Flynn</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24983.Doomsday_Book__Oxford_Time_Travel___1_" rel="nofollow" title="Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1) by Connie Willis">Doomsday Book</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14032.Connie_Willis" rel="nofollow" title="Connie Willis">Connie Willis</a> this is one of the better science fiction books I've read that deals with religion although this one is coming at it from the other (irreligious) side. I loved everything about it and I will definitely read it again someday. </span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><i>“You must not make the mistake of thinking that because nothing lasts, nothing matters.”</i><br /> <br />There's an interesting interview with the author <a href="https://www.tor.com/2009/05/25/a-conv... ">here</a></span><i style="font-size: x-large;">.</i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /><br />
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1710904772">View all my reviews</a>
</div></div>Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-32608167099355374822020-08-26T09:39:00.009-07:002020-08-26T10:24:45.164-07:00Review: 2312 (repost from 2016 on GoodReads)
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11830394" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="2312" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1405778758l/11830394._SX98_.jpg" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11830394">2312</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1858">Kim Stanley Robinson</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1330657882">5 of 5 stars</a>
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2312 is a future history in which new habitats have been created throughout our solar system, on Mercury, Venus, Mars, several of Jupiter’s moons, Saturn and its moons, and inside many asteroids. Much of the plot revolves around the mystery of a series of terrorist attacks in the solar system, but the book has a very meandering pace and spends a lot of time focusing on other things. The book is a slowly developing romance between Swan Er Hong, from Mercury, and Wahram, from Iapetus, one of Saturn’s terraformed moons. (Robinson is having some fun with personality types here, as Swan is a mercurial character and Wahram is, well, saturnine… Swan was a hard character to like at times, but they’re both interesting and I loved reading about them.) <br /><br /><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11830394.2312" rel="nofollow" title="2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson">2312</a> takes a pretty balanced view of the future, and avoids the extremes of apocalyptic pessimism or shiny techno-utopia. The regular chapters are interspersed with various lists (written by Swan) fake nonfiction extracts that describe the colonization of the solar system, and stream of consciousness sections. I loved it; there aren't a whole lot of writers who can make exposition a pleasure to read, but <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1858.Kim_Stanley_Robinson" rel="nofollow" title="Kim Stanley Robinson">Kim Stanley Robinson</a> is one of them. <br /><br />The descriptions of the settlement of the solar system are extremely detailed and clearly well researched. Much of the book takes place in Terminator, a moving city on Mercury. Terminator moves around Mercury on train tracks at the speed of the planet’s rotation, never staying in one place long enough to be scorched by Mercury’s dawn. The opening chapter describes the sunwalkers who come to Mercury to watch the sunrise. <br /><br />Besides the colonization of space, the book examines body modification, the potential future of AI, and environmental issues. Swan has undergone several modifications of her body and brain, including having parts of animal brains implanted in her head so that she can whistle like a bird, implanting a quantum computer in her head, and modifying her reproductive organs so that she can both mother and father children. She has also ingested alien bacteria discovered in the oceans of Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons. (The AI developments in this book provide background for the more advanced quantum computer AI in Aurora.) <br /><br />Earth is almost an ice-free planet but the terraforming techniques used off-planet usually won’t work on the already inhabited Earth:. "no slamming comets into it, for instance. So they bubbled their ship wakes with surfactants to create a higher albedo, and tried various levels of sulfur dioxide injected into the stratosphere, imitating volcanoes; but that had once led to disaster, and now they couldn’t agree on how much sunlight to block… no, Earth was a mess, a sad place. And yet still the center of the story. It had to be dealt with, as Alex had said, or nothing done in space was real."<br /><br />I will definitely reread this book (and <u>Aurora</u>) but I want to read some of Kim Stanley Robinson’s other books first, especially <u>The Wild Shore</u> and its sequels <u>The Gold Coast</u> and <u>Pacific Edge.</u></span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><u><br /></u>my favorite quotes:<br /><br /><i>"… as the sunwalkers stand on their points and watch, it’s not uncommon for devotees to become entranced by something in the sight, some pattern never seen before, something in the pulse and flow that snags the mind; suddenly the sizzle of the fiery cilia becomes audible, a turbulent roaring— that’s your own blood, rushing through your ears, but in those moments it sounds just like the sun burning. And so people stay too long. Some have their retinas burned; some are blinded; others are killed outright, betrayed by an overwhelmed spacesuit. Some are cooked in groups of a dozen or more. Do you imagine they must have been fools? Do you think you would never make such a mistake? Don’t you be so sure. Really you have no idea. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. You may think you are inured, that nothing outside the mind can really interest you anymore, as sophisticated and knowledgeable as you are. But you would be wrong. You are a creature of the sun. The beauty and terror of it seen from so close can empty any mind, thrust anyone into a trance."<br /><br />"To simplify history would be to distort reality. By the early twenty-fourth century there was too much going on to be either seen or understood. Assiduous attempts by contemporary historians to achieve an agreed-upon paradigm foundered, and we are no different now, looking back at them. It’s hard to even assemble enough data to make a guess."<br /><br />"[The sky] looked like a blue dome flattened at the center, perhaps a few kilometers above the clouds — she reached up for it — although knowing too that it was just a kind of rainbow made it glorious. A rainbow that was blue everywhere and covered everything. The blue itself was complex, narrow in range but infinite within that range. It was an intoxicating sight, and you could breathe it — one was always breathing it, you had to. The wind shoved it into you!"<br /><br />"Here they were, on the only planetary surface on which you could walk freely, naked to the wind and the sun, and when they had a choice, they sat in boxes and stared at littler boxes..." <br /><br />"Sometimes I think it's only post-scarcity that evil exists. Before that, it could always be put down to want or fear. It was possible to believe, as apparently you did, that when fear and want went away, bad deeds would too. Humanity would be revealed as some kind of bonobo, an altruistic cooperator, a lover of all."<br /><br />"All landscape art reminds us: we live in a tabula rasa, and must write on it. It is our world, and its beauty is entirely inside our heads."<br /><br />"Io, the innermost moon of Jupiter, a big as Luna. They yellow slag world, awesome upchucking of a moon's guts, regurgitation overland over until everything more volatile than sulfur has long since burned off. Sulfur, sulfur everywhere, and nary a place to stand. Four hundred live volcanoes bursting through the slag like angry boils, geysering sulfur dioxide hundreds of kilometers into the air… The hard crust on its surface, cooled only by contact with the chill vacuum of space, is so thin that in many places it would not support a standing person. Some early explorers found this out the hard way: walking too far away from their lander, they plunged through the sulfurous ground into red-hot lava and disappeared. <br /><br />We think that because we live on cooler planets and moons, we live on safer ground than that. But it is not so."<i></i></i>
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1330657882">View all my reviews</a></span>
</div>Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-37485363016182670352020-08-26T09:17:00.005-07:002020-08-26T20:03:04.410-07:00Review: Doomsday Book (repost from 2016 on GoodReads)
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24983" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Doomsday Book" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403972500l/24983._SY160_.jpg" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24983">Doomsday Book</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14032">Connie Willis</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1325793376">4 of 5 stars</a>
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I found out about this book when GoodReads recommended it after I added <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77773.To_Say_Nothing_of_the_Dog__Oxford_Time_Travel___2_" rel="nofollow" title="To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2) by Connie Willis">To Say Nothing of the Dog</a>. I hadn’t realized it was part of a series. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24983.Doomsday_Book__Oxford_Time_Travel__1_" rel="nofollow" title="Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel #1) by Connie Willis">Doomsday Book</a> is the first book in Connie Willis’s Oxford Time Travel series, which is about historians at a near-future version of Oxford University who use time travel as part of their research. It won both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards for Best Novel in 1992.<br /><br />This novel is a drama with some moments of comic relief, while <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77773.To_Say_Nothing_of_the_Dog__Oxford_Time_Travel___2_" rel="nofollow" title="To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2) by Connie Willis">To Say Nothing of the Dog</a> is a comedy with some dramatic moments. Kivrin, an Oxford student studying medieval history, is well prepared to visit the fourteenth century: "She had learned Middle English and Church Latin and Anglo-Saxon. She had memorized the Latin masses and taught herself how to embroider and milk a cow. She had come up with an identity and a rationale for being alone on the road between Oxford and Bath, and she had the interpreter and augmented stem cells and no appendix." <br /><br />Kivrin is supposed to be sent to the year 1320 — but something goes wrong. She ends up in 1348 instead, shortly before Christmas…. which happens to be right before the Black Death arrives in England. Back in modern times, a dangerous strain of flu hits Oxford University. As the faculty tries to figure out what went wrong with Kivrin’s assignment and how to rescue her, they must address a crisis in their own time as well. <br /><br />The only real complaint I have is about the modern-day section. This was written in 1992, so I can’t really blame Willis for not predicting that there would be cell phones in her near-future setting, but there were definitely answering machines in major institutions in 1992, and there aren’t any here. It’s hard to ignore because much of the plot revolves around telephone communication. But that's a minor thing, and it's an excellent book otherwise. <br /><br /><i>"Mr Dunworthy had told her it wouldn’t be anything like she imagined, and he was right, of course. But not about this mass. She had imagined it just like this, the stone floor and the murmured Kyrie, the smells of incense and tallow and cold."<br /><br />"They’ve all died, she thought, and couldn’t make herself believe it. They’ve all been dead over seven hundred years."<br /><br />"Are these the last days, the end of the world that God’s apostles have foretold?"<br />Yes, Kivrin thought. "No," she said. "No. It’s only a bad time. A terrible time, but not everyone will die. And there will be wonderful times after this. The Renaissance and class reforms and music. Wonderful times. There will be new medicines, and people won’t have to die from this or smallpox or pneumonia. And everyone will have enough to eat, and their houses will be warm even in the winter." She thought of Oxford, decorated for Christmas, the streets and shops lit. "There will be lights everywhere, and bells that you don’t have to ring."<br /><br />"I wanted to come, and if I hadn’t, they would have been all alone, and nobody would have ever known how frightened and brave and irreplaceable they were."<br /><br />"Most of it was terrible," she said softly, "but there were some wonderful things."</i>
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1325793376">View all my reviews</a>
Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-17494911352084387332020-08-24T16:35:00.006-07:002020-08-26T08:24:27.690-07:00Review: The Obelisk Gate
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26228034" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Obelisk Gate" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1578523237l/26228034._SX98_.jpg" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26228034">The Obelisk Gate</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2917917">N.K. Jemisin</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2333180930">4 of 5 stars</a> <br /><div><div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Synopsis from GoodReads: <i>This is the way the world ends... for the last time.</i></span></div><div><i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-size: large;">The season of endings grows darker as civilization fades into the long cold night. Alabaster Tenring – madman, world-crusher, savior – has returned with a mission: to train his successor, Essun, and thus seal the fate of the Stillness forever.</span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-size: large;">It continues with a lost daughter, found by the enemy.</span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-size: large;">It continues with the obelisks, and an ancient mystery converging on answers at last.</span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-size: large;">The Stillness is the wall which stands against the flow of tradition, the spark of hope long buried under the thickening ashfall. And it will not be broken. </span></i></div></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
I'm afraid this book suffers a little from being the second book in a trilogy. There is a great deal of exposition here and for some reason, I didn't find those sections as engaging to read as in the first book. I will reread <u>The Stone Sky</u> soon (probably some time in the next few weeks) but I hope I don't forget anything important, because some of the details of the setting just didn't stick in my head the way they have with other books. (I am one of those people who loved all the footnotes in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, so I can really get into this sort of thing with the right book.) <br /><br />This book is told from three perspectives: Essun, Nassun, and Schaffa. Most of that slightly frustrating exposition is in Essun's chapters. Essun spent most of the first book searching for her daughter, and in this book we find out where she is: her father Jija took her to a community called Found Moon hoping to cure her orogeny. Nassun's chapters have a lot more dramatic tension than Essun's, and we learn a lot about her difficult relationship with her both her parents. I liked having Schaffa's point of view; in the first book he's almost a villain but I had some sympathy for him here. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">This is a tricky book to review because there are some things I'd like to discuss (mostly related to the ruthlessness of the characters) that would involve spoilers. I never discuss spoilers in reviews but for <u>The Stone Sky</u> I might have to. I'll figure out what to do about that when I read it, I guess. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Some of my favorite quotes: <br /><i style="background-color: white; color: #4c4c4c; font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif;">”</i><i>But if you stay, no part of this comm gets to decide that any part of this comm is expendable. No voting on who gets to be people.</i><i style="background-color: white; color: #4c4c4c; font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif;">”</i> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i><i style="background-color: white; color: #4c4c4c; font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif;">”</i><i>It's not hate that you're seeing. Hate requires emotion. What this woman has simply done is realize that you are a rogga, and decide that you aren't a person, just like that.</i><i style="background-color: white; color: #4c4c4c; font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif;">”</i></span><br /><br />
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2333180930">View all my reviews</a>
</div>Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-38427127962483172552020-08-20T17:22:00.003-07:002020-08-26T08:25:02.938-07:00Bout of Books: Master Post (updated)<p><span style="font-size: large;">I signed up on <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user_status/show/304859295">GoodReads</a></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjddMgBMeRmrmIPscdMyaau4g-9zOt7j6xsO1skkkgiH09wFq0av2pZvobZdtclwu0fwNN8YPkrClonxPieKwGV4JCiscy3rRYtTKgxCFn96vxsjA8521M__bzCNaOTujKCBcQXcgBzgyU/s475/26228034._SY475_.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="303" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjddMgBMeRmrmIPscdMyaau4g-9zOt7j6xsO1skkkgiH09wFq0av2pZvobZdtclwu0fwNN8YPkrClonxPieKwGV4JCiscy3rRYtTKgxCFn96vxsjA8521M__bzCNaOTujKCBcQXcgBzgyU/w127-h200/26228034._SY475_.jpg" width="127" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8PhGWf3ujV-XsDC1-jT1E6TJPw1HqrHMzaHAIonEv6XdUYdMnEuOOteHgjdrtpsiwF6QNNnqijWPqmq9aow0Y2F3BRsdoXKeAHP-S9z5_DZ85JrsOygY9g9ScP1nNFwOR1DavMA0DbpU/s417/ebc_9781927356371_270.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="417" data-original-width="270" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8PhGWf3ujV-XsDC1-jT1E6TJPw1HqrHMzaHAIonEv6XdUYdMnEuOOteHgjdrtpsiwF6QNNnqijWPqmq9aow0Y2F3BRsdoXKeAHP-S9z5_DZ85JrsOygY9g9ScP1nNFwOR1DavMA0DbpU/w129-h200/ebc_9781927356371_270.jpg" width="129" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHyR1cyHygI9Af8_xe_-dU3SZqZAO3IM4oHQCgiznMf2nAEGR1GH-jTbYb7AQ6j3G6nu0BvLOafQqwPcPNFEcFJHQFXuD-HX33KdeEtkZE0qbFO7n2fFv9p1F6r0sHhWwW05WjXAmgh8o/s346/36073085.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="230" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHyR1cyHygI9Af8_xe_-dU3SZqZAO3IM4oHQCgiznMf2nAEGR1GH-jTbYb7AQ6j3G6nu0BvLOafQqwPcPNFEcFJHQFXuD-HX33KdeEtkZE0qbFO7n2fFv9p1F6r0sHhWwW05WjXAmgh8o/w133-h200/36073085.jpg" width="133" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>The Obelisk Gate</u> by NK Jemisin (The Broken Earth Trilogy #2) 87-100% (ebook)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>The Lais of Marie de France</u> translated by David Slavitt - pages 219-327 finished! (page numbers on phone) (ebook)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>Hyperion</u> by Dan Simmons (Hyperion Cantos, #1) 482 pgs (ebook)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">I'm not sure if I will finish:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer</u> by Neal Stephenson 37% read</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>Black Amazon of Mars</u> by Leigh Brackett 15% (LibriVox) </span></p><p><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">TBR:</span></b></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>The Einstein Intersection</u> by Samuel R Delany (audio - hoopla digital with library acct)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>Brown Girl in the Ring</u> by Nalo Hopkinson (print - public library)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">8/24/2020:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">I finished <u>The Einstein Intersection</u> and wrote about it <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3503151497">here</a>; I probably won't write a full review</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">I started <u>The R</u><u>oad t</u><u>o Wigan Pier</u> by George Orwell and <u>Le Morte d'Arthur</u> by Sir Thomas Malory </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">I read <u>Bartleby the Scrivener</u> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">I re-read <i>Aldarion and Erendis</i> from <u>Unfinished Tales</u> by JRR Tolkien (expect a post about this sometime next month when I've reviewed the books I finished this week) </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">I will have some reviews up soon!</span></p><p><br /></p>Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-39756807800353691752020-08-16T14:15:00.006-07:002020-12-31T10:30:59.268-08:00 Great Series Read Project! <p><span style="font-size: x-large;">This is my list for the Great Series Read Project started by Caitlin at <a href="https://realmsofmymind.wordpress.com/2018/12/13/the-great-series-read-project-first-post/">Realms of My Mind<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">.</span></a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Starred books are on the </span><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/group/bookshelf/1865-scifi-and-fantasy-book-club?order=d&per_page=30&shelf=read" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: x-large;">group bookshelf</span></a><span style="font-size: x-large;"> for one of my GoodReads groups<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">. </span>Struck through titles have been read already; some of them will be reread but I'm not sure which ones<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">. </span> </span></p><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Most of these I haven't even started yet, so I may decide not to finish some of them<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">. </span></span></div><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Adams, Richard: <b>Beklan Empire: </b><u>Shardik/Maia</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Burke, Sue:<b> Semiosis: </b><u>Semiosis*/Interference</u> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Bujold, Lois McMaster: <b>World of the Five Gods:</b> <u>The Curse of Chalion*/Paladin of Souls/The Hallowed Hunt</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Butler, Octavia: <b>The Patternists:</b><u> Wild Seed*/Mind of my Mind/Clay’s Ark/Survivor/Patternmaster</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Cherryh, CJ: <b>Foreigner series</b> <u>Foreigner*/Invader/Inherit</u><u>or</u> (first trilogy arc, part of a larger series; I am going to leave it at that for now)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Crowley, John: <b>Aegypt Quartet</b> (I own the second volume, which I grabbed at a library sale - need to get the rest from the library): <u>The </u></span><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>Solitudes/Love & Sleep/Daemonomania/Endless Things</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>Ha Lee</u>, <u> Y</u>oon:<u> The Machineries of Empire: Ninefox Gambit*/Raven Stratagem/Revenant Gun</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Hobb, Robin: <b>Liveship Traders Trilogy</b>: <u>Ship of Magic*/Mad Ship/Ship </u><u>of Destiny</u> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Jemisin, NK: <b>Broken Earth tril</b><b>ogy</b>: <u><strike>The Fifth Season*/The Obelisk Gate*/The Stone Sky*</strike></u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Jones, Diana Wynne: <b>Chrestomanci series:</b> <u>Charmed Life*/The Lives of Christopher Chant/The Magicians of Caprona/Conrads Fate/The Pinhoe Egg</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Kay, Guy Gavriel:<b> Under Heaven: </b><u>Under Heaven*</u>/<u>River of Stars</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Kuang, R.F.: <b>The Poppy War trilogy</b>: <u>The Poppy War*/The Dragon Republic/The Burning God</u> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Liu, Ken: <b>Dandelion Dynasty:</b> <u>The Grace of Kings*/The Wall of Storms/The Veiled Throne</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Novik, Naomi: <b>Temeraire:</b> <u>His Majesty's Dragon*/Throne of Jade/Black Powder War/Empire of Ivory Victory of Eagle/Tongues of Serpents/Crucible of Gold/Blood of Tyrants/League of Dragons</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Palmer, Ada: <b> Terra Ignota</b> - <u><strike>Too Like the Lightning*/Seven Surrenders*</strike>/</u><u>The Will to Battle/Perhaps the Stars</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Robinson, Kim Stanley: <b>Three Californias trilogy</b>: <u>The Wild Shore/The Gold Coast/Pacific Edge</u> (audio)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Samatar, Sofia: <u><strike>A Stranger in Olondria</strike></u>/<u>The Winged Histories</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Shanower, Eric: <u>Age Of Bronze Vol. 1: A Thousand Ships/Age Of Bronze Vol. 2: Sacrifice/Age Of Bronze Vol. 3A: Betrayal Pt 1/</u><u>Age Of Bronze Vol. 3B: Betrayal Pt 4</u> (reread) </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Simmons, Dan: <b>Hyperion Cant</b><b>os: </b><u><strike>Hyperion*</strike>/The Fall of Hyperion/Endymion/The Rise of Endymion</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Vance, Jack: <b>Lyonesse trilogy:</b> <u>Suldruns Garden/The Green Pearl/Madouc</u> (the library doesn't have this one so I will have to buy it at some point)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Willis, Connie: Oxford Time Travel series: <u><strike>Doomsday Book*/To Say Nothing of the Dog*</strike>/Blackout*/All Clear*</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Yang, JY: <b>Tensorate series</b>: <u><strike>The Black Tides of Heaven</strike>/The Red Threads of Fortune/The Descent Of Monsters/The Ascent to Godhood</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Zelazny, Roger: <b>Chronicles of Amber - Corwin series: </b><u>Nine Princes in Amber*/The Guns of Avalon/Sign of the Unicorn/The Hand of Oberon/The Courts of Chaos</u></span></p><p><br /></p>Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-19463146619660994572020-08-12T16:23:00.001-07:002020-08-26T10:56:18.961-07:00Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Loved but Never Reviewed<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQJR1Fi2aTp3HH-1TbE0_BX4IsKZmygALlIYaQ2o2U7UAlHJElSeUica_U40Pa1mC5pPeI3PMbq_lbv_EqC3bWDMKrWqHnE84nK1Qx2rtx7RBLXmVVC8XjcWMJUePoL30t-eC5_ChPmpQ/s500/TTT-NEW.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="203" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQJR1Fi2aTp3HH-1TbE0_BX4IsKZmygALlIYaQ2o2U7UAlHJElSeUica_U40Pa1mC5pPeI3PMbq_lbv_EqC3bWDMKrWqHnE84nK1Qx2rtx7RBLXmVVC8XjcWMJUePoL30t-eC5_ChPmpQ/s0/TTT-NEW.png" /></a></div><p><br /></p><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">I will probably review all of these eventually, but for now, I have included the blurbs (mostly from GoodReads) </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU3W2OZ2YOmT1KLEVtsjLfFHdGuKeZKW06biDYdaDGjzrVCqBg3ma6kEPpfgmUvoydHj0l-X8mrG3qUVpcqCvjpuIU2rblswZ2ZQqDQGosq3eAe8XB5KR4LcZ_jSc4HEs0-kFRCpEvRQE/s475/214187.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU3W2OZ2YOmT1KLEVtsjLfFHdGuKeZKW06biDYdaDGjzrVCqBg3ma6kEPpfgmUvoydHj0l-X8mrG3qUVpcqCvjpuIU2rblswZ2ZQqDQGosq3eAe8XB5KR4LcZ_jSc4HEs0-kFRCpEvRQE/w126-h200/214187.jpg" width="126" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> <u>Tolkien & the Great War</u></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i style="text-align: center;">“To be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than in 1939 . . . by 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.” </i><i>So J.R.R. Tolkien responded to critics who saw The Lord of the Rings as a reaction to the Second World War. Tolkien and the Great War tells for the first time the full story of how he embarked on the creation of Middle-earth in his youth as the world around him was plunged into catastrophe. This biography reveals the horror and heroism that he experienced as a signals officer in the Battle of the Somme and introduces the circle of friends who spurred his mythology into life. It shows how, after two of these brilliant young men were killed, Tolkien pursued the dream they had all shared by launching his epic of good and evil.</i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">This is the first substantially new biography of Tolkien since 1977, meticulously researched and distilled from his personal wartime papers and a multitude of other sources.</span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">John Garth argues that the foundation of tragic experience in the First World War is the key to Middle-earth's enduring power. Tolkien used his mythic imagination not to escape from reality but to reflect and transform the cataclysm of his generation. While his contemporaries surrendered to disillusionment, he kept enchantment alive, reshaping an entire literary tradition into a form that resonates to this day.</span></i></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7IWMPIqYwbClI3H-20x39fhMI81OSFBlCLoXrZfaA_Xni0DQYzGdMzwQoukLr-mSepv8jGNjHo8eCEuS8jYf6TMHBCX2bGUYva-Z7cTvrN2XFb5UtzrzDjtAxtbSTQ2NJyHAFrkoLEVE/s400/567657.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="245" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7IWMPIqYwbClI3H-20x39fhMI81OSFBlCLoXrZfaA_Xni0DQYzGdMzwQoukLr-mSepv8jGNjHo8eCEuS8jYf6TMHBCX2bGUYva-Z7cTvrN2XFb5UtzrzDjtAxtbSTQ2NJyHAFrkoLEVE/w123-h200/567657.jpg" width="123" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><u>Small Gods</u></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">O</span>ne of my favorite books in the Discworld series! This one can be read alone<em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">, </em>although there are a few connections to other books in the series<em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">. </em>I loved this<em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">, </em><span face=""> but I need to reread it in order to review it</span><span style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">. </span></span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="border: 0px; font-size: large; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></span></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: start;"><div style="color: #383838; text-align: left;"><em style="border: 0px; font-size: x-large; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">‘Just because you can’t explain it, doesn’t mean it’s a miracle.’</em></div><span style="font-size: large;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #383838;"><br /></span></div><em style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">On the Discworld, religion is a controversial business.</em></div></em><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><em style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Everyone has their own opinion, and indeed their own gods, of every shape and size, and all elbowing for space at the top. In such a competitive environment, shape and size can be pretty crucial to make one’s presence felt.</em></div></em><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><em style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">So it’s certainly not helpful for the Great God Om to find himself in the body of a tortoise, a manifestation far below god-like status in anyone’s book.</em></div></em><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><em style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">In such instances, you need an acolyte, and fast. Brutha, the novice, is the Chosen One – or at least the only one available. He wants peace and justice and brotherly love. He also wants the Inquisition to stop torturing him now, please…</em></div></em><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><span style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">The Discworld novels can be read in any order but Small Gods is a standalone novel.</div></span></span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: start;"><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">(blurb from <a href="https://www.terrypratchettbooks.com/books/small-gods/" style="border: 0px; color: #047ac6; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">https://www.terrypratchettbooks.com/books/small-gods/</a>)</span></div></div></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvHFQi991dtqOwgmeDkQ6Bu9A76ezFiZPimJvfg6vAFES9Eq68piZsHto7ansaao9T5n4rALJELHLTzpHhxeGD-4Ih147VdO7GaiuF8N0EN4LUl7kxMX1erZjevwd8vnbW7SUqdNl3Cuc/s350/51FSoAdqPzL._SL350_.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="231" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvHFQi991dtqOwgmeDkQ6Bu9A76ezFiZPimJvfg6vAFES9Eq68piZsHto7ansaao9T5n4rALJELHLTzpHhxeGD-4Ih147VdO7GaiuF8N0EN4LUl7kxMX1erZjevwd8vnbW7SUqdNl3Cuc/w132-h200/51FSoAdqPzL._SL350_.jpg" width="132" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span face="" style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-size: large; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: start;"><u>Nation</u></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Another of my favorite Pratchett books! This one is not part of the Discworld series<em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">.</em></span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Alone on a desert island — everything and everyone he knows and loves has been washed away in a storm — Mau is the last surviving member of his nation. He’s completely alone — or so he thinks until he finds the ghost girl. She has no toes, wears strange lacy trousers like the grandfather bird, and gives him a stick that can make fire. </span></em><em style="border: 0px; font-size: x-large; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Daphne, sole survivor of the wreck of the Sweet Judy, almost immediately regrets trying to shoot the native boy. Thank goodness the powder was wet and the gun only produced a spark. She’s certain her father, distant cousin of the Royal family, will come and rescue her but it seems, for now, that all she has for company is the boy and the foul-mouthed ship’s parrot, until other survivors arrive to take refuge on the island. Together, Mau and Daphne discover some remarkable things (including how to milk a pig, and why spitting in beer is a good thing), and start to forge a new nation.</em></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: start;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: #383838; font-size: large;"><div style="text-align: left;"><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Encompassing themes of death and nationhood, Terry Pratchett’s new novel is, as can be expected, extremely funny, witty and wise. Mau’s ancestors have something to teach us all. Mau just wishes they would shut up about it and let him get on with saving everyone’s lives</em><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">. </em></div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTgZEfrI3lHV2i2uVYS3epvrtx54JVQ2VmPWd-tDSOjA9i6fPGt937GibzWisJcaFrwc52DbHFmlwpk70_dKFDga_JdY8V85PfuVer6QNuZ6FUlWbVDva77L7BAA9Ai0tyG7NfpLIckUA/s475/73574.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="312" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTgZEfrI3lHV2i2uVYS3epvrtx54JVQ2VmPWd-tDSOjA9i6fPGt937GibzWisJcaFrwc52DbHFmlwpk70_dKFDga_JdY8V85PfuVer6QNuZ6FUlWbVDva77L7BAA9Ai0tyG7NfpLIckUA/w131-h200/73574.jpg" width="131" /></span></a></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: start;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #383838; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><div style="text-align: left;"><u style="color: #383838;">Lud-in-the-Mist</u></div><span style="border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em;"><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"></em></span></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><em style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Lud-in-the-Mist, the capital city of the small country Dorimare, is a port at the confluence of two rivers, the Dapple and the Dawl. The Dapple has its origin beyond the Debatable Hills to the west of Lud-in-the-Mist, in Fairyland. In the days of Duke Aubrey, some centuries earlier, fairy things had been looked upon with reverence, and fairy fruit was brought down the Dapple and enjoyed by the people of Dorimare. But after Duke Aubrey had been expelled from Dorimare by the burghers, the eating of fairy fruit came to be regarded as a crime, and anything related to Fairyland was unspeakable. Now, when his son Ranulph is believed to have eaten fairy fruit, Nathaniel Chanticleer, the mayor of Lud-in-the-Mist, finds himself looking into old mysteries in order to save his son and the people of his city.</em><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGZLltL6CZD-TNy-kpGHauU8ttT2L1qVp_PzuY3E8rPJHx1riwj3ET6vDGdw3QNWrQasZjCFERWwxTa5im5tGud9aonmCnpV-Qk9D1X3Xn7hZbpAVzLu04d0jy_9DykZoHv_fTOo5OO7k/s293/61MYX5jVU%252BL._SY291_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_QL40_ML2_.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="192" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGZLltL6CZD-TNy-kpGHauU8ttT2L1qVp_PzuY3E8rPJHx1riwj3ET6vDGdw3QNWrQasZjCFERWwxTa5im5tGud9aonmCnpV-Qk9D1X3Xn7hZbpAVzLu04d0jy_9DykZoHv_fTOo5OO7k/w131-h200/61MYX5jVU%252BL._SY291_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_QL40_ML2_.jpg" width="131" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><u>The Broken Sword</u> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Thor broke the sword Tyrfing to save the roots of Yggdrasil, the tree that binds earth, heaven and hell. Now the elves need the weapon for their war against the trolls. Only Scafloc, a human kidnapped and raised by elves, can hope to persuade Bolverk the ice-giant to make Tyrfing whole again. But Scafloc must also confront his shadow self, Valgard, the changeling in his place among men. </span></em></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinng3biKoCfSE6eBzFfjBlGe7L843gxUBMdbTvDYtpIsOqKCtGU_MbtdFJ9uHzXxfk97zK6aVwiEIYoqhiGkMPDoIXfLmCX10aF2ab6hYs6m0f5-zM92MR160t5ypED7bTGhyphenhyphendKbwII3o/s1200/81xScSMIsSL.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="767" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinng3biKoCfSE6eBzFfjBlGe7L843gxUBMdbTvDYtpIsOqKCtGU_MbtdFJ9uHzXxfk97zK6aVwiEIYoqhiGkMPDoIXfLmCX10aF2ab6hYs6m0f5-zM92MR160t5ypED7bTGhyphenhyphendKbwII3o/w128-h200/81xScSMIsSL.jpg" width="128" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><u><span style="font-size: large;">The King of Elfland's Daughter</span></u></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">One of the great early fantasies; I read this years ago and found it enchanting<span face="" style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">,</span> so I want to read it again someday<span face="" style="color: #383838; font-style: italic;">. </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">The poetic style and sweeping grandeur of The King of Elfland's Daughter has made it one of the most beloved fantasy novels of our time, a masterpiece that influenced some of the greatest contemporary fantasists.</span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: #383838; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPZzTXtforjzYmCaeeakipWZSqBdB086aPbxZeHnPtxmbg6VqYdHuzxg9Di8tAyQGAHNZYBkVp5oYb_TNrugy1A8lX5SQcYaORUWj07EUBdP153-w9QGJveTpCVsS14UbfBtoGASKueJE/s1029/61I4zSiOMBL.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1029" data-original-width="625" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPZzTXtforjzYmCaeeakipWZSqBdB086aPbxZeHnPtxmbg6VqYdHuzxg9Di8tAyQGAHNZYBkVp5oYb_TNrugy1A8lX5SQcYaORUWj07EUBdP153-w9QGJveTpCVsS14UbfBtoGASKueJE/w122-h200/61I4zSiOMBL.jpg" width="122" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: #383838; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><u style="text-align: left;"><br /></u></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><u>The Years of Rice & Salt</u> by Kim Stanley Robinson</span><br /></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">It is the fourteenth century and one of the most apocalyptic events in human history is set to occur - the coming of the Black Death. History teaches us that a third of Europe's population was destroyed. But what if? What if the plague killed 99 percent of the population instead? How would the world have changed? This is a look at the history that could have been: a history that stretches across centuries, a history that sees dynasties and nations rise and crumble, a history that spans horrible famine and magnificent innovation. These are the years of rice and salt<em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">. </em></em><br data-mce-bogus="1" /></span></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></em></em></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRZgQNhlqajkzgbobV8n4Aoho4fCcVf_3P_xt44u9ShDBF4A3nfQYof2fqPh2jxCIi1oxbSlLx41sitsahnZ7XxHtzbXBEWWUCqKXJr5dI_ENiuC5Ld87C7F7BqF5LWPtRRGYEX2jTYI4/s475/43545._SY475_-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="295" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRZgQNhlqajkzgbobV8n4Aoho4fCcVf_3P_xt44u9ShDBF4A3nfQYof2fqPh2jxCIi1oxbSlLx41sitsahnZ7XxHtzbXBEWWUCqKXJr5dI_ENiuC5Ld87C7F7BqF5LWPtRRGYEX2jTYI4/w124-h200/43545._SY475_-1.jpg" width="124" /></span></a></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><u><span face="" style="color: #383838;">The </span><span face="" style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> <span face="">O</span></span></u><span face=""><u>nce & Future King</u> by T</span>.<span face="">H</span>.<span face=""> White</span></span></div></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; font-size: large; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-style: normal; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><br /></div></span></div></div></blockquote><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; font-size: large; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span face="" style="color: #383838;">I loved this but have never reviewed it; I will definitely have t</span><span face="" style="color: #383838;">o</span><span face="" style="color: #383838;"> reread it and write about it sometime</span><span face="" style="color: #383838;">.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span face="" style="color: #383838;"><br /></span></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span face="" style="color: #383838;"><span><i>T.H. White’s masterful retelling of the saga of King Arthur is a fantasy classic as legendary as the sword Excalibur and city of Camelot that are found within its pages. This magical epic takes Arthur from the glorious lyrical phase of his youth, through the disillusioning early years of his reign, to maturity when his vision of the Round Table develops into the search for the Holy Grail, and finally to his weary old age. With memorable characters like Merlin and Owl and Guinevere, beasts who talk and men who fly, wizardry and war, The Once and Future King has become the fantasy masterpiece against which all others are judged, a poignant story of adventure, romance, and magic that has enchanted readers for generations.</i></span></span></div></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4GFc4nWq9ujKNtsBzwQuHojBqgBrVXIsa203unBihjcHFBMXleiip3I4nre94lFsGrx7rle_Umdnu-I_GG5u6PmWUwSLtBCiaIXh8aUm1HbTcOxYm16B-Xs7DcaMP5YQGsJfrA-PNcB4/s475/12527.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="317" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4GFc4nWq9ujKNtsBzwQuHojBqgBrVXIsa203unBihjcHFBMXleiip3I4nre94lFsGrx7rle_Umdnu-I_GG5u6PmWUwSLtBCiaIXh8aUm1HbTcOxYm16B-Xs7DcaMP5YQGsJfrA-PNcB4/w133-h200/12527.jpg" width="133" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><u style="color: #383838;">Pilgrim at Tinker Creek</u><span face="" style="color: #383838;"> by Annie Dillard </span></span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large; text-align: center;">a brilliant essay collection! </span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">An exhilarating meditation on nature and its seasons—a personal narrative highlighting one year's exploration on foot in the author's own neighborhood in Tinker Creek, Virginia. In the summer, Dillard stalks muskrats in the creek and contemplates wave mechanics; in the fall she watches a monarch butterfly migration and dreams of Arctic caribou. She tries to con a coot; she collects pond water and examines it under a microscope. She unties a snake skin, witnesses a flood, and plays 'King of the Meadow' with a field of grasshoppers.</em> <br data-mce-bogus="1" /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV7YqZh8rjC2bVPEt9-Gfkez5RIubMSeHQ2NEcx4sQrNlaDvG04yYTqEIqbMacNh0NAE6IRwHT5pp6j6Sj72cQvc1ZSykb0LnsWC5pzjx3H6FAyj9ZFTTmx943uHtB10wL2gMs-wcQN2A/s475/32781._SY475_.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="296" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV7YqZh8rjC2bVPEt9-Gfkez5RIubMSeHQ2NEcx4sQrNlaDvG04yYTqEIqbMacNh0NAE6IRwHT5pp6j6Sj72cQvc1ZSykb0LnsWC5pzjx3H6FAyj9ZFTTmx943uHtB10wL2gMs-wcQN2A/w125-h200/32781._SY475_.jpg" width="125" /></span></a></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span data-mce-style="text-decoration: underline;" style="line-height: 1.57143em; text-decoration-line: underline;">War and the Iliad</span> by Simone Weil & Rachel Bespaloff</span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></em></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">War and the Iliad is a perfect introduction to the range of Homer’s art as well as a provocative and rewarding demonstration of the links between literature, philosophy, and questions of life and death.</span></em></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Simone Weil’s The Iliad, or the Poem of Force is one of her most celebrated works—an inspired analysis of Homer’s epic that presents a nightmare vision of combat as a machine in which all humanity is lost. First published on the eve of war in 1939, the essay has often been read as a pacifist manifesto. Rachel Bespaloff was a French contemporary of Weil’s whose work similarly explored the complex relations between literature, religion, and philosophy. She composed her own distinctive discussion of the Iliad in the midst of World War II—calling it “her method of facing the war”—and, as Christopher Benfey argues in his introduction, the essay was very probably written in response to Weil. Bespaloff’s account of the Iliad brings out Homer’s novelistic approach to character and the existential drama of his characters’ choices; it is marked, too, by a tragic awareness of how the Iliad speaks to times and places where there is no hope apart from war.</em><br /><br /><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">This edition brings together these two influential essays for the first time, accompanied by Benfey’s scholarly introduction and an afterword by the great Austrian novelist Hermann Broch.</em></span></div></div>Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-71618133227368794392020-08-09T14:40:00.000-07:002020-08-09T14:40:24.664-07:00Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathon Closing Survey<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br />How would you assess your reading overall?</span><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">I read a lot more than I expected! I g</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">o</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">t a <a href="https://deweysreadathon.wordpress.com/2020/08/05/lets-play-readathon-bingo/ " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">bing</a></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://deweysreadathon.wordpress.com/2020/08/05/lets-play-readathon-bingo/ " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">o</a></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"> (3 across)</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"> I commented in the </span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">GoodReads gr</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">oup t</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">o</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">o</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Did you have a strategy, and if so, did you stick to it? </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">I had two books planned: </span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkAxsNdMsdpT5wS-vt5i-OXMJUqbIf3k821KSd7WZzXgglmjuJaY68TCHTOMNpFGb9UW0x1Ax0GwIvO9hhoNE9cjzkS70-4kB1j7ejyJ1L6vgwHTyPCT2j8avyqLC_WTahoe9d0zA95rw/s475/16248223.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="317" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkAxsNdMsdpT5wS-vt5i-OXMJUqbIf3k821KSd7WZzXgglmjuJaY68TCHTOMNpFGb9UW0x1Ax0GwIvO9hhoNE9cjzkS70-4kB1j7ejyJ1L6vgwHTyPCT2j8avyqLC_WTahoe9d0zA95rw/w133-h200/16248223.jpg" width="133" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1obQU3axGveHKwrGL_lbkK-4ubibAR-W0NepcpVl5LPDfzq24URgNeAU8G0PTIl0bLghH7FfRm1tx95mlEU71Gb3d2MAnlghz2wQ7Di5SIslGsuJrn6VYwy3Z1DGBlnkVG_vFFQ6BhaM/s475/471966-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="display: inline !important; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="308" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1obQU3axGveHKwrGL_lbkK-4ubibAR-W0NepcpVl5LPDfzq24URgNeAU8G0PTIl0bLghH7FfRm1tx95mlEU71Gb3d2MAnlghz2wQ7Di5SIslGsuJrn6VYwy3Z1DGBlnkVG_vFFQ6BhaM/w130-h200/471966-1.jpg" width="130" /></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><u>The Ghost Bride</u> by Yangsze Choo </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><u>Haroun & the Sea of Stories</u> (reread) by Salman Rushdie</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">I read those and three other books: </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><u>The Drawing </u></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><u>of the Dark</u> by Tim P</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">owers</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><u>The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch</u> (graphic n</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">o</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">vel) by Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean (reread)</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><u>Ajax</u> by S</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">oph</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">o</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">cles </span></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYhixNe0hyphenhyphensE6LC3rwqhcg87e1PT2nUreQuFuqEMlmeHCw9JLLoXacKsYpOakv4CMG8rzK5JifWg7CtJ_Ny9wbp67DylvaS4gduFhEau4A31UWNKxtszMd6UmUsYZ5_izLSHDF219Lof4/s475/16792.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="display: inline !important; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large; padding: 1em 0px; white-space: pre;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="317" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYhixNe0hyphenhyphensE6LC3rwqhcg87e1PT2nUreQuFuqEMlmeHCw9JLLoXacKsYpOakv4CMG8rzK5JifWg7CtJ_Ny9wbp67DylvaS4gduFhEau4A31UWNKxtszMd6UmUsYZ5_izLSHDF219Lof4/w133-h200/16792.jpg" width="133" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBEyd6RiViHMw6jt0Z2gW9sqoDaC8RcZQfGWQZU4w8qGp8vZnSfElwtwDVNx44L8JW9nge7yuQSBPIwt2Cwz28r4Odocll0ri2oTejNAeuToD4D34M6DmMP3YxRjiBfXoOrMzU5U1KWDg/s475/12039893.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="display: inline !important; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large; padding: 1em 0px; white-space: pre;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="306" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBEyd6RiViHMw6jt0Z2gW9sqoDaC8RcZQfGWQZU4w8qGp8vZnSfElwtwDVNx44L8JW9nge7yuQSBPIwt2Cwz28r4Odocll0ri2oTejNAeuToD4D34M6DmMP3YxRjiBfXoOrMzU5U1KWDg/w129-h200/12039893.jpg" width="129" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz0cKW7DWRLCwXXYg4BMnHuaNHWAuAF76qTmZqd29mw9gNBxI8x6rXf-6TPND06V9GP3LeBw6ZWKW72xgDcUw8_nfb65KK44xDIh41HMHqIVfZ8OgB3qvgvk1Xw1UM19pWoODgny-nV6s/s424/27305734._SX318_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="display: inline !important; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large; padding: 1em 0px; white-space: pre;"><img border="0" data-original-height="424" data-original-width="318" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz0cKW7DWRLCwXXYg4BMnHuaNHWAuAF76qTmZqd29mw9gNBxI8x6rXf-6TPND06V9GP3LeBw6ZWKW72xgDcUw8_nfb65KK44xDIh41HMHqIVfZ8OgB3qvgvk1Xw1UM19pWoODgny-nV6s/w150-h200/27305734._SX318_.jpg" width="150" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><u>The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch</u> by Neil Gaiman (graphic novel) (reread)</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><u>Ajax</u> by Sophocles </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><u>The Drawing of the Dark</u> by Tim Powers I had checked this out but wasn't sure when I would read it<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">n</span>owh<span style="color: #181818;"><span style="background-color: white;">ere near as g</span></span>ood as <u>Declare</u><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">, but I will say more ab</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">out that when I review it</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">What was your favorite snack?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">Black licorice</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">, I think</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">. I had black tea (Yorkshire Red and looseleaf Lapsang S</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">o</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">u</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">ch</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">ong</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">) and when it was t</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">o</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">o late for caffeine I had hibiscus tea</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"> </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">I will start writing my reviews</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">... see y</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">ou next Readath</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">on</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">! </span></div><div><br /><br /></div>Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-68821829312080924282020-08-06T01:42:00.017-07:002020-08-10T12:23:31.075-07:00Review: The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5907" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><img alt="The Hobbit, or There and Back Again" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546071216l/5907._SX98_.jpg" /></span></a>
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5907">The Hobbit, or There and Back Again</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/656983">J.R.R. Tolkien</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3367990176">4 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
<span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I read </span><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5907.The_Hobbit__or_There_and_Back_Again" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #00635d;" title="The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien">The Hobbit, or There and Back Again</a><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> years ago after I read </span><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33.The_Lord_of_the_Rings__The_Lord_of_the_Rings___1_3_" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #00635d;" title="The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3) by J.R.R. Tolkien">The Lord of the Rings</a><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> for the first time. I liked it, but I didn't feel compelled to read it again. I reread it in June. I still don't like it nearly as much as </span><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33.The_Lord_of_the_Rings__The_Lord_of_the_Rings___1_3_" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #00635d;" title="The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3) by J.R.R. Tolkien">The Lord of the Rings</a><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">,</span><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> but it was worth the reread.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The Hobbit was first published in 1937. Tolkien didn't originally plan to write a sequel and wasn't sure whether it would fit into the stories of Middle-earth that he had been working on for decades (then the early versions that were later published as The Book of Lost Tales). I have the revised edition from 1966, in which chapter five, Riddles in the Dark, was changed to make it more consistent with </span><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33.The_Lord_of_the_Rings__The_Lord_of_the_Rings___1_3_" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #00635d;" title="The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3) by J.R.R. Tolkien">The Lord of the Rings</a><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">The wizard Gandalf persuades Bilbo Baggins to join the dwarf Thorin Oakenshield and his companions, who are setting out to reclaim the Lonely Mountain and its treasure from the dragon Smaug.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Far over the misty mountains cold<br />To dungeons deep and caverns old<br />We must away ere break of day<br />To seek the pale enchanted gold.<br /><br />The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,<br />While hammers fell like ringing bells<br />In places deep, where dark things sleep,<br />In hollow halls beneath the fells.</i><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">I like the dwarven songs, but the goblin songs (which come later) are kind of ridiculous; the larger problem, I guess, is that the goblins (and the trolls) are just a little too silly as antagonists. The songs of the elves are far more frivolous than either the elven songs in LotR or the dwarven songs here. It seemed weird at first, but I suppose elves can't be serious all the time. The riddle game in chapter five is great, but apart from that, things get much more interesting in the second half (or so) the part where Bilbo and the dwarves stay with Beorn, a skin-changer who changes into a bear. From there it gets more intense as it goes on. It is not as descriptive as LotR, and the descriptions in L</span><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">otR are </span><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">one </span><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">of my favorite things</span><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">, </span><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> s</span><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">o it's not surprising that I don't</span><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> like The Hobbit quite as much</span><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">.</span><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> </span><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;"> </span></span><div><span style="color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">After reading this I listened to the 1979 radio adaptation by The Mind's Eye. I definitely recommend it! I thought the voice acting & songs were great.</span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">There's a bit <span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">of weirdness where the Elvenking </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">of Mirkwood is implied t</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">o be the <i>same </i>person wh</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">o was inv</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">olved in the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">o</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">riginal ancient quarrel between the Elves and Dwarves: </span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><i>In ancient days they had had wars with some of the dwarves, whom they accused of stealing their treasure. It is only fair to say that the dwarves gave a different account, and said that they only took what was their due, for the elf-king had bargained with them to shape his raw gold and silver, and had afterwards refused to give them their pay.</i></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">In <u>The Silmarillion</u> as it was eventually published this </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">is definitely before the Elvenking's time</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">, and</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"> a different character</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">.</i></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">There is a quote from Tolkien's letters (which I haven't read; I am taking this from <u>The History </u></span><u style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">of Middle-earth</u><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"> v</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">ol 3</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">)</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"> that says this about his discussions with his publisher after The Hobbit was published:</span></div><div><i><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">I then (after the publication </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">of The H</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">obbit) </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">offered them the legends </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">of the Elder Days</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">, but their readers turned that d</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">own</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">.</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"> They wanted a sequel -- but I wanted her</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">oic legends and high r</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">omance</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">. The result was The L</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">ord </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">of the Rings</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"> </span></i></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><span face="" style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">Favorite quotes:</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818;" /><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818;">“Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?”<br /><br />“As they sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves. Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick.”<br /><br />“Roads go ever ever on,<br />Over rock and under tree,<br />By caves where never sun has shone,<br />By streams that never find the sea;<br />Over snow by winter sown,<br />And through the merry flowers of June,<br />Over grass and over stone,<br />And under mountains of the moon.<br /><br />Roads go ever ever on<br />Under cloud and under star,<br />Yet feet that wandering have gone<br />Turn at last to home afar.<br />Eyes that fire and sword have seen<br />And horror in the halls of stone<br />Look at last on meadows green<br />And trees and hills they long have known”</i><br /><br /><br /></span></div></div>Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-75538510035867151132020-06-13T23:34:00.017-07:002020-06-13T23:48:08.630-07:00Review: The Fifth Season
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19161852" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Fifth Season" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386803701l/19161852._SX98_.jpg" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19161852">The Fifth Season</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2917917">N.K. Jemisin</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1801073072">5 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br /><div><div><i>“Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall; Death is the fifth, and master of all”</i></div><div><br /></div><div><div>Synopsis from GoodReads: <i>Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze -- the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years -- collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>The book opens with the beginning of the worst Fifth Season in recorded history. The government maintains the Fulcrum, an army of enslaved orogenes with the ability to control energy, particularly that of the ground and temperature. Their abilities give them power geological activity and temperature so that they can both cause and prevent earthquakes.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><u>The Fifth Season i</u>s the first book in the Broken Earth Trilogy. I think it could fit into either science fiction or fantasy; it is hard to tell because it leans so heavily on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws">Clarke</a>'<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws">s Third Law</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div><u>The Fifth Season</u> is darker than most books I read. I suspect the question of whether it has a pessimistic worldview doesn't make much sense outside the context of the trilogy as a whole, so I will come back to that when I finish rereading <u>The Obelisk Gate</u> and <u>The Stone Sky.</u></div><div><br /></div><div>The first book is technically mostly setup when you look at it in relation to the other books, but</div><div>it doesn't feel that way! I think this is something to do with how the book does so much of its worldbuilding through characterization & plot. In this book, all those things go together perfectly, while the other books rely more on exposition.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are three points of view: the young girl Damaya, in training as an orogene; the young woman Syenite; and the grieving mother Essun. Essun's perspective is given in second person and present tense; there is a plot-related reason for that, but Jemisin doesn't reveal it in the first book. I loved the writing! Essun's perspective felt odd at first but I got used to it. Here are some of my favorite quotes:</div><div><br /></div><div><i>- “Yumenes is not unique because of its size. There are many large cities in this part of the world, chain-linked along the equator like a continental girdle. Elsewhere in the world villages rarely grow into towns, and towns rarely become cities, because all such polities are hard to keep alive when the earth keeps trying to eat them… but Yumenes has been stable for most of its twenty-seven centuries.</i></div><div><i>Yumenes is unique because here alone have human beings dared to build not for safety, not for comfort, not even for beauty, but for bravery. The city’s walls are a masterwork of delicate mosaics and embossing detailing its people’s long and brutal history. The clumping masses of its buildings are punctuated by great high towers like fingers of stone, hand-wrought lanterns powered by the modern marvel of hydroelectricity, delicately arching bridges woven of glass and audacity, and architectural structures called balconies that are so simple, yet so breathtakingly foolish, that no one has ever built them before in written history. (But much of history is unwritten. Remember this.)”</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>- “This is what you must remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another. This has happened before, after all. People die. old orders pass. New societies are born. When we say the world has ended, it's usually a lie, because the planet is just fine. But this is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. For the last time.”</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>- “Friends do not exist. The Fulcrum is not a school. Grits are not children. Orogenes are not people. Weapons have no need of friends.”</i></div></div>Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-67559993037332952532020-06-02T13:41:00.003-07:002020-06-02T13:47:26.211-07:0015 Books of Summer!<div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I <a data-mce-href="https://bethsbookishthoughts.blogspot.com/2020/05/wyrd-wonder-wrap-up-post.html" href="https://bethsbookishthoughts.blogspot.com/2020/05/wyrd-wonder-wrap-up-post.html" style="border: 0px; color: #047ac6; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">wrapped up last month<span style="line-height: 1.57143em;">'</span>s reading</a> but forgot to add my link in time for the final round-up </span><span style="font-size: large;">of Wyrd & W</span><span style="font-size: large;">onder</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #383838; font-size: large;">The 20 Books of Summer challenge is hosted by <a href="https://746books.com/2020/05/14/20-books-of-summer-20-is-on-the-way/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">746 Books.</a> </span><span style="color: #383838; font-size: large;">I am joining with a goal of 15 books! </span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">June: 5</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">3 books for the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/group/bookshelf/1865-scifi-and-fantasy-book-club" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">SFBC Group Bookshelf Challenge</a> on GoodReads:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (reread) </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">others: </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><u>The First Men in the Moon</u> by HG Wells <a href="https://karensbooksandchocolate.blogspot.com/2020/01/challenge-link-up-post-nature-in-title.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">(Classic with Nature in the Title</a>)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Wild Card </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>July: 5 </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The Protestant Ethic & the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber (nonfiction)(reread) (I read this earlier this year but never reviewed it; I think I need to read it again to write about it properly)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The Lais of Marie de France</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The </span><span style="font-size: large;">O</span><span style="font-size: large;">belisk Gate by NK Jemisin (reread)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Wild Card</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>August: 5</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Ajax by Sophocles</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Electra by Sophocles </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The Gorgias by Plato - another nonfiction that I need to reread</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Le Morte d Artur by Sir Thomas Malory - I think I can start in July and finish in August</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The Stone Sky </span><span style="font-size: large;">by NK Jemisin </span><span style="font-size: large;">(reread)</span><br />
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Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-11251239223083566912020-05-31T22:20:00.003-07:002020-06-03T10:06:46.079-07:00Wyrd & Wonder Wrap-up Post!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Thanks to <a href="https://onemore.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">imyril,</a> <u> </u><a href="https://deargeekplace.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lisa,</a> and <a href="https://jorielovesbookishblogs.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jorie</a> for organizing this!<br />
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I visited a bunch of blogs this time including <a href="https://calmgrove.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Calmgrove</a> & <a href="https://peatlong.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Peat Long</a>.<br />
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my posts:<br />
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<a href="https://bethsbookishthoughts.blogspot.com/2020/05/top-ten-tuesday-fantastic-opening-lines_26.html">Top Ten Tuesday: Fantastic Opening Lines</a> </div>
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<a href="https://bethsbookishthoughts.blogspot.com/2020/05/six-degrees-of-fantasy-separation-lord.html">Six Degrees of Fantasy Separation: The Lord of the Rings to Lavinia</a> </div>
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<a href="https://bethsbookishthoughts.blogspot.com/2020/05/book-beginnings-20-friday56-20-fifth.html">Book Beginnings: The Fifth Season</a><br />
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<a href="https://bethsbookishthoughts.blogspot.com/2020/05/review-chocolat_19.html">Chocolat</a> review<br />
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<a href="https://bethsbookishthoughts.blogspot.com/2020/05/review-midnights-children_14.html">Midnight's Children</a> review<br />
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<a href="https://bethsbookishthoughts.blogspot.com/2020/04/my-wyrd-wonder-2020-tbr-list-5-books.html">my list at the beginning</a></div>
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Here is a quick tour of everything else I read: </div>
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Mirrormask:</u> I listened to an audiobook novelization of the film and really enjoyed it. I probably would have been a bit lost if I hadn't seen the film, though. <br />
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City of Brass</u> by SA Chakraborty: I didn't finish this. I'm not sure why this one didn't click with me; I liked it at first and I was intrigued by the setting, but after a while, it didn't seem to be going anywhere, and there was nothing I felt strongly enough about to keep me reading.</div>
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Monstress vol 4: <u>The Chosen</u>: I read vols 1-3 last year and it might have been a mistake to wait this long; as with the previous volume, I felt a bit lost. Kippa was taken by forces working for the mysterious "Doctor" and Maika is trying to find her. There is a lot of talking and not a whole lot of plot progression, which would be ok if it were easier to follow, but... I could really use a synopsis to sort out my thoughts if I can find one somewhere. I will probably reread this series when future volumes come out; at least, I want to give it another try. I really like the art, though.<br />
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The Sandman Companion:</u> A guide to the comics series; most of the book is interviews with the writer, Neil Gaiman. I loved it! Most of what I thought was really interesting was very specific commentary on the stories, so I am not sure how to review this one. Towards the beginning, Gaiman mentions a few writers that influenced him. I recognized Roger Zelazny (I really liked A Night in the Lonesome October) and Samuel Delany (I have read a couple of novellas by him plus the novel Babel-17.)</div>
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The Fifth Season</u> by NK Jemisin: The first book in the Broken Earth trilogy which was one of the highlights of my reading in 2018. I finished rereading this but still need to review it! It was definitely worth rereading but I am not sure when I will read the next one.</div>
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short stories:<br />
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I read a graphic novel version of two Oscar Wilde fairy tales illustrated by P Craig Russell (in one volume): <u>The Devoted Friend/The Nightingale & the Rose.</u> Lovely illustrations! I have <a href="https://bethsbookishthoughts.blogspot.com/2019/03/review-happy-prince-other-stories.html">read and reviewed</a> The Nightingale and the Rose before. I can't really think of anything to say about the other one. </div>
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I revisited two other excellent short stories:<br />
"Come Lady Death" by Peter Beagle <a href="https://podcastle.org/new-to-podcastle/">(Podcastle podcast)</a>: I read this years ago as part of a short story collection by this author, but this is my first time listening to a Podcastle episode! I hope to listen to some other Podcastle episodes before next year's Wyrd & Wonder.</div>
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I also reread "Paid Piper" by Tanith Lee: the first tale in her collection Red As Blood: Tales from the Sisters Grimmer. This is one of my favorite fantasy stories: a retelling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin with a little bit of the myth of Pan mixed in.</div>
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<i>You try to lock everything up in a cage. Your animals and your hearts. But love will always get out. Love, or hate.</i><br />
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other:<br />
I listened to the album of the "Orpheus in Hadestown" musical (2010) and I highly recommend it.<br />
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<i>Once upon a time there was a railroad line</i><br />
<i>Don't ask where, brother, don't ask when</i><br />
<i>It was the road to Hell, it was hard times</i><br />
<i>It was a world of gods...and men!</i><br />
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Look out for my <a href="https://746books.com/2020/05/14/20-books-of-summer-20-is-on-the-way/">20 Books of Summer list</a> soon!</div>
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Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-1475738117922584802020-05-26T23:00:00.001-07:002020-05-26T23:40:27.340-07:00Top Ten Tuesday: Fantastic Opening Lines<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Since it is May, I have chosen my first lines from fantasy novels for Wyrd & Wonder<i style="text-align: left;">.</i></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: arial;">Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. They met upon the third Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic.</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: arial;">They were gentleman-magicians, which is to say they had never harmed anyone by magic - nor ever done anyone the slightest good. In fact, to own the truth, not one of these magicians had ever cast the smallest spell, nor by magic caused one leaf to tremble upon a tree, made one mote of dust to alter its course or changed a single hair upon anyone's head.</span></i><i><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtoHoqsRsuN_zqhjxyJFXfg6aqqVpYliqLPQUtDbyYsTWhZWnV5kOEsY3qne7RTg-97fHiulqArb9LB9gl4QvjoJ5SIkQjHAuwDDPCX2SESuhRy3k5_2U9OS0QRwJg0o-Bq6q3AdSkXwA/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="206" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtoHoqsRsuN_zqhjxyJFXfg6aqqVpYliqLPQUtDbyYsTWhZWnV5kOEsY3qne7RTg-97fHiulqArb9LB9gl4QvjoJ5SIkQjHAuwDDPCX2SESuhRy3k5_2U9OS0QRwJg0o-Bq6q3AdSkXwA/w129-h200/4832._SY475_-2.jpg" width="129" /></span></span></a></i></div>
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<i style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I was born in the city of Bombay… once upon a time. No, that won’t do, there’s no getting away from the date. I was born in Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home on August 15th 1947. And the time? The time matters too. Well then, at night. No, it’s important to be more… On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. </span></i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC_VpsU0MAdCOcX1ZXvQYRsQqc8auWFlcavor_eajN3AJGYqfczwfTFNSPtrE37G9sq-Wl635TmrecrGcY8cRhXyX7TP-GCBRmHl9P7TU-DCVpeDsrJFGULrxYZXMqlvk_wKi17mdpI1U/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="308" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC_VpsU0MAdCOcX1ZXvQYRsQqc8auWFlcavor_eajN3AJGYqfczwfTFNSPtrE37G9sq-Wl635TmrecrGcY8cRhXyX7TP-GCBRmHl9P7TU-DCVpeDsrJFGULrxYZXMqlvk_wKi17mdpI1U/w129-h200/471966.jpg" width="129" /></span></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i style="text-align: justify;"><i style="text-align: start;">There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name. It stood by a mournful sea full of glumfish, which were so miserable to eat that they made people belch with melancholy even though the skies were blue...</i></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>The magic in that country was so thick and tenacious that it settled over the land like chalk-dust and over floors and shelves like sticky plaster-dust. (House-cleaners in that country earned unusually good wages.) If you lived in that country, you had to de-scale your kettle of its encrustation of magic at least once a week, because if you didn't, you might find yourself pouring hissing snakes or pond slime into your teapot instead of water. </i> <span style="color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><i>This is where the dragons went. </i></span><span style="text-align: justify;"><i>They lie... not dead, not asleep. Not waiting, because waiting implies expectation. Possibly the word we're looking for here is... dormant.</i></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: arial;">And although the space they occupy isn't quite like normal space, nevertheless they are packed in tightly. Not a cubic inch there but is filled by a claw, a talon, a scale, the tip of a tail, so the effect is like one of those trick drawings and your eyeballs eventually realize the space between each dragon is, in fact, another dragon.</span></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Sam Vimes sighed when he heard the scream, but he finished shaving before he did anything about it. </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0Bh_v-Vn6AmyY0A_IjnWKGSQ2-WHeyDeCELas0or7mCpsdXXLGu_rfLUyTPFLQdzHOKqdi6BxNJhkELDUWIzK1oqFk6dw9i_y6qXyZVKWWKp8LBK2DCPgCULDs21tMVWl-Ua0dNLaTAw/" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="212" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0Bh_v-Vn6AmyY0A_IjnWKGSQ2-WHeyDeCELas0or7mCpsdXXLGu_rfLUyTPFLQdzHOKqdi6BxNJhkELDUWIzK1oqFk6dw9i_y6qXyZVKWWKp8LBK2DCPgCULDs21tMVWl-Ua0dNLaTAw/w133-h200/19161852.jpg" width="133" /></span></a><br />
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<i><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.</span></span></i></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-style: italic;">Before the mountain at the world’s end was built on the river plain, before the high city there grew up, before most of the Ravens went away into the forests of the deep, before the People’s long rage to kill Crows, before Dar Oakley’s sea-journey into the West, before the Most Precious Thing was found and lost again, before the ways were opened to the lands of the dead, before there were names in Ka, before Ymr came to be and therefore before Ka knew itself, Dar Oakley first knew People.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.</span></span></div>
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Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-39104330380967200952020-05-23T20:24:00.005-07:002020-05-25T14:21:09.717-07:00Book Beginnings #20 & Friday 56 #20: The Fifth Season<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4528786054046341843/3437952430914790752#" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="205" data-original-width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmzp1Wt4_ylhgiKG3SXUVn07u1-K1_z9l_Ne7Km1A4ukvq_jFPUSx7lDFH0mhyphenhyphenSWVTLJFEhJhMq-Lq2vP5rgQnL6xP2fin92INfkVyIT_kM5gV5aYkdDCNbodI2Xe3A4upTbop-1moXOg/s1600/BB.Button.jpg" /></a><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Book Beginnings is hosted by <a href="https://www.rosecityreader.com/2020/05/book-beginnings-burn-down-this-world.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rose City Reader.</a> The weekly post goes up every Thursday and bloggers can add their links all week. I am rereading The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin the first book in the Broken Earth trilogy. I wanted to read a book for the SFBC Book Club (we have a yearly challenge reading past group reads) I started a different one, Among Others, a few days ago, and didn't like it enough to keep reading, so I thought that I would like to reread this instead. After I finished the trilogy in 2018 I thought I would probably want to reread it eventually. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">PROLOGUE: you are here</span></i><br />
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<i>LET’S START WITH THE END of the world, why don’t we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.</i></span><br />
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<i>First, a personal ending. There is a thing she will think over and over in the days to come, as she imagines how her son died and tries to make sense of something so innately senseless. She will cover Uche’s broken little body with a blanket—except his face, because he is afraid of the dark—and she will sit beside it numb, and she will pay no attention to the world that is ending outside. The world has already ended within her, and neither ending is for the first time. She’s old hat at this by now.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And for the <a href="http://www.fredasvoice.com/2020/05/the-friday56-instagram56_21.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Friday 56:</a></span><br />
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<br />Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-5125737793435756892020-05-20T14:33:00.001-07:002020-05-28T18:08:54.655-07:00Six Degrees of Fantasy Separation: The Lord of the Rings to Lavinia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGa6QaZ714KzqIdU2fs1LzxX4DYX5CT6r-QGp10qDt0rTOtiJs-0180J4rCDoldu_dGcB0rQXo8Kg4VvD5fJjA3prIV_Cm1Yq4AKXIT_dZRjbZd8lr334OUrr5e0DVB5u9iekrCg64G6k/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="263" data-original-width="700" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGa6QaZ714KzqIdU2fs1LzxX4DYX5CT6r-QGp10qDt0rTOtiJs-0180J4rCDoldu_dGcB0rQXo8Kg4VvD5fJjA3prIV_Cm1Yq4AKXIT_dZRjbZd8lr334OUrr5e0DVB5u9iekrCg64G6k/s320/ww-2020-phoenix-2.png" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I still have at least one review to write, but I had hoped to do at least one non-review post for Wyrd & Wonder, so here it is!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I read Imyril’s <a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">Six Degrees of Separation</a> post (inspired by Kate’s meme at <a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">Books Are My Favourite and Best</a>) and I decided to join in! The idea is to pick six books and find connections between them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>The Lord of the Rings</u> by J.R.R. Tolkien</b> is not the first fantasy I ever read, but probably the first that is still a genuine favorite. It is, of course, famous for its background of <b>invented mythology. </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><u><b> Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell</b></u><b> by Susanna Clarke</b> has its own <b>invented mythology</b> in the form of the stories of the Raven King in an alternate England. Both of the protagonists are <b>deeply flawed,</b> although I loved reading about them. Norrell, in particular, is pretty much the Worst, although I felt sorry for him at times. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>The Sandman</u> comics series by Neil Gaiman</b> is another work that includes <b>invented mythology</b> and borrows extensively from real-world myths. The <b>deeply flawed protagonist</b> makes some <b>terrible decisions</b> before and during the main action of the series.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>The Silmarillion</u> by J.R.R. Tolkien </b>features a great many<b> terrible decisions</b> by various parties</span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> If I made a list</span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">, I w</span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">o</span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">uld have a summary </span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">of the pl</span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">ot -- that's it</span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">,</span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"> that's the entire b</span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">o</span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">ok!</span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"> But I want to highlight the </span><b style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">family drama</b><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"> in the House of Finwe in order to establish a link to. . . </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>The Once & Future King</u></b> <b>by T. H. White</b> is another long-time favorite for me, and the <b>family drama </b>between the Orkney brothers, the sons of Lot & Morgause, is one of the highlights of this classic Arthurian <b>retelling. </b></span></div>
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</span> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxzjdQ1RS6mvhEjla6H0OGKLLGpwfWA60tA2vsLy7T7H1i6Zhf8mZK9LaiJ3edySihu07VtXN98Bfx2yJ_0EFFgtRKrpEYgUdPUs6IS3JZWq5DlG-g4UYTD8nBW684URrXzM1SXPrPXyI/"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxzjdQ1RS6mvhEjla6H0OGKLLGpwfWA60tA2vsLy7T7H1i6Zhf8mZK9LaiJ3edySihu07VtXN98Bfx2yJ_0EFFgtRKrpEYgUdPUs6IS3JZWq5DlG-g4UYTD8nBW684URrXzM1SXPrPXyI/" /></span></a><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Lavinia</u> by Ursula Le Guin</b> is a beautiful <b>retelling</b> of <u>The Aeneid</u> from the perspective of Lavinia, the future bride of Aeneas. I read it last month.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I think if I do this again I will limit myself to one book per author; lists like this are usually more interesting that way. But just this once, I had to include Tolkien twice. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Have y</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ou read any </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">of these? What did y</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ou think?</span></div>
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Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-53081090644718685532020-05-19T17:25:00.001-07:002020-05-19T17:30:29.827-07:00Review: Chocolat<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/321574" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Chocolat" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1398921955l/321574._SX98_.jpg" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/321574">Chocolat</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9432">Joanne Harris</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1966604799">5 of 5 stars</a>
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/321574.Chocolat" rel="nofollow" title="Chocolat by Joanne Harris">Chocolat</a> is a contemporary novel with a few fantasy elements. I really liked the setting, which is one of most beautiful and immersive settings I've read about lately. This is the second time I have read the book. It was worth rereading, but not amazing enough for me to read it a third time, most likely.<br />
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The beginning: <br />
<i>We came on the wind of the carnival. A warm wind for February, laden with the hot greasy scents of frying pancakes and sausages and powdery-sweet waffles cooked on the hot plate right there by the roadside, with the confetti sleeting down collars and cuffs and rolling in the gutters like an idiot antidote to winter. There is a febrile excitement in the crowds that line the narrow main street, necks craning to catch sight of the crêpe-covered char with its trailing ribbons and paper rosettes. Anouk watches, eyes wide, a yellow ribbon in one hand and a toy trumpet in the other, from between a shopping basket and a sad brown dog. We have seen carnivals before, she and I; a procession of two hundred and fifty of the decorated chars in Paris last Mardi Gras, a hundred and eighty in New York, two dozen marching bands in Vienna, clowns on stilts, the Grosses Tetes with their lolling papier-mâché heads, drum majorettes with batons spinning and sparkling. But at six the world retains a special luster. A wooden cart, hastily decorated with gilt and crêpe and scenes from fairy tales. A dragon's head on a shield, Rapunzel in a woolen wig, a mermaid with a cellophane tail, a gingerbread house all icing and gilded cardboard, a witch in the doorway, waggling extravagant green fingernails at a group of silent children... At six it is possible to perceive subtleties that a year later are already out of reach.</i> <br />
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The plot:<br />
Vianne Rocher and her daughter Anouk move to the French village of Lansquenet, where Vianne sets up a chocolaterie called La Céleste Praline. When the book opens, it is Mardi Gras. They arrive in town during the carnival. The shop is on the square opposite the church and clashes with the old-fashioned town's strict observation of Lent.<br />
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Vianne is the main point-of-view character, but Pere Reynaud, the local priest, who has a vendetta against Vianne, gets some chapters from his point of view. I also enjoyed the secondary characters.<br />
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The magic:<br />
The magic is understated, but it is a bigger deal in the book than the film. The main character knows what each character's favorite chocolates or sweets are as soon as she meets them, because she can read their thoughts. Tarot cards play a role, although they may or may not actually reveal the future. <br />
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The antagonist: <br />
Reynaud is great, and I don't think he's a cartoon villain. This is a gray hats vs white hats type of conflict. The film made the mayor the antagonist instead, so if you have only seen the movie you might want to check out the book version. <br />
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The ending: <br />
The ending is bittersweet, but not too sad, and it leaves a few loose ends. In contrast, the film comes closer to tying things up in a neat little bow. (Softening the impact of a bittersweet ending is not exactly new in film adaptations, so I really should have expected it. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16793.Stardust" rel="nofollow" title="Stardust by Neil Gaiman">Stardust</a> by Neil Gaiman comes to mind.)
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1966604799">View all my reviews</a>
Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4528786054046341843.post-22410356399677822572020-05-14T10:36:00.003-07:002020-08-11T17:28:26.217-07:00Review: Midnight's Children
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4832" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Midnight's Children" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1579980242l/4832._SX98_.jpg" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4832">Midnight's Children</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3299">Salman Rushdie</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/725233256">5 of 5 stars</a>
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I first read <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14836.Midnight_s_Children" rel="nofollow" title="Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie">Midnight's Children</a> in 2012, but that was my second attempt to read the book. The first time was the previous year, I think. I couldn't get through it the first time, even though I really liked the beginning. But once I got the hang of it, I loved it! <br /><br />I knew a little bit about Indian history before reading it. I had at least heard of some of the famous people mentioned, but I'm not sure how necessary that is. Jo Walton talks about that issue in her <a href="www.tor.com/2009/06/16/indias-superheroes-salman-rushdies-midnights-children/" rel="nofollow"> review</a> of the book at Tor.com: <br /><br /><i>Midnight’s Children invites you to immerse yourself in India the way you would with a fantasy world—and I think that was partly Rushdie’s intention. He was living in England when he wrote it. He’s talked about how writers like Paul Scott and E.M. Forster were untrue to the real India, and with this book I think he wanted to make his vision of India something all readers, whether they start from inside or outside that culture, could throw themselves into. I don’t think his intention was to teach Indian history, though you’ll certainly pick some up from reading it, so much as to demonstrate the experience of being plunged into Indian history, as Saleem is plunged into it at birth.</i><br /> <br />The novel starts with the main character, Saleem Sinai, describing his birth. He is telling his life story to his fiancee, Padma. And he is dying, so he doesn't have much time. Saleem starts by telling of his birth in the exact moment that India became an independent country. He then backs up to recount the story of how his grandparents met, and then the story of how his parents met. Most of Book One takes place before Saleem's birth. His family is Muslim, but since he grows up in Bombay, Hinduism figures prominently in the book as well. I had to look up a few things, but I found it pretty accessible without a vast knowledge of Indian mythology. <br /><br /><i>"Family history, of course, has its proper dietary laws. One is supposed to swallow and digest only the permitted parts of it, the halal portions of the past, drained of their redness, their blood. Unfortunately, this makes the story less juicy; so I am about to become the first and only member of my family to flout the laws of halal."</i> <br /><br />And eventually he comes back to the moment of India's independence: <br /><br /><i>" ... this year-- fourteen hours to go, thirteen, twelve-- there was an extra festival on the calendar, a new myth to celebrate, because a nation which had never previously existed was about to celebrate its freedom, catapulting us into a world which, although it had five thousand years of history, although it had invented the game of chess and traded with Middle Kingdom Egypt was nevertheless quite imaginary; into a mythical land, a country which would never exist except by the efforts of a phenomenal collective will -- except in a dream we all agreed to dream; it was a mass fantasy shared in varying degrees by Bengali and Punjabi, Madrasi and Jat, and would periodically need the sanctification and renewal which can only be provided by rituals of blood. India, the new myth, rivalled only by the two other mighty fantasies: money and God."</i> <br /><br />Book Two begins when Saleem is born. The premise of the book is that Saleem and other children born in the hour from midnight to 1 pm have magical powers. Saleem and Shiva, both born exactly at midnight, are the two most powerful. Saleem is telepathic, and later, he gains an extraordinary sense of smell. Shiva's powers aren't described in detail but he lives up to his name: Shiva the destroyer. Book Two covers Saleem's life until the end of the 1965 war between India and Pakistan (April to September). And then, <i>"six years later... there was another war."</i> <br /> <br /><i>"Reality can have metaphorical content; that does not make it less real. A thousand and one children were born; there were a thousand and one possibilities which had never been present in one place at one time before; there were a thousand and one dead ends. Midnight's children can be made to represent many things, according to your point of view: they can be seen as the last throw of everything antiquated and regressive in our myth-ridden nation, whose defeat was entirely desirable in the context of a modernizing, 20th-century economy; or as the true hope of freedom, which is now forever extinguished; but what they must not become is the bizarre creation of a rambling, diseased mind."</i> <br /><br />The children, or at least 581 of them, find each other with the help of Saleem's telepathy. Their unity is as tenuous as India's national unity, as it turns out. <br /><br />I can't really classify this novel as either comic or tragic. It is a book of contrasts. It is pretty disturbing at times, though. Let's see, there's torture, alcoholism, domestic violence, and misogyny, so if all that is too much for you, this may not be your kind of book. This is one of my favorite novels, in case you can't tell from how much I'm quoting it! The events of Book Three lead up to one of my favorite endings; it's fantastic, but I'm not sure I can even discuss it without giving too much away. <br /><br /><i>"All games have morals, and the game of snakes and ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner; and for every snake, a ladder will compensate."</i><br /><br /> I'd like to say something about the portrayal of women, but I'm not sure how to address that without going into great detail about exactly what happens in the book. There are several important female characters: Saleem's maternal grandmother, Naseem Aziz; his mother, Mumtaz, who takes a second name, Amina, after her second marriage; his aunt Alia; his sister, the Brass Monkey (the name comes from an English expression); his crush at school, Evie Burns; Parvati, one of the Midnight's Children; and Padma, Saleem's lover and, eventually, his fiancée. They are all very vivid characters. <br /><br /><i>"How are we to understand my too many women? As the multiple faces of Bharat-Mata? or as even more... as the dynamic aspect of Maya, as cosmic energy, which is represented by the female organ? <br />Maya, in its dynamic aspect, is called Shakti; perhaps it is no accident that, in the Hindu pantheon, the active power of the deity is contained within his queen! Maya-Shakti mothers, but also muffles consciousness in its dream-web. Too many women; are they all aspects of Devi, the goddess, who slew the buffalo-demon, who defeated the ogre Mahisha, who is Kali Durga Chandi Chumunda Uma Sati and Parvati... and who, when active, is colored red? <br /><br />'I don't know about that,' Padma brings me down to earth, 'They are just women, that's all.'"</i> <br /><br />The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997) entry for Rushdie mentions Gunter Grass's <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35743.The_Tin_Drum" rel="nofollow" title="The Tin Drum by Günter Grass">The Tin Drum</a> as a possible influence. I don't think I have heard of that book, so I will have to look it up. And in the comments at the Tor review I linked, someone mentions <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/76527.The_Life_and_Opinions_of_Tristram_Shandy__Gentleman" rel="nofollow" title="The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne">The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman</a> as a possible influence, or at least a book with some interesting parallels. I haven't read that either! Maybe I'll get to it after I read a few of the other very long books I am already planning to read. I don't consider this book all that long, really; considering all the things that happen in it, it is actually pretty short, but dense! <br /><br />Rushdie has an interesting essay on unreliable narration in the book, which you can read <a href="https://salmanrushdie.livejournal.com/2230.htm=" rel="nofollow">here.</a>
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Beth http://www.blogger.com/profile/00181538167994145152noreply@blogger.com0