[books] The Amulet of Samarkand
Feb. 25th, 2005 08:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snugglekittyThis is the only book that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
starkeymonster has ever recommended to me that I didn't like.
Initially, it looked terrific. A book for young adults, about a modern-day London run by magicians and demons, with amusing footnotes?
But I found that I didn't like it. Generally, I like reading young adult books because they warm me up, somehow. There's an inside part of me that gets tired sometimes, when I see how cold and disconnected the world is. Reading young adult books usually gives me a sense of hope.
In this book, everyone is out to get each other. Only hopelessly naive people try to protect or nurture the innocent. Everyone with a brain knows that you can't have any personal ties beyond those of convenience if you want to survive. Kind people are the victims of predators, not the heroes who overcome them.
That's not a world I'd ever want to live in. It made that tired place inside me feel even more cold.
I'm surprised that people like books like that. I have always agreed with that quote - Austen, I think - that says, "The good end well and the bad end poorly - that's what fiction means."
starkeymonster has ever recommended to me that I didn't like.Initially, it looked terrific. A book for young adults, about a modern-day London run by magicians and demons, with amusing footnotes?
But I found that I didn't like it. Generally, I like reading young adult books because they warm me up, somehow. There's an inside part of me that gets tired sometimes, when I see how cold and disconnected the world is. Reading young adult books usually gives me a sense of hope.
In this book, everyone is out to get each other. Only hopelessly naive people try to protect or nurture the innocent. Everyone with a brain knows that you can't have any personal ties beyond those of convenience if you want to survive. Kind people are the victims of predators, not the heroes who overcome them.
That's not a world I'd ever want to live in. It made that tired place inside me feel even more cold.
I'm surprised that people like books like that. I have always agreed with that quote - Austen, I think - that says, "The good end well and the bad end poorly - that's what fiction means."
