lost weekend (now with added bookblogging)

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Where did my weekend go??? It's like it disappeared into this fever dream of bad Libertines fanfiction and compulsive wikipedia-ing of eighties post-punk bands...wait, that's not like what happened, that is what happened. ;_;

Suppose the weekend isn't over. Suppose, if I am very good tomorrow, I may finish on time for a late movie at

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SPOILERS for House of Many Ways

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I really loved Charmain -- a girl who can't do anything for herself and needs to read books to feel calm is a girl after my own heart -- and Peter, and was prepared to really love the book, but it just doesn't sit right. I wanted it to be about how clothes you throw on the floor don't just magically disappear, someone picks them up and puts them away; similarly, the house's Morning Coffees and Afternoon Teas don't just magically appear, a group of kobolds labors underground in sweatshop-like conditions for minimal pay (a jug of milk? when milk comes free with Breakfast?) to put them together. But, you know, the kobolds enjoy laboring for paltry wages! Or even when they aren't being paid at all! (See: Prince Ludovic.) That's just the way they are! Nothing to see here, Humans Rights Watch, move right along

Re: SPOILERS for House of Many Ways

[startredder]

You put this /so/ much more coherently (and I mostly agree with you, although I was delighted by Howl, but it's really hard to separate than from being delighted with Sophie being disgusted with Howl) than I managed to when I talked about House of Many Ways, but somehow I didn't even think of the kobolds and their completely inappropriate treatment, which is weird, because I have picked up on something similar, equally offensive, and equally unaddressed in previous books (do not read Paula Volsky), and yet by the time I got around to writing about this, it had completely flown out of my head. Maybe because by the time I got to the end of the book, the kobolds had become such a non-issue in the text.

The more I think about it, the odder it was, because DWJ has brought up versions of the kobold-problem in previous books (definitely The Merlin Conspiracy and a bit in Dark Lord of Derkholm, I think) and /did/ have characters shake the status quo up because that's the right thing - not have one of the slaves bitch because the Inherently