I love books.
I have been reading some stuff lately. Yay! Good books truly help you appreciate leisure, even when the leisure is involuntary.
The Privilege of the Sword - Ellen Kushner
This book is in the nature of a sequel to Swordspoint, a wonderful classic in the art of the stated and understated. It's set, in my total half-assed estimate, about twenty years after the close of Swordspoint and maybe twenty years prior to the story "The Death of the Duke".
I started this one today. I haven't finished it yet, and from this standpoint it would be easier to talk about the 1 1/2 things slightly jarring about it than the many things perfectly right about it, so I won't mention it much. But I like it more than The Fall of the Kings.
I think it's funny that at one point Alec is described visually in more detail than we've ever gotten on him before-- enough to truly visualize his face, enough to give me the germ of a drawing if I wanted to draw him-- but Richard, as far back as I can recall, is never given the same treatment. As if Richard, visually, was merely hair (noticed once) and eye color (noticed several times). The essence of Richard, his definitive traits, have nothing to do with his appearance.
*sigh~*
And yet, when he comes in, he suffuses the whole scene. I think he'd been on the page for a line and a half when the very ink of the letters in the words "the man" were leaking Richardness like curtains leaking light on a dark street.
Sprig Muslin - Georgette Heyer
After reading this thread on
coffeeem's journal, I decided to break the habit of a lifetime (avoiding romance novels as if they carried STDs) and check out this Heyer Regency Romance stuff. A dedicated sweep of two large used bookstores turned up one, count 'em one, well-creased paperback with truly lackluster cover art. (And I was lucky to find that, as I was informed by the man behind the counter.) But the inside was very nice, and I agree with everything said about her witty dialogue, and if there was a real edge to any of her subject matter it could probably aspire to Greatness. But I know it was meant to be very light, rather like The Importance of Being Earnest, and in fact her books probably have been made into plays sometime, somewhere.
Ignore my muttering about edginess - light comedic romances are certainly better than purple prose romances about vampires or whatnot (not thinking of the latest Laurell K. Hamilton!), it's just that my ability to judge, and my tastes, have been knocked all out of whack first by adolescent hormones and then by fanfiction, the reading of which, on an edged things scale, corresponds to shaving with a machete.
Melusine and The Virtu - Sarah Monette
Read 'em. Liked 'em. Recommended 'em! Several times. On the edged things scale these correspond to shaving with a big old Bowie knife. Not much I feel like saying about the story or the characters right here and now-- I'm still all aflutter from discovering that I can read the author's livejournal. (And I sympathize very much with her statement that fangirl gushing and fan-dissection of the characters on her own livejournal made her uncomfortable. Made me uncomfortable too.)
But I will say that these books have inspired me to make two fanarts in the last two weeks, and with my meager output that is really saying something about the inspiration's source. Both pictures were *gasp* done with paper, not pixels, so they're not up on DA. For the first one I used Copic markers for the first time. For the second one I drew both Felix and Mildmay. (Although Mildmay kept nearly the same angle and expression as the first picture. I think of it as green funk.) It may have been an excess of ambition, but doing new things is good, yay! I'd really like to color the second one, and see if I can fix some flaws in it, so I hope it will meet a scanner soon. And of course, the official cover artists for these two books seem to have shrunk in horror from depicting Felix crazy-dangerous or Mildmay scarred, so I did my best to address that. I may like to keep on trying!
The Privilege of the Sword - Ellen Kushner
This book is in the nature of a sequel to Swordspoint, a wonderful classic in the art of the stated and understated. It's set, in my total half-assed estimate, about twenty years after the close of Swordspoint and maybe twenty years prior to the story "The Death of the Duke".
I started this one today. I haven't finished it yet, and from this standpoint it would be easier to talk about the 1 1/2 things slightly jarring about it than the many things perfectly right about it, so I won't mention it much. But I like it more than The Fall of the Kings.
I think it's funny that at one point Alec is described visually in more detail than we've ever gotten on him before-- enough to truly visualize his face, enough to give me the germ of a drawing if I wanted to draw him-- but Richard, as far back as I can recall, is never given the same treatment. As if Richard, visually, was merely hair (noticed once) and eye color (noticed several times). The essence of Richard, his definitive traits, have nothing to do with his appearance.
*sigh~*
And yet, when he comes in, he suffuses the whole scene. I think he'd been on the page for a line and a half when the very ink of the letters in the words "the man" were leaking Richardness like curtains leaking light on a dark street.
Sprig Muslin - Georgette Heyer
After reading this thread on
coffeeem's journal, I decided to break the habit of a lifetime (avoiding romance novels as if they carried STDs) and check out this Heyer Regency Romance stuff. A dedicated sweep of two large used bookstores turned up one, count 'em one, well-creased paperback with truly lackluster cover art. (And I was lucky to find that, as I was informed by the man behind the counter.) But the inside was very nice, and I agree with everything said about her witty dialogue, and if there was a real edge to any of her subject matter it could probably aspire to Greatness. But I know it was meant to be very light, rather like The Importance of Being Earnest, and in fact her books probably have been made into plays sometime, somewhere.
Ignore my muttering about edginess - light comedic romances are certainly better than purple prose romances about vampires or whatnot (not thinking of the latest Laurell K. Hamilton!), it's just that my ability to judge, and my tastes, have been knocked all out of whack first by adolescent hormones and then by fanfiction, the reading of which, on an edged things scale, corresponds to shaving with a machete.
Melusine and The Virtu - Sarah Monette
Read 'em. Liked 'em. Recommended 'em! Several times. On the edged things scale these correspond to shaving with a big old Bowie knife. Not much I feel like saying about the story or the characters right here and now-- I'm still all aflutter from discovering that I can read the author's livejournal. (And I sympathize very much with her statement that fangirl gushing and fan-dissection of the characters on her own livejournal made her uncomfortable. Made me uncomfortable too.)
But I will say that these books have inspired me to make two fanarts in the last two weeks, and with my meager output that is really saying something about the inspiration's source. Both pictures were *gasp* done with paper, not pixels, so they're not up on DA. For the first one I used Copic markers for the first time. For the second one I drew both Felix and Mildmay. (Although Mildmay kept nearly the same angle and expression as the first picture. I think of it as green funk.) It may have been an excess of ambition, but doing new things is good, yay! I'd really like to color the second one, and see if I can fix some flaws in it, so I hope it will meet a scanner soon. And of course, the official cover artists for these two books seem to have shrunk in horror from depicting Felix crazy-dangerous or Mildmay scarred, so I did my best to address that. I may like to keep on trying!