The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

The Turn of the Screw
by Henry James

I've read Henry James before, and greatly enjoyed his...er, psychology, I guess you could say. And I had heard this particular work mentioned many times—I know it was adapted for the stage as well—but somehow, in all that, I somehow missed this was a ghost story. (If I'd known, I probably would have read it in October.)

The most terrible thing (meaning the scariest element of the work, not how terrible the work is, of course) about the story is the way the characters of the two children use passive-aggressiveness. Or, rather, the way they play head games with the narrator, their governess. That, and the way he uses euphemisms to frighten ("horrible" things that the children have done and that were done to them were hinted at constantly, but the only thing he lets us know for sure is that a Mr. Quint (now deceased and haunting the house) had an affair with Miss Jessel (also currently deceased and haunting the house) and that the two ghosts spent a great deal of time in the company of the children while living, were "bad" people, and are now haunting the children, who enjoy the haunting). Every bit of evil and past sin is only hinted at, which allows the reader's imagination to fill in the gaps with just as much horror as they can imagine. I suppose that James, like Hitchcock, understood that the truly scary stuff is the stuff you can't see/know.

I did enjoy it, but I admit that living in a time where everything is tell-all, and people are given the facts of every gory detail, the story was...well, not very scary, and a little frustrating with all the information it did withhold. But there you have it. Maybe James intended to frustrate me personally. (Yeah, not likely.)

Borgel by Daniel Pinkwater

Borgel
by Daniel Pinkwater

Pinkwater puzzles me. By all accounts, I should love this guy's writing: he's silly, and random, and odd. Normally I really like silly, I love random (isn't that the charm behind things like Monty Python and Douglas Adam's novels?), and I AM odd.

Buuut...somehow, I really haven't gotten IN to Pinkwater. This isn't the first one of his books that I've tried, but this is the first that I liked. And I'm still baffled that I'm not in love with him. Oh well. Maybe in some other decade?

I guess if you want a synopsis, the book is about a kid who has an Uncle Borgel show up one day to live with his family. They have no idea who he is, but they take him in. Turns out that he is actually from another planet and he lets the kid and the family dog go with him on his interstellar travels in an old car. And they get to see, among many different things, a magical, cosmic Popsicle.

See? I should love this! But I don't. I'm puzzled. I mean, why not?

Moon-Flash by Patricia A McKillip

Moon-Flash
by Patricia A. McKillip

I've enjoyed a lot of McKillip's stuff. She writes a beautiful fairy tale (or fantasy novel, if you prefer to call them that). And her style is eloquent and beautiful without overwhelming the story...I've really enjoyed lots of her books!

But this one? A cross-over into science fiction? Hmm....

At first I was pretty skeptical, and for good reason: the beginning is set in a primitive, simple place—which wouldn't be bad at all, normally, but since it's a sci-fi novel you know where it's going to lead: simple, happy people meet technology for the first time, and what do they think of it? etc. Been done many, many times.

But, as usual, she drew me in and took me places I wasn't expecting, and drew both truth and depth out of the story. By the end of the book, I had to admit I thoroughly enjoyed it. Hooray for McKillip!

Sorcery & Cecilia by Patricia C. Wrede AND Caroline Stevermer

Sorcery & Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot
by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer

I LOVED this book. It was thoroughly fun from start to finish.

Jane Austen and sorcery? Yeah, it has been done before to some extent (like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell), but I liked this one better. It is entirely composed of correspondence between two ladies in Austen's England: one in London, and one in the country. And they have a very interesting time...

Really. If you like Jane Austen, and you don't mind a little bit of magic mixed in, this book is really too much fun to miss.

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

Ella Minnow Pea
by Mark Dunn

This book is clever. Maybe too clever. Really so clever it verges on annoying. But that is because it's a story not so much about characters (which is what I generally prefer: strong characters), or even driven by plot. It's a story about an idea. So of course it's clever. And if you like plot and character and that sort of thing, you might just find it annoying.

Not to say that there isn't characterization or a plot—there is--but it takes a back seat to the idea. It reminded me a bit of stories about utopian societies gone awry—Animal Farm, 1984, Orwell stuff in general—but the main point of the story is what would happen if we were no longer able to use certain letters of the alphabet, and we kept losing them, one by one?

And it's actually an appealing idea to me. So I did enjoy the story. And Dunn must've had a great time writing this, especially when he was writing toward the end of the book and only had a handful of letters left that he could use. I almost think that it was more fun for him to write it than it was to read? Who knows. Guess it depends on the person reading it!

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy

The Scarlet Pimpernel
by Baroness Orczy

I don't know entirely what I was expecting when I picked this up. Something similar to Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, perhaps? Or a little Les Miserables? What did I know about the Reign of Terror except what I've read in novels, anyhow?

What I was not expecting was a swash-buckling romance. (I've never seen any of the numerous "Scarlet Pimpernel" movies, of course. If I had, I probably would have known what was coming.)

It is a story about a larger-than-life hero. Reminded me a great deal of James Bond, in fact, with one huge difference: Bond is the generic male's fantasy of what the coolest guy on earth would be like; the Scarlet Pimpernel is the generic woman's fantasy of the world's most desirable man. (Honestly, the richest man in Europe, devastatingly handsome, cares about what he wears, impeccably polite, and completely hides it all from the world so he can be secretly the bravest and most daring man in the world? Come on! Complete and total fantasy!)

There are other parallels, too: the Pimp's alter-ego is a complete buffoon (Hmm...Clark Kent took a page from his book); the Pimp has a secret room in his home where he conducts all his pimpy business that is accessible only to his valet (Bruce Wayne was paying attention to this, no doubt, and also to the fact that oodles of money can be very handy when you are in the business of rescuing people). And so I have seen the birthplace of many modern heroes in this book. (Unless, of course, there is a hero who leads a double life before Orczy's novel? Probably...)

It was a fun read: Orczy knows how to build the suspense and build an entertaining story. If the romance was a trifle...well, unrealistic, and if the main protagonist, Margurite (she is the protagonist more than the Pimpernel, of course: we see everything through her eyes) who is described repeatedly as the "cleverest woman in Europe" often behaves like an idiot with wool for brains, well, it's still very entertaining and fun to read.

Napoli Overdose

So it's not really an overdose. But it should be. I mean, how much can you read by one author at one time? Should you read all of their works in a week's time? Probably not. But I did read a lot of Donna Jo Napoli over the last two weeks, and I'm not sick of her at all. Quite the opposite. I started with...

Ugly

...a retelling of the Ugly Duckling. Set in Australia. Well, why not?

Her stuff is imaginative, researched, and thoughtful. What indeed would it take for a lone chick to survive in the wild? What would that bird think after being rejected by the only family he knew? How in the world would he discover who he really was?

Light reading, but so nice. The mother duck really was quite wonderful, and the little swan brave. And Napoli doesn't play down the harsh reality of life and survival in the wild, and the Australian critters were so interesting to read about.

Writing about it makes it seem kinda lame, but it really wasn't at all. Really. I especially loved the friends that he manages to make along the way. (Okay, now that really makes it seem lame, but it ISN'T, I promise!)

Since I'm just slaughtering this, let's move on to the next:

The Prince of the Pond series:


1. The Prince of the Pond
2. Jimmy, the Pickpocket of the Palace
3. Gracie, the Pixie of the Puddle

All three stories are short and sweet, but they have such life in them! What indeed happened to the frog prince while he was a frog? How difficult would it be for him to figure out how to be a frog? And would he do what all froggies do—swim, eat bugs, have a family? And would he try to do it like a frog, or like a man?

And then, after he becomes a prince again by the princess kissing him—then what? Would he miss his life in the pond? Or would the life in the pond miss him?

It was a good series, and surprisingly touching. The ending of the first two books were very bittersweet—and the ending of the third quite a bit happier, though a little bittersweet still.

I love how she researched everything in and out (lots of strange factoids about frogs in here) and literally had to think like a frog to be able to write about so many frogs. Thoughtful and honest. Yeah, I like Napoli.

Halloween Reads

Okay, no reason to re-invent the wheel. I already did this post over at my main blog, but I figured, why not put a link here, too? I mean, it's not like anyone ever sees this blog, so who cares, right?

I did finish Tamsin again, and, oh, I do love that book. What could be spookier than reading about The Wild Hunt when it's windy outside? Go, Peter S. Beagle!

The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett

The Light Fantastic
by Terry Pratchett

I love Pratchett. I have read many of his books by now (all in the Discworld series, I think), and I never cease to be amazed by his ability to write something completely and utterly silly, and, at the same time, that can carry so much satire and commentary on today's world. Seriously.

This is one of the earliest books in the Discworld series—the second book, perhaps?—with the marvelous characters of the inept wizard Rincewind and the irrepressible tourist Twoflower (who teaches Death to play bridge), and of course, Cohen the Aged Barbarian.

I will be reading Pratchett forever. I love this guy.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

Stardust
by Neil Gaiman

This is not the first book I've read by this author. I tried Coraline a few years ago and really didn't care for it. (My main complaint was although the story was very imaginative, the characterization was...I can't quite remember if I could call it "weak," all I remember is that I could've cared less what happened to the characters. A huge flaw for a reader like me, who primarily reads for the characterization.) I've also read Good Omens (written by Gaiman and Terry Pratchett), and I liked that book a great deal, but I attributed that to Pratchett.

But I'll take it back. I really liked this book. It may have something to do with my penchant for fairy tales and how I'm always searching for authors to write new fairy tales for me. And the fact that this was a brilliant fairy tale, very imaginative and beautiful. I loved the three old witches in the wood; the brothers killing each other off for the crown; the woman enchanted to be a bird; the fallen star. And even the bits of humor and wisdom that got thrown in...very nice read.

The ending, however, was a little anti-climatic. When the witch finally meets the star, I was expecting some kind of a showdown, not just a conversation. It works with the story, of course, and it is a nice ending, but it didn't end with a bang. Not that all books have to, of course, but it left me feeling like I had just watched another Hayao Miyazaki film where so much could have been built up to some incredible climax, but he always sidesteps the big boom, and everyone ends up friends at the end, warm fuzzies all around...

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
by J. K. Rowling

This was a re-read, of course, as I was warming up for Book 7. This has been one of my favorites of the series (so far; and I have to say I enjoyed Book 3 just as well). As I finished it this time, I was mostly left with questions and anticipations about Book the Last. Snape is definitely playing a double game—but for which side, and what is he aiming for? How will it end? Who will die? Will Draco experience a change of heart and help Harry by the end? How will the book go with no Hogwarts as a backdrop? Then there are the general romantic questions—like who will Luna end up with? Gwarp?

And is it really going to end? What if I don't want it to?

*SPOILER*
One thing about this book that I was very glad to see: Dumbledore is dead. Now, don't get me wrong; it's not that I don't love Dumbledore, and I am the type to cry over a book, so I definitely did at the end; it's just that I was getting tired of him rescuing Harry. He made exceptions, broke rules, explained away problems...and I like Harry, too, but for heaven's sake, I want to see him stand on his own! (Another reason to look forward to Book 7 to see what Rowling does...)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
by J. K. Rowling

I can't believe it's over.

But there it is: it's over. Now what? Oh yeah, time to go read Eclipse with the rest of the Edward/Jacob junkies.

The nice thing about this book was that Harry really comes into his own. By the end, he's really...well, matured. He's come a ways from the nasty bitter snot that I hated in book 5 who attempted Unforgiveable Curses...

And sure, there are holes in the plot and in the overall structure of the seven books, but really, who cares? Rowling put 17 years of sweat and tears into this, and I'm grateful to her for it. I thought it was a great ending. It worked for me.

And I don't want to put any spoilers in, so I'll just say that the last bit of the book was a pretty suspenseful read. Hard to put the book down to eat or sleep or take care of my poor kid. (Lucky for him, I finished the book in...two days? Or was it three?)