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landofnowhereDue to travel and such I haven't posted here in a while -- but I'm back now, and have stuff to catch up on. (OTOH I actually didn't read that much, but still.)
The Interior Life, Katherine Blake (Dorothy Heydt). The second half of the book grabbed me less than the first, but it may just not hold up as well to being read in little pieces. Or I'm just jealous that the distraction of Susan's interior life doesn't seem to have any negative impact on her functioning in our world. This is not the sort of book which is about reconciling Susan's two lives, or about asking why any of this is happening, but I would have liked Susan to be able to share what she's going through with people in our world. (At least she does find out that the SCA exists!)
Keeping the Castle, Patrice Kindl. (Recommended byladyherenya). So this book was blurbed with comparisons to I Capture the Castle, but it's really hard to live up to that comparison, and it doesn't have much in common beyond the premise -- protagonist is a teenage girl who feels obliged to marry well so that her family can afford to have the decaying castle. It's a pleasant, satirical YA Regency Romance of the sort that has characters named Lord Boring (he is) and the Marquis of Bumbershook. I was hoping that it would do what I Capture the Castle does with realizing that sixteen is too young for the standard marriage HEA but instead it stays true to genre convention. Maybe I should read some Joan Aiken instead.
Speak For Yourself, Lana Wood Johnson. I forget where I even saw this, but I was intrigued by the premise: a gender-swapped Courtship of Miles Standish with a female app developer protagonist, set among teens who are very into academic competitions. This last bit grabbed me, as that was definitely my social milieu as a teenager, and I haven't really seen it in fiction. There were things I really liked -- I found the protagonist's desire to have everything go to plan and her difficulty standing up for herself to be relatable, and I cried at the end when she got better at talking to people (though she still has a bunch of growth to go). The sibling/best-friend relationships were well done, but other parts felt less deeply covered. The book didn't actually make being an app developer sound all that fun, which is realistic -- spending time dealing with tickets on your most popular app, which isn't one you're excited on. The romance worked for me mainly because it wasn't the main thread of the story -- as a romance plot it hangs entirely on the protagonist repeatedly ignoring her love interest when he says "we need to talk".
A couple side notes: there was a homeschooled character on the Scholastic Exposition team, who didn't get as much time as I'd like, but was portrayed as a slighly different type of nerd from the rest of the gang and didn't end up deciding to go to school at the end. Also, I have not actually read The Courtship of Miles Standish, but I saw the Wishbone! But the connection to the plot is tenuous enough that.
Next up is Magnificent Rebels by Andrea Wulf. Bring on the Romanticism!
The Interior Life, Katherine Blake (Dorothy Heydt). The second half of the book grabbed me less than the first, but it may just not hold up as well to being read in little pieces. Or I'm just jealous that the distraction of Susan's interior life doesn't seem to have any negative impact on her functioning in our world. This is not the sort of book which is about reconciling Susan's two lives, or about asking why any of this is happening, but I would have liked Susan to be able to share what she's going through with people in our world. (At least she does find out that the SCA exists!)
Keeping the Castle, Patrice Kindl. (Recommended by
ladyherenya). So this book was blurbed with comparisons to I Capture the Castle, but it's really hard to live up to that comparison, and it doesn't have much in common beyond the premise -- protagonist is a teenage girl who feels obliged to marry well so that her family can afford to have the decaying castle. It's a pleasant, satirical YA Regency Romance of the sort that has characters named Lord Boring (he is) and the Marquis of Bumbershook. I was hoping that it would do what I Capture the Castle does with realizing that sixteen is too young for the standard marriage HEA but instead it stays true to genre convention. Maybe I should read some Joan Aiken instead.Speak For Yourself, Lana Wood Johnson. I forget where I even saw this, but I was intrigued by the premise: a gender-swapped Courtship of Miles Standish with a female app developer protagonist, set among teens who are very into academic competitions. This last bit grabbed me, as that was definitely my social milieu as a teenager, and I haven't really seen it in fiction. There were things I really liked -- I found the protagonist's desire to have everything go to plan and her difficulty standing up for herself to be relatable, and I cried at the end when she got better at talking to people (though she still has a bunch of growth to go). The sibling/best-friend relationships were well done, but other parts felt less deeply covered. The book didn't actually make being an app developer sound all that fun, which is realistic -- spending time dealing with tickets on your most popular app, which isn't one you're excited on. The romance worked for me mainly because it wasn't the main thread of the story -- as a romance plot it hangs entirely on the protagonist repeatedly ignoring her love interest when he says "we need to talk".
A couple side notes: there was a homeschooled character on the Scholastic Exposition team, who didn't get as much time as I'd like, but was portrayed as a slighly different type of nerd from the rest of the gang and didn't end up deciding to go to school at the end. Also, I have not actually read The Courtship of Miles Standish, but I saw the Wishbone! But the connection to the plot is tenuous enough that.
Next up is Magnificent Rebels by Andrea Wulf. Bring on the Romanticism!
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Date: 12 Jan 2023 13:55 (UTC)no subject
Date: 12 Jan 2023 17:22 (UTC)Haha, same! It's probably the only place I've ever encountered that poem! It certainly wasn't assigned in school.
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Date: 12 Jan 2023 23:43 (UTC)no subject
Date: 13 Jan 2023 13:56 (UTC)no subject
Date: 14 Jan 2023 03:36 (UTC)no subject
Date: 20 Jan 2023 15:16 (UTC)no subject
Date: 14 Jan 2023 02:13 (UTC)I liked Speak for Yourself! I hadn't heard of The Courtship of Miles Standish, nor that Speak for Yourself was a retelling, so that's interesting context.
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Date: 14 Jan 2023 03:38 (UTC)no subject
Date: 14 Jan 2023 12:54 (UTC)Yeah, I agree that the second half is a little more ragged than the first, but I still find it fun. (I've always wanted a sequel in which the fantasy world enters the lives of Sue's kids when they're older...)