First of all, this is a sequel. If you haven’t read the preceding novel A Wizard of Earthsea, then go do that right now. It’s not long. I’ll wait… It’s wonderful, right? I remember how the prose grabbed me when I first read it, and it still grabs me that same way. It’s like The Gunslinger in that way; it feels truly, effortlessly ethereal. The text exists outside of time, as do all great fairy tales. And that’s the one problem with the sequel. Much […]
A Last Natural Wilderness
Milan Kundera wrote “Beauty is a world betrayed… [t]he only way we can encounter it is if its persecutors have overlooked it somewhere.” You know that feeling of discovering something beautiful? Something, perhaps, overlooked? In the case of a book, chances are that you didn’t really “discover” it, not in any real sense of the word. Someone else discovered it, and then a lot of other people discovered it too – after all, there it is, printed and bound and sitting in your lap. But maybe you […]
CBR Review #2: Alanna: The First Adventure
The book cover I’m using is the original cover for the first edition of this book, from back in 1982 (I think). To me, this is the only cover that I even acknowledge. It’s the first one I saw, and the best one. It’s so evocative of the story, whereas the newer ones are just blah. I review this book over on my blog. Sorry, my site is slow. I need my husband to upgrade the hosting to a *faster* site, but he’s cheap. […]
Silas Marner Gets the Lifetime Movie Treatment
This novel was, apparently, a New York Times bestseller. I don’t recall reading any reviews of it, but I’m guessing it was a big hit with folks looking for something easy to take to the beach or on long plane rides. The funny thing is, it’s exactly the type of book the main character hates. AJ Fikry is an over-educated 40-ish widower who owns a bookstore on Alice Island, which is near Nantucket. He is grumpy and has very exacting tastes in literature, preferring short […]