The Song of Achilles was one of my favorite books last year and I totally forgot about it.
My heart expands / 'tis grown a bulge in't / inspired by / your beauty effulgent.
William ,'Conversations with Dead People'
Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
megan walker - Jun 24, 2013 2:56:56 pm PDT #20939 of 28370
"What kind of magical sunshine and lollipop world do you live in? Because you need to be medicated."-SFist
DavidS - Jun 24, 2013 2:57:32 pm PDT #20940 of 28370
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."
Jane Eyre/Wide Sargasso Sea and Dr. Jeckyll.../Mary Reilly would be examples of ones more in the fan fiction vein, but I'm also thinking about books where a particular classic is a big plot point.
Updike wrote one based on Scarlet Letter titled, I think "S."
Ahab's Wife.
Foe by J.M. Coetzee - Robinson Crusoe told from the POV of Friday.
There are a bunch more but those are the ones I remember off the top of my had after Wide Sargasso Sea.
Dana - Jun 24, 2013 2:58:58 pm PDT #20941 of 28370
I'm terrifically busy with my ennui.
Achilles in Vietnam is non-fiction, but is tied to The Iliad.
Steph L. - Jun 24, 2013 3:00:10 pm PDT #20942 of 28370
this mess was yours / now your mess is mine
The first 3 Mary Russell books are definitely the best.
But I sure didn't see the assault-y part coming. At all. Kind of shook me up.
This is also exactly how I feel.
It's just -- I didn't expect the format of the entire book to be the way it was, with the flashbacks to Julia's magic training (for want of a better term), but I *loved* her backstory. LOVED. Right up to the OMGWHATISHAPPENING part. (And -- I was never quite sure about this -- was it anal, or just rear entry? I mean, sure, rape is rape, particularly by a mean trickster god, so I'm not at all trying to split hairs to say one is less horrific than the other. Mostly, I couldn't tell from the text what was what, and wondered how other people read it.
Tep, I'm still leery. I was a bit put off by the gender relationships in the first book, so I think I'm going to keep away from the 2nd.
The weird thing for me is that I *wanted* to love the first book, and found it fairly pretentious and lacking substance. So I didn't expect to like the second, and wouldn't have read it, but we were on vacation with Tim's family, and his college senior-aged niece (who is a nerdy Buffista spirit baby, and whose opinion I trust) had it with her and loved it, so I borrowed it. (Plus, I had The Night Circus with me, and she ganked it from me before I could even start it, so I figured I might as well read her book.)
DavidS - Jun 24, 2013 3:03:43 pm PDT #20943 of 28370
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."
I really liked and preferred The Magician King to the first book, which I did enjoy.
That scene is horrific though.
megan walker - Jun 24, 2013 3:05:45 pm PDT #20944 of 28370
"What kind of magical sunshine and lollipop world do you live in? Because you need to be medicated."-SFist
Foe by J.M. Coetzee - Robinson Crusoe told from the POV of Friday.
I love this idea.
Polter-Cow - Jun 24, 2013 3:06:27 pm PDT #20945 of 28370
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!
When You Reach Me features A Wrinkle in Time very heavily.
Dana - Jun 24, 2013 3:08:05 pm PDT #20946 of 28370
I'm terrifically busy with my ennui.
Tep, I thought it was "just" vaginal rape, not anal. FWIW. It did really piss me off that the transforming event in her life had to be a rape.
I have mixed feelings about both books.
bennett - Jun 24, 2013 3:09:46 pm PDT #20947 of 28370
There's also lots of stuff re-writing the Bible. My fav is Mark Twain's "Diary of Adam and Eve".
megan walker - Jun 24, 2013 3:18:10 pm PDT #20948 of 28370
"What kind of magical sunshine and lollipop world do you live in? Because you need to be medicated."-SFist
When You Reach Me features A Wrinkle in Time very heavily.
Oooh, that's right. See, I think there's probably plenty, I'll just have to look into it more.
Ideally, the list would just have books that are about classics and not retellings, but I'd need two dozen for that. I think I only have about 5 or 6 now.