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Normally fandom_wank makes me sad, but it's been highly amusing recently. Although I'm actually starting to feel sorry for Steve Vander Ark - or I was until I watched those videos of him comparing JKR to Umbridge and talking up the fans as if he was trying to mobilise them for some sort of attack. It kind of squicked me and made me laugh at the same time.
Talking of squicking, I read Carry Me Down by MJ Hyland the other week. I hated it, but that's probably a compliment to the writer, because I can't believe she wrote it to be enjoyed. ( Read more... )
Unlike The Book Thief, which I reread last month and was pleased to discover that I loved just as much the second time through. Yay for fresh writing, vivid characters and Death as a narrator!
I'm currently listening to Double Vision by Pat Barker, and it's as if she opened up my head and spread the contents out on the page. That makes it sound rather onanistic (perhaps it is), but I just can't believe how much the story resonates with me. Partly it's the setting (the forest around Chillingham in Northumberland), which appeals both for its familiarity and its remoteness, and partly the characters (many of whom are dealing with grief and/or trying to get on with their lives following some kind of trauma). It's about the effects of war and destruction on the human mind, and this is reflected in the immediate setting by the devastation of the foot and mouth epidemic.
It also features a relationship between a forty-year-old man and a nineteen-year-old girl. I was moaning about this trend in literature a few months ago ( and now I shall expand further: )
Perhaps it works for me because these characters are real for me in a way that Chad and Melissa (an unholy couple if ever there was one) and Howard and Victoria aren't.
Anyway, I'm enjoying Double Vision a lot. Perhaps this will be the impetus I need to pick up the Regeneration trilogy again - I read and loved the first book, but never got any further.
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