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2011 Books 38-40
May. 23rd, 2011 08:31 pm38) The Magicians and Mrs. Quent by Galen Beckett: recommended by Joshua Kronengold in A&E I'm happy to have picked this one up, even though at times the Austinian pastiche of the background was just a little too twee. It improved once the central character changed from being Eleanor to Jane Eyre midway through the book, while the final third of the book was in many ways a more conventional fantasy novel. Still and all quite good, and I look forward to the sequel.
39) The Jewel in the Skull by Michael Moorcock: My Moorcock reading has been woefully deficient (just the Elric stories some 20 years ago) and therefore I was pleased to find the White Wolf edition of the Hawkmoon Eternal Champion stories at the library book sale. The first of them was as compulsivly readable as the Elric stories, if not more so as the hero is less of a brooding menace to everyone around him. It's fascinating to see how Moorcock was able to take the pulp fantasy traditions of Howard from 30-40 years earlier and recast them; of course, I'm now reading them 40 years past that.
40) I Am America (and so can you!) by Stephen Colbert: picked up at the book sale to kill time (they didn't allow strollers in, so Rachel and I had to trade off with the baby outside the tent) this was cute, but the central joke of Colbert's character works much better in short televised doses than it does in longer print. Of course, that's true of almost any TV comic trying to write a book - it's damnably hard to carry off stylistic delivery humor for a couple hundred pages. Glad I only dropped the $1.50 on it.
39) The Jewel in the Skull by Michael Moorcock: My Moorcock reading has been woefully deficient (just the Elric stories some 20 years ago) and therefore I was pleased to find the White Wolf edition of the Hawkmoon Eternal Champion stories at the library book sale. The first of them was as compulsivly readable as the Elric stories, if not more so as the hero is less of a brooding menace to everyone around him. It's fascinating to see how Moorcock was able to take the pulp fantasy traditions of Howard from 30-40 years earlier and recast them; of course, I'm now reading them 40 years past that.
40) I Am America (and so can you!) by Stephen Colbert: picked up at the book sale to kill time (they didn't allow strollers in, so Rachel and I had to trade off with the baby outside the tent) this was cute, but the central joke of Colbert's character works much better in short televised doses than it does in longer print. Of course, that's true of almost any TV comic trying to write a book - it's damnably hard to carry off stylistic delivery humor for a couple hundred pages. Glad I only dropped the $1.50 on it.
