silverflight8: stacked old books (books)
The introduction of English Magic!

The Library at Hurtfew to The Friends of English Magic

Quick summary of chapters )

-

Thoughts )
silverflight8: stacked old books (books)
I'm rereading JS&MN at the moment (Norrell's running about with Drawlight in London; I'm not far in.) I wonder if there are enough JSMN fans on my flist to do a read along? Does anyone want to do a read along? There are about seventy chapters, so I could put up a post each week for chapters 1-5, or something. The details that are packed into footnotes means that any review or discussion I have of these books pretty much covers 1% of the novel.

(I'm totally fine with any of you guys spreading this/people dropping in to chat, and I'm happy to do it even if only one other person wants to. I really love this book.)
silverflight8: Barcode with silverflight8 on top and userid underneath (_support)
Title: Hawk of May
Author: Gillian Bradshaw
Length: 279 pages

Read more... )

Title: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
Author: Susanna Clarke
Length: 782 words

Read more... )

Title: Moscow Rules
Author: Daniel Silva
Length: 443 pages

Read more... )
silverflight8: Barcode with silverflight8 on top and userid underneath (Barcode)
Earthquake happened, and it is so far out of my experience that I thought it might be people on the roof, doing construction. Or something. I just never expected to be in the midst of one, and so it was so very weird.

Haven't anything else to say, except that I'm still on track with writing (omg, \o/), and at 13,500 words.

I keep trying to read the book The Court of the Air (Stephen Hunt): it's a steampunk sci-fi, I suppose you could say, and I keep putting it down. This is because it reminds me frequently of my own book - the settings are entirely different, and the characters, too - but it has that first draft feel, and the dialogue is dead. The author dumps information on you. One of the main characters shows up in the first chapter and then is absent for the next half-dozen. It skips from what should be a horrifying act (someone just got killed in front of her, hello?) and goes to somewhere else entirely.

I find myself comparing it always to the books I've just read - in this case, The Ladies of Grace Adieu (by the incomparable Susanna Clarke, who wrote Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell) and Sherlock Holmes's last few chronicles. The distance between those two works and The Court of Air is enormous. In Clarke and Doyle's books you don't have the sound of the author's voice ringing in your head - Hunt's work feels as though I know what he's thinking as he writes it, adds a bit of dialogue-tag to round it off; in contrast, Clarke and Doyle's writing is confident, and it sounds like the narrator. Watson, as the narrator, sounds like a separate entity - even with the random intrusion of footnotes (I've got an annotated copy), it is always Watson speaking, not Doyle. I want to like it, and I like the premise very much; I can't get past the prose.

(This is sort of like reading Star Wars: Shatterpoint (Matthew Stover, he of the admired Episode III: Revenge of the Sith book adaptation; I deeply admire his ability to use new lines and punch you with the formatting of his prose), and something like Terry Brook's Episode I adaptation, which, frankly, was pretty much the movie narrated in a flat voice with a few extra scenes. (I read it, and if it hadn't when I was a week without internet and the first day I got books, it would not have been read.) The first one has vitality and movement (Shatterpoint evokes the Vietnam War, from what I understand of the conflict, very strongly). The second is just a retelling, and the movie, as much as it was criticized, was probably better.

*

So deeply behind on reviews I cannot even say. And I owe denise a thousand apologies because I still haven't finished those FAQ-revisions - they're almost done, and they keep getting pushed off *blushes really badly*

Profile

silverflight8: bee on rose  (Default)
silver

April 2025

S M T W T F S
  123 4 5
678910 1112
1314 1516171819
20212223242526
27282930   

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 10th, 2025 07:58 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios