“The Twelve Dancing Princesses” is one of several fairy tales that I truly love and only rarely find satisfying adaptations of. That isn’t a criticism of the world and its life choices, exactly, because I can see how “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” would be difficult to adapt well. It’s an odd little story, and the ending’s not the best ever, and even when I do read adaptations of it, I rarely feel they’ve done a good job exploring the potential of the original story. That was the case with Entwined, even though I did enjoy it. Azalea is the oldest…
35 CommentsReading the End Posts
I thought Leap Day would be an excellent day to post about Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, a story about things that might or might not be real, and events that happen inside and outside of time. My sister (Indie Sister!) gave this to me for Christmas, and I actually read it a while ago but missed reviewing it in one of my reviewing flurries. So I shall talk about it now instead! Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is about a boy called Jacob who was traumatized by the sudden, violent death of his grandfather. He remembers seeing a…
30 CommentsThis book was so cool! (Except for the unacceptable way there was no index. What nonfiction book skips indexing??) But it should stand as a lesson in the importance of titles. This is a dreary title, isn’t it? I got the book at the library in a very grudging spirit, because I wanted to read loads of books about conservation and cultural property controversies and archaeological ethics and all that sort of thing, but they didn’t have very many books like that (see previously No Bone Unturned and Stealing History for the only other two books I could find on…
25 CommentsAh plays. I bought Copenhagen in 2009 at the glorious glorious book sale in my hometown (oh my God that book sale, I dream about it sometimes) because it was fifty cents or something and I like plays, and then I chronically didn’t read it for a year and a half, and then I moved to New York and left it behind because I didn’t love it because I hadn’t read it, and then in January when I was at the library getting plays I was all, Dammit, I need to read this damn play. So I checked it out…
6 CommentsThe problem with nonfiction is that I always want specialized stuff and the libraries don’t want me to have it. Or, the other problem with nonfiction might be, there’s just not enough of it out there. I wanted to read loads more books about looting and other cultural property issues, because I enjoyed Stealing History and was interested in the issues it raised. I don’t think I appreciated it enough for portraying the complexities of the issues, like the compromises archaeologists have to make with collectors if they want to have any opportunity whatsoever to study looted antiquities. Then I…
12 CommentsStealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World, by Roger Atwood, was a very interesting book all about looters and what gets lost when ancient sites are torn up and their contents sold off to wealthy collectors around the world. It used Peru as a focus to discuss the global problems of looting and collecting, but my main takeaway from it is that the Met is a big jerk about repatriating local artifacts. And now when I go to the Met and don’t pay full price, which I’m entitled to do because the admission fee is…
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