May Books

[slemslempike]

May
The Player's Boy - Antonia Forest
The Bachelor of Arts - R K Narayan
The Shutters of Snow - Emily Holmes Coleman
The Player and the Rebels - Antonia Forest
Wonder - Rachel Vail
Delicate Matters - Vickery Turner
There Goes Summer - Mary Hooper
Life in a Cold Climate - Laura Thompson
Hey There Dollface - Deborah Hautzig
Mediator 3 - Meg Cabot
Teen Idol - Meg Cabot
Small Gains - KM Peyton
Ever After - Rachel Vail
Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy

Rereads - the two Antonia Forests, and the Rachel Vails, which I picked up recently after vaguely looking for them for a few years.

Life in a Cold Climate I found really tedious after a while - it was interesting to read about Nancy, but the style was abysmal. I'm really looking forward to Decca's letters later this year, it would be nice to read something that wasn't so automatically dismissive of her.

I was a bit disappointed in Small Gains. I've never liked Peyton's historical fiction as much as her modern day children's books, but even so I thought this was rather clunky, though I did like the heroine. I'm finding I enjoy Meg Cabot far more outside the Princess Diaries. Somehow less cloying, and I find email/IM conversations a it dull to read after a time.

Woman on the Edge of Time was wonderful. Very abrasive, and sometimes the utopia grated a little, but still really excellent. I did find that I wondered if I'd like to live in the utopia, but I also have a thing about inequality getting placed so that it seems to have the root of enjoyment/pleasure - things about power, and exclusion, and people thinking that they'd miss that, and that equality would spoil it. But I think I can't really imagine society without it, and so it seems all bound up instead.

Comments

[sangerin.livejournal.com]

What did you think of Hey Dollface? (I'll say up front that I like it. I think the story is a bit bitsy, but I never minded that when I read it as a kid, or when I read it again as a teenager and understood some of what was involved a little bit better).

[gair.livejournal.com]

Seconding that question - I do think Hey Dollface is interesting. Sort of one-of-a-kind, really. I think its message has changed a lot since it was written, though - Gerald was very unimpressed when it came out, I think it's splendidly queer, partly because there's just not enough stuff written that charts the territory between f-f and f/f.

Have you read Second Star to the Right? Best anorexia novel EVAR.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

It's a bit like Kissing Jessica Stein in some ways. Trying to differentiate between friendship and sexual relationship.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I really liked the first half, but found the end a little too issuesy. I would probably have liked it a lot if I had read it earlier. I thought it was well done though, and I'll probably reread it at some point and see if I take in more.

[the_antichris.livejournal.com]

I've probably said this before, but I have millions of tiny ♥s for the Mediator books. I like the Princess Diaries too, but they're just too light. Candyfloss instead of cake.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I really liked the first ones, but lately they've been rather dull and insubstantial. But the Mediator books really rock!

[lsugaralmond.livejournal.com]

Hello! How are you? You have been unusually silent for the last few days so I hope you aren't trapped under something heavy or anything. Would you still like to meet up this weekend? I would love to! Please email me or send a text (there's a link to my contact details on my user info).

[(Anonymous)]

Hello! I am having a break from lj at the moment. Mostly because I have not yet seen Doctor Who and don't want to get spoiled.

I sent you an email, but maybe I got the address wrong - basically, I would love to meet up on Saturday. I have to catch a train from Euston at 16.10, but apart from that any time is good for me. Shall we meet for lunch and bookshops? When/where's good for you?

[lsugaralmond.livejournal.com]

Oh no, I didn't get the email. Sorry about that. That sounds like a lovely plan. You know far better than I do where the good bookshops are (I live in London but I am crap) but if you tell me which is the closest tube station to the best of them we could meet outside it. How about 11.30? So we can have a little browse before lunch?