ermingarden | Entries tagged with book blogging

Just Finished
I recently read Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, which was utterly superb! It's definitely a classic for a reason, and I recommend it in the strongest possible terms. (It also put the current political situation, terrible as it is, somewhat into perspective, in that at least nuclear war does not seem to be imminent.) A dark book in many ways, certainly, but never a grim book.

Now Reading
I'm about halfway through Pride and Prejudice! This is in fact my first time reading Jane Austen at all;

fiona15351, during her recent visit, convinced me that now is the time to give Austen a go, and advised me to start with P&P, which is eventually to be followed by Persuasion. I'm enjoying it! I've somehow never seen an adaptation of P&P, either, so I came in with essentially no prior knowledge of the plot or characters, and my reactions have been amusing Fiona.

Up Next
I had just started Le Guin's Five Ways to Forgiveness when I was prevailed upon to read P&P, so I'll be returning to that.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: I have "Parce Domine" stuck in my head

A Second Chance: A Federal Judge Decides Who Deserves It by Judge Frederic Block
My Rating: ★★☆☆☆

David Lat recommended A Second Chance as an "engaging and enlightening new book" about the First Step Act (FSA). Unfortunately, I have to assume he didn't read the book in its entirety before describing it that way.
( Read more... )

Current Mood: disappointed

Borrowed from

independence1776 and

narya_flame <3

Last book read: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson - my first Sanderson novel, and I really enjoyed it! Now I get what all the fuss is about.

Currently reading: Words of Radiance - sequel to The Way of Kings.

Most recently added to read:

fiona15351 just recommended Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland.

Most anticipated read: Doomsday Book by Connie Willis - another recommendation from Fiona!

Current Mood: nerdy

It's happened – I've jumped aboard the Biggles bandwagon! After hearing about these books for a while from what felt like half the people I know on DW, I finally took a peek at

rachelmanija's Fic in a Box stories canon-blind on the 4th, and immediately said: "Oh help, I took a look at your Biggles fics and I think I’m going to have to read these books now!" She very kindly advised me to start with Biggles Flies East.

That was the afternoon of December 4. As of the afternoon of December 7, I have read not only Biggles Flies East but also Biggles Buries a Hatchet, Biggles – Foreign Legionnaire, Biggles Follows On, Biggles & Co., Biggles – Secret Agent, and Biggles Looks Back. That's an average of one Biggles book every ten hours – leaving aside the fact that I've also been tearing through the Biggles fics on AO3. All this during a time period when I need to be studying for final exams (my first exam is on Monday) and, theoretically, sleeping.

I never read Biggles as a kid, but they're exactly the sort of books I would have loved at a certain age, and I like them a great deal even now. There's a lot of unexpected depth. My favorite so far has to be Biggles & Co. – it has a great kind of rollicking humor in parts, without veering over into farce. I love the scene where [minor spoilers]

Biggles warns Ginger about the German guard by singing to him – it's both hilarious and extremely clever.

Anyway, back to studying – but consider me Team Biggles!

Current Mood: busy

Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
My Rating: ★★★★★

I loved Gideon the Ninth, but found Harrow the Ninth a bit of a slog, so I wasn't even certain I was going to read Nona. Then I finally read a sample on Sunday, and promptly spent the afternoon and evening devouring the book.

General thoughts (non-spoilery)

A huge part of what made me love Nona is, well, how much I love Nona! She's an immediately captivating character and narrator – she reminds me in many ways of Klara, the narrator of Klara and the Sun, which I also loved.

NtN is a vibrant book with a tremendous amount of heart, and I strongly recommend it. In my opinion, it has the strengths of both GtN and HtN but lacks much of what frustrated me about the latter. That said, YMMV, depending on what and whom you liked most in GtN and HtN.

Specific thoughts (very spoilery, and also very scattered)

1) PAUL!

Camilla Hect and Palamedes Sextus have had my heart from the moment they were introduced in GtN, so I adored how much we saw of Cam & Pal in NtN – and of course, I have to talk about their end.

First of all, the name "Paul" is absolutely incredible on so many levels. For one thing, we only know one other person in this series with one of those stereotypically common, one-syllable New Testament names – and that's John! Which works really, really well with Paul-as-the-anti-John, which I think we see getting set up.

NtN is shot through with the theme of love-as-consumption vs. love-as-communion. (Religious connotations intentional.) John literally describes the Lyctors as extensions of himself; he reshaped the people he called his friends to place them under his own control. We see an echo of this in how Ianthe treats Coronabeth, too.

Then we see Camilla and Palamedes, and Pal's desperation not to subsume/consume Camilla! I've not been looking at Tumblr reactions to NtN much, but from what I have seen, at least some people are seeing this as a bad end, a horrifying end, for Cam and Pal. I don't see it that way. Their backs were to the wall, and they wouldn't have chosen this if it weren't necessary, but ultimately...well, as Cam put it to We Suffer earlier, "the Sixth House went out on its own terms." Choosing to die (or be transfigured?) in the way they did, in Pal's words, was "the best and truest and kindest thing [they could] do in this moment." Truest – truest to themselves, to who they were and who they always tried to be. And they avoided the thing they feared most, which was one of them swallowing up the other.

Is this "Perfect Lyctorhood" – or a form of it? MAYBE! In HtN, we see the Lyctors furious at learning – or thinking they've learned! – that John achieved Lyctorhood without Alecto dying. But Alecto isn't a human! She's literally the Earth! John couldn't possibly consume her entirely. Could two human beings to achieve Lyctorhood and remain separate? Maybe not, actually. Maybe Paul is as good as it gets.

But turning again to the name "Paul":

Pal says to Cam, "In the River—beyond the River—I truly believe we will see ourselves and each other as we really are." This is essentially 1 Corinthians 13:12: "Now we are seeing a dim reflection in a mirror; but then we shall be seeing face to face. The knowledge that I have now is imperfect; but then I shall know as fully as I am known." (Note: The translation I'm using for Biblical quotations throughout this post is the 1966 Jerusalem Bible, which has traditionally been the basis for the lectionaries used by English-speaking Catholics outside the United States, including in New Zealand.)

Going down the road of Paul's name as referencing Paul the Apostle – which, considering this is Tamsyn Muir we're talking about, is probably one of at least four overlapping references, but it's the one that leapt out to me – immediately brought to mind 2 Corinthians 5:17: "And for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here." Paul is a new person who did not exist before, but Paul also is Cam and Pal – Cam and Pal transfigured.

There's a part of me that wonders if this transfiguration is what will happen to Harrow and Gideon in the end. I doubt it – it would be too tidy for Muir! There's another part of me that wonders if this is what will happen to Harrow and Alecto: Harrow sacrificing herself to bring the Earth back to life – albeit a new Earth – through her living body?

I'd say attempts at prediction are fruitless with Muir, but shoutout to

chestnut_pod for predicting the Cam & Pal "smoosheroo" back in May!

2) Nona

The line in the (delightfully Wilde-esque) epilogue that gutted me was: "For Alecto knew not how to kiss, except such as it involved the mouth and teeth." Because Nona knew. Nona knew the "lessons of the hand and the mouth"; Nona kissed Gideon's corpse so tenderly. I hope and expect that Alecto will remember what it was to be Nona. But she still won't be Nona. This is the line that drove home that Nona is gone.

It's interesting to me to think of Nona as the human i(/I)ncarnation of Earth. Nona is fully a human being in a way Alecto really isn't – or rather, she learns to be human in a way Alecto never has. And the most fundamental thing is how to love in a human way. The things Nona learns best, that she pays the most attention to, have to do with expressing love.

Continuing in a similar vein, I am struck by how important Nona's job as Teacher's Aide is to her motivations. She takes extremely seriously the idea that she is in some way responsible for her friends. For example, even as she generally looks up to Hot Sauce and follows her lead, when she helps a panicking Hot Sauce after the broadcast she does it as a Teacher's Aide: "'Listen to me,' she commanded. 'I'm your Teacher's Aide. Breathe with me...'"

Paul reminding Nona that Noodle is in the truck is what spurs Nona back into action when she was ready to let go. Why? I certainly don't think it's because Nona cares about Noodle more than she cares about Pyrrha or Crown or anyone else. I think it's because Nona feels responsible for Noodle – looking after him was part of her job as a Teacher's Aide, and even now that matters to her.

(I just love Nona so much, okay? She's so good.)

3) Crown

Crown Him with Many Crowns Thy Full Gallant Legions He Found It in Him to Forgive is such a name. Wow. I do not really know what's going on in most of the latter part – "Thy Full Gallant Legions" is a phrase in the Côte d'Ivoire national anthem, though I don't know if that's what Muir's trying to get at with it, and I don't know what "He Found It in Him to Forgive" is referencing in particular...BUT I do have a few thoughts about the first phrase!

My initial reaction to Crown/Coronabeth's full name was actually annoyance, because simply reading the words "Crown Him with Many Crowns" was enough to get the tune stuck in my head. "Crown Him with Many Crowns" (the tune name is "Diademata," which just means "Crowned") is a real old warhorse of a hymn I've sung in choir dozens of times at least. (Here's a version on YouTube.) But thinking about the text of the hymn, there seems to be a lot Muir could potentially be hinting at here.

The first question about the name is obvious: Who's the "Him"? I don't know! On a Watsonian level, one assumes it wouldn't be John, in a Blood of Eden name. Perhaps that question will be answered someday!

"Crown Him with Many Crowns" has twelve verses total, although they're basically never all sung. The first verse goes like this:

Crown him with many crowns,
The Lamb upon his throne;
Hark how the heav'nly anthem drowns
All music but its own:
Awake, my soul, and sing
Of him who died for thee,
And hail him as thy matchless king
Through all eternity.

What immediately springs to my mind is the parallel we're getting between "Crown" at the start of the verse and "Awake" at the transition into the second half. Knowing Muir, I think this was deliberate, hinting at a parallel or contrast between Crown/Coronabeth and Wake/Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity. This is underlined by the similarity between "Thy Full Gallant Legions" in Crown's name and "These Valiant Dead" in Wake's.

Looking at the names in parallel makes me a little more confident about "Thy Full Gallant Legions" coming from Côte d'Ivoire's national anthem, because "Kia Hua Ko Te Pai" ("Let goodness flourish") is a line in New Zealand's national anthem. I don't know enough about the history of Côte d'Ivoire in general, and the anthem in particular, to speculate on why Côte d'Ivoire's anthem in particular, so I'll leave off that thread there.

The names are very different structurally, though! Corona's name works as a single sentence: the gallant legions the unidentified "He" has forgiven are instructed to crown him. Everything is structured around a single figure who isn't Corona. Wake's name, in contrast, doesn't have a similar internal narrative and doesn't center on any single figure apart from the hearer.

Generally speaking, I would tend to read Crown's name as pointing back in the direction of John; that was certainly my reaction when first encountering it. But while "Crown Him with Many Crowns" is definitely a triumphant hymn, and a lot of the imagery is of the sort we see used for John, it also has some astonishingly beautiful lines that don't fit John at all: my personal favorite is "Crown him the king, to whom is given / The wondrous name of Love."

4) The nun

There were three moments in NtN that really Got Me. One was Paul coming into being, another was the line in the epilogue I discussed above, and the third was the nun walking into John's room, saying the second half of the Hail Mary, and then shooting herself.

Did I know from the lead-up in the preceding paragraphs that she was going to kill herself in a kind of self-sacrifice? Yes. Did the lines "She said, Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. And she shot herself." still make my skin crawl? YES.

It has me thinking about different symbolic languages, especially in the context of religion; religious practice as language, in a sense. My particular background and cultural context makes the words "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death" just about as weighty as words get – I've surely said them literal thousands of times. And that passage is only as much of a gut-punch as it is to me because of that external context. It reminds me how much I'm missing when reading books, watching movies, etc., that draw on different symbolic languages! I can be told "Oh, this has this association, and this is used in that way," and that gets me to a certain point, but inevitably there is a gap in emotional experience.

Anyway, I'd love to hear what you think! How did NtN compare to the first two?

Current Mood: impressed

I spent much of the past few days absolutely devouring Barbara Hambly's James Asher vampire novels series and I am just blown away – I can't believe I haven't read them before, I adore urban fantasy! Hambly's Star Wars novels are some of my favorites, but I hadn't read any of her other books – God only knows why it took me this long!

This series is my favorite take on vampires I've ever encountered. I'll post a discussion of each book individually at some point; I am currently too unhinged by this series to discuss it rationally.

Anyway, I desperately need more! So I'm putting everything else on hold while I go ~~commit~~ write some (self-indulgent) fic. I don't think I've ever had such an immediate urge to go write after finishing something!

So...expect vampire fic before too long <3

Current Mood: enthralled

"Der Werwolf" by Christian Morgenstern is an absolutely hilarious German poem that's generally thought to be untranslatable – so I was delighted to run across a creative English adaptation by Alexander Gross here. "Der Werwolf" is an extended play on the fact that "wer" is "who" in German; in his English version, Gross instead plays on "were" as a form of "to be" in English, and the hapless werewolf is conjugated where the Werwolf is declined.

The German text is as follows: ( Read more... )

And here is Gross' English adaptation:

A Werewolf, troubled by his name,
Left wife and brood one night and came
To a hidden graveyard to enlist
The aid of a long-dead philologist.

"Oh sage, wake up, please don't berate me,"
He howled sadly, "Just conjugate me."
The seer arose a bit unsteady
Yawned twice, wheezed once, and then was ready.

"Well, 'Werewolf' is your plural past,
While 'Waswolf' is singularly cast:
There's 'Amwolf' too, the present tense,
And 'Iswolf,' 'Arewolf' in this same sense."

"I know that--I'm no mental cripple--
The future form and participle
Are what I crave," the beast replied.
The scholar paused--again he tried:

"A 'Will-be-wolf?' It's just too long:
'Shall-be-wolf?' 'Has-been-wolf?' Utterly wrong!
Such words are wounds beyond all suture--
I'm sorry, but you have no future."

The Werewolf knew better--his sons still slept
At home, and homewards now he crept,
Happy, humble, without apology
For such folly of philology.

Current Mood: spooky

13. A book with a premise you'd never seen before quite like that

Black Blossom by M.C.A. Hogarth

Black Blossom – tagline: "a fantasy of manners among aliens" – and the rest of Hogarth's Kherishdar series take place among an utterly fascinating alien culture, that of the "Ai-Naidar".

Ai-Naidari society is based on (or at least extraordinarily similar to) Plato's Republic, but it's a version that actually works. Spending time in Hogarth's meticulously fleshed-out world is deeply enjoyable. The plot of Black Blossom is also intriguing, and the characters are all well-developed and sympathetic – the conflicts all arise from people who are acting in good faith, and reasonably think they're doing the right thing, but have differing ideas of what that is.

The first two works in the Kherishdar series – The Aphorisms of Kherishdar and The Admonishments of Kherishdar – are novella-length compilations of connected short stories; Black Blossom and Kherishdar's Exception are novels. I read Black Blossom first, and I didn't have any problems understanding it, so I'd say you can start with any of the first three, though I don't think Exception can be understood without Black Blossom.

Because of bad experiences earlier in her career, Hogarth has requested that no one write fanfic based on her books, and I respect that...but it does make me sad, because I definitely have fannish feelings about Kherishdar. How do you feel about these types of authorial requests? Does it matter whether an author is a mainstream success (e.g., Anne Rice) or relatively obscure, like Hogarth? Does the current expectation that authors engage with their readers via social media - and the correspondingly increased likelihood that authors will be shown or otherwise encounter fanfic of their work - impose additional obligations to respect authors' wishes? My instinct is that it does make a difference, but I'd like to hear other folks' thoughts on it.

The remaining questions: ( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

12. A book that came to you at the wrong time

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in kindergarten, and it was the first book I'd ever read in which a character died. I didn't handle that well! According to my parents, when I got to the scene where Aslan died, I closed the book, cried quite a lot, and then declared I was never going to read a book again – "If people die in books just like they die in real life, then what's the point of books?"

That resolve lasted four days, which to this day remains the longest I've ever gone without reading anything. I didn't pick up The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe again until several years later – at which point I discovered Aslan came back to life after just a few pages! I loved it to pieces the second time around, and still do, but I was a little too young at first.

The remaining questions: ( Read more... )

Current Mood: amused

Okay, time to face the facts: I'm not finishing the book meme by the end of the month. Committed to finishing it eventually, though!

11. A book that came to you at exactly the right time

Star Wars: Showdown at Centerpoint by Roger MacBride Allen

Showdown at Centerpoint – and the Corellian trilogy generally, though I read Showdown at Centerpoint years before I managed to get my hands on the first two books – is among the best of the best when it comes to Star Wars novels, and is excellent science fiction generally. The worldbuilding is excellent: The Corellian Trilogy introduces the concept of the Celestials, a mysterious ancient species, and this thread gets picked up in later novels, all the way through the Fate of the Jedi series. I also love Allen's take on Jedi philosophy. There's a scene where Luke Skywalker uses some risky and unconventional tactics to disable enemy fighters without killing anyone, and it's followed by this passage: Luke breathed a sigh of relief. That one had been just a bit too close. There were times when the advantages of being a Jedi Master could turn around and bite you, no doubt about it. A regular fighter pilot without the power to use the Force wouldn’t have felt any moral obligation to risk his own life while using the Force to spare his enemies. Luke smiled faintly to himself. One of these old days, his moral obligations to spare life were going to get him killed.

I first read Showdown at Centerpoint when I was eight or nine, and the book came to me under some unusual circumstances. I was bullied pretty badly as a kid. The cousin of one of my tormentors evidently felt bad for me, because he gave me two Star Wars books out of the blue one day – Showdown and a choose-your-own-adventure book about Zam Wesell. I already liked Star Wars, but Showdown is what really made me fall in love. (Jonah, if by any chance you're reading this: Thanks!)

The remaining questions: ( Read more... )

Current Mood: grateful

Slowly catching up on the book meme...

9. A book that reminds you of someone

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco is my mother's favorite novel, and one of mine as well.

The Name of the Rose is a murder mystery set – with incredible attention to detail – in a Benedictine monastery in Italy in 1327. This is a time and place of significant turmoil; tensions around the relationship between the sacred and the secular, and the dangers of religious certainty, are everywhere.

As is always the case with Eco, there is much more going on than is obvious on the surface. You could never doubt that Eco is a semiotician; the novel constantly explores the idea of signs and what they do (and do not) signify. Literary, philosophical, and theological allusions permeate the novel, but the reader's enjoyment doesn't depend on catching the references; they just add an additional layer. Every time I read The Name of the Rose, I notice countless things I never have before.

Eco's characters – especially the narrator, Adso – are well-developed, and the story is often intensely emotional. I've cried reading it.

My mom and I often have very different tastes, so it's great to have something we both love so much.

The remaining questions: ( Read more... )

Current Mood: thoughtful

8. A book that feels like it was written just for you

The Templar Knight Mysteries series by Maureen Ash!

Bascot de Marins, a Templar knight, returns to England at the end of the twelfth century after almost a decade of captivity. While recovering from his wounds, he spends time in the service of Nicolaa de la Haye, the formidable castellan of Lincoln Castle, and catches murderers with the able assistance of a mute Italian boy named Gianni – Bascot's servant in name, but his son in heart.

Found family, complex relationships with religion, and engaging mysteries, all in an impeccable medieval setting – it's as if Ash were writing with me in mind!

The series is now eleven books long (Crusade of Murder came out in May and isn't on the Goodreads series page yet), but each one can stand alone; in my opinion, the first few are the best. (My personal favorite is #2, Death of a Squire, though it has stiff competition!)

The remaining questions: ( Read more... )

Current Mood: happy

Day seven of the meme, posted on day...twelve. Better late than never!

7. The most imaginative book you've seen lately

I was briefly tempted to say Winterblumensaat, but that's imaginary, which isn't quite the same thing. ( Read more... )

I'm going with Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer (and the Terra Ignota series generally) for this one. Reading Too Like the Lightning is a pretty overwhelming experience. There's just so much going on! Palmer does fascinating things with novel political systems, religion, gender...all told in the style of an eighteenth-century novel, with possibly the world's most neurotic (and often unreliable) narrator. It's a utopian novel more than anything else, and really gets into ethical issues about what is justifiable in service of maintaining a society that is in many ways better than ours, but still deeply flawed.

Note: When I first picked up a copy I thought Palmer was doing something deeply cissexist with gender; then I read further and realized she was actually doing something very different – exploring how the fact that gender is a social construct doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just that we made it, and now we have to deal with the thing we made rather than pretending it will go away if we ignore it.

The remaining questions: ( Read more... )

Current Mood: impressed

Here's yesterday's answer:

6. A book where you were dubious about the premise but loved the work

Enemies to Lovers by Aster Glenn Gray

Honestly, I expected Enemies to Lovers to be unbearably corny. The summary begins like this: "Handcuffed together. Only one bed. Which will win: Megan and Sarah's sizzling sexual attraction, or their compulsion to correct each other’s atrocious fandom opinions?" Books about fandom are often pretty bad (think Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl), so I read Enemies to Lovers out of almost morbid curiosity.

Folks, it's good. Really good. It offers a nuanced and realistic picture of fandom drama, including a culture clash between journal fandom and Tumblr norms, and the characters are impressively well developed for such a short book. Gray plays with familiar tropes in a delightful way to create what is in some ways a love letter to fandom – a love letter that does us all the courtesy of taking fan culture seriously rather than making it a punchline.

(I also reviewed this book here back in August.)

The remaining questions: ( Read more... )

Current Mood: surprised

Two days late, but here's day 5 of the book meme:

5. A book where you loved the premise but the execution left you cold

The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard

Here's part of the author's summary:
Cliopher Mdang is the personal secretary of the Last Emperor of Astandalas, the Lord of Rising Stars, the Lord Magus of Zunidh, the Sun-on-Earth, the god.
He has spent more time with the Emperor of Astandalas than any other person.
He has never once touched his lord.
He has never called him by name.
He has never initiated a conversation.

One day Cliopher invites the Sun-on-Earth home to the proverbially remote Vangavaye-ve for a holiday.

The mere invitation could have seen Cliopher executed for blasphemy.
The acceptance upends the world.

I love books about people forming friendships around/across status differences and social taboos, so I thought this would be right up my alley. Turns out, if it's up anyone's alley, it's one fifty miles away from me, across state lines and a major waterway.

As soon as the book started dealing with wider political issues – about 15% of the way in – it lost me. The takeaway I got was "Authoritarianism is OK as long as The Right People are in charge," which is something I fundamentally disagree with.

chestnut_pod described Cliopher in their excellent post about this book as "Good Bismarck (Who Can Also Dance and Make Boats Perfectly)," which is absolutely spot on.

Plus, the worldbuilding wasn't very fleshed out, which is okay in a shorter book but becomes tiresome when something is over 900 pages long.

The remaining questions: ( Read more... )

Current Mood: disappointed

Day 4 of the book meme:

4. A book with a worldbuilding detail that has stuck with you

A Wizard of Earthsea (and the rest of the Earthsea cycle) by Ursula K. Le Guin.

I'm perpetually intrigued by the connection between magic and language in Earthsea, the idea of all things – including people – having true names, and the knowledge of the name giving power over the named entity. (A secret: I have always wondered what my own "true" name would be.)

The remaining questions: ( Read more... )

Day 3 of the October book meme:

3. A book where you really wanted to be reading the "shadow" version of the book (as in, there are traces of a different book in the work and you would have preferred to read that one)

Chalice by Robin McKinley

I absolutely loved reading Chalice. Many of the elements that most intrigued me, though – How do the elemental priesthoods work? What is it like to become a priest of Fire, and to live as one? – were left sketched out rather than fully developed. That's not a criticism of the book: Chalice is Mirasol's story, so it makes perfect sense that we only have a vague sense of things she doesn't have personal knowledge of. But if Chalice is Mirasol's story, its shadow is Liapnir's story, and the shadow does interest me a little more. Well, that's what fanfic is for....

The remaining questions: ( Read more... )

Current Mood: thoughtful

Time for Day 2 of the book meme...posted on Day 3. Oh well.

2. A book that was an interesting failure

What does it mean for a book to "fail"? Does it just mean the book is bad, or is there something else to it? Is it based on what the author intended to accomplish by writing the book, and if so, how do we know that, and how do we judge it? Can a book have a purpose at which it can succeed or fail independent of authorial intent? Can an excellent book nevertheless be a failure?

My answer for this is Star Wars: The Crystal Star by Vonda McIntyre. The Crystal Star is McIntyre's only Star Wars novel, and it's almost universally disliked by Star Wars fans. The thing is, The Crystal Star isn't an awful book; it just doesn't work as a Star Wars book. McIntyre's worldbuilding is interesting, but doesn't mesh well with the established Star Wars universe, and her characterization of existing Star Wars characters is shaky. As what it is – a Star Wars novel – The Crystal Star fails, but if McIntyre had written a book with largely the same elements outside the constraint of a pre-existing canon, I think it could have been good.

The only time I can remember seeing elements from The Crystal Star used in a fanwork is in "Alter of Waru" by Jedi-lover, an excellent Luke/Mara story published on FFN back in 2012. Otherwise, fandom has largely ignored it.

The remaining questions: ( Read more... )

Back in March I posted a book meme by

aedh with thirty questions. I did it Tumblr-style, answering questions asked in the comments, but then

dolorosa_12 did it journal-style in April, answering one question per day for a month, starting here, and that was so much better! So I've decided to do it again, journal-style this time, throughout October.

1. A book that haunts you

Knowledge of Angels by Jill Paton Walsh

Knowledge of Angels is a beautifully wrought tragedy. An atheist from a far-off country washes up on a tiny island in the late medieval Mediterranean, where the local cardinal tries to convert him, seeking to spare him from execution as a heretic. Meanwhile, a group of shepherds capture a feral child, and the cardinal hopes to learn from her whether knowledge of God is innate – a question with immense import for the stranded mariner's fate.

The remaining questions: ( Read more... )

Current Mood: pensive

Enemies to Lovers by Aster Glenn Gray
My Rating: ★★★★☆

Note: I received an advance copy of this book to give an honest review.

Why do we write what we write, and love the stories we do? What does it mean for a story to be "good"? Enemies to Lovers explores these questions at the same time as it plays with some of fandom's most enduring and beloved tropes. ( Read more... )

Some additional thoughts that didn't make it into the Amazon review: ( Read more... )

And finally, since debate on the topic is so central to the book, I'm curious: what are folks' thoughts on woobification in your own fandoms?

Current Mood: curious

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Non-Actionable Puffery

Entries tagged with book blogging

Reading (Ash) Wednesday

A Second Chance: A Federal Judge Severely Disappoints Me

Book meme

Biggles Distracts a Law Student

Nona the Ninth

James Asher Vampire Novels (I am unhinged!)

A Poem for Halloween: "Der Werwolf"

Unprecedented: Black Blossom

Bad Timing: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Perfect Timing: Showdown at Centerpoint

Reminds Me of Someone: The Name of the Rose

Just for Me: Templar Knight Mysteries

Imaginative: Too Like the Lightning

Exceeded Expectations: Enemies to Lovers

Didn't Measure Up: The Hands of the Emperor

Worldbuilding: Earthsea

Book with a Shadow: Chalice

Interesting Failure: The Crystal Star

Haunting: Knowledge of Angels

Enemies to Lovers