While She Knits - phenoms

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

What have you been reading while she knits?  Have you read anything phenomenal?

Comments

[9mil.livejournal.com]

anything by Ayn Rand. And re-reading A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Also Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.

I'm sadly failing in the YA fiction/fantasy department.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

I just read Catalyst by Laurie Halse Anderson and it completely wrecked me. I know most people think Speak is her greatest novel and I agree it's excellent, but somehow this one resonated with me a lot more.

[idiosyncreant.livejournal.com]

Gah. I meant to continue posting on the line of the "gifts" from MWT. I'm sorry! I even thought of it a few days ago, but things have been out of order in the house...

I'm reading Superior Saturday, the latest in the Garth Nix "Keys to the Kingdom" series! I'm kinda excited about Arthur [SPOILER] getting more immortal...[ / SPOILER ]

I just finished The Tempest, for the first time, too. I wouldn't let myself read anything else this year before I did, because I read *no* classics for the first time last year. Pitiful.

[avalonestel.livejournal.com]

A Posse of Princesses by Sherwood Smith, and the graphic novel series Full Metal Alchemist and Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle.

[opheliastorn.livejournal.com]

Mostly books for my courses next semester - Mrs Dalloway, The Mysteries of Udolpho... Oh, and Northanger Abbey, because I can finally understand the satirical bits!

[cleo]

*squees* Doesn't reading Udolpho make NA just that much more HILARIOUS?! &hearts

What I'm Reading!!!

[thelasteddis.livejournal.com]

I'm in the middle of Gracling, and I'm loving it. It's about a girl who has a killing grace (which is like a superpower but cooler), and is forced to be her uncle's henchman/torturer. It's really good! However, I have it as an e-book, so I can't take it anywhere near water - so when I'm in the bath I'm reading The Naming (first in the Pellinor series). One of my friends assures me it's excellent, but so far I'm not impressed. It's exactly like Eragon... just with a girl instead of a boy. We've got a Brom character, we've got a Sloan character... and god's love, we've even got an evil power who turned from his human nature and is consumed by greed and evil and DARKNESS.
Oooooooh! Darkneeeeeess!
Why is it always Darkness? 'Cause I think we all know that darkness is not the personifcation of evil. Pointy red beards are.

Re: What I'm Reading!!!

[peanut13171.livejournal.com]

I wasn't impressed by The Naming either.

[peanut13171.livejournal.com]

Just finished Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. It was pretty good.

Also read The disreputable history of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart and liked it quite a bit because the heroine is really smart.

My YA author discovery of 2008 was Catherine Gilbert Murdock who wrote Dairy Queen and The Off Season. I have *no* interest in football or farms, but these books were fabulous. (I hear her latest, Princess Ben, isn't as good but I've got it on hold at the library.)

The Cabinet of Wonders Marie Rutkoski - quite good

The Magic Thief Sarah Prineas - quite good

Flora's dare : how a girl of spirit gambles all to expand her vocabulary, confront a bouncing boy terror, and try to save Califa from a shaky doom (despite being confined to her room)by Ysabeau Wilce - lots of fun.

[magicsandwiches.livejournal.com]

I, too, adored the Dairy Queen books and eagerly await the third installment this fall. It's so odd how a character completely unlike me has captured my attention so completely. I swear I've read these books five times each by now. Princess Ben, on the other hand, was quite a disappointment. Perhaps I was longing for someone more like DJ, but I found the protagonist to be completely unlikeable until nearly the end, which I think was the intent of the author, for reason of character arc. Strange! And I had waited for it since September to come off hold at the library. Boohoo for bitter disappointment!

[aspectabund.livejournal.com]

Graveyard Book is very nice, and also remarkably simple. It was a doubly nice experience for me because the first time I "read" it, it was to Neil Gaiman's video tour narration, which you can find here: http://www.mousecircus.com/videotour.aspx . He has a lovely reading voice, no doubt greatly assisted by his Britishness. :)

[aspectabund.livejournal.com]

I have been very bad, and have read almost exclusively comics since the summer. Watchmen, Sandman, and New Avengers are the mainstream ones, but mainly imported French comics. Whyyyy can French people draw so well? And so charmingly! I adore the culture of Europe with its greater respect for artists in general, and I really wish we had more of a thing for independantly-published comics in North America.

Oh welp. At least I speak French! (Thank you Canadian government and your enforced bilingualness.)

Book wise, I've read far too much Neil Gaiman, and I'm ploughing steadily through book 2 of Octavian Nothing. I keep having to write down words to look up in the dictionary as I go through Octavian Nothing, something I haven't had to do for years, hahah. I enjoy the nostalgia of it. <3

But for the most part, I've been watching lots of movies. Alack, the result of being in an animation course - frequent references are made both by teachers and classmates, and I then go on to watch them so I can see what they were all going on about. :(

[ricardienne.livejournal.com]

I just read The Eyes of a King by Catherine Branner (young author, getting a lot of press due to youth). It was quite good: young man in authoritarian, post-coup dictatorship trying to cope, not yell at grandmother, protect/save saintly and ill younger brother. And meanwhile, there is a counterrevolution being plotted, and details of his past surfacing, and a possible restoration of the king and revival of magical learning and all that, but it can't penetrate the daily life and daily struggle and tragedy.

Short summary: awful dialogue, but pretty good book.

Re: What I'm Reading!!!

[chachic.livejournal.com]

I've been wanting to read Graceling but it's still not available here so I have to be patient and wait for it.

I just finished reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, which was reviewed by MWT. It's really good and I loved it. The story is set in a post-apocalyptic US, where 24 teenagers from different areas are randomly picked to survive in an arena until only one person remains and he/she is declared the winner.

[bluestalking.livejournal.com]

Do you read Tsubasa online? Because NEW CHAPTER THIS WEEK it was awesome. :DDDDD

Re: What I'm Reading!!!

[bluestalking.livejournal.com]

Ooooh yeah, I started laughing on the first page, with the map & the stupid names, and became decreasingly impressed from there.

[bluestalking.livejournal.com]

I had great hopes for Cabinet of Wonders and in the end found it humorless and impersonal. :( It was all about the trinkets--had no spirit, no heart.

[bluestalking.livejournal.com]

I just read The Color Purple, which is not my kind of book at all, but by the end I kind of loved it. Also doing a lot of reading of and about Frances Burney, and working slowly through Hand of the King's Evil by Chaz Brenchley. I should be reading moooooore. D:

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

Most of my recent reading has been pretty good, but not phenomenal. The exception being Toni Morrison's A Mercy, which is a little bleak but oh so rich.

Re: What I'm Reading!!!

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

I liked Hunger Games, too!

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho. The blurb on the cover calls it "dazzling in its powerful simplicity and inspiring wisdom" and it is.

And Nation by Terry Pratchett. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this one when award day comes in a couple of weeks. It's fabulous.

[avalonestel.livejournal.com]

I'm not that far in the story yet, no - I only just read about the thing Fai did to Sakura. And I decided to just read the whole thing from the beginning in the published translations and go straight through the scanlations. Do you read XXXHolic?

[(Anonymous)]

Pagan's Vows by Catherine Jinks (and all the rest of the series)...hilarious. Pagan reminds me a lot of Eugenides, in certain ways. (Small, witty, a bit funny-looking, too clever for his own good...)

Also April Lady by Georgette Heyer is *adorable*. The hero and heroine have been married for just about a year when the story starts...

~Feir Dearig

[bluestalking.livejournal.com]

I do I do I do! :D

I totally fell out of anime fandom this last year, but there are still a handful of manga/ka that keep my attention, and CLAMP is always on that list. :P

[avalonestel.livejournal.com]

That's how I feel, too. CLAMP is just too amazing to let fall by the wayside. Have you read Kobato at all?