About stories of all kinds
Reading this book just made me want to read the first one again... This is portal fantasy and fractured fairy tales and an original fantasy world and parallel universes and alternate history all rolled into one.
One official sent her to another, and the other sent her back again to the first, and so backward and forward; until it appeared to me as if both must have been appointed for their skill in evading their duties, instead of performing them. Bleak House by Charles Dickens Bleak House by Charles Dickens, Collector’s… Continue reading ‘And so backward and forward’
A dying motel with a custom built tower, a night-walking sister who is obsessed with Hitchcock, and a grandmother who tells stories of monsters combine to create a setting ripe for horrors of all kinds.
The truth was, he thought that what newspapers and books referred to as ‘the horrors of solitary confinement’ were grossly exaggerated. He would rather have too little company than too much of the wrong sort. Arthur & George by Julian Barnes Arthur & George by Julian Barnes, Vintage Books 2006, p. 211 There are times… Continue reading ‘Too little company’
This book was just what I needed to pick me up from a series of reading disappointments. There haven’t been many new reads I’ve discovered that I really liked instantly and kept me interested and enjoying them all the way through.
“[W]e... care not what you set up, so you pull merrily down what stands in our way... for it is our profession to turn the world upside down, and we live ever the blithest life when the downer side is uppermost.”The Monastery by Sir Walter Scott The Monastery by Sir Walter Scott Some days the… Continue reading “To turn the world upside down”
Admittedly, I read this book during a lazy summer a couple of years ago. This is the review I wrote then, very short on specifics and very long on the adjectives. "Fantastical and atmospheric. The view through a child's eyes can be heartbreaking and poignantly identifiable."
I don’t need a job—I make work for myself. If only I could figure out a way to monetize it. For instance, this very week, instead of doing the necessaries around the house, I decided to compile an itemized list of every book on my shelf, its height, type (hard or softcover), whether it had… Continue reading Bookshelf Reorganization: Do it for the aesthetic
One night as they lay lurking in the fireless dark, Túrin looked on his life, and it seemed to him that it might well be bettered. The Children of Húrin The Children of Húrin by J.R.R. Tolkien I just adore the dry understatement of this epiphany. Although I would deny charges of lurking, I too… Continue reading ‘It seemed to him’
The story is written in vignette style, but each vignette is still so tightly bound to the overarching plot that it isn’t purely vignette style, but something in-between vignette and novel. In my opinion, the result is that it fails to effectively be either.
Fictitiously Yours 