My sister & nephew, both avid readers with good taste, recommended I read The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett, so I got it right away.
The wee free men, it turns out, are tiny blue guys with lots of tattoos and a thick Scottish dialect, and they're known as "pictsies" (and they get really angry if you mistake them for "pixies"). The protagonist is a 9-year-old girl named Tiffany who wants to become a witch, but worries that her name might interfere with her success.
The novel is a bright and funny fantasy / adventure story, with great characters and dialogue, and good depictions of girls & women. (So nice to find that!)
I found myself wishing, though, that I'd listened to the book instead of read it. Long ago, I listened to Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, read by Lenny Henry, and it was the best book recording ever. [And I'm including Jim Dale's recording of the Harry Potter books in that calculus!] I attribute my enjoyment of Anansi Boys ~35% to the great writing and ~65% to the amazing performance. Hearing it read—and read so well—decreased my general discomfort with the genre, and increased my attention in the passages I would have skimmed with my eyes.
So though I very much enjoyed Wee Free Men, I still think I might try to track down an audio version of it. I think I would like it better with my ears.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Friday, October 5, 2012
Book #27 - Brideshead Revisited
In the rules of this (wholly arbitrary, self-inflicted) challenge, I am supposed to only "count" New To Me books/movies. In deference to that, I have not posted every time I watched Fletch. I also abstained from book group in June because they were reading ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, which I read years ago.
But then, I started to get that yearning that I get when it's been too long since I've read BRIDESHEAD REVISITED. It's as though I haven't heard from someone I love in a long time, that kind of loneliness and melancholy.
For years, whenever someone asked "What is your favorite book?" I answered "The House of Mirth." And I had a ready explanation of what I loved about Lily Bart and her tragic descent and the loveliness and pain of Wharton's depiction of the era.
But somewhere along the line, 10 or 15 years ago, I realized that I hadn't read HOM for years. And then I realized I was reading BRIDESHEAD REVISITED annually.
I keep revisiting (apologies) the novel because I can't stop thinking about the people in it. (They don't even feel like characters to me, just people.) Moments and scenes and quotations stick in my head as though I'd lived them, not read them. And every time I read it, I am taken anew by some element or line or scene, as though it was completely new to me.
Maybe this is what scholars do? Inhabit a text completely; consume it and commune with it so that they can own it? I can, through the narrow opening provided by this small novel of Evelyn Waugh (and my experience of it) see clearly how and why that would appeal. I would want to be an academic if I got to dissect BRIDESHEAD.
So this is my explanation of why, despite the fact that it's not an unread book, I am counting this rereading of BRIDESHEAD REVISITED towards my goal.
Have you read it? I'd be happy to read it again, and talk about it with you.
But then, I started to get that yearning that I get when it's been too long since I've read BRIDESHEAD REVISITED. It's as though I haven't heard from someone I love in a long time, that kind of loneliness and melancholy.
For years, whenever someone asked "What is your favorite book?" I answered "The House of Mirth." And I had a ready explanation of what I loved about Lily Bart and her tragic descent and the loveliness and pain of Wharton's depiction of the era.
But somewhere along the line, 10 or 15 years ago, I realized that I hadn't read HOM for years. And then I realized I was reading BRIDESHEAD REVISITED annually.
I keep revisiting (apologies) the novel because I can't stop thinking about the people in it. (They don't even feel like characters to me, just people.) Moments and scenes and quotations stick in my head as though I'd lived them, not read them. And every time I read it, I am taken anew by some element or line or scene, as though it was completely new to me.
Maybe this is what scholars do? Inhabit a text completely; consume it and commune with it so that they can own it? I can, through the narrow opening provided by this small novel of Evelyn Waugh (and my experience of it) see clearly how and why that would appeal. I would want to be an academic if I got to dissect BRIDESHEAD.
So this is my explanation of why, despite the fact that it's not an unread book, I am counting this rereading of BRIDESHEAD REVISITED towards my goal.
Have you read it? I'd be happy to read it again, and talk about it with you.
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