I love Jane Austen. Period. Those books are some of my favorite, and yes I have read every single one of them. Except Lady Susan...I hate reading unfinished books, so I tend to skip them. I also hate people who think they have the right to finish them....They aren't the author and they shouldn't try to finish something when they have no idea what was in that author's head,...any amount of reading up about the original author's life still doesn't give them the right...BAH. Okay, enough soap box...
A modern idea of love is that you see someone and automatically fall in love with them! Or you sleep with somebody you sort of know and after awhile all the sleeping together turns into love. Why, why, WHY!! Jane Austen knew a thing or two about love, although never married herself.
All of her characters know their future spouse for a long while before they actually, truely become enamored with them. Fanny Price lived with her cousin for many years before she (and he) saw each other as potential suitors. Elizabeth Bennet actually hated Mr. Darcy before having her vision corrected about his virtues. Marianne Dashwood watched the object of her desire go through a horrible engagement to another woman because of his honor before she was able to marry him. Emma married a man SIXTEEN years older than herself who used to play with her as a child! My point is that these women knew the men they married.
Love at first sight is a bit of a hoax. Even Mr. Darcy didn't fall in love with Elizabeth right away. He actually made it very clear to all of his friends that he didn't think there was an attractive feature in her face before realizing other features that he liked. It didn't happen as quickly as the movies often portray. If you read the book the entire progression of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy's regard for each other took the better part of a year, as did Jane and Mr. Bingley, and not without alot of bumps along the way.
In the end though, each party had realized the virtues and FAULTS of the other. I have to point that out because some women get into their heads that their man should be perfect. Good heavens no! Austen plainly points out the flaws of all her characters, but she also includes their virtues and shows them striving to overcome their flaws.
Austen also critizies women who do marry with little or not regard for their spouse, such as Charlotte Lucas and Miss Bertram, both of whom marry for money and comfortable homes, albeit different reasons why. She points out that both extremes are bad and instead is very careful about culturing the relationship between her heroine and hero.
Charlotte Bronte thought that Austen wrote romances for cultured gardens, while hers occupied the windswept moors. Actually, I don't think Austen wrote romances at all. She was writing about the relationships between people, all kinds of people. Between sisters, between husband and wife, between suitors, between aunt and niece, between friends and between casual aquantances even. She is always discussing conversation between people, not necissarily describing landscapes or houses. Her characters do the talking and thinking for most of the book. They are books about people and the energy between them, one of which is love.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Chronicles of Pellinor by Alison Croggan
Okay, I'll be honest. These books drove me CRAZY. I mean, it was a nice epic story about a girl who is the "one who will save us all", as she discovers her powers as a Bard in a mythical land. Sound familiar?
Ya I thought so too.
Let me put it this way. It was basically "The Lord of the Rings" only with a 15-16 year old girl instead of a hobbit. Now I like "Lord of the Rings" knock offs, most modern fantasy is in some way is copied from Tolkien's work. But this one was a little TOO obvious. This girl has a tragic history as a slave in a cruel mountain fortress of sorts. She is helped to escape by a Bard, and suddenly he decides that she is the daughter of the Head Bard of a lost city. And she has immense power that scares everybody, good and bad.
Croggan is creative with the culture she creates with all the signs of being a true Tolkien knock off including random apostrophes in the middle of the names of villages like Cai'paval or something similar. But she follows the genre and outline too closely. Nothing is a surprise, you kind of can predict what will happen before it happens. From the beginning of the first book "The Naming" to the last book "The Singing" you know that she is going to save the day. Usually in books like that there is always a point where you aren't sure. Even when the girl spends most of the second book as a hormonal witch, you still know that in the end she is going to defeat the big, bad guy at the end of the fourth book. It was too predictable.
Even in Harry Potter, you don't know if Harry dies or not. There is still that level of unpredictability, even though the reader knows that Harry will save the day. You still don't know if he will survive it. In the Chronicles of Pellinor the author goes on and on about how the main character had no real childhood and that she was deprived of all that was truly hers, so OF COURSE she is going to live. The author couldn't bear to kill her off after all that!!
In "Lord of the Rings", in spite of what everyone says about it being a happy ending: FRODO DIES. Not only does Frodo fail in his mission (he did too, Gollum did it for him), it eventually kills him, thats what going across the sea means...he did what he did to save the Shire, to stay and live peacefully in the Shire, but HE DOESN'T!! Most fantasy's don't have happy endings for the main characters. The Chronicles of Pellinor's ending is WAY too happy. None of the main charaters die and they all live happily ever after with no real lasting effects of their adventures...BLAGH..
So over all it is worth a read, but I won't buy these books. Too predictable. Like I knew that girl was going to get together with her mentor at the end of the books from the very first book. DUH!
Creative, but predictable. And believe me. High fantasy is rather predictable, but this was overly so.
Ya I thought so too.
Let me put it this way. It was basically "The Lord of the Rings" only with a 15-16 year old girl instead of a hobbit. Now I like "Lord of the Rings" knock offs, most modern fantasy is in some way is copied from Tolkien's work. But this one was a little TOO obvious. This girl has a tragic history as a slave in a cruel mountain fortress of sorts. She is helped to escape by a Bard, and suddenly he decides that she is the daughter of the Head Bard of a lost city. And she has immense power that scares everybody, good and bad.
Croggan is creative with the culture she creates with all the signs of being a true Tolkien knock off including random apostrophes in the middle of the names of villages like Cai'paval or something similar. But she follows the genre and outline too closely. Nothing is a surprise, you kind of can predict what will happen before it happens. From the beginning of the first book "The Naming" to the last book "The Singing" you know that she is going to save the day. Usually in books like that there is always a point where you aren't sure. Even when the girl spends most of the second book as a hormonal witch, you still know that in the end she is going to defeat the big, bad guy at the end of the fourth book. It was too predictable.
Even in Harry Potter, you don't know if Harry dies or not. There is still that level of unpredictability, even though the reader knows that Harry will save the day. You still don't know if he will survive it. In the Chronicles of Pellinor the author goes on and on about how the main character had no real childhood and that she was deprived of all that was truly hers, so OF COURSE she is going to live. The author couldn't bear to kill her off after all that!!
In "Lord of the Rings", in spite of what everyone says about it being a happy ending: FRODO DIES. Not only does Frodo fail in his mission (he did too, Gollum did it for him), it eventually kills him, thats what going across the sea means...he did what he did to save the Shire, to stay and live peacefully in the Shire, but HE DOESN'T!! Most fantasy's don't have happy endings for the main characters. The Chronicles of Pellinor's ending is WAY too happy. None of the main charaters die and they all live happily ever after with no real lasting effects of their adventures...BLAGH..
So over all it is worth a read, but I won't buy these books. Too predictable. Like I knew that girl was going to get together with her mentor at the end of the books from the very first book. DUH!
Creative, but predictable. And believe me. High fantasy is rather predictable, but this was overly so.
Dorothy Sayers vs Agatha Christie
So I love to read. I don't just read a book a week or anything like that. I read a book a day, at least! I went to a book club once where the ladies kept talking about how they hadn't read a book in a month or more. Needless to say, I have NO CLUE how they could not pass a day without reading something!
I dedicate this blog to all those who are addicted (as I am) to reading and have a craving for a good book ALL THE TIME.
This morning instead of work, I read one of Dorothy Sayer's Lord Peter Whimsy mysteries. I should have worked, cleaned my house, scrapbooked, cooked, did the dishes, or worked (I said that twice, huh?), but did I? NO.
I love Dorothy Sayer's mysteries because they are not just about solving a mystery or catching the bad guy. That has a lot to do with it, but she also looks at the main characters and develop them with every new book. They are written post-WWI and set in England, mostly London. It is fun to see how different England and London were before WWII, at least I find it interesting, but then again I am a history buff...But I hate the History Channel.
Anyways, I love Agatha Christie novels (set at about the same time at the same place) but hers aren't quite as deep as Sayers are. She kind of skims the surface of the mystery, following a very similar pattern in all of her books (believe me I have read almost all of them, if not all of them). Sayers varies her technique a little bit, and I especially loved "Gaudy Night" because it was all set in Oxford, giving an idea about what Oxford was like before WWII. Sheesh, it would be nice to have lived in an era of servants! :)
If you don't know who I'm talking about or what books I'm talking about, shame on you!! Go look them up in your local library. Mostly library have TONS of books by both authors (especially Agatha Christie...she wrote over 100).
I would recommend "Whose Body" by Dorothy Sayers and "Orient Express" by Agatha Christie. But any of them would do. Dorothy Sayers are in a kind of order, but you can actually pick up any of hers at any given time. Agatha Christie are set in what ever year she wrote them and have no real order. Although "Final Curtian" was technically one of her last books, she wrote it long before she died, then had it published posthumously.
Anyways, enjoy reading!
I dedicate this blog to all those who are addicted (as I am) to reading and have a craving for a good book ALL THE TIME.
This morning instead of work, I read one of Dorothy Sayer's Lord Peter Whimsy mysteries. I should have worked, cleaned my house, scrapbooked, cooked, did the dishes, or worked (I said that twice, huh?), but did I? NO.
I love Dorothy Sayer's mysteries because they are not just about solving a mystery or catching the bad guy. That has a lot to do with it, but she also looks at the main characters and develop them with every new book. They are written post-WWI and set in England, mostly London. It is fun to see how different England and London were before WWII, at least I find it interesting, but then again I am a history buff...But I hate the History Channel.
Anyways, I love Agatha Christie novels (set at about the same time at the same place) but hers aren't quite as deep as Sayers are. She kind of skims the surface of the mystery, following a very similar pattern in all of her books (believe me I have read almost all of them, if not all of them). Sayers varies her technique a little bit, and I especially loved "Gaudy Night" because it was all set in Oxford, giving an idea about what Oxford was like before WWII. Sheesh, it would be nice to have lived in an era of servants! :)
If you don't know who I'm talking about or what books I'm talking about, shame on you!! Go look them up in your local library. Mostly library have TONS of books by both authors (especially Agatha Christie...she wrote over 100).
I would recommend "Whose Body" by Dorothy Sayers and "Orient Express" by Agatha Christie. But any of them would do. Dorothy Sayers are in a kind of order, but you can actually pick up any of hers at any given time. Agatha Christie are set in what ever year she wrote them and have no real order. Although "Final Curtian" was technically one of her last books, she wrote it long before she died, then had it published posthumously.
Anyways, enjoy reading!
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