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SO TIRED you guys. I went to an Avengers All-Nighter at the BFI with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nixied, which showed Iron Man II, Thor, Captain America, and Avengers Assemble from midnight til 10am. Which was lots of fun but I want to die a little bit (also my bitterness at no shawarma scene for the British continues.)
Anyway, here’s what I read in April:
The Book of Dead Days by Marcus Sedgwick
This is children’s fantasy and awesome. Theatre, and illusion, and a Faustian pact, and this bizarre enormous, degrading city, and secrets in churches and underground confrontations. It’s very Gothic, actually, and both the kids won my heart.
An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
Cute. My habit of liking the best friend better in John Green books better continues, not least because the protagonist occasionally wobbled on the edge of Nice Guy-ism. But this was fun and I love the ‘teenage former child prodigy’ thing.
Looking for Alaska by John Green
My favourite John Green by some way; I just found the protagonist, and his best friend, and Alaska, completely convincing and engrossing. I do love me some ensemble-ness, and the usual value his books place in platonic friendships. I saw the Big Thing That Happens coming, but I kind of think you’re meant to. The atmosphere, the comedy, the meditations on death and defining moments - yayness!
Paper Towns by John Green
I expected to passionately love this because of its theme of the imagined becoming real, which fascinates me; not so much. BUT its argument against the Manic Pixie Dream Girl and the sexism inherent in that trope, and also the epic road trip, made me happy.
Shakespeare: The World as a Stage by Bill Bryson
This was interesting - as a beginning book-on-Shakespeare for me it really worked, because Bryson didn’t really have any scholarly hobby-horses except for ‘no, really, we know basically nothing.’ Lots of tangents, but I was expecting that, and I really enjoyed reading about sixteenth-century London. And he resisted the urge to connect various RL happenings in Shakespeare’s life to his plays, and he obviously holds no truck with the Shakespeare-isn’t-Shakespeare conspiracy theories, and I learnt some stuff. So, in a very three-stars sort of way, I liked it.
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
I liked this but didn’t passionately love it. I think that might have been my mood, though, because I started it last year and really loved the beginning (had to stop for dissertation). Setterfield’s prose is lovely and rhythmic and her narrator is a passionate lover of books, which I always find easy to identify with (although this time it also reminded me how many fewer books I read these days). The book positions itself as Gothic very aggressively and I felt a bit hit over the head with it - like, we’re in an isolated house on the moors and it’s misty November and the house is full of secrets and our ingenue sees a woman in the night and hears strange sounds, you don’t need to also keep going on about Jane Eyre, I get it. But the only first I ever got at uni was for an exam where I talked about Gothic tropes so that might just be me. I enjoyed it a lot, and the dreamlike feel was appropriate, and I am always a fan of Gothic. Especially with an appropriately Gothic, omg-identity-issues twist at the end.
nixied, which showed Iron Man II, Thor, Captain America, and Avengers Assemble from midnight til 10am. Which was lots of fun but I want to die a little bit (also my bitterness at no shawarma scene for the British continues.)Anyway, here’s what I read in April:
The Book of Dead Days by Marcus Sedgwick
This is children’s fantasy and awesome. Theatre, and illusion, and a Faustian pact, and this bizarre enormous, degrading city, and secrets in churches and underground confrontations. It’s very Gothic, actually, and both the kids won my heart.
An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
Cute. My habit of liking the best friend better in John Green books better continues, not least because the protagonist occasionally wobbled on the edge of Nice Guy-ism. But this was fun and I love the ‘teenage former child prodigy’ thing.
Looking for Alaska by John Green
My favourite John Green by some way; I just found the protagonist, and his best friend, and Alaska, completely convincing and engrossing. I do love me some ensemble-ness, and the usual value his books place in platonic friendships. I saw the Big Thing That Happens coming, but I kind of think you’re meant to. The atmosphere, the comedy, the meditations on death and defining moments - yayness!
Paper Towns by John Green
I expected to passionately love this because of its theme of the imagined becoming real, which fascinates me; not so much. BUT its argument against the Manic Pixie Dream Girl and the sexism inherent in that trope, and also the epic road trip, made me happy.
Shakespeare: The World as a Stage by Bill Bryson
This was interesting - as a beginning book-on-Shakespeare for me it really worked, because Bryson didn’t really have any scholarly hobby-horses except for ‘no, really, we know basically nothing.’ Lots of tangents, but I was expecting that, and I really enjoyed reading about sixteenth-century London. And he resisted the urge to connect various RL happenings in Shakespeare’s life to his plays, and he obviously holds no truck with the Shakespeare-isn’t-Shakespeare conspiracy theories, and I learnt some stuff. So, in a very three-stars sort of way, I liked it.
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
I liked this but didn’t passionately love it. I think that might have been my mood, though, because I started it last year and really loved the beginning (had to stop for dissertation). Setterfield’s prose is lovely and rhythmic and her narrator is a passionate lover of books, which I always find easy to identify with (although this time it also reminded me how many fewer books I read these days). The book positions itself as Gothic very aggressively and I felt a bit hit over the head with it - like, we’re in an isolated house on the moors and it’s misty November and the house is full of secrets and our ingenue sees a woman in the night and hears strange sounds, you don’t need to also keep going on about Jane Eyre, I get it. But the only first I ever got at uni was for an exam where I talked about Gothic tropes so that might just be me. I enjoyed it a lot, and the dreamlike feel was appropriate, and I am always a fan of Gothic. Especially with an appropriately Gothic, omg-identity-issues twist at the end.
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I totally agree with everything you said about Looking for Alaska. "I was always shocked when I realized that I wasn't the only person in the world who thought and felt such strange and awful things." ...Probably mangled the exact wording, but God, I love this quote, because who doesn't feel isolated in the awful things they think?
Paper Towns at first didn't move me at all, but I loved the theme of imagining people complexly, and every time I read it I see a little bit more of the theme, and now I see it everywhere--so many situations in which people misimagine others. Of course, I'm currently in the midst of a huge writing project based on PT, so it's kind of on the brain. But yeah, I love PT more every time I read it.
And sadly, I'm going to come across yet again as a mad John Green-obsessed fan, because I haven't read any of the other books you talk about this time, so I can't talk about them. Sorry I never talk about anything else!