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Books books books!
Apr. 27th, 2013 07:50 pmMy papers are finished, almost a week early, so I have nothing to do but relax and READ READ READ. Fun books, I mean; I have put a moratorium on all serious for-school reading until I get back from my jaunt to Chicago.
And reading I have been!
1. Gail Carson Levine’s A Tale of Two Castles.
This was cute. I don’t know, I think perhaps I’ve outgrown Levine’s prose style: it may be time to stop reading her books in the hope that another Ella Enchanted will arise.
It doesn’t help that A Tale of Two Castles is a mystery as well as a fantasy. I have Feelings about how mysteries should work, and A Tale of Two Castles just doesn’t come together the way I like.
2. Speaking of mysteries! I read Sam Eastland’s Archive 17, which is the third in his series of Inspector Pekkala mysteries, which are set in Stalinist Russia and thus unite two of my minor passions, murder mysteries and Russian history. Stalinist Russia sort of lends itself to conspiracy theories, which generally I hate, but so far Eastland has avoided tripping my “Oh, please, people just do not conspire that secretly for that long” feelings.
This book also deals with one of the things I didn’t like so much in the earlier Pekkala books, the romanticization of the tsar - Pekkala discovers something about the tsar which compromises his previous admiration for him. Unfortunately we see almost none of the emotional fallout of the discovery, although I guess being stuck in Siberia, Pekkala doesn’t have a lot of excess emotional energy.
Given that Pekkala spends the book in a camp in Siberia (investigating the murder of a special prisoner, although if I were Pekkala and Stalin sent me to a camp “to investigate,” I would be wondering the whole way there if the investigation was just a ruse to get me to go quietly), one expects it to be pretty grim - and it is - but I rarely got the feeling that Eastland was wallowing in the grimness, the way grimdark authors often do.
3. And a bonus movie! Someone recommended The Road to El Dorado to me as “the gayest animated conquistador movie ever made,” to which I said, one, “Is there competition for this honor?” and two, “I guess I’d better watch that.”
Unfortunately it doesn’t have much else to recommend it, although it is, in fact, the gayest conquistador movie ever made, even though the love interest Chel has clothes so flimsy that only the miracle of animation physics kept them on her. She is sassy, because sassy seems to be the hot new thing to do with love interests you don’t want to characterize too much; but then none of the characters in this movie are overly characterized. I never did figure out which one was Miguel and which was Tullio, never mind they look nothing alike.
Seriously, Chel’s wearing like...a tube top and a loincloth. It looks so uncomfortable.
Even more uncomfortable: I have now had the theme song, “El Dorado,” stuck in my head for three days. Make it stooooooooop.
And reading I have been!
1. Gail Carson Levine’s A Tale of Two Castles.
This was cute. I don’t know, I think perhaps I’ve outgrown Levine’s prose style: it may be time to stop reading her books in the hope that another Ella Enchanted will arise.
It doesn’t help that A Tale of Two Castles is a mystery as well as a fantasy. I have Feelings about how mysteries should work, and A Tale of Two Castles just doesn’t come together the way I like.
2. Speaking of mysteries! I read Sam Eastland’s Archive 17, which is the third in his series of Inspector Pekkala mysteries, which are set in Stalinist Russia and thus unite two of my minor passions, murder mysteries and Russian history. Stalinist Russia sort of lends itself to conspiracy theories, which generally I hate, but so far Eastland has avoided tripping my “Oh, please, people just do not conspire that secretly for that long” feelings.
This book also deals with one of the things I didn’t like so much in the earlier Pekkala books, the romanticization of the tsar - Pekkala discovers something about the tsar which compromises his previous admiration for him. Unfortunately we see almost none of the emotional fallout of the discovery, although I guess being stuck in Siberia, Pekkala doesn’t have a lot of excess emotional energy.
Given that Pekkala spends the book in a camp in Siberia (investigating the murder of a special prisoner, although if I were Pekkala and Stalin sent me to a camp “to investigate,” I would be wondering the whole way there if the investigation was just a ruse to get me to go quietly), one expects it to be pretty grim - and it is - but I rarely got the feeling that Eastland was wallowing in the grimness, the way grimdark authors often do.
3. And a bonus movie! Someone recommended The Road to El Dorado to me as “the gayest animated conquistador movie ever made,” to which I said, one, “Is there competition for this honor?” and two, “I guess I’d better watch that.”
Unfortunately it doesn’t have much else to recommend it, although it is, in fact, the gayest conquistador movie ever made, even though the love interest Chel has clothes so flimsy that only the miracle of animation physics kept them on her. She is sassy, because sassy seems to be the hot new thing to do with love interests you don’t want to characterize too much; but then none of the characters in this movie are overly characterized. I never did figure out which one was Miguel and which was Tullio, never mind they look nothing alike.
Seriously, Chel’s wearing like...a tube top and a loincloth. It looks so uncomfortable.
Even more uncomfortable: I have now had the theme song, “El Dorado,” stuck in my head for three days. Make it stooooooooop.
