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I finished two books today, and it must be a blue moon or something, because both of them were rereads of long standing. Despite the huge amount of books that I own (and I do cull the herds! I swear!), I rarely do full-dress rereads anymore, simply because I tend to have the relevant parts of the usual suspects mostly memorized, and merely have to pull out the book in question to flip to the relevant part, read the bit I want, and be satisfied.
But I was reading the first of these books, Liza Dalby's The Tale of Murasaki, partly as a spur to my own inspiration vis-a-vis a vague novella idea I've had brewing in my mind for a while, and I read it originally in freshman year of high school (paired with Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha, about which the less said, the merrier), which was nearly ten years ago now. So, especially since I got a pretty hardcover with the purple ribbon and endpapers in Michigan, I felt justified reading the whole thing through again.
( In melancholy Miyako )
By contrast, John Bellairs' The House with a Clock in Its Walls is pure enjoyment. I think I read this book in second or third grade (most likely third), and I remember that it creeped me the hell out. I was probably too creeped out to notice its utter charm, wonderful characters, and no-nonsense, headlong plot. The book's Michigan setting rings perfectly true (seriously, that state is uncanny), and I think Mrs. Zimmerman had to flee the Reich for being too cool.
Well, I am 20K words into the novel, which is approximately 20% of my projected total (because I've written this thing huge before, and it just got annoying after 100K), and there has been no action to speak of, aside from some scheming, some rooting around in subterannean crypts, and a funeral. Oh, and a past assassination is discussed implicitly. What gives? In my other efforts, the body count was in the dozens before the end of the first chapter. Bleh. More things to address in rewrites.
But I was reading the first of these books, Liza Dalby's The Tale of Murasaki, partly as a spur to my own inspiration vis-a-vis a vague novella idea I've had brewing in my mind for a while, and I read it originally in freshman year of high school (paired with Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha, about which the less said, the merrier), which was nearly ten years ago now. So, especially since I got a pretty hardcover with the purple ribbon and endpapers in Michigan, I felt justified reading the whole thing through again.
( In melancholy Miyako )
By contrast, John Bellairs' The House with a Clock in Its Walls is pure enjoyment. I think I read this book in second or third grade (most likely third), and I remember that it creeped me the hell out. I was probably too creeped out to notice its utter charm, wonderful characters, and no-nonsense, headlong plot. The book's Michigan setting rings perfectly true (seriously, that state is uncanny), and I think Mrs. Zimmerman had to flee the Reich for being too cool.
Well, I am 20K words into the novel, which is approximately 20% of my projected total (because I've written this thing huge before, and it just got annoying after 100K), and there has been no action to speak of, aside from some scheming, some rooting around in subterannean crypts, and a funeral. Oh, and a past assassination is discussed implicitly. What gives? In my other efforts, the body count was in the dozens before the end of the first chapter. Bleh. More things to address in rewrites.
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20,826 / 100,000 (20.8%) |
