Early in Tehanu, Tenar (hello old friend!) muses about her friend Moss, the village witch: “She thought Moss was following her heart, but it was a dark, wild, queer heart, like a crow, going its own ways on its own errands.” I can’t think of a better way to describe this book. In the last pages of The Farthest Shore, another mage says of Ged, “He has done with doing.” Tehanu is the story of what comes after The Doing. Ged leaves Roke and returns […]
A more accurate title would have been Uninteresting
And so we reach the penultimate book in my apparently neverending Booker Prize Longlist challenge of 2013. Apparently, it’s a “much anticipated” new novel, which I’m sure is the case for those of us who have read MacLeod’s previous novels and knew this one was coming out. As it is, I was blissfully unaware of either, but the subject of this novel was very much up my alley, so to speak. Set in 1940, it focuses on a maddeningly middle class family, the Beaumonts. Geoffrey […]
Ghost Stories on a Tatami Mat
Target: Miyabe Miyuki’s Apparitions: Ghosts of Old Edo. Translated by Daniel Huddleston Profile: Horror, Ghost Stories Japanese horror ranges pretty heavily from mild ghost stories to some incredibly creepy and dehumanizing body horror. Apparitions fortunately falls into the former citatory, chronicling a series of stories that walk a fine line between scary and sentimental. These tales capitalize on the cornerstone of Japanese spirituality: that every object and creature is imbued with a sprit. At their core, these stories are more cautionary tales, advising the listener to act with honor […]
If there’s Sex in the Title it’s bound to be good right?
My boyfriend and I binge watched the Showtime series “Masters of Sex” and once I finished I was keen to learn more so I decided to read the book by Thomas Maier. In the past I had learned a bit about Masters and Johnson when reading “Bonk” so this book was not entirely unfamiliar territory. It was interesting to read how the book differed from reality (although even in a non-fiction book like this I am sure that some liberties were taken). Overall it was […]