Review: Thousand Cranes, Skellig, Spiderwick Chronicles
Thousand Cranes - Yasunari Kawabata
This was a really nice and thoughtful present from David, in response to this mess:
It made me realize I've been circling around another one of his books for the past few years, never actually reading it. Now, I think I finally will get to it. This is a weird weird book, and one that really manages to get under your skin and bring up a lot of feelings and associations that don't seem to flow from the text itself. But it draws you in, and makes you believe in its world and the bonds between its characters. And while I wouldn't exactly say it romanticizes suicide, mostly because it never whitewashes the emotional impact of it, it certainly creates a space where it seems like a reasonable option. (Also, does someone wanna fix his Wikipedia article to reflect his cause of death? Which was suicide, but he was old, so it was maybe okay?) I'll use a cliche and call it haunting. I really liked it.
Skellig - David Almond
What else is new, I read this because Nick Hornby told me to. And it's got an angel who might just be an owl? It's simultaneously both the ultimate children's book and nothing you would ever want to give a child, and so of course it's absolutely perfect. Give this and The Egypt Game to a kid and they'll turn out great and will be such trouble. That said, it's really a book less about creepy-ass angels than it is about the power of love and friendship. But it's also all about smart kids.
The Spiderwick Chronicles: The Field Guide; The Seeing Stone; Lucinda's Secret; The Ironwood Tree; The Wrath of Mulgrath - Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black
Is it just me, or was it annoying that this wasn't one big(ger) book? Are they serious with charging $10 for each of these things? I liked it and am excited for the movie since I think the book will actually translate really well onto the screen. But I guess I'm not that excited because I wasn't surprised by them, they were well-written and pretty engaging children's books. I will definitely continue to recommend them to kids, but they're not really any better than that.
The Nixie's Song (Beyond The Spiderwick Chronicles, Book 1)
The metafiction-ness of this didn't bother me as much as it did James, and not as much as the sudden appearance of the characters from the first series. It was weird and it was distracting. Just as I was beginning to care about the new characters they throw in the old ones? Also, there's a blind and southern magic negro. But again, there's been a good job done of telling a story about the seedy and unconcerned about us side of fairies and such. And I actually like the Florida setting of this one better, you can't trust hot places.