Reading Log
The Towers of Trezibond by Rose Macaulay. It's one of those slight, batty, slyly funny British novels that are terribly amusing, until there's a sharp turn to quietly devastating and deep. A quote:
"The fact was that Father Chantry-Pigg would not really have liked the Byzantines much had he encountered them, though he would have preferred them to Turks and other Moslems. He was not actually a sympathetic clergyman, and, had he been with his ancestor for the great attack on Constantinople in 1203, he would have been amongs those who, brandishing the cross above their heads, massacred and pillaged and looted in the name of Latin Christendom, helping to put to flame the great libraries whose loss he now deplored. He was better at condemning than at loving; aunt Dot used to wonder what Christ would have said to him."
The tone is sly, batty, faux-naive, very British. A seemingly slight novel, but the further I read, the more depth it displays. I'm only a third of the way into it, and I can best descibe the subject matter as a meditation on religion, on the inseparable foolishness and profundity of religious sentiment, as well as a charmingly eccentric travalogue of the exotic East -- the Trezibond of the title being in Turkey.
The Heartbreak Kid by astolat. Eric/Vince, Entourage. *yay* It's as fabulously written as anything you'd expect from astolat, with the funny, the perfect plot developments and the hotness, but I loved this story for how perfectly she captures the show -- the characters, the world, the relationships -- and shape them into a kick-ass slash story. They could film this story and make it the third season finale; heck, even the explicit gay sex is so something HBO could air.
Fair by minnow1212. McKay/Sheppard, SGA. So beautiful, a descriptor I don't throw around lightly. The highest compliment I can pay is that after I finished reading, I didn't want to leave the headspace this story had put me in. Lyrical and lovely, minnow1212 takes a crack!fic idea and makes it into something as gleaming and precious as a gem.
"The fact was that Father Chantry-Pigg would not really have liked the Byzantines much had he encountered them, though he would have preferred them to Turks and other Moslems. He was not actually a sympathetic clergyman, and, had he been with his ancestor for the great attack on Constantinople in 1203, he would have been amongs those who, brandishing the cross above their heads, massacred and pillaged and looted in the name of Latin Christendom, helping to put to flame the great libraries whose loss he now deplored. He was better at condemning than at loving; aunt Dot used to wonder what Christ would have said to him."
The tone is sly, batty, faux-naive, very British. A seemingly slight novel, but the further I read, the more depth it displays. I'm only a third of the way into it, and I can best descibe the subject matter as a meditation on religion, on the inseparable foolishness and profundity of religious sentiment, as well as a charmingly eccentric travalogue of the exotic East -- the Trezibond of the title being in Turkey.
The Heartbreak Kid by astolat. Eric/Vince, Entourage. *yay* It's as fabulously written as anything you'd expect from astolat, with the funny, the perfect plot developments and the hotness, but I loved this story for how perfectly she captures the show -- the characters, the world, the relationships -- and shape them into a kick-ass slash story. They could film this story and make it the third season finale; heck, even the explicit gay sex is so something HBO could air.
Fair by minnow1212. McKay/Sheppard, SGA. So beautiful, a descriptor I don't throw around lightly. The highest compliment I can pay is that after I finished reading, I didn't want to leave the headspace this story had put me in. Lyrical and lovely, minnow1212 takes a crack!fic idea and makes it into something as gleaming and precious as a gem.