Yes, the mind boggles. Actually, I see I was wrong that the entire book was called The Man in the Iron Mask. It was called The Vicomte de Bragellone, and The Man in the Iron Mask was the third part of the English version.
But David Coward, who wrote the intro to my Oxford World’s Classics editions of all three, says of The Vicomte de Bragellone: “It [Vicomte] is by far the longest segment [of the entire Musketeer saga] and is usually published in English in three distinct parts: The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Louise de la Valliere and The Man in the Iron Mask.”
I recall a Frenchman in another thread who expressed puzzlement that the book he knew had been shortened to just the third part and renamed The Man in the Iron Mask. He was unaware that the earlier parts of the book were available in English under the other titles.
Just finished Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned From Judy Blume, by Jennifer O’Connell. Mmmmm, delicious fluff. It’s a collection of essays by female writers about how the Blume books affected them. The book mentioned most often was Deenie, one of the few I never read, but I enjoyed reminiscing about all the others. I was tempted to read some of them again (then again, maybe I won’t).
I didn’t think much of The Color of Water (mentioned in my last post). His mother was a crotchety old nut who denied her white Jewishness and founded a black church. Bleah.
Yes, that’s my complaint. The author didn’t provide enough background material to make it rational for that particular group of people to form such an expedition. Anne Edwards voiced the reader’s objections (“This is crazy!”, etc.) but they weren’t answered to my satisfaction.
Later on in the book, the crew makes elementary mistakes and bizarre decisions which are carefully crafted to put the characters in a particular emotional situation. The book reminds me a little of an M. Night Shyamalan movie: the writer doesn’t let petty details like a realistic plot get in the way of the atmosphere he wants to create.
I’m about halfway through Children of God, and I don’t think I’m going to like it as much as The Sparrow. For one thing, my objections to the staffing of the first Jesuit expedition pale in comparison to my thoughts on this second one. But what is bothering me more is that the author’s treatment of her characters, particularly Emilio Sandoz, is beginning to verge on emotional pornography. She repeatedly gives them a glimpse of peace and then snatches it away.
It’s like she had to write **Children of God ** to give some sort of closure and answer questions, but it runs out of steam and creativity compared to The Sparrow, which I loved.
I just finished The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stround. It seemed like something I should like, but I found the main character really bratty, annoying, and sometimes downright despicable. I won’t be reading the rest of the trilogy.
Started The Bloody Chamber, by Angela Carter last night. It’s a thin volume of revisionist fairy tales. I’m don’t like the prose style and her take on the classic fairy tales isn’t exciting or fresh, but it’s only 120 pages so I’d going to get through it.
We’re all about book recommendations around here. If you list some of the books and authors you have enjoyed, you will probably get some good suggestions.
I didn’t like him either, but I excused his behavior as believable, especially as someone who was immature, materialistic, and power hungry. And he did grow a bit.
I have a problem with a YA book where the main character:
Murders, steals and betrays. Or maybe I’m bothered that he does all those things and doesn’t ever repent. At the end of the book, he’s fully entrenched in the Magician’s world of power plays and corruption. I figure in the next two books, he’s only going to get worse.
Bartimaeus tickles me, but I don’t know if he overcomes Nathaniel’s awfulness.
Just finished Shelby Steele’s A Bound Man, a small book about Barack Obama’s uneasy place between white and black society. It’s a lot more bleak of a perspective on race relations than I personally have (and predicts his defeat in November!), but was recommended by a literate (and pretty conservative) friend, so I read it. Unless you’re a fan of Steele, or obsessed with the allegedly unbridgeable divide between blacks and whites today, I’d say give it a miss.
I’m now re-reading a favorite of mine from high school, Thomas Berger’s Arthur Rex. It’s a wonderful, witty retelling of Arthurian legend, romantic and thrilling, slightly tongue-in-cheek but essentially respectful of the genre.
Having recently finished reading aloud Jean Craighead George’s classic outdoor adventure My Side of the Mountain with my eight-year-old son, we’re now embarked upon the sequel, On the Far Side of the Mountain, and have been enjoying it so far.
I also just received a slim volume of my sister’s poetry which she self-published, and hope to begin reading it soon.
I finished this last night, and you’re right, gigi. It starts off with the intensity of the first book, but the second half particularly fell flat for me.
I kinda liked it, for that very reason. It is different to have a main character who, while starting out as is usual in these sorts of young person’s fantasy books, isn’t really wholly sympathetic - he is after all a product of his environment.
Holy crap! The Evelyn Keyes autobiography arrived yesterday and I was up til 2 a.m. finishing it. What an interesting woman! If she had an ego, she hid it. She wasn’t quite self-deprecating or humble, but she didn’t brag on herself either, even though she accomplished quite a lot. I like her.
The book was very well-written – didn’t drag for an instant. I want more like this. I don’t read bios, especially Hollywood bios, but I want more. Any recommendations? I guess I could start a separate thread but I’m lazy.
I’ve just started on an essay collection called The New Kings of Nonfiction, with stuff by Michael Pollan, Dan Savage, Malcolm Gladwell, Chuck Klosterman, etc. There’s probably stuff in there I’ve read before, but overall I’m expecting a good time.
It took me about two days just to read the introduction because I get literally a few minutes a day in which to read. And during this time, a TV is blaring in the background and I get interrupted three times. Grrr! Fortunately, I think I’ll be far too “ill” to work tomorrow.
I just read Evelyn Keyes’ page on Wikipedia, and I didn’t realize there was a movie made of Mrs. Mike! I read that book a dozen times when I was a kid. Too bad it doesn’t seem to be out on DVD.
Yep. Sampiro started a thread about her, which prompted me to get the book.
Some of the obits got some things wrong, and it’s funny how little things affect how we perceive people. One obit said she and Artie Shaw lived in a “castle” in Spain. According to her book, they built a house there – a nice house, but not a castle. She gardened and cooked (on a wood stove) and cared for animals – not at all the impression you get from “castle” life.
Another obit said that her California home was a replica of Tara. But that’s not true either – she died in a retirement home that looked like Tara. If you read that her private home was Tara-like, you get the impression that she was living in the past. From her book, it’s plain that Keyes was a “carry on, don’t cry over spilled milk” kind of gal.
The book was a fascinating look at the personal lives of celebrities in the 40’s and 50’s. There could have been more about the business of movie-making, but there was enough.
I don’t come back to log every book I read in these threads but I had to for my last one: The Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer. It doesn’t quite manage to be as bad as his Hominids but it stinks like rotting fish left in a locked car on a summer day. I don’t know what I hate more about his books: the brainless “science” (in a book where medical ethics are a major issue the main characters skip animal testing of a medical process and jump straight to humans), the paper thin characters (there is a chapter where a character goes to a therapy session and two pages later the therapist has created a perfect outline of their psychological issues mainly so that Sawyer can spell out things that were obvious before), the absolutely insane worldbuilding (someone invents immortality and it causes no kind of stir so they sell it for $20 million at time share-esque seminars), or the writing that feels like something out of a freshmen composition class (every location description is three sentences general design building or area in very generic terms and then one detail about it tacked on at the end).
The only nice thing I can say is that I had to stop to bang my head against the wall so I could get the stupid out about once every three paragraphs instead of every two like I did with Hominids. I hope to god that I never have to read anything by that man again since I doubt I have enough sanity left to make it through another of his books.
