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I needed something short and sweet after Never Let Me Go, so yesterday afternoon I had the choice of baking muffins or going on with the Reading Bingo. Today, by the way, shall be baking time!
For the "A Book With a Blue Cover" square I chose Diana Wynne Jones' Charmed Life. She wrote it in 1977, and it's the first book in her Chrestomanci series. I first met this author when I watched Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle back in 2005, and after reading that book I read the two sequels too. I saw this book among the recs for me on the Amazon website, and I really liked the cover (hence the square), so I bought it last year and it has been sitting in a corner ever since.
First things first, I liked it. I read it all in one sitting, just like Neil Gaiman said he did the first time he read it. It's gripping and intriguing and fun. But it confirms something about her writing that I didn't like in her Howl books too. Whenever I read one of her books, it always feels like I'm reading a long, long intro of people bickering, up to the last chapter when stuff actually happens. And all her characters are various degrees of selfish, annoying, vain people. Even the good guys are the kind of persons that I would never befriend in real life. I'm not saying these are faults in her writing, I can perfectly see why people would enjoy these stories. But they're just not meant for me. Not all characters have to be sympathetic examples of virtue, I like my heroes with a side of mistakes and selfishness, but not when it's the main aspect of their characterization. It was literally 240 pages of people complaining about the unfairness of their life, and then stuff happened.
So yep, I'm probably not going to check another one of her books. They're lovely, imaginative stories, and the way magic is depicted is great, but they're not for me.
And now I have to shower and prepare myself for a long, long walk across town to an office that it's so far away it's basically in another Realm. Wish me luck.
For the "A Book With a Blue Cover" square I chose Diana Wynne Jones' Charmed Life. She wrote it in 1977, and it's the first book in her Chrestomanci series. I first met this author when I watched Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle back in 2005, and after reading that book I read the two sequels too. I saw this book among the recs for me on the Amazon website, and I really liked the cover (hence the square), so I bought it last year and it has been sitting in a corner ever since. First things first, I liked it. I read it all in one sitting, just like Neil Gaiman said he did the first time he read it. It's gripping and intriguing and fun. But it confirms something about her writing that I didn't like in her Howl books too. Whenever I read one of her books, it always feels like I'm reading a long, long intro of people bickering, up to the last chapter when stuff actually happens. And all her characters are various degrees of selfish, annoying, vain people. Even the good guys are the kind of persons that I would never befriend in real life. I'm not saying these are faults in her writing, I can perfectly see why people would enjoy these stories. But they're just not meant for me. Not all characters have to be sympathetic examples of virtue, I like my heroes with a side of mistakes and selfishness, but not when it's the main aspect of their characterization. It was literally 240 pages of people complaining about the unfairness of their life, and then stuff happened.
So yep, I'm probably not going to check another one of her books. They're lovely, imaginative stories, and the way magic is depicted is great, but they're not for me.
And now I have to shower and prepare myself for a long, long walk across town to an office that it's so far away it's basically in another Realm. Wish me luck.
