anachred

{...I think I'm listening to Jeff Buckley for the first time. Is this possible? I know the name like it's important...}
 

So I've been falling for Shoujo Rom-Com (that may sound like a redundancy, but bear with me) lately.

Another instance of me succumbing to a love that brands me for an Uber-Nerd. I'm not complaining...it's more of a self-amused cataloguing at this point.
...fantasy, Ender's Game, poetry, costumes, anime, an emo band, Enya, chant, shoujo, old book smell, Pixar kid movies...

One closed-series comic I've really enjoyed and just finished is not a rom-com, but a drama-dy. Kinda.
If you are at all likely to read a comic, I'd like to recommend crossroad to you, for it's characters.

 

( Oddity )

 

Okay, stats on my other current affairs:

Vampire Knight: another example of a non-Rom-Com (it's a little bit horror, above the usual manga love of the creep-tastic.) At Vol. 2.
Vampires at boarding school, blah, blah, blah. The heavy association of blood-taking and sex is kind of an interesting tension here, but my heart just isn't in it...

Tail of the Moon: this is also interesting in that the heroine sets out to have babies with the hero on the 3^rd page, but in a naïve and horrifyingly awkward way. I would like it better if Ninja Master Boy wasn't so beautiful... At Vol. 2

Skip-Beat: !!!

Okay, this is famous with good reason. (I always forget that this can happen, and am always ashamed of my snobbery when I discover I've been avoiding a potential favorite.)

It's a bit weird at first, and not in a good way, with out-of-nowhere spirit powers in the heroine rising from her wrath...in total contrast with her normal personality. This mind-bending facet kind of abates (though not going away) as the other plots develop. And let me say, this showcases all the classic elements of manga with all the strength they have, rather than the weaknesses.

They knew each other as children!

He's actually his father!

They both are incapable of love!

But it feels organic to the comic, since it never takes itself too seriously. The angst and emotives are off-set by real moments, or at least wacko humor.

I've read every chapter in scanlation, and earnestly hope to have money someday and use it to buy the Japanese originals...or at least the most recent ones. ^_^

After Skulduggery Pleasant: Playing With Fire, I have been approaching sequels with a certain trepidition. One of the perils of open-ended series' is that the Dreaded Middle of any novel can so easily translate to a Series Sag. Artemis Fowl is a series I really respect for not falling into sameness and this most recent one was *really* *good* (though I've mentioned it before:

Garth Nix is a writer whose ideas are fabulous, though his writing strikes me as so-so. The Keys to the Kingdom series illustrates this in extreme: it's got a kid-series-without-deep-characters feel, and yet, the settings are really interesting, and the plotting is really good, so I keep on reading.

Superior Saturday
the penultimate story, has a feeling of acceleration that is welcome. Not only does one of the feared developments develop (to my glee, I was surprised to note, probably because it's going to make things so much more interesting) but the villain is not a characature, and the odds against the MC are quite stiff. (The characature nature is in line with the world-building, oddly enough, but still...)

Good luck, Mr. Nix! I'm depending upon you! (...and the gold-glowing Arthur Penhaligon.)



Flora Segunda...I can't remember some of the specific reservations I had with this first book. Basically there were some not-so-tight parts, or beginner-sounding writing.

Flora's Dare is solid, though.
And really, really enjoyable.
I was kind of afraid at the beginning, when a lot of the wacky stuff sounded a bit too straight-out-of-Now, that the oddball juxtaposition of the first was going to falter. It comes back from that wobble (to me: I'm sure it didn't bother most people) to be so much more than as good as the first. It is more clearly plotted, deftly characterized, and full of realistic fluctuations of situation. Flora definitely gains from her experiences, is both burdened and empowered by it, too.
Actually I closed the book with a pang of pleasure. I don't know when that's happened before, but the excitement than there was going to be another book, as well as satisfaction at the ending of this one was just about balanced.

Maybe for the King of Attolia. But there's no comparison to reading that book...we've got a different history.

So: Flora's Dare, definitely a "Go Out and Buy, with Previous Volume".

Keep it up, Ms. Wilce, and may you be strong to the race!

There are so many facets to life, I keep thinking of different things about this new year I want to declare.

Ah-yah, I am big into goals.
It works for me to have it concrete. Even if I never look at the paper again, I've made sense of what I am thinking by anchoring it in ink or graphite.

As a reader I want to accomplish these things:


~ Finish The Tempest (William Shakespeare). First!
~ Finish the Spidey comic collection
~ Read Name of the Wind (I had to return it, and was waiting for a good moment to start again--I have it out now for that moment)
~ Commit Girl-Genius/Star Wars fic    (let's just say I had a little ditty pop into my head about modified light-sabers)
~ Continue reading Women of the Wolves, and chronicling it.


Now, I have some thoughts about certain books, as A Reader, to share.

I don't think I'm going to be able to read this:


Which is sad, because the first (Hound of Rowan) was so much fun.
And it's not that it's fallen off. It's just that everything's still there...and it feels like a second book.
There was something shiny about the first, and it was probably the world. Well, it's the same.
No new-world-smell.

I did get through this:


Though it wasn't so awesome as the first, to me...
it felt like a sophomore slump. Promising better when it gets the car past the Doldrums.
Plus. "Valkyrie"'s shadow got killed, and is now hiding something from her. That has "promise" written on its forehead.

Meanwhile...


I'll be getting back to you on this.
I am such a sucker for arrogant males, one worries for me...
(Then again, point me to an unarrogant male, and I'll take it as a challenge to needle it out of him. It's the secretive ones that bother me, actually.)
No offense to any un/arrogant males who read this blog...  :P

There are good books, and there are books that are a slightly unpleasant hit of strong stuff, stuff too strong for me.

I'd love to know what it is. How a book gets that way. I'm not sure I want to write a book that dogs the reader's steps when they set down the book, and haunts them for a while after it's done, because I find that a little uncomfortable.
But it makes such a story! One that doesn't leave the heart.

Do you have authors you think have this touch?
The one I'm thinking of:


I'm reading Son of the Shadows right now.
In a way, I feel these titles don't really sparkle enough for the way these stories weave mythology into otherTimes with such deep detail. But in another way, I have no idea what title could do justice to such straight-on good books without aging or losing power.

*shrug*

Right. Just what I needed: a new, demanding story idea and opener!

Well, I wrote more of it than this, but for the Tuesday that is coming to a close I give you:
Jamie Duluth was considered to be in the world's top tier of Spirituals. He was also going to be a legacy student at Friedenheimer Institute of Higher Attainment. He wanted to be a normal kid. Honest.
...Oh, just leave me alone!

I'm actually in one of my idea-spurts, so this is not totally unexpected.
It is also totally explicable in terms of my reading:

I finished Wildwood Dancing--I really think that if it weren't for the cover I might not have gotten past the first third. I don't know why I didn't feel the magic of it quite as soon as I did Daughter of the Forest. Maybe because I HAD to read it, coming down on the last due-date.
I don't think it stood out as much. Being a more collaged retelling might have a lot to do with it. That I'm not all that enthralled with Transylvania OR snowy winters (snowy winters in Japan, or in New England, or really wherever I like--but it all seemed a tad generic, not just the setting). But I enjoyed it pretty well.
 There were twists to the end that were great, and I

I hit page 99 of Vol. 4 of Aolon. I ought to be half done at this point. This is dubious. I am however revealing Shaim's little thing with disappearing magic, as I'd forgotten about it in the interest of working out some semblance of a plot. Still no success with that, but we've done a full pan on the scenery. *bleargh.* I don't know why I always get to a point where I have to say, "You're allowed to get to the point any time now"...I think I have a faulty concept of "the middle" of a book.

~Next afternoon:~

I finished Un Lun Dun, too. ^_^ I think it definitely got better once I realized the heroine was the one I liked. And it's inventive and fun. On the scale (size-wize) of HP, the postmodern child of The Phantom Tollbooth thematically, and in the likeness of Hitchhiker's Guide for humor-sense.

I'm reading UnLunDun by China Mieville. After announcing to my mom it just didn't get me, but I was reading it for my own good, he lets Hemi (Cockney half-ghost boy) come back onstage and well... *is a goner*
That's a way he can get me. Deeba (heroine at large) is snappy in a fun way, but Zanna (purported messianic figure du jour [spelling that wrong, so no apostrophe for me]) is dry, and there's only two of them in a great wide world of concerned grownthings.
Hemi, you restored my faith. Many half-ghast blown kisses.

I'm spending the week avoiding sunburn as we do vacation sorts of things. I believe the touch of color on my forearms is due to reading. No kidding--outside when I thought I was shaded and it was plenty late in the day. Who's the fairest one of all? The lady who manages to conquer the sun's evil rays to maintain that healthy red-head pallor!

I now have too many books on my shelf. But for writing I've been focusing on the Aolon story (black market established--trouble to come) and the Regency Underground book I've put off reading is awesome and also timely. I'm mostly thinking about revision on my short stories. No drive to write any right now, so blanketing the market in a few weeks/months sounds about right...

That is what [sis] Becky thought I'd said the first time--and honestly, I wouldn't put it past Susanna Clarke to have intended the perception.

I'm almost done with the book: about a 6th left, which (considering I was only a third done a few days ago) is not far from finished at all. This is enough evidence that I love it. Why I am going to expound next, and this will probably be only the beginning. (If you are in a mood for Clarke-esque footnotes, go to my anachronistic_red account on Xanga, and follow the tag for theTword, in which "T" stands for T*lk**n and stand in amazement at one re-reading of the first two volumes' effect on my ability to communicate with the world at large.)


I'm in all-over awe of this book, but my sales pitch is this:

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is precisely the book that might have come out of a response to Bronte's faulting of Austen (all shut up in drawing rooms and privet hedges, with no wild moor or tumbling becks in sight, to paraphrase only slightly).
Wild, wild England bookending very British (quintessential age of Britain Britishness) characters and laughing at the magic men have held onto in it's pale weakness no man would accept in his tea.

I never read this book before because all the descriptions started in the wrong place. They start with the MacGuffin or Maguffin--Napoleon--if only in reference to the period. Much more to the point is that this is almost to the Regency era, which frames a sense of magic that feels like that of DeLint's Little Country more than that of Harry Potter.
And Strange is the bright, rebellious pupil. No, that is the wrong start, too. Strange is already a man when he comes into this book, and while I was thinking he was of the make of Nathaniel in the Bartimaeus Trilogy, instead, he's merely a genius under a scholarly Casaubon type (yet not Casaubon, to my utter relief also, and yet the similarity to a character in one of my other favorite classics drew me in to trust). He is married by his second appearance, and he has a patience and kindness that I was not expecting. Certainly he's a bit careless, but his contrariness comes of being too bright among the dull. It's not a main feature.


I think I should post this to Amazon, something I've never considered doing before. But I flatter myself I have important things to say about this book.

I'll probably being poetizing it once I'm finished. For now I'm happy with the bleakly beautiful poems in the text.


~ETA:
While the rest of the world is relieved (or not) that Rowling landed the last Harry book, I'm sitting here bouncing because Clarke got the ending of JS&MrN so perfect, I could never have foreseen it.
And she didn't banish magic from England. *beams*
    I did post that review. My first ever.

I'm writing a short story that opens with the character leaving a poetry reading. It's immensely fun.

The Great God Pan

concerns Pan's doomed love to Iphigenia. Donna Jo Napoli writes this from Pan's immediate perspective, though allowing gaps in the narrative for the sake of story. Much like her Beast, it's beautifully told, though it is threaded throughout with the sexual. While that's perhaps a very realistic male point of view, I don't read male points of view to be flashed as often as their natures read "sex"--which is, I'm led to believe and have no desire to debate the veracity, all the time. Now, the story's not really that bad. But still.

I like filtered point of view. I sacrifice reality to the thematic focus on other-than-sex [-most-of-the-time].

It's intriguing. Iphigenia and Pan's ends are apparently ambiguous in the Greek lore. So Napoli was able to create her own story around it. In this, it exceeds Beast. Beast had too many trappings to either debunk or reweave. It was the gilding that was the focus. The Great God Pan is a story. While the gods were not treated as fascinatingly as WebMage, or MacCaughrean's retellings have done them...I can see why not. It's not a comedy.

It was very good.

The really intriguing thing, though, is that Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa is taken from Iphigenia. (Now, if there isn't anything more mystifyingly fascinating than the Japanese renditions on common Western folklore, I don't know what it is.) Not that there's really any relation between the two stories. But she seems to have a certain allure to the modern day reader. For a fairly minor character of Greek folklore—and I didn't really remember the name or story of the character Miyazaki was fascinated by, but once I read the book, it occurred to me they had to be one and the same.

I just read Peter Pan in Scarlet.

I've enjoyed some of the non-official Pan books more.

First of all: I enjoyed it--and I think McCaughrean is a genius. But if you want to read a Peter Pan story by her go read The Pirate's Son. It's not an actual "sequel" or anything actually related. It has the qualities and a few of the elements Peter Pan in Scarlet did not have, though, that seem more outstanding.

McCaughrean is one of the writers who seems to never do the same thing twice. I personally thing that (with allowances for the original Barrie context) she is just not wacky enough. It's spirited, and has an interesting storyline, genuinely scary ideas, and a sense of characters. It's just not quite as much fun as Peter and the Starcatchers, and not as dreamy as When Pirates Came to Brooklyn, and not as contemporary as my own little efforts in that direction.

If you love Peter Pan, read it. If not, check out the cover copy and first chapter to see if you'll like it.

But for me, it had too much in common with her "Stop That Train!" (which I could not get into) and not as much delightful tongue-in-cheek wit as A Thousand and One Arabian Nights. Which is a shame. Barrie's tongue was either firmly planted in his cheek, or he was suffering self-deprecation while writing a novel from his play.