While She Knits

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

Gosh, it's been quiet around here!

What great things have you read recently that are totally obscure?  Something other people are unlikely to ever find on their own?

I'll go first:

Boris by Cynthia Rylant - if you've ever loved a pet, you'll like this one.  So sweet!  And, it's told in verse.

A teen sci-fi series that you'll like if you're a Star Trek nerd * - the Galahad series by Dom Testa.  A comet has infected the earth with a disease that is killing off all the adults.  As a last-ditch effort to save the human race, scientists build a spaceship to travel to another planet, and choose 251 disease-free teens who must learn how to get the ship there, and colonize the planet.  Lots of fun.  The first book is The Comet's Curse.



* No, not me.  Not a bit.

Comments

[booksrgood4u.livejournal.com]

Memorized? Not really, I only read each book once before they had to go back to the library :( More like ingrained in my memory, I guess XD But I thank maybe the confusion abou tim being short came form the beginning of ST when the "two soldiers" came to get the King of Mellinor - the taller one and the shorter one. But next to Nico, they're bother towering...Poor Nico

Nice Nico/Irene comparison....Another great reason for Sounisians to read Eli! I think the two biggest difference between the way Irene handles her situation and Nico handles hers, are these:
1. Nico has Josef, and even if he's as dense as his swords romantically, he has always been there to support her, believe in her, and generally treat her like a human being not a monster. Irene, on the other hand, was pretty much alone until Gen came along. I mean, she had Relius as a friend, but not in the sort of way that she could tell him how she felt or the things that bothered her. Now that she has Gen, she has to work to reverse all those years of internalizing all those feelings.

2. Nico has someone to blame, if that makes sense. Without the demon, she would just be a normal girl, but with the demonseed inside her, she becomes a potential weapon. So like Tesset told her, she is not a demonseed, she is a human with a demonseed inside her. Irene doesn't have that excuse. She is a weapon because she needed to be, so she made a decision to make herself into a weapon. Of course, Relius telling her to trust noone didn't help, now did it ?! But at the end of the day, she has no one to blame but herself, regardless of now necessary she believes her actions to be.

SO pretty much, Nico has it slighlty better than Irene, but Irene is lucky in that Gen came after her, telling her that he loved her, and basically that he didn't beleive she was a monster, and that he would love her anyway even if she was. Nico's got Josef, who's a little on the slow side in the relationship department, and while she desperately needs to hear that some one loves her anyway, the only she hears it from is the demon. And he's not a bargain XD But I do think that usually, Josef's actions speak louder than his words - like when he defends her to ELi or Slorn, or goes through his 'Mother Hen" routine, of fights Sted or the LoS to protect her.

And you thought *you* were hijacking this thread!! I can't help it - Your coparison was tooooo interesting to ignore! =D

[manderelee.livejournal.com]

I'm debating whether I should respond to this... it might take a five paged essay to fully analyze something like this! Haha. Sounis always inspires the thinker in me; when I'm working on real life essays, I'm always drawing blanks.

I agree with Josef's actions speaking louder than words. He's not much of a talkative guy anyway.

Now that I think about it, it's kind of hard to describe the damages they both incur. Your second point about blame made me think of something that worried me in Spirit Eater. Do you think that the whole "Master of Myself" approach is potentially suggestive of victim-blaming? I understand that it's actually a way to unlock the full potential of a wizard, and maybe I shouldn't be over and psycho analyzing things, but even though I thought that technique was really cool on one hand, I thought it had some pretty sad implications for the way Nico has been handling things. Because if she is the "master of herself" then it implies that her whole suffering is her fault, because she let it happen. Tesset always tells her that nothing she doesn't want to happen to her would if she's got enough control and understanding, and so when bad things do happen to her, she blames herself. That's also one of the things the demon manipulates her to do; every time she couldn't save Josef, the demon tells her it's her fault. I mean, I understand that as readers we blame the demon for all the suffering Nico had to go through, but I'm not so sure if she believes she's as blame-free as she should be. Maybe it's just the phrasing of "letting things happen to her" that gets me uncomfortable, because it really undermines the violation she experiences under the demon's hands.

And with Irene, the lines are blurry as well. While I also think that Irene made the decision to take up queenship all by herself, did she really have much choice? I used to blame her for that as well, and I couldn't understand why she was so jealous of Helen when she was the one who decided to be queen of a country such as Attolia. I think this was one of my questions from a post earlier this year (ugh that horrible post... still feel bad about what happened there, sorry guys), and people enlightened me by saying that she didn't really have much choice in the matter. She would have probably been assassinated as soon as she was married off, or she would have lived a very bad life watching others screw her country over.

And would you look at that? Two ginormous paragraphs. This is quickly turning into an analysis... not a book recs post. Hmm, mods, just give me a warning if I'm stepping over the line!

[booksrgood4u.livejournal.com]

I've got some thoughts - I'll send you a PM so we don't totally take over this WSK and also so we don't spoil anyone who is or os going to read the series.

But this is good - Now everyone sees how much we need people to discuss this sereis with XD

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

No way, Leng, I'm glad we are talkingggggg about boooooookssss!

Going to Amazon right now to order The Spirit War.

[manderelee.livejournal.com]

Yaay!

And The Spirit War was great, though The Spirit Eater was still my favourite. Last third if SW is definitely intense, but I spent most of the book heartsick for Nico. =P I've already pre-ordered the last book!