Oh, dear, the plight of women throughout history has been really dreadful. The Case of Madeleine Smith is a graphic novel (graphic history, I guess) about real-life Victorian lady Madeleine Smith, who may or may not have murdered her lover Emile L’Anglier (though she probably did murder him, the book strongly implies). It’s a straightforward, fairly impersonal depiction of the story – could just as well be the Classic Comics version! The book deliberately (I assume) sets the reader at one remove from the players in the story, so it’s more of a history than a story. I would have…
2 CommentsReading the End Posts
I read somewhere (who knows?) that War for the Oaks is a retelling of Tam Lin. I’m on a mad craze to read all the retellings of Tam Lin that I can find, which is brilliant because Fire and Hemlock is waiting for me at the end. Also, I am interested in reading a whole bunch of retellings of one story, because I am thinking of doing an adaptation of “The Little Mermaid”, and I am curious to see how people do it. War for the Oaks isn’t a retelling of Tam Lin, but it’s fun and I enjoyed it.…
4 CommentsI read about this over at Imani’s blog – I miss Imani! Where did she go?? – and today curled up in my comfy old papasan chair to read it. The Shooting Party is set shortly before the start of World War I, with a large group of British aristocrats and their spouses getting all together to shoot at Lord Randolph Nettleby’s estate. With World War I looming on the horizon, the reader is all too aware that they are gathering together to participate in a way of life that is passing and will soon be dying away entirely. At…
4 CommentsBlast. I wrote a nice, thoughtful review of this book, and then it somehow got lost when I reviewed Death: The High Cost of Living. Bother bother bother. Suffice it to say – The Queen of Spells is a retelling of “Tam Lin”, which is such a great story that I have checked out or reserved five different adaptations of it, to decide which one is best (apart from, obviously, Fire and Hemlock). The Queen of Spells is not best. The sequence where Janet is hanging onto Tom as he turns into all sorts of things is trippy and nifty…
2 CommentsOh, steampunk, why do you keep breaking my heart? I want to love you, I do. What’s not to love about steampunk? In theory it should be everything good: Victorians, and flying machines, and (usually) fantasy elements too. How can it be that I have never read a steampunk book and really loved it? The Court of the Air is about two plucky orphans who are being chased by assassins, and they’re not sure why. I got bored about 150 pages in and didn’t finish it. There were several reasons for this. First of all, there were dangling participles all…
3 CommentsI read about Baltimore on Jenclair’s blog untold ages ago, and I put it on my list, but I didn’t leave myself a little note explaining what it was about. This is something I do now, but I didn’t always, and so when I would be at the library looking at my list of books, I never checked out Baltimore because I had forgotten anything I ever read about its plot. Fortunately I was incredibly bored recently and took the time to go back through my book list, look up the reviews, and leave myself teeny little plot synopses. Baltimore…
5 Comments(Finally getting around to reading some of the books I got at the book fair in early March. Stupid library, distracting me.) Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with a Ewing’s sarcoma at the age of nine – at one point she reads about it and discovers it has a 5% survival rate. After ages and ages having this sorted out, she is left with part of her jaw missing. Later on she receives numerous grafts to sort this out, and these work for a while and then keep getting reabsorbed. (I believe that’s how it worked – I’m fuzzy on medical…
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