Fantastic Fantasy!

I finished reading the first novel of Mercedes Lackey's Five Hundred Kingdoms series, "The Fairy Godmother", yesterday, and wow! What a fantastic novel! Breezed through it in 7 days, and even worked out a way that I can knit and read at the same time because I just didn't want to put it down! I've never read any of her novels before, but I've now added four series to my TBR list!

The Five Hundred Kingdoms is a romantic fantasy series which turns traditional fairy tales on their heads.  In this novel a Cinderella, whose Prince is entirely unsuitable for her, decides to hire herself out so that she at least gets paid for slaving away all day.  Instead, thanks to some magical intervention, she becomes the apprentice of a Fairy Godmother. The story is warm, funny, feminist (that's not a bad word!), and incredibly sweet.  Who needs a Prince when there are tragic endings to be subverted, and Tradition to be twisted? This is a fine example of the 'moral' tradition of fantasy stories, something I think we could all use a little more of. 

To be completely fair, it wasn't perfect. There are a few needless repetitions of ideas and story background that probably should have been edited out, making me think 'Hey, I just read that x chapters ago!'. Some of the sentences suffer from an archaic structure, which seems to be a part of the overall fairy tale vibe but isn't consistent enough to blend in.  Also, I read an e-book edition, and there were a number of glaring errors (like missing words) that ought to have been edited better. But, overall, it wasn't enough to really detract from my enjoyment of the story, so I'm willing to let it slide. More than let it slide, I'm really looking forward to reading the next six stories in the series and having to talk myself out of reading them all right now!

Interestingly, this novel solved my personal mystery of why sometimes, even though I'm thoroughly enjoying a novel, I don't breeze through it, usually stretching the last third of the novel out as long as I can.  It's because, even though I know the Good Guys will 'win', I also know I'm not guaranteed a Happy Ending. Sometimes the good guys die in the process of saving the world, sometimes they have to sacrifice their own happiness for the benefit of others, but it's not always Happy. Because this series is romantic fantasy, the consequences are milder. Sure, there is darkness and peril (what good would the story be without that?!) but ultimately there is redemption for the deserving, and Happiness. I'm not gonna lie - I like Happy Endings, they make me... well, happy! If that means it sometimes takes me a little while longer to read a book that has a potentially tragic ending, I'm totally OK with that.

My reader's soul is feeling revived, mostly because I have loved four of the last five novels I've read so much, that I'm feeling strong enough to dip back into the Man Booker winner's list for my next read. I'm still skipping over "Sacred Hunger", "The Ghost Road" and "The God of small Things" (I'm not feeling quite that strong!) so I'm going to give Ian McEwan's "Amsterdam" a try.  It's fairly short, and now that I've figured out how to read and knit at the same time, it may not even be too tedious!

Happy reading!

Choosing Between Darkness and Joy

I've been trying to listen to the audio book of Pat Barker's "Regeneration", a story about a soldier in World War I who writes a manifesto condemning the war and is listed as mentally unstable as a result. It's dark.  I'm not very far into it, because every time I try to 'read' it I just feel overwhelmed by the darkness.  The other title I've been trying to read is Arundhati Roy's "The God of Small Things" - I've only gotten about 1/8th into the novel, and while it's not as dark, it is very heavy in terms of descriptive passages and I'm having a heck of a time trying to get into the story. It just isn't fun for me anymore, so  I'm moving on, and it feels great. Moving beyond the Man Booker list means the tone of the posts is going to change a bit.  Most of you only know me through this blog, so it may be a bit like getting to know me all over again.  I hope you still like me!

My father and I have a conversation about twice a year about entertainment, how we choose what we read and watch, and why we like the things we do. My dad, who is a brilliant man, always says that he chooses books, TV shows, and movies for their ability to help him escape the darkness of everyday reality.  I think it's a great philosophy. 

I know lots of people enjoy dark, gritty entertainment, the type with "real world" problems, but I go to the arts to increase the joy in my life. That doesn't mean it's all sunshine and rainbows, just that good wins more often than bad. I like to laugh, and I do so quite freely, and everything (and everyone, for that matter) that I love makes me laugh to some degree. That's not to say I don't appreciate art which deals with loss. Some of my favourite songs are of heartbreak. Almost all of my favourite books have at least one tragedy that breaks my heart. Art reflects life, and life contains that pain. But, I choose to see life as being primarily a bright and joyful experience. So when I go to art, the love and joy need to overwhelm the darkness. This may seem like a contradiction when you see how many serial killers are on my list of favourite characters, but I go to thrillers for pure escapism, which is fun. Which is joyful.  It makes sense to me.

For the past 15 months I've been collecting books that I want to read, and I'm feeling so spoilt for choice that I'm tempted to re-read a favourite book simply to avoid making the decision about what to read next.  I have an odd habit with books I'm really looking forward to. I buy them right away, and then keep them unread.  My theory is that once I read the book, I'll no longer have it to look forward to.  So I build up a little stockpile of my favourite authors until I reach a breaking point, at which I gorge myself on them over the course of a month (or sometimes just a couple of weeks!). I sometimes do the same thing with a 'new to me' author who has several titles published already. I enjoy a total immersion style of fandom.

Currently I have multiple titles from (in no particular order):
Rob Thurman
Chelsea Cain
Daniel Kalla
Kelly Meding
Caitlin Kittredge
Jeff Lindsay
Kathy Reichs
Maggie Sefton
Peter Tremayne
Devon Monk
Tanya Huff
Roddy Doyle
Anton Strout
Jim Butcher
Ariana Franklin
Lev Grossman

plus individual titles by another half dozen authors, a bunch of history and mythology books, books by friends, and some new authors I want to try, all awaiting my pleasure!

Ever since I started reading the Man Booker books I've felt as though I am battling the clock.  Looking at my list of 'pleasure' reading, I feel like I've got all the time in the world, it's just a matter of making a start somewhere, and they will all get read! It's a pretty great feeling!

Happy Reading!

Not A Review Of Celtic Thunder

I finished reading Graham Swift's "Last Orders" on Tuesday, November 27th - it took me 15 days to read it, but I've been having a difficult time blogging about it. Not that I didn't enjoy the novel - I really did! - I've just been distracted this week. Completely lacking focus on anything that doesn't directly involve Celtic Thunder.  The day job has suffered, sleep has suffered, reading has suffered (I can't read while listening to music - weird, I know!), and I'm fairly certain that my friends, Twitter followers and family would really like me to just Shut. The. Fuck. Up. but I had an amazing time at the concert on Monday, I'm really excited to see the acoustic Hurricane Sandy benefit concert next weekend, and I'm seriously tempted by the cruise next November. It's been an emotionally busy week for me! I do feel bad about not blogging, but I really couldn't focus, and I didn't want to write an entire post just about how amazingly fun the show was.  So that's all I will say about it! ;)

I was a bit concerned that "Last Orders" would be similar to "The Old Devils" - just a bunch of old people drinking and depressing me.  Turns out it's more of a road trip story, with the four principle characters driving across country to spread the ashes of a recently deceased friend, Jack.  During the trip they all privately reflect on their relationships with Jack.  It's also a story about family, the ones we chose and the ones we don't, and how their expectations of us (and ours of them!) affect our lives. There are moments of bittersweet humour and revelations about the interconnections in their past, some surprising and some obvious, all told in bite sized chapters which fit perfectly into my 'bus reader' schedule.  I wanted the novel to go beyond it's natural conclusion because I really grew to care about the characters - which means, of course, that Swift did his job perfectly!

The theme of isolation ran deep in this novel, highlighted by the characters seeming inability to have an intimate conversation with each other.  They are all more or less alone, and facing mortality, but they never speak to each other about the fears that come along with that, even as they are all preoccupied with them in their own thoughts.  They worry about their children, and who will see to their remains when they pass on.  Despite that, it feels like a hopeful novel, as they all still have time left to them in which they can try to reconnect.  There's something beautiful about that.

All said, I really enjoyed this novel, will gladly recommend it, and I'm looking forward to reading more of Graham Swift's writing in the future.  For now, my next read is Arundhati Roy's "The God Of Small Things" - which has been in my purse since Tuesday, and hasn't been opened once.  Also, I'm no further along in Pat Baker's Regeneration trilogy because as hard as it is for me to read while listening to music, it is 100% more difficult to 'read' an audio book while listening to music!

In my defence, it was a really amazing concert!

Happy reading!

A Mystery, A Romance, and A Very Late Post

Well, James Kelman certainly captured my attention! It took me a long time to read "How Late It Was, How Late" (31 days!) but, honestly, it's because I didn't want to let go of Sammy!  At its heart the story, to me, is a mystery - what happened on Saturday, where's Helen, etc. I absolutely love mystery, so I really took my time to savour the story.  I did not find the ending particularly satisfying, but I still loved the book.

Apparently there was a bit of controversy when "How Late It Was, How Late" won the Booker prize in 1994 which seems to have been mainly concerned with the use of 'fuck' in the novel.  I myself was a bit worried about the novel having been written in dialect, which can often be inscrutable, but I found it flowed quite easily and I was quickly immersed in the mystery and drama of the story.  Quite frankly, the story would have been ridiculous in 'proper English'.  The swearing, when not flowing smoothly, was more comedic than vulgar.  However if you do find 'that sort of language' distasteful, you're probably going to want to skip this novel!

There was a passage early on in the novel that caught my eye and seems to define a lot of 'literature' to me, so I thought I'd share that with you:
"Funny how ye tell people a story to make a point and ye fail, ye fail, a total disaster.  Not only do ye no make yer point it winds up the exact fucking opposite man, the exact fucking opposite.  That isnay a misunderstanding it's a total
whatever."
So true, right?

I was going to spend my audio book time (also known as Knitting Time) with the prequels to Pat Barker's 1995 Booker prize winner, "The Ghost Road", but I ended up finding a copy of Rachael Herron's "How to Knit a Love Song" in the library audio downloads... Funny how that happens! I read her memoir, "A Life In Stitches", in the spring (but didn't count it as reading a whole book, because I read it over several months... oh shut up.) and I really enjoyed it.  So, I listened to that instead the Regeneration books, because I am a total sucker for romance novels, and also knitting novels. It's a pretty fun novel - life on a sheep farm, within view of the ocean, with a hot rancher?? Yes Please!!  It even made me want to try out spinning, which I've been very resistant to.  I mean, who has the time?! Plus, spinning wheels take up so much space... Anyway, I'm really looking forward to reading the rest of the series - there are a couple of characters from this novel who I'd love to spend more time with!  

All by way of explaining that my next read is not "The Ghost Road", as I haven't finished the first two novels in the trilogy.  So I'm instead moving on to read Graham Swift's "Last Orders", which I started yesterday, because this post is actually several days in the making. Not that time has improved the quality of the content in any way.  I feel like I'm staring down another deadline, so hopefully a little fire under my butt gets me through a couple novels in quick succession here! Stay tuned, and

Happy reading!

I Can't Help Loving The Irish!

I finished reading Roddy Doyle's "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" yesterday (13 days for those keeping track) and, no surprise, I loved it.  It was a little touch and go the first ten pages as the novel is written without chapters, which I hate.  The narrator is a 10 year old boy, so the story is divided into bite sized chunks determined by his attention span - a perfect 'bus book' for me!

Beyond the fact that this is an 'Irish' story, I loved it because it is the most true story I've read in a long time.  Not factual, but true in a very honest way about how we see the world as children, the games we play with ourselves and the imaginary rules that the world operates by.  It's a really enchanting novel, tinged with the helplessness of growing up.  I honestly don't want to say too much about why I loved the story - I just want you to find yourself a copy and enjoy it!

I've been trying to hard to 'cheat' with Barry Unsworth's "Sacred Hunger" by listening to an unabridged audio book, but it's proving to be impossible! Although the Calgary Public Library does have copies of it in stock, they are only available to visually impaired patrons.  So I decided to purchase an Audible account, only to discover that the title isn't available in Canada! Darn you, international copyright laws! I can't even locate a new or used physical copy of the audio book to purchase. It's driving me a bit crazy, but I'm not quite ready to cave in and actually try reading it again!!

The up-side of my new Audible account is that I can listen to the first two volumes of Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy before reading the Man Booker winner, "The Ghost Road"! I imagine that book 3 wouldn't have won the prize if it couldn't be read as a stand alone novel, but I'd rather not risk it.  Besides, this way I have an extra excuse to spend my evening's knitting (as if I needed another excuse!)!  In physical reading, I'm moving on to James Kelman's "How Late It Was, How Late" which has a promising premise, although I am a bit worried about it's having been written in phonetic dialect, which I always find challenging.  What's life without challenges, right?

Happy Reading!