Good media - books edition
Jul. 29th, 2007 06:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
opera142The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.
Not cutting this because, dude, it was written 50-some years ago. The story was rather monotonous--crazy chick has crazy stuff happen to her-- but it was well-written and short so it was breezy read rather never-ending wangst. I fangirled through the prose. "goggle-eyed headlines", "paved my plate with chicken slices", "I had nothing in my purse except peanut shells". Vivid writing. Squeakies.
It was interesting from a quasi-historical setting. Sylvia was an intern at a fashion mag, and typewriters were everywhere. When her boss wanted to contact her she SENT A TELEGRAM. Everyone drank and smoke in the office and at business lunches. Her mother wanted her to learn shorthand so she'd have something to fall back on.
Her friends were fairly snarky and slutty, something that I -know- had to be going on in the early 50's, but I'm so conditioned by corny whiteness of Leave It to Beaver that I was surprized. Highly recc'd.
Flesh and Spirit by Carol Berg.
Omg, go read right now. Right now! Gut your way through the first couple of chapter where Valen, the protag, seems ubsequious and smarmy. He gets likable and story is astounding.
It's fantasy. Dark, creepy, unsettling fantasy. Everyone is a bad guy. The villians are terrifying-- they eat eyes, they stake people and drag out their entrails, they poison wells and ponds. Berg is a master at relentlessing driving the plot from bad to worse to awful to unspeakable to hellish. She doesn't give Valen a moment's rest.
The language sometimes suffers from fantasy's overwrought "high" speech, but there are plenty of unique descriptions. "Bone-breaking cold".
It ends on a cliff-hanger. Damn fantasy authors and their love of 98542 book series. I must wait wait waitwaitwaitwait until Jan 2008 for the next one.
GO READ IT.
Not cutting this because, dude, it was written 50-some years ago. The story was rather monotonous--crazy chick has crazy stuff happen to her-- but it was well-written and short so it was breezy read rather never-ending wangst. I fangirled through the prose. "goggle-eyed headlines", "paved my plate with chicken slices", "I had nothing in my purse except peanut shells". Vivid writing. Squeakies.
It was interesting from a quasi-historical setting. Sylvia was an intern at a fashion mag, and typewriters were everywhere. When her boss wanted to contact her she SENT A TELEGRAM. Everyone drank and smoke in the office and at business lunches. Her mother wanted her to learn shorthand so she'd have something to fall back on.
Her friends were fairly snarky and slutty, something that I -know- had to be going on in the early 50's, but I'm so conditioned by corny whiteness of Leave It to Beaver that I was surprized. Highly recc'd.
Flesh and Spirit by Carol Berg.
Omg, go read right now. Right now! Gut your way through the first couple of chapter where Valen, the protag, seems ubsequious and smarmy. He gets likable and story is astounding.
It's fantasy. Dark, creepy, unsettling fantasy. Everyone is a bad guy. The villians are terrifying-- they eat eyes, they stake people and drag out their entrails, they poison wells and ponds. Berg is a master at relentlessing driving the plot from bad to worse to awful to unspeakable to hellish. She doesn't give Valen a moment's rest.
The language sometimes suffers from fantasy's overwrought "high" speech, but there are plenty of unique descriptions. "Bone-breaking cold".
It ends on a cliff-hanger. Damn fantasy authors and their love of 98542 book series. I must wait wait waitwaitwaitwait until Jan 2008 for the next one.
GO READ IT.
