Category: Books

books about other books?

Saturday, 1 September, 2007 at 12:07 am

Hah! I knew I couldn’t be imagining things when I read about Neelgaimon in Children of the Jedi! (Although I didn’t catch the sandmine/sandman thing. Probably because I’m not a big fan of Barbara Hambly’s writing style. >_> It seems like not only is she telling too much, but she’s showing too much as well. [I don’t necessarily believe one should show over tell or vice versa, just whichever one works best for the situation.] No wonder it’s taking me so long to get through the book.)

Then earlier, when reading InterWorld, I was reminded of Ender’s Game/Shadow. I don’t remember if it was the school, or the Nowhere-at-All and flying/falling (down). Then there’s also a character named Jai. heh.

/end dork

online library catalogues

Friday, 27 July, 2007 at 12:15 am

Hmm, Shelfari is indeed shiny, but I like the indie sort of vibe LibraryThing has.

I just remembered, Neil Gaiman once mentioned getting some sort of ISBN reader to catalogue his books in LibraryThing…? Which made me envious, but alas I do not have the thousands of books that would necessitate the need of a reader.

But anyway! I think I should stick with the service that Neil uses. XD;;

won’t stop til I find

Wednesday, 11 July, 2007 at 1:07 am

Last night I spent almost three hours reading Jodi Picoult’s The Tenth Circle.

I like the book all right. I must, if I kept reading it and didn’t stop for hours. (Well, one drawback is that the chapters are so long … it’s a better incentive for me to stop reading if I see that I’ve read x number of chapters already … and it’s easier to stop at a new chapter … or maybe the last full paragraph on the first page of a new chapter … well how about the next paragraph going to the next page … *g*)

I don’t know. The main plotline doesn’t attract me much. It’s interesting, but is it rereadable? I bought the book because Borders had the first chapter online for preview, and the comic aspect of it interested me (Neil Gaiman was mentioned in the book XD; ). I don’t really like the daughter or the wife. I don’t dislike them, I just don’t really care about them much. I like Daniel though. I don’t know why. I will just have to continue reading it. :)

on reading and such

Tuesday, 19 June, 2007 at 11:59 pm

(I rarely say this, but) Squee!

I finished Crown Duel a little while ago. (I’d forgotten about the short story in the back, hehe.) I thought it was so good that I went on Amazon wondering if Sherwood Smith had written anything else. Now, I did read the little bio in the back that gives her website address, but I wouldn’t have visited it (or given anything else she’d written much thought) if she hadn’t posted on Amazon.

A lot of reviews on Amazon are general and don’t really tell you much of anything about the book. I couldn’t figure out … well, anything about the book (Inda, for anyone keeping track). (I have to admit, what the author wrote confused me a bit; it seemed sort of random and not really fitting in with talking about the book at first.)

After I realized it was the author herself writing, I thought she might give more details about the book, so I went around looking on her site. What I wanted to know probably isn’t crucial to selling the book, but the things I found out sold it for me: adult fantasy, set in Meliara’s world. Woohoo!

Although it’s not about Mel or Shevraeth, I’m still interested. I keep thinking it’s somewhat similar to M. M. Kaye’s The Far Pavilions (which, upon further consideration, might almost be up to par with how fun Crown Duel, Ella Enchanted, etc. are), and I don’t want that to ruin it. Since it’s still in hardcover, I’ll just wait for the price to go down, and misleading associations to go down as well.

The squee! part comes in when I found out Sherwood Smith has written other stories with Mel and Shevraeth in them, and some are available online. :O One fansite, Colorwoods, also has a Q&A page up, which is almost like another story. More like backstory, but since I hadn’t known it before, it’s a new story to me. I’ve bookmarked three pages and joined a new community on Livejournal, to remind me to read all this later.

And all this has led me to staying up till midnight, when I’d planned to get to bed earlier than last night. D’oh!