[books] Moondial and The Eight
Apr. 8th, 2005 08:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snugglekittyMoondial by Helen Cresswell is a book I had read as a child. I thought I would re-read it. I think I felt about it mostly how I did the first time. It was sweet, but kind of creepy. I didn't like the character of the "witch" (who is collecting ghost stories, likes cats, and apparently is evil) but the first time I read it, I was too young to really be tuned into that.
(I am still trying to remember the name of the two books about the girl who has the mystical experiences in the land of the insects. There are monsters, also, some of which she cures by being nice to them. It was a chapter book. At one point, she has to pretend to be a bird and sing for the monster king. Anyone remember?)
The Eight by Katherine Neville was recommended to me by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
avivasedai. More recently, fortryll also mentioned the book as influential in her life. It took me a while to get started with it, but once I did, the rest flew by. I read most of it today, in fact. I enjoyed it very much. When mrpet asked me what it was about, I said, "Ummm... chess. And Middle Eastern tribes. And the French Revolution. And alchemy." It's kind of cool when you can say that about a book. He says, "It sounds like the author pulled a bunch of words out of a hat!" and I said, "No, not at all actually." The story hangs together very well and the plotlines interconnect on a regular basis. The author does that cleverly, often by using the same locations, and characters in the modern day reading what characters in the earlier time period wrote, and the same physical objects. I was impressed. (I also found it interesting that a character from The Geographer's Library recurred - the medieval Arabic alchemist - but I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me.)
It didn't change my life or anything, but I liked it a whole lot.
(Does anyone else get kind of a Mary Sue feeling when the protagonist of a story has the same name or the same initials as the author? Yeah, I thought so.)
(I am still trying to remember the name of the two books about the girl who has the mystical experiences in the land of the insects. There are monsters, also, some of which she cures by being nice to them. It was a chapter book. At one point, she has to pretend to be a bird and sing for the monster king. Anyone remember?)
The Eight by Katherine Neville was recommended to me by
avivasedai. More recently, fortryll also mentioned the book as influential in her life. It took me a while to get started with it, but once I did, the rest flew by. I read most of it today, in fact. I enjoyed it very much. When mrpet asked me what it was about, I said, "Ummm... chess. And Middle Eastern tribes. And the French Revolution. And alchemy." It's kind of cool when you can say that about a book. He says, "It sounds like the author pulled a bunch of words out of a hat!" and I said, "No, not at all actually." The story hangs together very well and the plotlines interconnect on a regular basis. The author does that cleverly, often by using the same locations, and characters in the modern day reading what characters in the earlier time period wrote, and the same physical objects. I was impressed. (I also found it interesting that a character from The Geographer's Library recurred - the medieval Arabic alchemist - but I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me.)It didn't change my life or anything, but I liked it a whole lot.
(Does anyone else get kind of a Mary Sue feeling when the protagonist of a story has the same name or the same initials as the author? Yeah, I thought so.)
