| It Wasn't a Puppy After All |
[May. 14th, 2012|09:07 pm] |
I think I’ve finally managed to come up with an adequate comparison to illustrate the depth of my disappointment with the second season of Game of Thrones.
It is a bit like waiting for years for a puppy. You’re eager, you’re nervous, you’re really, really expectant. But you also know it is likely that it won’t be exactly as you have imagined, so you try to keep your expectations realistic.
Then you get your puppy and it is all very exciting. After a while, you start noticing that it is not all fun and games with this puppy; it is a bit hard to train and sometimes you get quite upset because it just isn’t working out. But at the end of your first year with the puppy, you are still very happy because it is a lovely puppy, all considered.
Next year doesn’t start out so well, however. The puppy is being more difficult again. There are some glimmers of hope, though, and you struggle on for those.
Then, the bombshell hits. Your puppy isn’t actually a puppy. It is revealed to be a large rat dressed up in a puppy costume. You can keep trying to pretend it is a puppy, but that will never make it one. If you like rats, you might still be able to make do with the rat, but if you don’t…well, you’re out of luck.
That’s where I am at now with Game of Thrones. I don’t particularly dislike rats, but I am not really fond of them either. And I can’t stop thinking about the puppy. |
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| On "The Song of Achilles" |
[Mar. 25th, 2012|03:59 pm] |
I really ought to write a proper review, but with everything being so busy right now, I don't feel as if I can collect my thoughts enough. But I do need to write something.
This Friday, Elio and I picked up the Kindle edition of Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles on a recommendation from a friend. Now, retellings are a sensitive business for me. There's a couple of stories -- or rather, story cycles -- that I feel so strongly about that the "wrong" interpretation will, without fail, set my teeth on edge. One such is the Arthurian legends. Another, even more dear to my heart, is the Trojan cycle. These story cycles are among the first stories I remember reading (or having read to me) and they are at the heart of my love for myth and history. If I had not fallen in love with them, I don't think I would be a reader of fantasy or a student of classical history.
( Read more... ) |
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| From Myth to Reality |
[Nov. 17th, 2011|02:13 am] |
I haven't horseblogged in ages, but I am currently having a major procrastination phase (my Master's thesis may turn into my dissertation proposal or I may switch my basic idea for the dissertation from horses in Greek myth and religion to Roman horse racing or possibly even defixiones) so I am finding all sorts of things to do, bouncing from one to the other like I've had too much coffee. Except, I don't drink coffee at all.
( Read more... ) |
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| Male & Female Authors |
[Nov. 7th, 2011|02:49 pm] |
A few days ago, Kate Elliott and Katherine Kerr both posted on their LJs about women and fantasy. Now, gender issues aren't perhaps my favourite issues, but this time the subject caught my attention because I do think we've seen a frustrating development of fantasy in the last decade. Male writers write more and more "macho" stuff (gritty, violent, bleak, etc) and female writers write more and more romance.
I like the middle ground. ASoIaF is, for me, part of the middle ground, though it seems clear that certain aspects of it are the reason for the male writers going towards one end of the spectrum. The reason for the female writers moving towards the other end seems like it is often publisher-driven; they are being told its the only thing that sells.
I used to read a pretty equal amount of male and female authors. I didn't care (and I still don't) about the gender of the author. But what has happened over the last years is that I've pretty much stopped picking up new male authors. Not because they're male but because they don't write anything I am interested in.
Elio and I used to read a lot of the same things. Now it pretty much only happens with authors we were already reading, not with new authors. And it seems to be harder and harder to find the sort of middle ground fantasy that I like.
As a bit of an offshoot of this train of thought, I ended up considering the authors that get discussed (and that post) on the Westeros forums. I rather wish we had some female authors show up as well. There are plenty that ought to appeal to readers of ASoIaF, unless they are of the variety that never reads any other fantasy. |
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| Formative Books |
[Nov. 2nd, 2011|04:51 pm] |
Everyone who is a Reader has them, I think. Formative books that, even though we may not have read them for many, many years, loom large in our imagination. If they are hard to find, they often become a nagging voice at the back of your mind, cropping up when you least expect it. Given my obsession with making lists on paper or just in my head for various experiences (I suppose one has to call it rather OCD to have this constant urge to catalogue ones life), I have had a habit of constantly revisiting -- at least in memory -- various books from my childhood. I hate forgetting any pleasant experiences (the unpleasant ones I never seem to forget anyway) and books certainly fall under that.
Some books, however, take very little effort to remember. Such as the quartet of YA fantasy books from Geraldine Harris called The Seven Citadels. The first part was published in Swedish in 1985, so I was 11 then. I wasn't, if I recall things correctly, much of a fantasy reader as of yet. Though, it was close; I was a voracious reader of myths and legends, with a good helping of children's and YA historicals on the side. My heroes were Achilleus and Sir Lancelot and I could list all the principal Norse, Greek and Egyptian deities with ease. In fact, I believe I owned a book on Egyptian mythology by the same Geraldine Harris, but I don't think I noticed this until much later.
Then I spotted the cover for the first book, Prince of the Godborn, among the new arrivals at the library. It caught my attention and I borrowed the book. And fell in love with it. I vividly recall how the third book, The Dead Kingdom, was a release that I waited eagerly for, perhaps for the first time. I also recall reading it at school during the breaks and when someone threw a snowball at me that hit the book, they found out they had made a big mistake. I loved those four books so much and after those I could not get enough of fantasy.
So, what sparked this trip down memory lane? Well, I have hunted for English editions of these books for some years, but the second-hand volumes on offer at Amazon tend to be listed in the range of a 100 dollars... I do have the Swedish books still, and to some extent those are the books of my childhood, but I really do want to read the original as well. Today, my random search struck gold. Just this year the books have been republished as e-books and on-demand print editions (the last part is coming out now in November). Mind you, they are e-books with incredibly awful covers, but who cares. I can finally get to read these books in English. |
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