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snugglekittySo, I decided it was finally time to Do Something about that big pile of books that I've never read, and thus don't know if I want to keep. So I will be trying to read my way through the pile in the next week or so. (Yes, I should have planned further ahead.) Then I'll have a different pile of new-to-me books to read through.
First I read The Summer Queen by Joan D. Vinge, a long-ago present from my long-ago friend Soli. This was a sequel to a book I simply loved called The Snow Queen, which I had never read because I never read the book in between, World's End. (If anybody else out there is in the same dilemma, take heart! You don't have to have read World's End, as its contents are summarized in the third book.) Anyone who likes the well-known Samaria books by Sharon Shinn would like these books too - they have a lot of thematic similarities, although these books have more graphic violence and sex. They deal with intense themes - obsession, betrayal, loss of love, cultures clashing, faith. I would give The Summer Queen four stars - I suspect I'll read it again, and I really couldn't put it down. A particularly intriguing thing about this sequel is that it made me want to re-read The Snow Queen to see if my impression is correct - that the author may have decided, after the first book had been published , that she didn't like the ending and wanted to change it to some extent.
Then I read a book I found in a pile of Free called The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. I almost put it down after the first fifty pages. I found the narrative style a little difficult. There was a lot of jumping around, and some things about the perspective were confusing. But, I decided that since I was somewhat intrigued, and almost halfway done with the book, I would finish it, and I'm really glad I did. I'm definitely going to have to read it again, so that now that I know what is going to happen, I can try to analyze what lessons the author is trying to teach us. (I feel pretty confident that there are some, since she modeled her book on Austen's to a certain extent.) I also want to read her other books. I would give this book three and a half stars, even though it's a sleeper and not really an easy read. At a certain point, I kept reading it because I wasn't sure why I liked it, and I wanted to find out, and that's kind of neat. Also, this is kind of what I wanted Reading Lolita in Tehran to be like, and it wasn't.
Fifteen books so far. This is going to be a good year for reading.
First I read The Summer Queen by Joan D. Vinge, a long-ago present from my long-ago friend Soli. This was a sequel to a book I simply loved called The Snow Queen, which I had never read because I never read the book in between, World's End. (If anybody else out there is in the same dilemma, take heart! You don't have to have read World's End, as its contents are summarized in the third book.) Anyone who likes the well-known Samaria books by Sharon Shinn would like these books too - they have a lot of thematic similarities, although these books have more graphic violence and sex. They deal with intense themes - obsession, betrayal, loss of love, cultures clashing, faith. I would give The Summer Queen four stars - I suspect I'll read it again, and I really couldn't put it down. A particularly intriguing thing about this sequel is that it made me want to re-read The Snow Queen to see if my impression is correct - that the author may have decided, after the first book had been published , that she didn't like the ending and wanted to change it to some extent.
Then I read a book I found in a pile of Free called The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. I almost put it down after the first fifty pages. I found the narrative style a little difficult. There was a lot of jumping around, and some things about the perspective were confusing. But, I decided that since I was somewhat intrigued, and almost halfway done with the book, I would finish it, and I'm really glad I did. I'm definitely going to have to read it again, so that now that I know what is going to happen, I can try to analyze what lessons the author is trying to teach us. (I feel pretty confident that there are some, since she modeled her book on Austen's to a certain extent.) I also want to read her other books. I would give this book three and a half stars, even though it's a sleeper and not really an easy read. At a certain point, I kept reading it because I wasn't sure why I liked it, and I wanted to find out, and that's kind of neat. Also, this is kind of what I wanted Reading Lolita in Tehran to be like, and it wasn't.
Fifteen books so far. This is going to be a good year for reading.
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Date: 2006-02-06 03:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-06 04:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-06 04:20 pm (UTC)