(no subject)
May. 1st, 2018 11:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morganmuffleNot quite the start of May but we're still in the first week! I'm kind of amazed I'm keeping these book posts up when everything else is dropping by the wayside but it's really nice for me to keep of track of and some of you seem to like reading them too.
Bit of a mixed bag this month- my first Bujold, Harriet Walter's fabulous autobiography via Shakespeare and a great discovery in Lonely Londoners.
I've noticed this year that although my total number of books is holding up I'm reading in fits & starts so I'll have days and days of complete inability to concentrate on a book and then I'll sit and read for 3 hours straight. Escapism at its finest!
April reviews
The Waters of Eternal Youth - Donna Leon Not the greatest of the Brunetti novels but I always enjoy a bit of Donna Leon and Venice & the food came across brilliantly as always. This has a very sad plot which I think is partly why it feels a bit downbeat to me but I did enjoy reading it and puzzling everything out.
A Sicilian Romance - Ann Radcliffe April's Emotions Book Club read was fun but reminded me of why I love Northanger Abbey so much- there is so much that is easy to laugh at in gothic novels! This one is relatively short and though the plot is utterly ridiculous it did keep me turning the pages and I did enjoy it. I wanted to shake Julia quite a lot but I've never met a gothic heroine who didn't inspire that emotion in me! I also want to know a lot more about poor (slightly more sensible) Emilia.
Brutus and Other Heroines - Harriet Walter I loved this book, it's 100% relevant to my interests. It's actually a weird mash up for different writing styles because it's separated into chapters by characters (or groups of characters) Harriet has played and some of them she wrote as individual essays for other purposes and some are specifically for this book. I loved her thoughts on playing Viola, Portia and Imogen all in the same year (playing the boy parts) especially when you then reach forwards to her playing Brutus and Henry IV. It's a pity this came out before she'd played Prospero but it's still a must for anyone interested in theatre or Shakespeare or just how characters are put together in an actor's mind.
The Warrior's Apprentice - Lois McMaster Bujold It's taken me forever to read a Bujold- my Dad has been saying I should for years and he;s not the only one! Eventually he just handed me this one and it's finally reached the top of my pile. It was definitely a good read and Miles is an engaging character. I'm not sure it blew me away but it was unusual enough to hold my interest and I absolutely want to read more. And there is a LOT more for me to read *g*
The Lonely Londoners - Sam Selvon I picked this up when stuck in London without a book and promptly read the whole thing in a little over 24 hours. It's remarkably apy with the Windrush scandal in the papers at the moment because this is the story of a variety of Afro-Caribbean men (mostly men) in London in 1956. It's written in patois but Selvon slips in and out of it sometimes and it was never hard to read or understand. The whole book is full of beautiful poetry and wonderful characters and colour and parties and drama but its title is absolutely right. I'd never heard of this book before but I'm so glad I picked it up.
Sauron Defeated (The History of Middle-Earth, #9) - JRR Tolkien This is the last part of the Lord of the Rings plus something called the Notion Papers and a series of narratives about the Numenorean legend of The Drowning of Anadune. So a bit of a mixed bag and the LOTR section wasn't one of the most interesting because actually by the time Tolkien got to the end of LOTR he had it fairly well plotted out so there aren't a lot of changes. The later bits fascinate me as legends and myths and different snippets of stories become tangled. Also because one of my favourite things about Middle Earth is the idea that it IS our earth and so the drowning and the eagles of the west and the straight path all tying into our own Atlantis myths speaks to me in a very real way. And so I'm at 9/12 and I've only taken 13 years to get here *coughs*
Monsieur Maurice - Amelia Edwards I was looking for travel writers and someone suggested Amelia Edward's A Thousand Miles Up The Nile but before I invested it I thought I'd try one of her shorter fictional pieces just to see what her style is like. It's a lovely little story, though INCREDIBLY frustrating because the narrator is a little girl and I wanted a lot more answers than I got. In a way it turned out to have some points in common with my earlier Ann Radcliffe reading (but less OTT) I do want to try some of her non-fiction now though which was sort of the point.
Bit of a mixed bag this month- my first Bujold, Harriet Walter's fabulous autobiography via Shakespeare and a great discovery in Lonely Londoners.
I've noticed this year that although my total number of books is holding up I'm reading in fits & starts so I'll have days and days of complete inability to concentrate on a book and then I'll sit and read for 3 hours straight. Escapism at its finest!
- The Waters of Eternal Youth - Donna Leon
- A Sicilian Romance - Ann Radcliffe
- Brutus and Other Heroines - Harriet Walter
- The Warrior's Apprentice - Lois McMaster Bujold
- The Lonely Londoners - Sam Selvon
- Sauron Defeated (The History of Middle-Earth, #9) - JRR Tolkien
- Monsieur Maurice - Amelia Edwards
April reviews
The Waters of Eternal Youth - Donna Leon Not the greatest of the Brunetti novels but I always enjoy a bit of Donna Leon and Venice & the food came across brilliantly as always. This has a very sad plot which I think is partly why it feels a bit downbeat to me but I did enjoy reading it and puzzling everything out.
A Sicilian Romance - Ann Radcliffe April's Emotions Book Club read was fun but reminded me of why I love Northanger Abbey so much- there is so much that is easy to laugh at in gothic novels! This one is relatively short and though the plot is utterly ridiculous it did keep me turning the pages and I did enjoy it. I wanted to shake Julia quite a lot but I've never met a gothic heroine who didn't inspire that emotion in me! I also want to know a lot more about poor (slightly more sensible) Emilia.
Brutus and Other Heroines - Harriet Walter I loved this book, it's 100% relevant to my interests. It's actually a weird mash up for different writing styles because it's separated into chapters by characters (or groups of characters) Harriet has played and some of them she wrote as individual essays for other purposes and some are specifically for this book. I loved her thoughts on playing Viola, Portia and Imogen all in the same year (playing the boy parts) especially when you then reach forwards to her playing Brutus and Henry IV. It's a pity this came out before she'd played Prospero but it's still a must for anyone interested in theatre or Shakespeare or just how characters are put together in an actor's mind.
The Warrior's Apprentice - Lois McMaster Bujold It's taken me forever to read a Bujold- my Dad has been saying I should for years and he;s not the only one! Eventually he just handed me this one and it's finally reached the top of my pile. It was definitely a good read and Miles is an engaging character. I'm not sure it blew me away but it was unusual enough to hold my interest and I absolutely want to read more. And there is a LOT more for me to read *g*
The Lonely Londoners - Sam Selvon I picked this up when stuck in London without a book and promptly read the whole thing in a little over 24 hours. It's remarkably apy with the Windrush scandal in the papers at the moment because this is the story of a variety of Afro-Caribbean men (mostly men) in London in 1956. It's written in patois but Selvon slips in and out of it sometimes and it was never hard to read or understand. The whole book is full of beautiful poetry and wonderful characters and colour and parties and drama but its title is absolutely right. I'd never heard of this book before but I'm so glad I picked it up.
Sauron Defeated (The History of Middle-Earth, #9) - JRR Tolkien This is the last part of the Lord of the Rings plus something called the Notion Papers and a series of narratives about the Numenorean legend of The Drowning of Anadune. So a bit of a mixed bag and the LOTR section wasn't one of the most interesting because actually by the time Tolkien got to the end of LOTR he had it fairly well plotted out so there aren't a lot of changes. The later bits fascinate me as legends and myths and different snippets of stories become tangled. Also because one of my favourite things about Middle Earth is the idea that it IS our earth and so the drowning and the eagles of the west and the straight path all tying into our own Atlantis myths speaks to me in a very real way. And so I'm at 9/12 and I've only taken 13 years to get here *coughs*
Monsieur Maurice - Amelia Edwards I was looking for travel writers and someone suggested Amelia Edward's A Thousand Miles Up The Nile but before I invested it I thought I'd try one of her shorter fictional pieces just to see what her style is like. It's a lovely little story, though INCREDIBLY frustrating because the narrator is a little girl and I wanted a lot more answers than I got. In a way it turned out to have some points in common with my earlier Ann Radcliffe reading (but less OTT) I do want to try some of her non-fiction now though which was sort of the point.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-06 09:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-06 04:58 pm (UTC)My SFF reading started out very much dependent on which shelves I could reach and she was over the stairs where I couldn't get to at all and then by the time I was tall enough I was buying my own books and never went back. I will make my way through the other Vorkosigan books but what of her fantasy would you recommend?
no subject
Date: 2018-05-07 08:26 am (UTC)As for fantasy, it's a real mixed bag. She's written one series I absolutely adore and one where the main characters' relationship just squicks me out and I never got past the first one (it's an age difference thing, teenage girl with much older man and I vaguely remember sex being involved in the magic system).
But the other series, hoo boy. I'm sure you'll have seen mention of the Penric novellas online, they're set in the same world, but the books I want to rec are Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls. You can take or leave the third novel, The Hallowed Hunt, it's set in the same universe but a long time earlier with no crossover characters. Chalion starts off as pretty stereotypical fantasy stuff but then sets up the whole universe very nicely, while Paladin has a middle-aged woman as protagonist and is one of my absolute favourite fantasy books.