Tag: Terry Pratchett

Springing Into Fantasy

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations31 Comments

Today marks the launch of spring–and of the Once Upon a Time Reading Experience, hosted by Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings.  This will be my third year participating, and I’ve been looking forward to joining in again.  If someone was going to design a reading challenge around my favorite kinds of books…it would look a lot like this one.  I mean, fantasy with an emphasis on fairy tales!  That’s what I read (and what I write too).

I’ve been telling myself that I’ll make progress on my To Be Read list over the next three months, since so many of the books on it are fantasy.  This, of course, ignores that fact that I’ll probably add tons of wonderful new books too…but shhh, let’s not talk about that right now!

I have far too many books that fall into this Experience to list them all here, but I’ll give you a few initial ideas…

~ Stardust by Neil Gaiman, for the group read-along

~ Chalice by Robin McKinley, which I started yesterday…but close enough

~ Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George (a reread) and its once-removed sequel, Princess of the Silver Woods (because I already read the immediate sequel, Princess of Glass)

~ The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, to get me set up for the real challenge…

~ The Lord of the Rings trilogy–or at least a good attempt at them

~ Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, because…Pratchett and Gaiman!  How have I not already read this?

~ The House on Durrow Street and The Master of Heathcrest Hall by Galen Beckett, as I thoroughly enjoyed the first book in the trilogy, The Magicians and Mrs. Quent

~ The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley, which I read SO long ago that I’ve completely forgotten them, and now I feel like they’re a gap in my McKinley reading

~ More installments of the Sevenwaters Series by Juliet Marillier, part of my goal to complete series

And, oh, so many, many random fantasy novels…really, the list above barely scratches the surface!  Well, scratches it, maybe, but not so far as a dent.  So, I’m not worrying too much about which books I read, or how many, or which Quests they fit into.  I’ll just toss lots of books into the air (metaphorically) and let them fall where they will.  I hope you’ll come along for the fun!

Imagined Lives: Portraits of Unknown People

On By cherylmahoneyIn Historical Fiction, Reviews6 Comments

Imagined LivesI’ve been deeply intrigued by the concept of Imagined Lives: Portraits of Unknown People ever since I first heard about it.  Eight authors wrote fictional character sketches, based off portraits whose original identities have been lost.  Many were at some point thought to be someone famous from history, which is how the portraits ended up at the National Portrait Gallery in London.  Later scholarship has overturned their supposed identities, and now the Portrait Gallery (which, by the way, is my favorite museum, ever) has put together a collection of stories around these anonymous portraits.

I almost bought a copy in the gift shop when I was at the museum…but I have trouble buying books I haven’t read, so I resisted.  I hit the library instead, and I think that was the right decision.  I enjoyed the book, but I’m glad I didn’t spend however many pounds they would have charged me.

There are eight authors and fourteen character sketches, and while I liked the book overall, the quality does vary.  The style also varies, which contributes to the changing quality.  I liked best the ones that were more like stories.  There’s a mix of letters, personal reflections, and fictional encyclopedia entries, all of them only two to three pages long.

The encyclopedia entries read like, well, encyclopedia entries.  Some of the more elaborate ones have some intriguing elements to them, but ultimately…well, how fascinating is an encyclopedia entry, really?  Especially a very brief, overview biography of someone.  Some of these would be wonderful as novels, but in such a compressed format, they fall a little flat.  Not all–but some.

For the letters and the reflections, I liked the shortness.  Because of their style, they’re much more intimate, much more detailed, and give us this tiny, very personal glimpse into the individual’s life.  I especially liked it when the glimpse is very closely tied into the portrait–as in a woman writing to her sister about her husband’s rash investment in commissioning a portrait they can’t afford, or a young noblewoman whose painting has been done with the interest of attracting a suitor, and she fears a husband who would choose his wife in such a way.  That was one of my favorites.  We also get the other side of a similar story, a woman writing to her mother about her indecision on whether she should accept a suitor who has sent her his portrait.

My favorite, though, is actually one of the encyclopedia entries, which will make more sense when I tell you that it was written by the delightful Terry Pratchett.  It tells the tale of the very unfortunate Joshua Easement, who dreamed of being a great explorer but whose “navigational method mainly consisted of variations on the theme of bumping into things.”

The portraits all seem to be from loosely around the time of Queen Elizabeth I, and many are tied very closely into history.  As is frequently true with much longer works of historical fiction, some of the fun of the stories is weaving the fictional characters into the lives of real people.

The book concludes with an essay on how scholars identify portraits, and how portraits like the ones in the book can lose their original identities.  It’s a very accessible essay, and an interesting look at the stories behind the portraits in museums.

If you have an interest in portraits or British history, I recommend this intriguing (and very quick) read.  I didn’t enjoy all the character sketches, but in the midst are several gems.

Museum Site: http://www.npg.org.uk/

Other reviews:
Vulpes Libris
Patrick T. Reardon
Anyone else?

Buy it here: Imagined Lives: Portraits of Unknown People

What Are You Reading This Spring?

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations, What Are You Reading?14 Comments

itsmondayTime to join in again for the Book Journey meme, “It’s Monday, What Are You Reading?”

I finished reading and reviewing Les Miserables, which was quite the long haul.  Read the review(s!) here: Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

I read and enjoyed the other books on my previous list, with reviews coming up in the next week.  I’ll have Scarlet up tomorrow.  (Addendum: It’s up now!)

Right now I’m in the middle of My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier, because I love her most famous book, Rebecca.  I first heard about this one years ago, and thought I didn’t want to read it because it was too much like Rebecca–another mysterious woman who may be good or may be monstrous, though in this case it’s her husband who died under mysterious circumstances.  So I put that one at the back of my mind and read three other, very different, books by du Maurier…and didn’t find them to be all that good.  Yet I’m convinced by Rebecca that du Maurier is absolutely brilliant!  And thus I’m deciding that maybe it makes sense after all to read her most Rebecca-like other book.  So far, I’m liking it better than the others!

Spring BooksAfter this one, I have a big stack of fantasy I’m eager to jump into.  The Once Upon a Time “challenge” runs every spring, and I may just start in on the fantasy a few days early.  I have a number of rereads piled up, but I want to take a new perspective on them: Chalice by Robin McKinley, because I want to look at it as a Beauty and the Beast retelling; Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George, because it was only the second “12 Dancing Princesses” story I ever read, and now I’ve read eight or ten, and written one; The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien which I haven’t read since I was maybe twelve.  And I am vowing and swearing to read Lord of the Rings this spring, and The Hobbit seems like good gateway-Tolkien.

And last, I have been meaning to read Good Omens pretty much forever.  Because, I mean, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman!

I’ll let you know how it goes.  🙂  Happy Spring and Happy Reading this week!

Death Comes for an Apprentice

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews2 Comments

MortIn my usual way of reading Discworld books, I had read most of the Death subseries without reading the first one.  But recently, I finally picked up Mort by Terry Pratchett to get the beginning of the story, confident of finding a book that would be about life and death and eternity–and it was–and be enormously funny–and it was!

Mort has never been much of a success at anything, so his father decides the answer is to apprentice him out to a trade.  As it happens, Death is looking for an apprentice.  The job is a little daunting but Mort begins to get into the swing of things (pun intended!)…but then matters become complicated when he saves the life of a princess who the universe is now convinced is dead, and when Death begins to explore happiness and contemplate escaping his duties.  Also there’s Death’s daughter (adopted) thrown into the mix, and more than one wizard of questionable power.  And…well, it’s Discworld.  There’s havoc and there’s hilarity.

There’s a whole collection of fun characters here, as I would expect from Terry Pratchett.  Mort undergoes an interesting transformation from ordinary screw-up to resembling Death just a little too much–including this problem he keeps having passing through objects.  Princess Keli is great fun, especially as she becomes immensely frustrated when the universe thinks she’s dead and everyone keeps forgetting about her.  She’s an odd blend of very strong and also quite inept in dealing with the world–as happens when you’ve been a princess all your life, and never needed to deal with the world.  Ysabell, Death’s daughter, is an odd blend of crazy and ultimately endearing.  And it was fun to learn the backstory on Albert, Death’s servant–he’s in later books, but his background isn’t revisited that I can recall.

My favorite character here was Death himself.  I tend to like him best in a supporting role–sometimes when he’s too much the focus it gets old (while often his two-paragraph cameos are the funniest bits of other books).  Here, there’s enough focus on Mort and the others that Death gets just the right balance–plenty of him, but not too much.  He tries to explore human happiness, which treats us to scenes of Death fly-fishing, line-dancing, and sitting in a bar (at a quarter to three, of course), and never quite understanding any of the things he’s doing.  My favorite may be when Death visits an employment agency and puts down “Anthropomorphic Personification” as his previous position.

The setting is also particularly fun here, something I don’t often say about books!  But Death created his own world, and though he tried very hard, he has some trouble–everything tends to be black and fake.  We also spend time in Keli’s mountain kingdom, and get to visit Ankh-Morpork.

There isn’t a huge lot of satire and depth here, but there are some discussions on justice and eternity and the meaning of life.  Death seems to struggle with these questions throughout his books.

The weak point of the book is the ending–only the very, very end.  At the risk of a slight spoiler, there’s a sudden switch in the romance, and even though I knew it had to be coming (based on the later books about Mort’s daughter), Pratchett still didn’t sell it to me.  It’s like he decided on the last chapter that there was more future potential in ending one way than with the other, and went for it without bothering about whether it made sense.  I won’t complain too much…since it did lead to the amazing Susan, heroine of later books.

This is the fourth book in the Discworld series, and it’s one I’d recommend as a place to start.  The books still get better, but this is the earliest one that’s already showing just how hilarious Terry Pratchett can be.  Highly recommended!

Author’s Site: http://terrypratchettbooks.com/

Other reviews:
Brian Jane’s Blog
Helen Scribbles
The Eagle’s Aerial Perspective
Anyone else?

2012 End of the Year Round-up

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations9 Comments

We’re coming up on the end of the year, and I think it’s a good time to look back at my reading in 2012! I don’t expect my favorite (and least favorite) books to change too much in the next few days.  My total reads this year comes in at 182, with possibly two more if I finish the books I’m midway through right now.  I’m calling that a good year in reading…

From that list, here are the ups and downs of my last twelve months of books.  Links go to my reviews.

1) Best Book  –  This is in some ways an easy question this year.  My favorite book all year was The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne Valente.  Its only serious competition is its own sequel, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There.  These are both beautifully written books with wonderful characters, vivid worlds, and fun nods back to classic children’s fantasy, which I also love.

This was an easy question because I try to select from new reads.  But I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention that I reread some of my absolute favorite ever (ever) books this year: The Little White Bird by J. M. Barrie, Susan Kay’s Phantom, and The Song of the Lioness quartet by Tamora Pierce.

2) Worst Book  –  I must have had a good year, because I don’t have a clear frontrunner (backrunner?) for this one.  I’m going to have to say Wicked by Gregory Maguire, even though it was a reread.  It was my book club’s selection, and I was hoping to like it better on a second read-through.  I didn’t.  I did have a wonderful time discussing it, though.

3) Most Disappointing Book  –  This one could have been the worst book, but it’s a better fit for this slot instead: Star Trek: The Price of the Phoenix by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath.  They edited two excellent collections of Star Trek short stories, and the plotline looked good.  I have a weakness for storylines about characters apparently dead then returning, and this centered on Kirk doing exactly that.  But…it wound up feeling like the reader was thrown in mid-story and, a much bigger problem, there was something just off about the portrayal of both Kirk and Spock.  Spock gets upset with the villain and snarls.  I kid you not.  There was one very good McCoy moment when Kirk turns up alive, but otherwise this flopped.

4) Most Surprising (in a Good Way)  –  I’m going to say the Bloody Jack audiobook, by L. A. Meyer and read by Katherine Kellgren.  It wasn’t the book that was surprising, or even how good it was (I expected that) but how much I ended up really liking audiobooks in general, when I’d resisted for a long time!

5) Most Unlikely Read – Now and then I read something quite different than my usual fare.  One possibility is The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, since I so rarely read nonfiction.  But I think even odder was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith, though that was the fault of my book club.

6) Most Satisfying Read – Legacy by Susan Kay.  Not the best book of the year, not even a contender…but it gives me an immense feeling of satisfaction to know that I’ve finally read the only other book by the author of my favorite book.  And it’s a 600 page, heavily historical novel.  There’s some satisfaction just in finishing!

7) Best Series Discovered – I’ve been fighting very hard not to start series this year…  Fairyland is the obvious answer, but since it was the answer to #1, let’s say The Magicians and Mrs. Quent by Galen Beckett.  Jane Eyre meets Pride and Prejudice meets fantasy!

8) Most Hilarious Read  –  As usual, this goes to Terry Pratchett (for the third year!)  Of the several I read, I’ll give it to Wyrd Sisters, mostly for the scenes involving Death.

9) Can’t Believe I Waited Until 2012 to Read It  –  Since I spent the year trying to finish series, there are a number of candidates here.  I’m giving it to books 2 and 3 of the Lando Calrissian trilogy, considering until I picked them up, I vaguely thought I had already read them!

10) Most Looking Forward To in 2013  –  Easy.  Fairyland 3, which I certainly hope will be out some time in 2013.  🙂

What were your best or worst of 2012?  Or feel free to answer any of the other questions!