Around 5 o’clock I went out and got me some provisions. After fortifying myself with junkfood (although not, alas, the junkfood I wanted–I can’t find pretzel M&Ms for love or money), I continued on my journey through bookdom.
Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days
Okay, so what is with authors who write retellings of fairy tales and living in Utah? I swear, between Shannon Hale, Mette Ivie Harrison, and Jessica Day George, that state has got this shit tied up.
There’s a Mormon joke in there somewhere, but I’m not going to make it. Not because I’m better than that–we all know I’m not–but because I can’t figure out what that joke is right at this moment.
Don’t worry, I’ll get back to you.
Anyway, I’ve been given warnings about Shannon Hale, but I actually quite enjoyed this. I’m not familiar with the tale it’s based upon (something out of the Brothers Grimm, not one of the heavy hitters), but it’s sort of like Rapunzel in that it involves a princess locked up in a tower for refusing to marry a really unpleasant dude. However, instead of a studly young man climbing up her long hair, she’s got a lady’s maid named Dashti to get shit done. Dashti’s pretty accomplished: she reads, she writes, she draws, she sings the illness out of people, and she makes gruesome rat traps. I liked her a lot–and I also liked the fact that Hale managed to base the culture largely upon medieval-era Mongolia without making a big deal out of it or exoticizing everything. Dashti’s illustrations are included, and it was so refreshing to see pictures of recognizably Asian people included as, you know, THE HEROES.
I will be keeping this one.
Maryrose Wood, The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: Book I: The Mysterious Howling
Okay, if you liked Lemony Snickett, I’m guessing you’ll like this. Penelope graduates from her dreary orphanage-cum-governess school and takes a job at Ashton Place, where she’s supposed to tame three children who have been raised by wolves. There’s a lot of word play and spoofing of Victorian England, which I always enjoy. Beyond that, I don’t really have much to say about it, because it’s the first in a series and clearly a lot of it is set-up. I’d buy this for my sister if I wasn’t A.) Broke as hell; and B.) Pretty sure that she’s already read it.
That’s the bitch of having a family full of readers: on the one hand, you know what to buy everyone for Christmas. On the other hand, they’ve probably already bought it on their own. Fuckers.
ONWARD!
“pretzel M&Ms”
What? How? That is against nature!
Dude. DUDE. Have you ever had a chocolate-covered pretzel? Think that, only BITE-SIZED.