Indoor & Outdoor Mats
Aug. 19th, 2018 07:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyTwo-thirds of the way through August and I haven't posted my July books read list yet. And now I discover that I haven't posted June yet either. How slack of me.
I have been drifting for the last couple of months. Since the start of June, I would guess, since that's the last time I updated the To Do This Week list on my desk. It's been good, a proper hibernation now that I've finally, finally, finished with Old Work. So I emerge, blinking, into the light, ready to re-engage.
A magazine headline I saw recently
Sizzle and a swizzle: She stole my MAN and my CHIPOLATA
Highlight of this year's Masterchef Australia
The contestant who served up anchovy and gorgonzola ravioli with tomato sauce. Just contemplate that flavour combination. (The judges didn't like it.)
June and July books read
* Sorcerer to the Crown - Zen Cho (2015) ★ ★ ★
I wanted to like this so much more than I did. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, Sorcerer to the Crown is the story of Zacharias Wythe, an emancipated slave who becomes the English Sorcerer Royal. Giving a speech at a school for magical young woman, he meets Prunella Gentlewoman, a half-English, half-Indian orphan who is the school drudge and who has untapped magical powers. What follows is a book that desperately wants to be Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell as written by Georgette Heyer with race, gender and colonial politics, but it can't quite pull it off. Some really interesting ideas, but a bit rushed and underbaked.
* You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat] - Andrew Hankinson (2016) ★ ★ ★ ★
This is a true crime story, of a sort. It's the story of the last week in the life of Raoul Moat, the British murderer whose manhunt was a media sensation in 2010. It's told mostly in the second person, a style choice I thought would be irritating, but instead found very effective. Overall: compelling and unsettling.
* This Rough Magic - Mary Stewart (1964) ★ ★ ★
An out-of-work actress goes to stay with her rich sister in Corfu and finds herself discussing The Tempest with a famous thespian, puzzling over a couple of mysterious death-by-drownings and having an instant romance: They hate each other! They save a stranded dolphin! They love each other! As you do.
Anyway, the thriller plot is really good, the romance plot is... there, and all up it was a lot of fun.
* Winter Magic - Abi Elphinstone (ed.) (2016) ★ ★ ★
This is a collection of YA stories, with a common theme of winter. One twee little poem, a couple of really good stories, and all the rest are perfectly fine, so it was a pleasant and easy read.
* If We Were Villains - ML Rio (2017) ★ ★ ★ ★
This is like a much, much less annoying version of The Secret History, in which the seven fourth-year theatre students at an exclusive American performing arts college take their production of Julius Caesar a little bit too seriously. The Shakespeare-quoting conversations get a bit much, the kids are pretentious and it's obvious from the start who really murdered Caesar, but I galloped through it on a rainy winter's afternoon so... on balance, it gets a relatively high score.
* Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions - Mario Giordano (2015) (trans. John Brownjohn, 2016) ★ ★ ★
Auntie Poldi is a redoubtable and incorrigible Bavarian widow who retires to Sicily to be near her late husband's sisters. When her handsome young handyman, Valentino, is killed, she vows to find the murderer... and seduce the detective on the case.
I wanted to like this so much more than I did. The story is a cosy romp and I like the idea of Poldi, but I found the text too idiomatic. The narrator (Poldi's unnamed nephew) mentions more than once that Poldi speaks Bavarian and Sicilian (as opposed to German and Italian), and I wonder if the English translation is trying to convey that (if so, it's successful.)
Note: the story also features a couple of cameos, including Ringo Starr and Death, who are both quite helpful in their own way. So that was... unexpected.
* The Winterlings - Cristina Sánchez-Andrade (2014) (trans. Samuel Rutter, 2016) ★ ★ ★
Two sisters, who fled their village as children during the Spanish Civil War, return home in the 1950s. Everyone has secrets. The sisters have a secret, the dentist has a secret, the priest has a secret. Even the cow has a secret. It's all very elliptical and wispy.
I have been drifting for the last couple of months. Since the start of June, I would guess, since that's the last time I updated the To Do This Week list on my desk. It's been good, a proper hibernation now that I've finally, finally, finished with Old Work. So I emerge, blinking, into the light, ready to re-engage.
A magazine headline I saw recently
Sizzle and a swizzle: She stole my MAN and my CHIPOLATA
Highlight of this year's Masterchef Australia
The contestant who served up anchovy and gorgonzola ravioli with tomato sauce. Just contemplate that flavour combination. (The judges didn't like it.)
June and July books read
* Sorcerer to the Crown - Zen Cho (2015) ★ ★ ★
I wanted to like this so much more than I did. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, Sorcerer to the Crown is the story of Zacharias Wythe, an emancipated slave who becomes the English Sorcerer Royal. Giving a speech at a school for magical young woman, he meets Prunella Gentlewoman, a half-English, half-Indian orphan who is the school drudge and who has untapped magical powers. What follows is a book that desperately wants to be Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell as written by Georgette Heyer with race, gender and colonial politics, but it can't quite pull it off. Some really interesting ideas, but a bit rushed and underbaked.
* You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat] - Andrew Hankinson (2016) ★ ★ ★ ★
This is a true crime story, of a sort. It's the story of the last week in the life of Raoul Moat, the British murderer whose manhunt was a media sensation in 2010. It's told mostly in the second person, a style choice I thought would be irritating, but instead found very effective. Overall: compelling and unsettling.
* This Rough Magic - Mary Stewart (1964) ★ ★ ★
An out-of-work actress goes to stay with her rich sister in Corfu and finds herself discussing The Tempest with a famous thespian, puzzling over a couple of mysterious death-by-drownings and having an instant romance: They hate each other! They save a stranded dolphin! They love each other! As you do.
Anyway, the thriller plot is really good, the romance plot is... there, and all up it was a lot of fun.
* Winter Magic - Abi Elphinstone (ed.) (2016) ★ ★ ★
This is a collection of YA stories, with a common theme of winter. One twee little poem, a couple of really good stories, and all the rest are perfectly fine, so it was a pleasant and easy read.
* If We Were Villains - ML Rio (2017) ★ ★ ★ ★
This is like a much, much less annoying version of The Secret History, in which the seven fourth-year theatre students at an exclusive American performing arts college take their production of Julius Caesar a little bit too seriously. The Shakespeare-quoting conversations get a bit much, the kids are pretentious and it's obvious from the start who really murdered Caesar, but I galloped through it on a rainy winter's afternoon so... on balance, it gets a relatively high score.
* Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions - Mario Giordano (2015) (trans. John Brownjohn, 2016) ★ ★ ★
Auntie Poldi is a redoubtable and incorrigible Bavarian widow who retires to Sicily to be near her late husband's sisters. When her handsome young handyman, Valentino, is killed, she vows to find the murderer... and seduce the detective on the case.
I wanted to like this so much more than I did. The story is a cosy romp and I like the idea of Poldi, but I found the text too idiomatic. The narrator (Poldi's unnamed nephew) mentions more than once that Poldi speaks Bavarian and Sicilian (as opposed to German and Italian), and I wonder if the English translation is trying to convey that (if so, it's successful.)
Note: the story also features a couple of cameos, including Ringo Starr and Death, who are both quite helpful in their own way. So that was... unexpected.
* The Winterlings - Cristina Sánchez-Andrade (2014) (trans. Samuel Rutter, 2016) ★ ★ ★
Two sisters, who fled their village as children during the Spanish Civil War, return home in the 1950s. Everyone has secrets. The sisters have a secret, the dentist has a secret, the priest has a secret. Even the cow has a secret. It's all very elliptical and wispy.