Catcher in the Rye Read-a-long

Here's your chance to leave a link to your review/thoughts, start spoiler discussions (if you haven't read the book, you may not want to read the comments), rant or rave about the book, and bascially say whatever you'd like (about the book, please).

Thanks for reading along!

Sunday Salon: Fanfiction

This will have to be a quickie... I've been meaning to get to the computer to write a bookish musing post, but the laptop's down again (we just -- finally -- caved and bought a new one), and M's been hogging the desktop, whenever she can, for the last week.

Doing what, you ask?

Reading Harry Potter fanfiction.

I don't remember how she got started on it; perhaps Hubby set her on to a site, or perhaps she discovered it on her own, but the girl's addicted. So much so that her "regular" reading has gone down (I think she's finished a book or two, maybe, in the past week, but that's down from her usual amount of four or five), and it's caused some tension with her younger sisters who also want their share of computer time.

And, I have to admit: I don't like it. Not because she's on the computer. No: I don't like it because I have a bias against fanfiction.

Hubby -- who writes fanfic -- and M have gone the rounds with me as to why I don't, and all I can come up with is that it's not "real" writing. I feel like it's a bunch of first or second drafts out there, and that it's much like brain candy (which I do admit, many books are): there's no inherent *worth* in creating stories from someone else's imagined universe.

So... my question for you today is this: what do you think about fanfiction? If you do read/write it, why? What do you get from it? Or, if you don't, why not? What turns you off about it?

I know I'm biased. But I promise to try and keep an open mind.

Book-to-Movie Friday: The Lightning Thief

So, I took M and C to see Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief this past Monday.

We had a grand time.

I went in excited, yet apprehensive: Chris Columbus pretty much hacked the first two Harry Potter books to death and I really wanted the Percy Jackson movie to hold together as a movie, not just be nice scenes from the book. At the same time, I wanted it to be faithful to the book, avoiding the terrible massacre that Ella Enchanted was.

And you know what? I think it succeeded in doing that. M sat next to me and critiqued everything that was different (her biggest complaint: the way the cabins were at Camp Half Blood) than the book. It was fairly significant: they cut and added characters (Persephone was not in the book), combined characters (most notably, they made Annabeth into more of a warrior than she was in the book. Battle strategy, yes. Kicking butt, however, is best left to the children of Ares.), changed scenes and mixed and matched. The adults were there mostly for show, as well: Pierce Brosnon and Chiron mostly just strutted around, and I didn't get much from Sean Bean or Kevin McKidd as Zeus and Posidon, respectively.

That said, however, they did much right. I liked the look of the movie (Camp Half Blood aside), and the feel. I think the movie got the adventuresome, questing feel of the book down. (Though, I have to admit, it's been forever since I've read it.) Grover was brilliant: Brandon T. Jackson caught the protective, yet hesitant vibe that Grover always gave off. He had the best lines of the movie, stealing the show pretty much every scene he was in. (Even though Logan Lerman is a cutie.) Visually, there was much done right: I loved the vision of the Underworld (a shout out to Steve Coogan as Hades: he rocked.), as well as the Lotus Casino. There were some nice musical cues, as well.

Verdict: it's not like the book, but it's not a horrid massacre of it, either. What it is, in the end, is lots of fun.

The Lost Conspiracy

by Frances Hardinge
ages: 11+
First sentence: "It was a burnished, cloudless day with a tug-of-war wind, a fine day for flying."
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

This book is much like that proverbial boulder: it takes a while to get going, but once it gets started, it rolls down the hill until it crashes to a stop, leaving you breathless.

It's the story of an island where there's tension between the colonists and the native peoples, the Lace. There are people -- Lost, they call them -- who can spend time outside of their bodies. The island needs them -- it's how they communicate over vast differences -- but doesn't exactly trust them. And when all of them, except for one Lace Lost, Arilou, suddenly die, an investigation starts. And sends Arilou and her sister, the unobtrusive Hathin, on the run for their lives.

It sounds pedantic, and for the first 200 pages or so, it is. Hardinge is a gifted writer, one of the least clunky similie and metaphor writers that I've ever read. They roll of the page effortlessly, drawing the reader in, rather then putting them off. But even her gifted writing couldn't keep the first part from dragging a bit. Which is sad, because many people (like M) will give up before the book really gets exciting. Because, right around the 1/3 mark, it does. Hardinge starts weaving in folk tales and traditions, giving life and personality to volcanoes, and turns the book into a bit of an adventure story and mystery. There are twists and turns, help from unexpected sources, and a bad guy who is scary because he's so reasonable and so wrong at the same time.

And all of that adds together to make this book a true pleasure to read.

Library Loot 2010-07

Not too many books this week for a couple of reasons. 1) Hubby's out of town, and I generally spend my nights catching up on bad romantic comedies that he won't sit through, which means less time for reading. (Though I have The Vicar of Dibley: A Wholly Happy Ending coming from Netflix, which excites me to no end. Richard Armitage... sigh...) And 2) I'm seriously trying to catch up with the pile that I already have on my bedside table. Not to mention the ones piled up on my shelves. And it always seems that the library books get read first...

This week's loot:

Picture Books:
There Was an Old Lady, created by Jeremy Holmes
Odd Owls & Stout Pigs: A Book of Nonsense, by Arnold Lobel/color by Adrianne Lobel
Zarafa: The Giraffe Who Walked to the King, by Judith St. George/Illus. by Britt Spencer
Martha Says It With Flowers, Susan Meddaugh
Surprise Soup, Mary Rodman/Illus. by G. Brian Karas
The Enemy, by Davide Cali/Illus by Serge Bloch
My Little Polar Bear, by Claudia Rueda
Mystery Vine: A Pumpkin Surprise, by Cathryn Falwell

Non-Fiction books:
How to Get Rich in the California Gold Rush: An Adventurer's Guide to the Fabulous Riches Discovered in 1848, by Tod Olson/Scott Allred/Marc Aronson
Funny Business: Conversations with Writers of Comedy, compiled and edited by Leonard S. Marcus

Middle Grade Fiction:
This Family Is Driving Me Crazy: Ten Stories About Surviving Your Family, edited by M. jerry Weiss and Helen S. Weiss

YA books:
Shine, Coconut Moon, by Neesha Meminger
Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover , by Ally Carter
The Truth About Forever, by Sarah Dessen

The roundup is either at Reading Adventures or A Striped Armchair. Obligatory FTC note: the links are provided through my Amazon Associates account. If you click through and actually purchase one of these books, I'll get a teeny, tiny payment. But, since no one ever does, and it's SO much easier using the associates account to put up these links, I'm going to keep doing it.