Has a nice rhythm, hasn't it?

Checking out the cross-posting feature here and passing on notice of an offer to my flist - but clearly a more earth-friendly expression than 'killing two birds with one stone' is needed for the day that's in it. 'Feeding two birds with one locally-grown seed' sounds stingy, rather than nice.

Anyway - BetterWorldBooks is offering 20% off all used books bought today.  It's especially good for people in the US, as there's free shipping there, though the per-book rate is reasonable compared to most online book sellers.

For the curious, I finally got Elizabeth E. Wein's The Winter Prince, and Gabrielle Zevin's Margarettown. 

Today I had to defrost my freezer, which has got to be the single household task that is most capable of making me face my utter and complete worthlessness. But listening to The Adoration of Jenna Fox on my iPod player helped a bit with distraction...

So, being very behind on the book write-ups, I decided to shove together two that seem to have little in common, but illustrate my total lack of consistency. The books are Maggie Stiefvater's Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. What they don't have in common? Lament is - I started to describe it as high fantasy, but of course it's not - it's concentrated, essence of fantasy, with not a quest in sight, and there's ice cream rather than stew. The Hunger Games is fast-paced, gripping science fiction, set in a dystopian society. As punishment for an earlier rebellion of some sort, each of the 12 Districts must choose one boy and one girl 'Tribute' to go to the Capital and take part in the Games - a televised reality-show competition which runs until just one tribute is left alive (more of the competitors killed nice and gorily by others than dying of starvation or exposure, if it's a good Game).

What they do have in common is heavy emphasis on the romance, and in both books it's the common set-up of the girl who has a guy best friend (her only close friend, in both) and competing love-interest is introduced, messing with everyone's heads. The inconsistency comes because the romance in The Hunger Games drove me MAD. I found it irritating, heavy-handed and felt it unbalanced the story. While reading Lament, on the other hand, I lapped it up and found myself marveling that it was the only YA I could think of in which I didn't lose liking for the old buddy when the heroine started fancying the socks off the new guy... or vice versa. The other thing I found myself marveling at was the number and closeness of the Diana Wynne Jones resonances.

( Fantasy, Trauma and Violence behind the cut - and more on the Diana Wynne Jones comment. )

That's a combination of giddy excitement and overwhelming dread, at the news which Younger Daughter shared with me a few minutes ago: there's going to be a film version of Eagle of the Ninth! Here's the link she just emailed me, with a message saying "No mention of Rosemary Sutcliff, though. NICE, GUYS". Y.D. rocks.

Given the fact that there's no mention of a book at all*, much less the author, I'm thinking they'll mess this up bigtime. Also the ..."and his loyal Celtic slave" makes me MUCH less than confident that they'll get Sutcliff's subtle presentations of the personal relationships and cultural clashes and minglings. Not to mention 'a Roman military drama.' Still very useful from my detached, critical perspective... Nope. I'll cry.

If the next bit of news on the subject says Keira Knightly is signed up to play Cottia, I won't just cry, but will throw a major hissy fit, so they'd better take that into account!

*Y.D. has just pointed out to me that it's only a crappy article, so no need to be certain that the film will live down to it.

Especially for sartorias, who is the opposite of fail.



Taken with my mobile, so not great quality, but when the skies were so perfectly blue, it had to be taken ...

So, I was going to write a post today, titled 'My First Three Deaths', as it was on this day 43 years ago that my father died, and also this day 38 years ago that my (maternal) grandfather died. And I was going to talk about the first of those deaths, when I was on another continent from my parents, and not brought home for the funeral. And the second, when I came downstairs in the middle of the night and found my mother crying and packing and asked if she was running away from home. The third death was my grandmother's, a bit over a year after my grandfather, in her own bed, and I was called in from playing outside to see her and say goodbye when she'd just died.

And it would have been elegiac and beautifully written and thoughtful.... .

Instead, I got a call this afternoon from the hospital (GOOD nurse - her first statement was 'No need to panic' and only second 'Your mother had a bit of a collapse today and was brought in here'), and spent the rest of the day in the hospital and back and forth collecting medicines and ringing people and bringing fruit and trying - in vain - to figure out how to collect her car from the petrol station where she collapsed. Beautifully timed it was, too, as the ambulance for the one hospital she likes and would choose to go to just happened to have called into the petrol station to get some coffee. They got coffee AND a patient - how efficient!

As Younger Daughter, Becca and I were driving into Dun Laoghaire this afternoon to go see her, I told them about my dad and grandfather's having died this day. Y.D. said "Oh, nooo." Then looking up towards the roof of the car she added "Hello to you. I hope you're enjoying Heaven. I hope you don't get Granny there though", which summed it up rather nicely, I think.

My mother was extremely perky by tonight, and very glad to be in there, though she had protested a bit when they said it would probably be a good idea to keep her overnight for some tests in the morning. Also proud of herself for having managed to reply by text to Y.D.'s message telling her who St. Lucy was. St. Lucy does sound odd, doesn't it? But think St. Lucia and - no, even after the day that was in it, I should not allow myself finish that off 'and you'll see the light'!

Transcription from the thought process (conversation? monologue?) in my head while crossing the bridge over the train station on the way into the city centre last week:

"I am very prone to narrating my thoughts and feelings all the time."

[10 seconds later, realising what I'd just thought/said] "Oh for ... !!!"

[10 seconds after being squashed flat by the ton of irony bricks falling on my head] Composing the LJ post reporting on this: "ME: I am very prone to etc....

This was a particularly ridiculous example, but does anyone else ever wonder how much more or less wordy or self-narrating (or how similar) the thought-streams of other people are? My favourite example of all time of someone doing a self-conscious self-narration and catching herself in it is Mona on her first day out in The Saturdays. Walking along, smiling to herself and wondering whether everyone passing her notices her and wonders who she can be and why she has the 'strange, mysterious smile'. Anyone who doesn't know what happens next can probably make a good guess, but I will give the quote if asked!

Earlier in the week, I had occasion to find myself in the 'Mind, Body, Spirit' section of a few bookshops. There's probably a fascinating research article to be done on how books are shelved there, vs. in other sections such as 'Health', 'Alternative Medicine' or 'Religion', for example. One of the worst was seeing Thinner Thighs and How to Meditate side-by-side, and indeed from the same series. What probably says it all about my state atm though is having managed to read the title of a book as THE FUTURE YOU FEAR WILL HAPPEN ANYWAY. How much do I not want to read that book?

Also got back the two books I'd lent my non-YA-reading (but doing an essay on YA in the marketplace for her MA programme) friend. Sara Zarr's Sweethearts and John Green's Looking for Alaska. Her verdict? She enjoyed them both. She thought they were well-written and intelligent. But she'd already had enough of YA. There was something along the lines of 'F**king teenagers! I wanted them to just get over themselves, and to get back to reading about adults!' Which I found interesting, especially about Sweethearts, as that seems a very unlikely book to elicit that kind of response. But I consider this a pretty positive outcome all the same! And I'd probably be unable to get out of bed for a week if I read some of her favourite tragic literary fiction novels. Cups of tea, cups of tea....

Review of Gullstruck Island in the Guardian, by Patrick Ness. (Taken from Achockablog, where Michael Thorn makes an interesting point about the length of children's books, though one I still don't consider very relevant to this particular book.)

I will admit to a bit - or maybe more than a bit - of defensive protectiveness, but this still seems to me a pretty weak review for a number of reasons. For one thing, what's the point of the first paragraph? By saying 'it's only middle-aged reviewers who complain about the length of children's books, not the children themselves', and then following up with suggesting that the 504 pages of Frances Hardinge's "delightfully inventive" AND "endlessly creative" book may "sound exhausting to you" but that's why it's a children's book - then I want to ask in return why he thinks we should pay any attention to his discussing the length at all? Those of us who read children's books because we love them are going to be less than impressed with this little bit of over-the-head-of-the-child nod to the other adult readers of children's and YA books who suffer along with him. Those who read them for purely professional reasons might wonder why he thinks his middle-aged reading reaction has any relevance if it is so out-of-keeping with the 'intended' audience's response.

Further on he does a similarly sloppy bit of thinking in "There is, in fact, probably too much more, not in terms of page length but in that Hardinge lets herself get bogged down too often in necessary explanations. How churlish to complain, though, about too much imagination." Yes, it might be, but he's actually complained about the author's supposedly letting herself get bogged down too often in explanations. Quite different things, even leaving aside the fact that I very much disagree about any bogging down's happening.

Next up is this: 'If the "blissing beetles" - which make a sound so beautiful everyone who hears it dies of pleasure - are a little too Hogwartian, then there is more than enough else to engulf young readers, holding them captive for the long haul.' (italics mine) Too Hogwartian? Which is supposed to mean... ? And as he's several times mentioned the fact that young readers are captivated by the Harry Potter books anyway, this is another non-sequitur.

And ending with a return to the thinly disguised jab at the book's being too long in "Blame JK if there just happens to be more of it than there used to be."

If he wanted to criticise the book, he should have picked out things that he felt were actually flaws in the book and discussed them. If he wanted to make himself look smart by implicitly condescending to the child (actually teen) readers - that kind of cheap trick is pretty sad. Especially in a children's book author. And for the record? According to Amazon The Knife of Never Letting Go (only Book 1, btw) is 496 pages. Impressive conciseness in comparison to Gullstruck Island!

For my sins* I had to get a new mobile phone, which ended up requiring two trips to the city centre.

The first time I went into a wonderful tea shop which opened here a bit before Christmas.  (I will happily purchase and post anything to anyone on my flist, so check it out!)  They always have a big container of brewed tea and offer you a cup - not always that great, but this one - Thé des Concubines - was really nice  (heavier on the cherry than the vanilla or mango).  So I got a bag of it as well as the Grand Jasmin Monkey King I'd gone in for and was chatting to the woman as paying.  Then the other person working in the shop came out carrying a tray with a big glass teapot, two unmatched tea cups -  here's the one I loved - and a snazzy little timer.  He brought it over to behind the till and told the woman it was white tea.  When I asked if it was the really expensive one - about which I knew because we'd looked at white teas for present for steepholm and decided that was a LOT to pay - he said it was and I was invited to wait the three minutes' remaining brewing time and try it.  (For the sake of other white tea drinkers, I was surprised that it was being steeped that long - but apparently he was giving it about 8 minutes at between 75 and 80°.)  The tea wasn't my favourite white tea ever, but it was extraordinary how smooth it was - and how well you could understand smoothness as a quality of tea just from drinking it.  It wasn't just being invited to share in this little ceremony that was so fabulous, but the care and pleasure with which the two of them approached a tea break.

Next day I'd to go back in for the actual buying of the mobile, and was in the Meteor shop for a while, being signed up and all by the manager.  An older woman had come in for help with her phone and started trying to push a €50 note on the young guy who'd been helping her.  He was quite embarrassed and repeatedly said he couldn't take it, didn't need it, was happy to have helped her - ending up finally by shoving it in her bag (inevitably, one of those big wheeled trolley bags).  At that point the manager stepped in to help out and went through the whole 'he's happy to help, he really can't take the money, I'm the boss, no really, you don't need to give him money' routine.  By then, the security guard, two other people who worked in the shop and I were all cracking up - the woman was laughing too, but not giving up at all.  The manager - still laughing but starting to look a little bit desperate - switched tacks and said if she really, really wanted to give him something she could get him a box of sweets.  Woman looked all pleased at the idea for a bit, and after repeating three or four times that he liked sweets, the manager indicated the young woman who worked there, saying she was a bit stuck on said Seán  At which the woman turned to her eagerly - and pressed the money on her.  We then had the whole thing all over again as the manager tried to get her to take a second alternative and get him a lottery ticket.  (I found out afterwards this was because the woman had accused the manager of suggesting a box of chocolates because he planned to eat half of them himself.) After a few 'would he like that?' questions were answered in the affirmative - 'especially if he won'- she apparently accused the manager of suggesting that because he'd demand half the money were it to be a winning ticket.  The manager retained every bit of his good humour and pointed out that he wouldn't see Seán for the dust if he won the lottery.  And after a few more assurances that her offer of cash wasn't necessary and far more valiant offers of help should she ever have another problem, she finally took herself off - almost leaving her mobile on the shop counter in the process.  My admiration for the patience and tolerance of everyone in the shop was pretty damn high.

I do love living here.


-- -- -- --

* Sins in question are those of impatience and frustration with the latest round of coaching my mother through (re)learning to use her mobile.  What goes around does come around sometimes...

So, Frances Hardinge. I really liked Fly-by-Night, but for some reason didn't feel the deep love for it that I would have expected to feel. And Verdegris Deep I liked even more - loved even - but not with such a gut-level love that I expected to see quite so much glow (glowingness?) in what I wrote about it when I read it during 2007's 48 Hour Book Challenge. Anyway, she's an author I will grab new book by without a heartbeat's hesitation, and this time I feel all the love, liking and admiration that a lot of my reading buddies felt for the others. And did I mention love? Yes? Because I love this book. Just making sure that's clear.

The only thing I don't love is the cover, which is a bit generic sparkly children's 'adventure' story for my taste. And sure, there are elements in there which fit the 'adventure story' bill, but there are also elements which could better be described as racial conflict story, or as dysfunctional family story in a Diana Wynne Jonesesque way. And there's the very powerful story of Hathin, and how she deals with being given the role of minder of her important, potentially-powerful (but possibly 'an imbecile') sister, Arilou, and how she copes again and again with loss and apparently hopeless situations. And it's funny. But that special kind of funniness that comes in the middle of tragedy, and doesn't make it less in any way. There is far more tragedy than I expected when I picked up the book, and far more than I expected from the first 6 or so chapters, but it's not in any way diminished by the humour.

( More behind a cut, so all the quotes don't break friends' LJ... )

(Apologies if this posts oddly - LJ would not give me a cut where I wanted it and indenting for quotes at the same time, no matter what I did. I want the wasted half-hour of life back.)

Just spotted this on Fuse #8: the good news part, which is the launch of Kidlitosphere Central.  It's already an amazing-looking resource, and huge credit to MotherReader for bringing it to life!  It looks as if it would be entirely possible to spend all one's free time (or work time, if that happens to be your job) learning of more and more great children's and YA books from the bloggers who love them so much.

And since I'm on the list (thanks, MR!), I better get down it - especially as I was made aware that I may have sounded 'less than impressed' by Eon when I wrote briefly about it. (This via steepholm , and it's possible that he wasn't reading that carefully, but of course, possible that he was and I wasn't writing carefully.)  Because I definitely liked it, and am very much looking forward to reading the sequel when it comes out. 

( Dragons and (unreliable) narrators and eunuchs and more )

Just as I started off by linking to Kidlitosphere Central, I'll mention the fact that I wouldn't put this at the lower end of YA.  But that's not a particularly informed judgment, and I'm an admitted super-wimp about violence and brutality.