Recommended reads
Nov. 1st, 2008 09:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
checkers65477I've been reading The Shining Company by Rosemary Sutcliff and I have a vague feeling of having read it before, though I didn't think I had.
Sutcliff's descriptions are beautifully written. After a couple dozen pages where we get to know the characters, there are these two paragraphs:
Life in the valley went on as it had always done. Harvest followed seed time; then came hunting for fresh meat in the winter, when we mounted the wolf guard over the lambing pens and every full moon brought the threat of cattle raiders. Spring, when the streams ran green with meltwater from the snows of Yr Wyddfa. Autumn when they ran yellow with fallen birch leaves.
And so there came an evening a year and more after the merchant with the archangel dagger.
Time has passed so easily, logically, and in such a believable way. With so few words, so skillfully written. Wow.
The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, was another lovely book. My favorite thing was the setting. It takes place in Georgia in the deep south, during the hottest part of the summer. Definitely a Girl Power book, and it's been made into a movie. I don't read too much adult fiction but this is one I'd recommend. My mother read it years ago and passed it on to me and it's been sitting on my TBR pile ever since. I should have listened to my mother!
It's strange--what makes this an adult book, when so many other coming-of-age stories are YA? I know it had crossover appeal; we sold it at our book fair and some of the older girls bought it. But I'm pretty sure it was marketed as an adult book. The main character is 14, perfect for YA. The story is told in first person, so it's all from her POV. There's nothing objectionable in it--older teens have read lots worse. Hm. Must be one of those cases that it's adult because the publishing company deemed it adult.
What have YOU been reading?
Sutcliff's descriptions are beautifully written. After a couple dozen pages where we get to know the characters, there are these two paragraphs:
Life in the valley went on as it had always done. Harvest followed seed time; then came hunting for fresh meat in the winter, when we mounted the wolf guard over the lambing pens and every full moon brought the threat of cattle raiders. Spring, when the streams ran green with meltwater from the snows of Yr Wyddfa. Autumn when they ran yellow with fallen birch leaves.
And so there came an evening a year and more after the merchant with the archangel dagger.
Time has passed so easily, logically, and in such a believable way. With so few words, so skillfully written. Wow.
The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, was another lovely book. My favorite thing was the setting. It takes place in Georgia in the deep south, during the hottest part of the summer. Definitely a Girl Power book, and it's been made into a movie. I don't read too much adult fiction but this is one I'd recommend. My mother read it years ago and passed it on to me and it's been sitting on my TBR pile ever since. I should have listened to my mother!
It's strange--what makes this an adult book, when so many other coming-of-age stories are YA? I know it had crossover appeal; we sold it at our book fair and some of the older girls bought it. But I'm pretty sure it was marketed as an adult book. The main character is 14, perfect for YA. The story is told in first person, so it's all from her POV. There's nothing objectionable in it--older teens have read lots worse. Hm. Must be one of those cases that it's adult because the publishing company deemed it adult.
What have YOU been reading?
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-03 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-03 05:15 pm (UTC)She does age as the story goes on, and you do get the sense that she's growing older--and so to me, it feels more like she goes from, say, sixteen to eighteen, but every now and then she'll sneak in a line about just being fifteen or having just turned sixteen and I'll go "no! wait! no you're not!"
also your comment makes me giggle, because that's exactly what she says (in reply to Char's neverending "are you old enough to marry yet?")--"A moment ago I was too young to marry you. Now, I am old enough to beg you to marry me." Or something like that.
The book also has a ton of wonderful, witty, subtle observations about love that I definitely didn't pick up on when I was younger.
...OH it makes me angry that "The Midwife's Apprentice" won the Newberry instead.
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Date: 2008-11-04 01:46 am (UTC)I feel the same way about A View From Saturday, which beat out The Thief. Blech.