Here's the low-down on a few books I've read recently. Future posts about books will probably be in much more detail, but rather than have a zillion posts today, I'll give you the condensed version:
The Time-Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
A strange quasi-fantasy book about a guy named Henry with a genetic disorder that causes him to leap backwards and forwards through his own history (and future). It's a love story, since he meets his wife when she's a child, and not as confusing as I thought it would be. For me, stories about time travel are always complicated (unnecessarily so), but this book was excellently written and extremely difficult to put down.
Eragon by Christopher Paolini
I read 8 pages and all I could think was that it was written in the same manner that I used to write when I was a teenager. I know he was a teenager when he wrote it, and usually I can overlook stuff like that, but I found he was using words awkwardly and I found it hard not to correct the text with a red pen. Perhaps I'm getting old, perhaps the horrible movie ruined it for me. I was hoping I would like it, but I didn't.
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Read it. Oh my god, go read it now. I've become addicted to Neil Gaiman.
That's it for right now. Next vice post will be about knitting!
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
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3 comments:
I loved Time-Traveler's Wife. In fact, I bought it as a book chat set for work.
I gave up on Eragon after 50 pages. It was clearly derivative of Star Wars by way of Tolkien. The movie was dreck too, but the presentation of magic use in it was better than a lot of other recent films, including Lord of the Rings and The Covenant. It's too bad, because while I don't like his writing, Christopher Paolini is a very eloquent and thoughtful young man, and accounted well for himself in the Random House 3P's Podcast alongside storied giants Philip Pullman and Tamora Pierce.
American Gods was excellent. I guess there's two kinds of people who read that book. Those who catch the big reveal right in the beginning, and those who hit themselves for not catching it before when they read it at the end. Sadly, I was in the latter group.
On the Eragon front, I found the beginning awkward too. And the story is clearly derivative. But, I finished it, and also Eldest, and I think his writing really improved throughout. By the end of the second book he had really come into his own and I'm really looking forward to part 3. The movie was, I'll grant you, embarrassing. But then, it had very little in common with the book besides character names and title.
P.S. I meant to say - Yay you came to blogger!
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