A blog of my running thoughts while reading. *Warning: Spoilers*
This is a really cute story. You can’t help but love Louis! He’s such a sweetheart! The story is nicely told and it’s a wonderful adventure. This is a great pre-gamer book, actually. The art is adorable and I love the soft, bright colors. I like the creepiness of the circus and the serenity of the island. The whole thing is masterfully done and I’m quite pleased. It’s a really fun book!
This is an absolutely beautiful book. It has the most amazing cut-paper illustrations! Each one is amazingly intricate and detailed. Many are surprisingly subtle. I just wanted to keep staring at each page for hours! The illustrations match the text perfectly, but the text almost doesn’t even matter. It’s just a brilliant picture book! I absolutely want a copy and am definitely going to keep my eye on this illustrator!
I kept wondering all through the essay on marriage why Bacon ever got married at all! He says no great man ever had a wife or children. As far as Bacon was concerned, wives pretty much make one’s life difficult and he mentions few benefits. Really he seems very distrustful and disdainful of marriage in general. I found it quite strange and quite annoying. Why did he ever get married?
I like how this book switches back and forth between Nita’s perspective and Dairine’s perspective. It makes the story very interesting and dynamic. I kind of wish that we could hear Kit’s perspective, but that would probably be too much here. This book has a great beginning and gets the reader engaged right away. It’s wonderful!
This wasn’t an amazing issue of The Horn Book, but it had some very interesting things in it. The acceptance speeches from the 2006 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards were there and all three were quite interesting. Lois Ehlert’s discussions about finding leaves were great. The Horn Book choices for the best books of 2006 was a fascinating list. The few I read I wholeheartedly agree with and most of the others I really want to check out. There was an interesting piece on diversity in fantasies that was a bit more pessimistic than I would have liked, but it made some good points. There was a special review of Peter Pan in Scarlet that made me really want to read the book (even more than I already did). Maybe I’ll actually talk myself into ordering it one of these days!
Bacon has little respect for mothers, which isn’t all that surprising since he doesn’t think real highly of parents in general. He also has little regard for letting people choose their own professions, either by interest or talent, in favor of letting their parents (read: father) choose their professions for them. This even after he points out that ignored middle children may very well be the ones destined for greatness! It was a strange essay from a clearly childless man.
The ending of this book was good. I liked that Jocelyn not only finally read some science fiction, but actually went out to a convention with Grigg!
I loved the “Questions for Discussion” at the end of the book. I almost always hate reader’s discussion guides but this one was very different. It was written by the author instead of the publisher and the questions were asked by the characters (three questions from each of the six main characters). The questions were not only good questions, but also very in character. It was a great way to do a reader’s guide type thing. I was quite impressed in general with the scope of this book and the questions it asked. It was a very good book. That said, I’m not sure it was that entertaining.
Bacon can see more uses for secrecy and lying, but has no patience for those who don’t do it well. He disapproves of useless lying, but is somewhat fuzzy on what that is exactly. I found his comment about great leaders and heroes always being blameless funny since it was so clearly a kiss-up kind of thing to say!
This book raises interesting questions about literary prejudices. I deal with them all the time at work and they drive me nuts, but the novel does a great job of painting a picture of them. I was interested in the characters, but disliked most of them. Grigg is my favorite. He’s nice, interesting and not a literary snob. The book makes funny references (Vampire LARPers and Linux with game emulators were my favorites). I’m surprised at some of the them (especially invisible Vampire LARPers), especially since they aren’t really explained. I’m enjoying it, though.
Bacon’s essay on adversity is strange. He makes one very odd reference that threw me off for the rest of the essay (which only comprised a page or so total). The reference was about Hercules traveling in a pitcher to rescue Prometheus, which is not part of the myth. At least, it’s not part of any classical telling of the story. It’s a weird later addition. It just seemed a really strange thing to mention. I was weirded out by it!