SHORT DRANGLEFABBING MONDAY*, OKAY?
What is the matter with me? I keep saying I need to spend less time on the blog, I need to learn to write shorter, and if I can’t write shorter . . . I’m going to have to disappear, and will be discovered thirty years from now on an atoll with my sixty-seven hellhounds and 1,893,712 rosebushes (very good drainage on atolls, and lots of fish mulch) happy and content and having forgotten how to type.**
Oh . . . well . . . I guess I have to finish PEGASUS II first.***
So let’s try again with Short Mondays.
It is really really really dumb that here I am a writer who is also a compulsive reader who almost never mentions or recommends books. There are two reasons for this. One of them you know: that I am an evil cow. For every ten books I read, eight of them I throw against the wall.† One of them gets a ‘meh’. One of them I like. But over time that’s still a lot of liked books.
Which brings up the second reason. Which is that books matter and in my well-known when-I’m-not-being-an-evil-cow-I’m-a-little-damp-pudding-of-self-doubt way, I quail at the notion of doing it wrong. Of not doing it right enough. Of writing a bad book report of a book I really liked. A great big sticky reason why this blog is days in the life is because if I mess me up . . . only I will care. And I can cope with me in a bad mood. I do it all the time.
So let’s try to start a new trend. With a book that Peter gave me for Christmas. He found it all by himself. I read book reviews so erratically any more I never know what’s going on, even when it’s hot, so I didn’t know to ask for it. Peter saw ‘Gothic’, ‘velvety purple cover’ and ‘HP Lovecraft’ and knew I had to have it.
http://www.walker.co.uk/Salem-Brownstone-All-Along-the-Watchtowers-9781406320527.aspx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz8cgCDvskc
(Whoever wrote the opening blurb either hasn’t read the book, or has already read the rest of the series. Never mind. Look at the pictures.)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/28/salem-brownstone-john-dunning-review
I don’t know from graphic novels, but I liked this one a lot.†† There’s heaps of stuff out there on the net about it—the three links here should be enough to tell you if you want to hunt it down or not.
I’m looking forward to the next one.
* * *
* Yes, I went ringing at Colin and Anthea’s home tower tonight. Yes, I went with Niall. Yes, I rang Cambridge. I rang Cambridge without a minder. But I am SPARING you the details (like that I didn’t do it very well, and that it took two tries. BUT WE GOT THROUGH TO THE END ON THE SECOND GO).
** There’s a bell tower out back^ and a piano on the veranda.
^ I have been selectively breeding hellhounds for bell ringing ability
*** And trying to get back into it after three days^ of mostly being unable to make my eyes focus on anything smaller than a hellhound has been like trying to get into a pair of jeans two sizes too small. A pair of wet jeans two sizes too small. Backwards. And one leg has been sewed shut.
^ I am much better today . . . and trying not to race around at 200 mph and give myself a relapse. Um . . .
† As Dorothy Parker memorably said, This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
†† And this may be too obvious for proper graphic novel readers but one of my favourite bits of throwaway humour is that while our hero is having a conversation with Cassandra hanging upside down in a tree, her speech-bubbles are printed upside down. Maybe I amuse easily.
comments
Please join the discussion at Robin McKinley's Web Forum.