Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Robin McKinley’s Rose Daughter, which I enjoyed even more than Beauty - I think you can really see how much she grew as a writer between the two retellings, because Rose Daughter is much more airy and at the same time far more gothic. The characterization is stronger, too: Beauty’s two sisters are much more strongly differentiated, as is the Beast. And the ending doesn’t feel as rushed.

H. G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, which is super fun in the same “Victorian thought experiment” way that The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is super fun. They, along with Frankenstein, teach an important lesson: Friends don’t let friends do science alone. It always ends badly.

And finally - I’ve totally been procrastinating this week, can you tell? - P. G. Wodehouse’s Psmith in the City, which is delightful to the end. Although I suspect having a friend pay for your education with the goal of making you a factotum on his estate would be a bit more awkward than Mike seems to feel about it, even if Psmith is his bestest best friend ever.

What I’m Reading Now

Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child. The first two thirds are delightful: it tells the story of a middle-aged couple, recently moved to Alaska (in 1920), who meet a strange little girl who lives in the wilderness with lichen and birch bark tangled in her hair. It’s a mixture of darkness - literal darkness; a lot of the book takes place during the Alaskan winter, and kicks off with the heroine walking out on the ice in a half-hearted attempt at suicide - and this eerie half-fairy tale feeling. Odd but effective.

The last third, which I’ve just started, bids fair to be a tale of Young Love, which - judging by the epigraph - will end with the wild girl becoming far less wild. I may decide that the last third never actually happened...

Also The Wind in the Willows, although I’m going to have to find a non-annotated edition, because the annotations are terribly distracting and often not very to the point. No, I don’t really care to know that the annotator thinks Otter is a member of the nobility and the rabbits are the teeming lower classes and the whole thing is an allegory for the English social structure. Even if Graham meant it that way I don’t want to know, because it rather detracts from it as a story.

In the meantime, I’ve laid The Wind in the Willows aside to start Selma Lagerlof’s The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, which I’ve been meaning to read since I was approximately eight. If there has been a theme to this year’s reading, it has been “finally getting around to all those books I’ve been meaning to read for ages.”

What I Plan to Read Next

Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South. ladyherenya has said so many nice things about the miniseries, clearly I need to get around to seeing it, which of course means I must read the book.

I’m also thinking about reading more McKinley. I’ve already read Sunshine (this seems to be everyone’s go-to McKinley rec), and I’ve heard that I have to read Pegasus. How do people like her other fairytale retellings? I’m intrigued by Spindle’s End but feel dubious about Deerskin, which looks pretty hardcore.

Comments

[seascribe.livejournal.com]

Oh, I LOVE Rose Daughter. Love love love. I love Beauty and Sunshine too, but ROSE DAUGHTER. *hearteyes forever* The ending of that book (re: The Beast) was everything I ever wanted out of that faerietale.

Deerskin was, uh, well, I didn't reread it. Spindle's End is really great though. It's got a similar airy feel to Rose Daughter, and I really enjoyed it. I recommend it. Pegasus is awesome too, but it stops abruptly in the middle of the action, and I stopped keeping up with the plans for the promised sequel. I might wait to make sure that is available before reading it.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Oh, sequels. Promised sequels are so dangerous. Maybe I'll put off Pegasus until the sequel happens, and read Spindle's End in the meantime. And perhaps Deerskin if I feel a particular need to be harrowed at some point.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Ooh, the first two-thirds of The Snow Child, as you describe them, sound right up my alley, and Amazon's book description furthers that impression. Young love taming the wild spirit, though, not so much. Hmmm. Well, but an author name Eowyn? I think I'll have to put it on my to-read list.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I was reading along going, "Oh, I'm going to have to recommend this to asakiyume - oh, wait." I'll let you know if the ending suddenly turns itself around, but it doesn't look good.

Having said that, the end of part 2 would have made a perfect stopping point, so you could totally just read to there and not go on into part 3.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Having finished The Snow Child, I think you'd like parts 1 and 2 a lot. Not only is there a wild little girl, but a middle-aged woman who believed in fairies as a child and still wants to believe (without it seeming at all forced or twee).

But part 3, while it could have been worse, is pretty frustrating. It's sort of an ongoing literary problem how to let the wild girl grow up without losing the wildness, and Ivey doesn't grapple with it successfully. Which is especially frustrating, because she could have done it without changing much - the girl's boyfriend wanted to be a trapper, and they could have traveled and trapped together and left their child with the grandparents till the child was old enough to bring along...

But it was not to be.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think I'd find that dissatisfying.

It's something that The Moorchild understood in a profound way: insofar as you are truly wild/truly fay, you cannot come into the human fold. Hell, it goes for wild animals, too, as well as magic creatures. Sometimes a kind of détente can be accomplished, a semblance of accommodation and acceptance of human ways--but if you're wild at heart, then you're wild at heart.

It sounds like this book wanted it both ways: all the wonder and promise of an ethereal, magical being, plus all the intense reality of a real-world being (plus Logical Explanations--why must we always have them??).

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I thought of The Moorchild too! Because the author does so clearly get it. Of course, it ends when Saaski is still a child, which is probably the easiest way to do it.

We actually don't get a Logical Explanation in The Snow Child - the ending is rather strange. The mesh between real-world reality and ethereal reality just doesn't work as well as it did in the first two parts.

[nagasasu.livejournal.com]

I didn't like Spindle's End, but Deerskin is my fave of hers. Chalice is a solid read (which honestly feels like a 3rd beauty and the beast to me), and I remember really liking The Blue Sword. However I haven't recently reread Blue and it might be kinda exotic Orient white saviorish, stuff I wasn't aware of when I was 12.

Also the North and south miniseries is soooo good. If you like the book I might give it a try!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I'll wait on Chalice till I've digested this retelling of Beauty & the Beast, then. Wouldn't you think she'd run out of new ways to retell it?

I tried to read The Blue Sword when I was but a lass, but I couldn't get into either it or The Hero and the Crown, so I don't plan to give it another go - especially given that I've heard it does have All the Issues.

I have high hopes for North & South. I really enjoyed Gaskell's Cranford, and it looks like this is a meatier book.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Spindle's End was enjoyable but lightweight, so I don't really remember anything about it. These days I'm not a huge fan of McKinley, since her writing in its natural state is kind of word soup, pretty on the surface but nonsensical close up, and editors can only do so much about it.

Not sure about her later stuff, but Blue Sword is definitely exotic fantasy sheik romance.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

This is not my impression of McKinley's writing, especially given that her different books have such different styles. Sunshine is informal and full of digressions, Rose Daughter is almost all description, and The Hero and the Crown is formal and hifalutin and I couldn't get into either it or The Blue Sword (which is different yet again, but also strangely distant).

Of course I was eleven when I read (or attempted to read) the last two, so I might feel differently now. But TBS's other issues would bother me so there's really no reason to try.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Have you tried reading her blog? I think a lot of why some of her books read better than others has to do with how they were edited. That her style is variable doesn't mean she doesn't have a tendency towards word soup (to be fair, I haven't been able to get through any of her recent books, and her blog kind of put me off her on a personal level :-/).

[morbane.livejournal.com]

and her blog kind of put me off her on a personal level

+1. Never read McKinley's blog. I mean, she doesn't eat babies, but it comes off rather whiny to me.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Eh, I don't remember that, but the weird "why are people making a big deal about Obama being black? He totally looks white!" comments around the 2008 elections left a really bad taste in my mouth. Plus word soup. :-/

I mean, I get why people like her books, I just mostly can't myself these days...

[morbane.livejournal.com]

Ugh. I did not read that at the time. Lucky me.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

I am paraphrasing from vague memory, and there were other SFF pros saying stupider things about race around the same time, but the whole thing was kind of suggestive that her clue had not evolved much since white savior sheik romance days. :-/

[morbane.livejournal.com]

Urk, I should not have given into curiosity. I did not find any references to Obama (and will stop looking!) but did find a note that stated that the name for America in the Sunshine universe is Independencia.

Independencia???

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Clearly the Founding Fathers were doing a bit of tippling at the Constitutional Convention, and, well, one thing led to another...

Plus, if the US was United States of Independencia, the inhabitants of the other countries on the American continents couldn't get annoyed about how the US had annexed the term American for its own private use.

[morbane.livejournal.com]

I... don't think that would solve the fussing. "What, you think no one else is independent? What do you think the definition of a nation IS?"

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I try not to read author's blogs if I can avoid it, because things like that happen.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the ninja girl and Little Springtime were both really disappointed when the creator of a manga they liked came out with some depressingly nationalistic crap.

[lycoris.livejournal.com]

I remember not enjoying Spindle's End very much but I can't remember quite why. I did really like Deerskin - it is hardcore but it was very interesting to read and had some wonderful moments. Might be something to read when you feel strong though!

Personally, my favourite McKinley book is Chalice - I loved the ideas and description in it, it just really worked for me. I haven't read Pegasus yet - it's on my list!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I've heard that Pegasus has a cliffhanger ending and no sequel in sight, so I'm going to put it at the bottom of my list. Chalice, though, I'll have to give a look.

[morbane.livejournal.com]

Beauty then Rose Daughter is a lovely order to read them in. I read Beauty second, and it was interesting, but a little disappointing because Beauty felt like only a re-telling, and Rose Daughter felt as though it was far more McKinley's story.

I do not personally recommend Pegasus unless you feel like reading half of a book. It has some lovely worldbuilding, but it's a bit meandering for its size.

I quite like Chalice, although, as other people have said, it does follow some Beauty and the Beast themes, and reading it with that particularly in mind detracts from it a little. I don't think it's much more like Beauty and the Beast than Sunshine is, and I found the heroine very engaging - she's a very ordinary person thrust into this confusing magical situation that she deals with by reading lots of books and bluffing and getting annoyed at having to do the latter.

Probably best not to read Deerskin so soon after Yonahlossee? Deerskin isn't bad, but it isn't cheerful. It's sort of a fairy tale about recovering from trauma. At least the recovery happens. Although the ending seemed weirdly ritualized. Not a lot happens; it seems, to me, to embody the message that merely surviving and living is worthy and brave; which is a good message, but not conducive to plot.

Spindle's End - well, the ending has certain people unhappy. The worldbuilding is especially charming, all about exasperated fairy godmothers caring for children. It actually reminds me quite a bit of George Macdonald's fairy tale work. (But I'd recommend him more than this.)

Perhaps consider The Outlaws of Sherwood? Not so fairy-taleish, but if you like her style generally, she seems to have a check on some of her more distracted tendencies here.

Dragonhaven is okay - I didn't really like the protagonist, but he was meant to be a slightly entitled teenage boy, and he's not a bad person.

Shadows is totally new. You could read it and tell us all about it.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Seconding rec for Outlaws, albeit through haze of memory.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I think I'll put off Pegasus until the sequel comes out, as the inconclusive ending seems to have annoyed everyone.

And ha, there is something intriguing about reading Shadows in advance of everyone...but then I wouldn't have anyone to talk about it with. Decisions, decisions!

[ladyherenya]

I agree with your comments about Rose Daughter. I really love the older sisters in that.

The two McKinley novels I'd lend to you if it were possible to lend physical books over the internet are The Outlaws of Sherwood and Chalice. Chalice has a fairytale feel to it, despite not exactly being a fairytale retelling.

I like Spindle's End (I've listened to the audiobook more than once) and I'd very cautiously recommend Deerskin - some of it is very grim and I don't know how you'd feel about that.
She's also written short stories, quite a few of them fairytale retellings, if that's what you're interested in.


North and South! Never mind Robin McKinley, just read North and South!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I have begun North and South! Margaret Hale and Mr. Thornton are arguing about the proper way to treat workers. Also, I think we might be approaching a spate of death scenes.