Recent reading
Feb. 28th, 2016 04:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaThe Corn King and the Spring Queen by Naomi Mitchison
A 700-page historical brick. As always, I like her writing a lot. Especially in the beginning of the book, I sometimes empathized with the characters, and sometimes I was thrown out of their heads (usually because of some act of violence). But the length of the book paid off, and I was really into it by the end. I could see parallells to Mitchison's other work in the social movement in Sparta, which was interesting, and I enjoy seeing history written from that angle. Also, I wanted some more Philylla/Erif! There are plenty of hints of it, but. *wants more*
Turns out there is actually a Philylla and Erif friendship fic from last Yuletide, though, and I have that open in a tab. I know the author is good, so I'm going to save it up for a bit.
Tea With the Black Dragon by R. A. MacAvoy
Hmmm. I did not quite connect with this book, although it wasn't bad or anything.
Letters To Zell by Camille Griep
For my fannish book club. I quit reading this book after 25%, and was prepared to be the grumpy one who liked neither this book nor the last one we read. But hey, turns out nobody enjoyed this one. It's a book that mashes up fairy tales and has the characters interact in the modern world, which is hard to do well, I think. I mean, I enjoy fairy tales in their own context, but if you just throw some random fairy tale characters together and let them interact in a modern context, you often lose what made them interesting to start with. I know, the author would say it wasn't random since it was meant to comment on the position of women in fairy tales, but it just didn't work for me. And the writing didn't grab me, either.
Book club team, feel free to jump in and tell me what didn't work for you.
A 700-page historical brick. As always, I like her writing a lot. Especially in the beginning of the book, I sometimes empathized with the characters, and sometimes I was thrown out of their heads (usually because of some act of violence). But the length of the book paid off, and I was really into it by the end. I could see parallells to Mitchison's other work in the social movement in Sparta, which was interesting, and I enjoy seeing history written from that angle. Also, I wanted some more Philylla/Erif! There are plenty of hints of it, but. *wants more*
Turns out there is actually a Philylla and Erif friendship fic from last Yuletide, though, and I have that open in a tab. I know the author is good, so I'm going to save it up for a bit.
Tea With the Black Dragon by R. A. MacAvoy
Hmmm. I did not quite connect with this book, although it wasn't bad or anything.
Letters To Zell by Camille Griep
For my fannish book club. I quit reading this book after 25%, and was prepared to be the grumpy one who liked neither this book nor the last one we read. But hey, turns out nobody enjoyed this one. It's a book that mashes up fairy tales and has the characters interact in the modern world, which is hard to do well, I think. I mean, I enjoy fairy tales in their own context, but if you just throw some random fairy tale characters together and let them interact in a modern context, you often lose what made them interesting to start with. I know, the author would say it wasn't random since it was meant to comment on the position of women in fairy tales, but it just didn't work for me. And the writing didn't grab me, either.
Book club team, feel free to jump in and tell me what didn't work for you.
