Fairy Tale Book Tag: True Love, Princesses, and Midnight Magic

Fairy Tale Book Tag: True Love, Princesses, and Midnight Magic.

I absolutely ADORE fairy tales. Here’s my list in response to the questions. You should go check them out! This is the first tag I’ve filled out.

 

1. Is there a book you lie about because you feel ashamed for liking it?

Hmm, this one’s hard for me. Becca Fitzpatrick’s Hush, hush series. I love it SO MUCH, but it feels awkward because, well, I’m 21 now and 21 year olds can’t read YA fiction, right? Right?!

2.  Which book do you love that has a hideous cover?

John Irving’s The World According to Garp. Mostly because there’s a toad on the front, and I can’t stand toads. I originally thought it was a Wind in the Willows-esque novel whose main character was a toad. Boy was I wrong.

3. What was the last book you bought based on cover alone?

Ok this one’s easy. Kevin J Anderson’s The Edge of the World, which I’ve already written a post about. Easily one of my favourite books, and much better than the last time I bought something for its cover. Thanks for that, overly-gruesome murder mystery.

4. Who is your favourite book couple? 

Another hard one. It’s been a while since I’ve read anything with a couple as its focus (so I can’t be too talkative here), but I’m gonna go with Julian Carax and his lover from Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind. Their relationship is so supportive and flexible, and although it crumbles a little near the end its still one of the most sincere and heartfelt ones I’ve seen yet.

 

 

 

5. If you like to branch out into new genres, what was the latest book you’ve tried?

Easy. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, which I’m reading right now. Classic literature of this era (18th-19th centuries), especially romance-related ones, have never really been my cup of tea. I find that they’re often stuffy and moralistic, and lack a cohesive plot. Nevertheless, I’m driving on with it and hoping it gets a little more bearable.

6. What was the last book that made you stay up all night? 

I tend to keep very late hours (perpetual night-owl), so staying up all night isn’t a huge deal for me. I would have to say the last one that really engaged me that much was either RS. Ingermanson’s Transgression, or Neal Stephenson’s REAMDE. Beyond that? Pirates of Time of course, my beloved WIP. If it’s gripping enough to keep me awake it has to be good, as far as I’m concerned. Or just hugely annoying to write, because of research.

 

7. What’s the worst book you’ve read recently?

Well. This is difficult. Recently, the worst I’ve read is E.L. James’ 50 Shades of Grey. I know I’ve already written a post about it, and talked about the psychological elements in it, but really? There’s no excuse for poor writing. There just isn’t. It makes it worse when it isn’t marketed and/or discussed properly in the media. It’s primarily a book about a very emotionally unstable man and a naive woman who tries to be some kind of hero, and it’s also about blatant abuse. BDSM is a whole different kettle of fish to 50 Shades, and for those of you who think otherwise I’m so, so sorry. But it’s just not right. A close second on that list is James Flint’s Habitus. Total lack of continuity, and the concept is nuts. Characters are 2D, seriously just go read my blog post on it, or if you like just read the book.

(Not even going to put pictures).

 

So those are my answers. How about you? Are there any books that came to mind when you saw this list? And do you have any favourite book tags? Tell me in the comments, I love hearing from you!

 

As always, never stop reading and stay tuned for more!

AdmiralCarter

Habitus by James Flint… and Christmas! (SPOILERS) (December, 2012)

Hello again all;

 

So I may have told a small lie when I said I was signing off for the year… it seems I can read faster than I expected, which is probably a good thing when it comes to university.

 

Anyway, I just finished reading Habitus by James Flint… and I’m not too sure what to make of it. It’s a masterpiece of literary abandon, sure, but for me it just lacked some kind of juicy resolution. The characters had their moments around the middle of the novel, but in the beginning and the end they just seemed to fall flat on their faces. Almost quite literally at the end, where they all died unpleasantly. If given a choice, I don’t think I’d read it again. It just wasn’t my cup of tea.

 

But, the few parts in there that stood out for me really made their impact known. It has humour, wit, a strong moral to ground itself in, and besides Laika and Sputnik most of it stayed on Earth. Flint writes like a movie director, using camera pans and zooms to their full effect and going right down to the very cells in our bodies to help explain his plot. Though it is quite hard to follow, the plot itself does make some kind of abstract sense, mostly because of the neat tie-up at the end of the piece that explains everything away with Emma and her telepathic-fungal spore weirdness. Perhaps a computer would understand it better than I, with all those ones and zeroes. It certainly a unique piece, and though it’s not to my tastes (there are certain things that should never be written down) some may be able to overlook the faults and enjoy it for what it is, which I struggled to do.

 

Besides that, Christmas was very good to me and delivered four new books! Here’s the list:

 

• The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
• REAMDE by Neal Stephenson
• The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco
• The Last Theorem by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl

I’m particularly excited about Sense of an Ending and Prague Cemetery and Last Theorem, mainly because Sense of an Ending has a Man Booker prize to it’s name and the Prague Cemetery and Last Theorem are written by two of my most favourite authors of all time! It should be a real treat to read them and I’m going to start with Sense of an Ending. It’s only a very short read (doesn’t look to be about a hundred pages or so), so I expect I’ll be writing about it very soon. 

 

So, for real this time, Happy New Year everyone. May 2013 be as exciting as 2012, without the end of the world.

 

AdmiralCarter.

The Immigrants by Howard Fast, and Habitus by James Flint (December, 2012)

Hello all!

 

With Christmas nearly upon us, and also this being End Of The World Day (thank you, Mayans for scaring us all) I bet you’re wondering where I get the time to read so much. The trick with doing something you love is to make the time for it, which is what I’ve been trying to do in amongst all the present-wrapping and setting up the tree and the lights and OH it’s so much! December is always a whirlwind for me.

 

And now onto the books. I finished reading The Immigrants in about five days. Once I got past the introduction things seemed to smooth themselves out in terms of the plotline, which had been jumping to and fro for the first hundred or so pages. The characters were fleshed out, and the interactions they all had fit their personalities quite well. The thing I admire the most about this book is the way that Fast uses the history of San Francisco to add the element of realism to the story. He weaves the fictional characters amongst the real-life events, and it adds another level of believability to the entire story.

 

I also like a good epic novel, and The Immigrants certainly fits that role. It tracks through the ups and downs of the Seldons and the Lavettes, in amongst the financial crisis of 1929, World War One, and of course Dan’s escalation to the top of Nob Hill. Overall, the book is well-written but I did find it harder to connect with the characters on an emotional level, simply because of the way that Fast chops and changes between characters so fast. I was only able to get a very small glimpse into the lives of the characters, and the speed with which Fast did the changes made it feel like the characters were never given a chance to really develop. I also feel that Dan’s character needed further development. Most of what we saw of Dan was him working, arguing, or being rebellious. That’s all well and good, but his character would have been more believable if he showed more emotion.

 

So, that’s The Immigrants. After that, I spent a good twenty minutes trying to figure out what to read next. Lost for motivation, I gravitated back towards my bedside table and picked up War and Peace. I struggled with that for about ten minutes, then decided that I would leave the war until winter and picked up a book I had been meaning to read since I bought it two years ago. That book is Habitus, by James Flint, and it is probably one of the more intriguing pieces I’ve dipped my nose into lately.

 

Habitus is essentially about the lives of three individuals, who exist during the time of the Space Race and the Computer Revolution. The word ‘Habitus’ actually means ‘the physical and constitutional characteristics of an individual, especially the tendency to develop a certain disease’ (dictionary.com), but the book isn’t about diseases. It’s about how the interactions of these three people intertwine with the development of computers, and what these new and amazing pieces of technology can do for them.

 

As a piece, Habitus is very strange. It isn’t laid out like your average book; it has chapters (of a kind) but they are segregated into three groups with the headings written in binary code (zeroes and ones). Again, like The Immigrants it does a lot of dancing between the characters, but here the characters seem more rounded and less like a rough sketchbook portrait. It’s also the debut work of James Flint, but I haven’t seen any of his other pieces around the place. Perhaps I’m not looking in the right places… anyway, it’s certainly a book that lives up to the reviewer comments on the back. It had me laughing myself silly in some parts, and hopefully will do so in many more because I’m only halfway through.

 

Also, there’s a lot of weirdness with Laika the dog and Sputnik II, but I think this only adds to the mood of the piece. I hope it continues to be a source of enjoyment as I complete it.

 

I’d best be off, have to do my enrolments for next semester.

 

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and I sign off for another year.

 

AdmiralCarter.