by Sherwood Smith
Grade: Unfinished
Read: Practically none of it. The first two pages, maybe?
Coming soon to a blog near you: RED herself reads all of A Stranger to Command! Yes, I really am going to read it. I am DETERMINED. Note the capital letters. Just...not yet. Once C.H. gets a better looking copy, because BOY I hate this cover.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Song of the Sparrow
by Lisa Ann Sandell
Grade: Unfinished
Read: Bits of all of it, but not enough to say that I've actually read it.
So...why did I get a book about Elaine? I knew I didn't like her much, and I like the love-of-her-life Sir Lancelot even less.
(Now, SPOILERS! But it turns out that she falls for Sir Tristan at the end of this one. I like Sir Tristan well enough, but I found this slightly weird.)
Plus--it's in verse! I'm not a huge poetry reader anyway, but the poetry I do like is either rambunctious and exhilarating, like Chesterton and Belloc, or strange and subtle, like Eliot and that whatever-his-name-was Da Todi guy that B. P. L. showed me recently. And not ... this.
So I decided I must have got it from the library anyway in the faint, faint hope that Sir Gawain and his family would be mentioned in a semi-positive manner. And they were! Well, semi-positive. Still not exactly bright, but it's better than their portrayal in many a Arthurian retelling.
Grade: Unfinished
Read: Bits of all of it, but not enough to say that I've actually read it.
So...why did I get a book about Elaine? I knew I didn't like her much, and I like the love-of-her-life Sir Lancelot even less.
(Now, SPOILERS! But it turns out that she falls for Sir Tristan at the end of this one. I like Sir Tristan well enough, but I found this slightly weird.)
Plus--it's in verse! I'm not a huge poetry reader anyway, but the poetry I do like is either rambunctious and exhilarating, like Chesterton and Belloc, or strange and subtle, like Eliot and that whatever-his-name-was Da Todi guy that B. P. L. showed me recently. And not ... this.
So I decided I must have got it from the library anyway in the faint, faint hope that Sir Gawain and his family would be mentioned in a semi-positive manner. And they were! Well, semi-positive. Still not exactly bright, but it's better than their portrayal in many a Arthurian retelling.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Story Time
by Edward Bloor
Grade: All right/Unfinished
Read: To page 196, plus a bunch of the end (enough that I think it can be "All right" instead of "Unfinished").
Story: Kate and George are sent to a school where tests are the teaching style, and ghosts and weird things abound.
I was rather disappointed in this one. The cover was great, the title was great, it was about a weird school and its awful tests, and there was an uncle who was younger than his niece.
But it didn't quite do it for me. I generally like stereotypes that are funny or awesome, but not humiliating, like the parents, or evil, like Cornelia and her children. It quite bugs me actually. Especially the parents. I mean, how do the kids possibly get so intelligent with such dumb parents? It doesn't really make sense. And I don't mean intelligent as in IQ, I mean intelligent as in social awareness.
I probably could have got around it if something else grabbed me enough, but nothing else did. I don't really know why.
Grade: All right/Unfinished
Read: To page 196, plus a bunch of the end (enough that I think it can be "All right" instead of "Unfinished").
Story: Kate and George are sent to a school where tests are the teaching style, and ghosts and weird things abound.
I was rather disappointed in this one. The cover was great, the title was great, it was about a weird school and its awful tests, and there was an uncle who was younger than his niece.
But it didn't quite do it for me. I generally like stereotypes that are funny or awesome, but not humiliating, like the parents, or evil, like Cornelia and her children. It quite bugs me actually. Especially the parents. I mean, how do the kids possibly get so intelligent with such dumb parents? It doesn't really make sense. And I don't mean intelligent as in IQ, I mean intelligent as in social awareness.
I probably could have got around it if something else grabbed me enough, but nothing else did. I don't really know why.
Monday, May 2, 2011
White Cat
by Holly Black
Grade: Good
Story: Cassel is part of a family of criminals. Kind of like The Godfather, except I haven't seen The Godfather, so I'm only guessing. Anyway. He starts having nightmares about a white cat, and soon his whole world starts falling apart.
This has bunches of my favourite things in it: brothers, con men, cool magic systems, high-end schools, and unreliable narrators. I especially like the first and the last of these.
So I really liked it. But somehow...I don't know. It wasn't quite as good as I expected. I think I was expecting more from his brothers, because I do so like book siblings.
But enough on the negative. I really liked it, I read it in one night, and I'm looking forward to the sequel.
Grade: Good
Story: Cassel is part of a family of criminals. Kind of like The Godfather, except I haven't seen The Godfather, so I'm only guessing. Anyway. He starts having nightmares about a white cat, and soon his whole world starts falling apart.
This has bunches of my favourite things in it: brothers, con men, cool magic systems, high-end schools, and unreliable narrators. I especially like the first and the last of these.
So I really liked it. But somehow...I don't know. It wasn't quite as good as I expected. I think I was expecting more from his brothers, because I do so like book siblings.
But enough on the negative. I really liked it, I read it in one night, and I'm looking forward to the sequel.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
The Last Unicorn
by Peter S. Beagle
Grade: Good
Story: All the unicorns are gone except one, who goes off in search of the rest, along with a rather hopeless magician and not-exactly-young ex-outlaw woman.
Well, I rather liked this one. It was not terribly similar to the short story in The Dragon Book, which was slightly disappointing. But maybe I just haven't caught on to Peter S. Beagle's style yet. I want to, though, so when I'm done this, I'm going to the library website to order some more of his books.
It was essentially a fable. So the characters were intriguing, but there wasn't quite as much fleshing out as I usually like. That makes them sound like they weren't deep, but I think they were incredibly deep in some ways. Think--The Lord of the Rings, maybe. I'm not totally sure what I'm trying to say here, but I'm utterly exhausted, so at least it's excusable.
Grade: Good
Story: All the unicorns are gone except one, who goes off in search of the rest, along with a rather hopeless magician and not-exactly-young ex-outlaw woman.
Well, I rather liked this one. It was not terribly similar to the short story in The Dragon Book, which was slightly disappointing. But maybe I just haven't caught on to Peter S. Beagle's style yet. I want to, though, so when I'm done this, I'm going to the library website to order some more of his books.
It was essentially a fable. So the characters were intriguing, but there wasn't quite as much fleshing out as I usually like. That makes them sound like they weren't deep, but I think they were incredibly deep in some ways. Think--The Lord of the Rings, maybe. I'm not totally sure what I'm trying to say here, but I'm utterly exhausted, so at least it's excusable.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Stranger Things Happen
by Kelly D. Link
Grade: Unfinished
Read: Part way through the first story.
There was something in the first story that disturbed me. I was going to read through some of the rest anyway, but I ran out of time and energy, and it was overdue at the library.
Grade: Unfinished
Read: Part way through the first story.
There was something in the first story that disturbed me. I was going to read through some of the rest anyway, but I ran out of time and energy, and it was overdue at the library.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
I Shall Wear Midnight
by Terry Pratchett
Grade: Unfinished
Read: To page 68.
I really wanted to finish this one. I loved the title and the poem it was based on. Plus, it's the new Terry Pratchett, and he might not live for much longer. But for some reason, I can never get into his Tiffany Aching books. Maybe they're too serious--yet I love the serious bits that come up in his other Discworld novels. So I don't know. I guess I'll try again some other time, when I have more time. Perhaps it was mostly the studying for exams that made me unable to concentrate on this book.
Grade: Unfinished
Read: To page 68.
I really wanted to finish this one. I loved the title and the poem it was based on. Plus, it's the new Terry Pratchett, and he might not live for much longer. But for some reason, I can never get into his Tiffany Aching books. Maybe they're too serious--yet I love the serious bits that come up in his other Discworld novels. So I don't know. I guess I'll try again some other time, when I have more time. Perhaps it was mostly the studying for exams that made me unable to concentrate on this book.
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