Your daughter is a discerning young woman, Dawn.

Teppy - my God, you are so right about Skulduggery being Remington Steele. I mean - he really, really, REALLY is. Notwithstanding the fact that he is an animated skeleton.

Thoroughly enjoyed that book. Then this morning I read Blood and Chocolate, which was so much better than the recent movie version that I wanted to go find the movie-making people and beat them to death with a blunt werewolf. (Honestly! What the fuck IS IT with people taking a book and then making it into a crapfest? I didn't have the heart to watch The Seeker, because every single thing I heard about it made me want to weep and/or hunt down the movie makers and strangle them with their own intestines for pissing all over Susan Cooper's fantastic The Dark Is Rising sequence. Rat bastards. Strangulation is too good for them.) Blood and Chocolate turns out to be a very nice little coming-of-age story. A fact which seems to have escaped the film-makers, who retained very nearly nothing at all other than a few names and the fact that the female protagonist is a werewolf. (And, Jesus, it's not like the title is subtle - hello, menstruation, anyone? Time of the month? Hair in unexpected places?) I like the book as much as Ginger Snaps, which it (happily) doesn't much resemble. Apparently she's also written a vampire book called Silver Kiss - anyone happened across it?

On a not-particulary-related note, a few months ago I was delighted to find a copy of Meredith Pierce's Darkangel, which I read when I was 16 or so and loved loved loved. Hadn't read it since, and I was startled to find that it had subsequently become book one of a trilogy. On the whole, I didn't love the trilogy - the first book was strange and vivid and wildly creative, a sort of gothic fairy tale set on the moon, but the subsequent books were a lot more ordinary. No, that's not quite fair. Rather - I loved the fact that the first book DIDN'T explain everything. It had fairytale logic going on, and it was very evocative rather than explicit when it came to worldbuilding. I felt that in choosing to expand her story and fill in the blanks, she actually made it smaller. Like the manga spinoff from the Labyrinth movie. And...wow, I'm really not expressing myself well. However, I really did like the ending of the trilogy quite a lot. And the 2nd and 3rd books weren't bad or uninteresting. Just - less wondrous. Less whimsical, perhaps. Less like a fairytale, and more like a YA fantasy novel sequence.

I don't suppose anyone out there has read them?

eyes tumbleweeds.

shrugs.

surveys other bootie from yesterday's shopping expedition.

Hmm...I'm thinking maybe Delia Sherman's Changeling next. Wonder how it will compare to Holly Black's treatment of the same subject matter?

I think this is probably the right place to post this.... Pauline Baynes, illustrator of the Narnia books - amongst many others - and as such responsible for the pictures inside millions of children's heads, has died.

[link]

Oh no. I grew up on these books, and I'm still a big Narnia fan.

The Narnia in my head is Pauline Baynes' Narnia, just as much as my Alice is Tenniel's and my Sherlock Holmes is Sidney Paget's. You will pry my crumbling Puffin Pauline Baynes' Narnia books from my cold dead fingers.

Teppy - my God, you are so right about Skulduggery being Remington Steele. I mean - he really, really, REALLY is. Notwithstanding the fact that he is an animated skeleton.

He's just such a *suave* motherfucker, you know?

Thoroughly enjoyed that book.

Go read the sequel -- it's just as good, IMO.

On the drive up to Canada, we listened to The Map That Changed the World, which is FABULOUS. And I think it works better as a book on tape because if I were reading it myself, I'd probably wind up skimming over most of the in-depth geology stuff to get to the racy gossip and science v religion bits. But I highly highly recommend it in either print or audio format - it's not something I ever would have picked up on my own (my dad gave me a DVD full of audiobooks right before we left), but I'm very glad to have read it.

Book review time again! Galveston by Sean Stewart and The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips.

I have ranted here before about how much I *hated* Twilight, and I haven't read any of the other books, even though they are hugely popular with the teens at my library. But I threw a Breaking Dawn release party at my library last Friday night, and it was super fun, and so I skimmed through the book afterwards, looking for the most wretched parts I could find. Whee! I totally agree about the last line being AWFUL, in a hilarious, ff.net kind of way. I wished I could send my teens home with Buffy DVDs instead. But it is exciting to hear them discussing the books so avidly. (Also, I'd just like to note that of the 11 teens who stayed till midnight to buy the book, 3 were boys, and I've talked to several more boys who read the series too. Surprising, but pretty cool!)

However, I have to say that many of the teens I've spoken with about the series *do* get that Bella is a sort of useless, wimpy character. I haven't talked to any girl who looks up to her so much as simply wishes she were in her place.

In the sunlight rather than burning up, they sparkle.

Is there any downside to being a vampire in this verse?

Hee! I... can't think of any, actually. Apart from Edward's whole "I can't kiss you or I will accidentally rip your throat out, oh wait, I guess I can!" I couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry during the scene in Breaking Dawn after Bella and Edward have fade-to-black sex, and she wakes up the next morning COVERED IN BRUISES, and he's all "Woe is me, I am a monster!" and she's like "Whatever, that was awesome, I totally don't care that you probably ruptured something important in my body!" And then there was the revelation that he bit the pillows (!) during their tryst (she wakes up COVERED IN FEATHERS, WHAT), and I can't wait to see the thousand and one "Edward Cullen, Pillow-Biter" icons that have inevitably already been made.

I am loving all the discussion of what people were reading when they were 14! (And taking some mental notes for developing my library's collection.) 14 was the year that my friend started me reading Jeanette Winterson, so I read a fair amount of queer literature and queer history in high school, as well as all the fantasy & sci fi I could get my hands on. And I was, of course, all over Anne Rice.

I don't think I ever answered what I was reading when I was 14-- I'm pretty sure I vacillated wildly between the Harl Presents and American romances that my neighbor bought in bulk every month and historical fiction along the lines of John Jakes and Michener and Anton Myrer and Southern fic along the lines of Anne Rivers Siddons. I think that may have been the year I discovered Heartbreak Hotel.

I'm such a wuss, I couldn't handle horror-- I tried reading Jaws and the first few pages gave me such horrible nightmares that I gave up, right then and there. My subconscious, she is an active and tormenting sort of thing.

hmmm can't really remember what I was reading at 14. I was past my historical romance (Victoria Holt mostly) phase. Maybe a lot of Salinger and Tom Robbins and Vonnegut. Although that may have been later in high school.