Philippa Gregory

My awe is now over.  I was impressed with “The Other Boleyn Girl”, I was semi-impressed (mostly I guess) with “The Constant Princess” and I was less than thrilled with “The Boleyn Inheritance”.  Now I’m really glad that I never bought it at the bookstore and instead borrowed it from the library.  Now, just because I didn’t like it doesn’t mean it wasn’t a quick read.

I was really interested by the premise.  Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Jane Rochford (Boleyn by marriage); their untold stories about the last decade of King Henry VIII.  I felt terrible for Anne of Cleves.  Her (alleged) crappy family and the feeling of wanting to get away from it all at any cost.  I admire her iron will against Henry’s bouts of rage, her stubborness to see Princess Mary & Elizabeth and her determination to not be remarried to the king after he has Katherine executed.  After all of Henry’s other wives, Katherine appeared to be exactly what he needed.  A pretty filly to prance around and be numb to the events happening around her.  Unfortunately, she was too vain to ever succeed in keeping his love.  Then there’s good ol’ Jane.  Jane the evil and horrid woman who put her SIL and husband to death by claiming to witness their misdeeds.  Sick.

What I hated most about this book and pretty much the one thing that kept me from enjoying the stories was the fact that each woman’s story lasted 4 pages max and during those 4 pages repeated everything from the previous chapter based on their point of view.  I felt like the story only progressed every 50 pages after these women retold the same facts and stories over and over and over again.

This book did not live up to the expectations the other two books had set up.  I admire her storytelling because she can carve out a beautiful story out of bare facts.  But the structure of this story was not good for me.  I had a terrible time staying interested.

Summer Time Fun

It’s been awhile since I last blogged.  This last month has been pretty crazy with all the traveling and different projects I’ve started.  The good news is that I’ve mastered some beginning knitting and have been reacclimating myself to being a stay at home mom.

When my son was first born I was in the habit of reading to him while he was breastfeeding.  We managed our way through many good books and a few bad ones in the process.  Then as he grew, we shifted into simple lullabies before bedtime.  His interest wavered in books and for awhile we didn’t read many.  But now we’ve gotten back into the swing of things.  His personal favorites are “I love you through and through” (this is how he learned where his toes, nose, ears, hair, eyes, and fingers are) and “Harold and the Purple Crayon”.  While we still read these, I thought it would be a better bedtime ritual to read to him for 15-30 minutes out of an actual book.  So far it’s been working marvelously.  Forever ago we bought “His Dark Materials” because my husband fancied himself reading it.  Never started it.  Instead, we’ve begun reading it to our son.  My only problem with this, is that I will read him a chunk (usually a chapter) and then in the evening for bedtime, my husband will read a chunk and we both miss out on what’s going on.

I know that somehow this trilogy has anti-Christian themes and whatnot.  But nothing has seemed overly obvious in the few chapters we’ve covered so far.  I feel bad for Lyra who is being used as a pawn by her uncle, Mrs. Coulter and the Master.  Lyra learns through gossip that Mrs. Coulter wants to use her to help lure other children into her servitude.  Lord Asriel has used Lyra as a spy in the college and the Master at Oxford College wants to protect her from whatever he believes Lord Asriel is doing, but hands her over to Mrs. Coulter.  What I perceive is the relationship between the daemons and their human is that they are the embodiment of their emotions and can take a corporeal form.  Other than that, I’m not sure what their importance is.

To start off our summer movie kicks, we saw “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”.  I’ve heard many good and bad reviews of the movie, each with equally good points.  Now, to be fair, the movie is set in the 1950’s and Area 51 and aliens were becoming a phenomenon.  So the concept of aliens and psychic forces is not beyond the imagination.  I was impressed that Steven Spielberg did not make Indiana Jones be as youthful as the previous movies.  They played to his age and yet kept the action appropriate.  What I most did not like about the movie is the concept of aliens itself.  At least at the end.  It seemd so overplayed and so overdramatic.  Plus I felt that Cate Blanchett’s character (Irina Spalko) could have been fleshed out a lot more.  The only thing we really know about her is that she is a psychic looking for all-knowing power/knowledge via the skulls.  But what I find silly, is that she claims to be psychic and all with the mind games, but the only time she really uses it is when she’s probing the minds of Professor Oxley and Indy using the skull.  Other than that, how does she prove her abilities?  My other kind of gripe about the movie is that I didn’t feel that they used the Indiana Jones theme music nearly enough during the movie.  We’ve been re-watching the other ones and it feels as if the theme is used in every other scene.  I know that when this 4th installment comes out on DVD we’ll get it, and I know that one weekend we will sit down and watch all of them in succession.  Then it might be easier to grasp if it truly fits into the Indiana Jones world or not.

My favorite books & authors

While I’m in the midst of my books and not having much to blog about, I figured I’d write about what kind of literature I like and what in particular draws me to an author.  Having been a bookworm ever since I was very little, I’ve read a very wide variety of books.  For a long time I was a huge fan of “The Baby-Sitter’s Club” by Ann M. Martin and was determined to emulate their very lives.  After that I was obsessed with everything written by V.C. Andrews.  When I tired of her repetitive theme, I immersed myself in the fictional world of Alice Hoffman.  Quickly I was bored with the same old story and vowed to avoid authors who use the same formula obsessively.

I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered a few authors who surprised me with every book and keep me eagerly anticipating more.  While Haruki Murakami certainly has the same basic concept behind the novels that I’ve read, they’re presented in such ways that I can’t immediately tell what will come next.  Louise Erdrich is such an amazing storyteller.  I am wowed by how easily she can intertwine the lives of so many people without losing us in the midst of it all.   Equally impressed was I with Gregory Maguire and his genius thought of giving us his version of the classic fairy tales.  These are the authors I have come back to time and time again when I need a good book fix.  Otherwise you can find me with my nose in some kind of feminist literature or trying to muddle my way through an acclaimed classic or trying on a new author.

In Haruki Murakami’s works, he takes us on a psychological journey.  His characters take on dream-like qualities and sometimes have difficulty in discerning reality from their dreams.  By the book’s end the two usually blend together and leave us with a sense of resolve and yet still leaving a sense of wonder.  I like books that don’t fully resolve because then it can feel too clean cut.  In my mini library I own Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Norwegian Wood, Dance, Dance, Dance, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, After the Quake, and The Elephant Vanishes.  I have extensive notes on some of the interviews he’s done with various magazines but am feeling too lazy to dig them out at the moment.  My personal favorite out of the ones I’ve read are The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, and the two books of short stories, After the Quake and The Elephant Vanishes.  I like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle because even though the main character is slipping in and out of reality quite fervently, he has a purpose throughout the entire story.  The entire time you are reading you want him to find out what is going on and to be reunited with his wife because everything else just seems so bizarre.  In Kafka on the Shore I was fascinated by how deeply lost the main character was in his fantasy.  Plus this was the first book I had ever read by Haruki Murakami and was hooked the entire way through the book.

We all know why I love Louise Erdrich’s writing, so I don’t think I need to say much more about that.

It wasn’t until after I saw an ad in the Minneapolis paper for the play “Wicked” that I picked the book up at a local Barnes & Noble.  I was utterly and completely engrossed in the book.  It was amazing and I immediately bought everything else I could get my hands on that he had written.  Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Mirror, Mirror  and Son of a Witch were the ones which I greedily read up.  I was impressed with everything I had read except for Son of a Witch.  It simply seemed to lack any of the power that Wicked did and it made me sad.  Although the question if he was Elphaba’s son or not never is answered, it can be powerfully assumed he was when his own child is born the same green as Elphaba.  In each of the books it was fun to read his take on what went on behind the fairy tale front.

Other than these three main authors, I don’t follow any one author or series of books religiously.  I’ve been dipping into the Buffy comics season 8 to satisfy my Buffy obsession and even that isn’t a constant because our little bookstore in town doesn’t get much for comics and the comic book store back home sells out fast too.  So I’m patiently waiting for the trade backs to come out.  I’ve come to appreciate autobiographies quite a bit but have found some, like fiction, to be quite boring and silly.  Some of my recommendations include Geisha, a Life (her story actually inspired the fictional work Memoirs of a Geisha), My Horizontal Life (a funny recounting of one’s sexual life), Bone Black (a memoir of bell hooks’ childhood) and of course Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (which is every bit as insane as the movie).

A few other books I’ve fallen in love with on their own are: Sex Wars by Marge Piercy, A History of the Wife by Marilyn Yalom, Mozart’s Sister by Nancy Moser, and Diary by Chuck Palahniuk.  Some of the books I was not as big a fan of are: Lolita (I cannot for the life of me get into this book; I’ve tried 4 different times), White Oleander by Janet Fitch (loved the book thought the book was crap; of course, never did get very far in the book), and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (don’t understand what the big deal about this book is; good read just not sure what the WOW factor is).  There are a ton more books that I think are amazing, but perhaps I’ll wait for another time to go into details.  For now I’ll get back into my reading!