craft cabin update: a year after his gallery debut, the david bowie i sketched and embroidered is finally part of the granny cluster in our living room. i should take up my sewing again, it being the first day of fall (in weather like this, i could drink cider and pick out embroidery floss all day) and all. it's intensely satisfying to festoon the apartment with things one's made.
speaking of taking things up, i've been thinking of hosting a book chat this fall; i'm fond of and will keep going with THUNDERTOME, but it's so lovely to discuss books when one's company is, you know, on the same page. might you be interested in reading lev grossman's the magicians and meeting back here to break it down? i hadn't even heard of it until reviews of its sequel, the magician king, started popping up at the end of august; it sounds promising, though. from "the badly behaved wizards of lev grossman's the magicians," a q&a with the village voice:
VV: Reviewers have described The Magicians as an amalgamation of other books. It's Jay McInerney meets J.K. Rowling, or it's Less Than Zero plus Harry Potter. What's your own amalgamation description?could be interesting, no? i'm thinking we could plan to have the magicians under our belts (as it were) by halloween, which is both easy to remember and several weeks away; we could then meet back here around the first of november and talk wizards. and, like, waugh. what do you think?
LG: You can't really leave out Rowling or C.S. Lewis, but the other main presences are Evelyn Waugh, particularly Brideshead Revisted, and Donna Tartt's The Secret History. Waugh takes young characters out of their sort of adolescent idyll and projects them into a very harsh and disorderly world—and just watches them flounder and sink. As they look for, you know, meaning and happiness and other things. God, I guess. And that's the structure of The Magicians, pretty much wholesale.
[...]
LG: I love Harry Potter, and it's a great fear of mine that The Magicians will be seen as a criticism or even an attack on Rowling. But I wanted to . . . test him. To test Harry. Or a Harry-like figure. To see what would happen if he was, say, having sex instead of snogging, or drinking real beer instead of butterbeer, if . . . his friends didn't have a Voldemort in their universe to tell them who's good and who's evil, to give them something to fight against.
VV: And what happens?
LG: Well, the story becomes less about fighting evil, using magic to fight evil, and more about trying to figure out . . . what the fuck magic is for.
so down.
ReplyDeleteI'm in. I left the longest comment on the last Thundertome and then it disappeared and I couldn't bear to re-write it.
ReplyDeleteP.S. - Am seriously considering a Kindle, finally. Less cluttery! Ability to check out e-books! But it feels like a betrayal of my spine-y friends. Such an ethical dilemma.
i'm in. sooo in. you know i like reading. and i especially like reading about witches.
ReplyDeleteYeah. I can do it. And I will have ALL of the extent Game of Thrones series under my belt by then. In which, I might add, quite some beer is consumed. And a dwarf drinks red wine.
ReplyDeleteOh god. That guest is me, Lisa.
ReplyDeleteSure, sounds fun.
ReplyDeleteRachel - I own a Kindle, which has its pluses and minuses. I enjoy the access to public domain books, and it's useful for travel. On the other hand, prices have been rising ever since Amazon (rightly) lost its case to undercut publishers with their $9.99 pricing model. And many (most?) libraries that have e-books lend versions that are not compatible with the Kindle. It was only very recently that the Iowa City Public Library announced it will begin the process of making available Kindle-compatible e-books. If your local library has Kindle-compatible books, though, then that's a definite positive. You may also want to look at other e-readers that are less proprietary than Amazon.
omigod your comment thing makes me tired.
ReplyDeleteI'M IN.
-esb
re: Kindle
ReplyDeleteaside from the fact that (AHEM) i have pledged to read the printed word, i am such a flipper-back-and-forther, and such a visual person. as in, i will think, "that bit i'm looking for is in the bottom-left corner..." i think the kindle and its brethren would freak me the fuck out.
that last one was me, esb.
ReplyDeleteCAN'T YOU DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS MOTHERFUCKING COMMENT SHIT?
the commenting platform's doing something extra-awful today; for awhile it wouldn't even let me in. normally i'd call dirty uncle paul in for this, but he is newly With Child, which is the best excuse for not being my html enabler i can imagine.
ReplyDeleteon kindles, it's probably pretty obvious that i'll go without; if it helps any of you to know that i continue to hoard books (and often pay full price for them), do take that and use it.
on one-time wizard book club (now auditioning new names; this feels like a job for MDF), you guys, i'm so excited about this! i hope the book isn't terrible; i really know almost nothing about it, but it Spoke to Me.
Afternoon update: I'm officially a traitor to the printed word, guys. Sincere apologies to ESB and LMO. My library juuuuust became compatible with Kindle and that was enough to sell me. I'm on the waiting list for The Magicians. I feel slightly guilty and also v. excited. Our apartment is dying under the weight of my book collection. Of course, I'll still need them all, because I'm pretty sure they don't recommend using the Kindle in the bathtub.
ReplyDeletei've ordered my copy of the magicians .... and i had better blow through the rest of game of thrones before its arrival!
ReplyDeleteI'm in! As I have much commuting time and very little reading time, I went the audible route. So technically, I won't be reading it, I'll be having it read to me. Is it cheating if I propose this book to my newly-formed book club for this month too? Two birds and all.
ReplyDeleteexcellent, rachel, sara, jen! i like the fact that you'll be following along via different media: it's like the battle of five armies at the end of the hobbit when you're all, wargs and goblins! men, elves, and dwarves! motherfucking eagles! i took so much cold medicine this morning!
ReplyDeleteI will try! The book you have chosen is being held for me at the BPL and will soon find itself in my freezer, but "reading" for me just now means "falling asleep holding a book, usually around 8:30 p.m."
ReplyDeleteThis has done great things for my picture-book intake, let me tell you.
p.s. Are there garbage puppies in this book? I don't think I can take any garbage puppies.
ReplyDeletei'll be the lead ant and let you know what i find. and maybe bring back a frito!
ReplyDeleteJust finished reading this book, so much fun. Can't wait to see what everyone else thinks!
ReplyDeleteSHOOT!
ReplyDeleteI want in! Though I don't know if I can read it in time. I get just a little bit of time to read before bed everynight.
love the gallery update. <3
i want in. however, i'm only about 20% certain i can make that happen right now. :(
ReplyDeletemaybe, one day, we can do a book chat of "olivia"? or, "the five chinese brothers"?