reading reading reading

[seldear]

I read the novelisation of Batman: No Man's Land - the story arc in the Batman comic book series where Gotham is cut off from the USA and becomes a free-for-all.

It's quite good. Oh, I imagine there are all kinds of issues with the backstory and the forestory and characterisation and retconning. This is comics after all. But I enjoyed the novel. Plus, Barbara Gordon POV!

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saramund has gotten me into Nora Roberts/JD Robb. At least she's prolific, although the books are, if not quite mind-candy, certainly not much above cookieness - sweet and quite filling and a nice break from seriousness. The JD Robb novels are intriguing for the murder-mystery angle, and I'm curious to see how she manages the steady relationship from book to book.

PTB around the world, please note: it is possible to handle consisted character and relationship development in a serial format - one just has to be a little more careful of detail.

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While I've been down in Nowra, I've read Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness series. I think it's classified Young Adults - I'd put the focus age around 9-10 years: then again, I was reading Lloyd Alexander's Black Cauldron series around 10, so...

As sharim points out, it was her first series, and her writing has probably matured. But Alanna, neat as she is, felt a little too Mary Sue for me, and written from the perspective of the old "I am woman, hear me roar" feminism. They're not bad, but not as meaty as I like my stories.

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I never thought it would be so difficult to get hold of a Phillip Pullman novel. I mean, the Dark Materials trilogy has a movie being made of it later this year, right?

You know how the law of libraries is such that they always have the 2nd and 3rd novels in a series, but never the first. Or, if they have the first book, it's out on loan, missing, or temporarily assigned to another library. ARGH.

Then I started looking in the bookshops for the first novel: Northern Lights. (I know, it's called The Golden Compass in the movies, but the name of the book in Australia is The Northern Lights - maybe it's a Philosopher's Stone thing for the Yanks again, who knows?) Trying to find a non-movie-related cover? Next to impossible. I finally found one in a bookstore that sells second-hand, or book seconds today. Read through to the end of section one. Trying to resist the urge to read on.

Comments

Re: random squee about the book!love. :)

[seldearslj.livejournal.com]

Okay, finished the His Dark Materials trilogy.

Is it just me, or did he start losing it in the 3rd book? I couldn't put the first book down, it was...powerful and dramatic and painful. He lost some momentum in the 2nd, but I figured it was a Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back kind of thing - a connective piece that got all the players in place. But the 3rd was...disappointing. Took me about 5 days to actually read, because I had no drive to finish it.

But, yes, the first movie looks like it will be amazing, just from the clips I've seen.

Re: random squee about the book!love. :)

[elaran.livejournal.com]

Nope, that's the general consensus about the series I'd say. Everyone's in awe about the first one but they end up a tad disappointed after they've finished it. :)