octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

Wee collection of four of Potter's picture books, which I read and reviewed separately so this is just for my own records. Rating is the average of individual star collections: the really rather boring (because so often told) Johnny Town-Mouse got two stars, the likeable Timmy Tiptoes and The Pie and the Patty Pan each earned three - but the best and most charming of the lot is of course Peter Rabbit, with four stars. As always, her illustrations are worth the price of admission alone, they're really better than the prose, which is perfectly adequate if not hugely inspiring.

An extended allegory that drew me in more as it went along. I found the end very affecting, but the travel through the various asteroids was a little laboured, I thought. I can see why this became a classic, being published when it was, but I don't know. I feel the themes - including, for instance, how adults have lost the imagination and sense of wonder they had as children - to be well-worn ground in my own reading history and also... not quite true? Perhaps old Antoine had a lot of extremely tedious peers at time of writing, but I tend to think my own imagination is much more exercised and rich as an adult than it ever was when I was a kid. (After all, it's had decades of use. Practise should have improved it!)

There might be a half-decent story here, under all the bloat and the endless mystic mumbo-jumbo of wheels turning and so forth (at which point I lose all patience) but it's bloody hard to make out. There comes a point in fantasy when you're world-building and over-complicating for the sake of it instead of for the sake of story - and this book has not only reached that point, it's left it far in the rear view mirror. I had to force myself to keep reading; large swathes of it were unbelievably tedious.

It's not utterly dire. There are some moments of invention which caught my attention - I did enjoy the Ogier and the creepy Way travelling, the idea of the Aes Sedai and gendered magic - and although the main character might well have been called Bland instead of Rand, I did like Lan and Nynaeve. But for the most part, it's a perfect example of why I struggle with a lot of epic fantasy... the story is so inflated that I just stop caring.

The best part of this is far and away Peake's illustrations of his poems. A hugely talented artist, his sketches here are absolutely delightful. The poems themselves don't charm me in the same way, although my favourite of the bunch, "Aunts and Uncles", is pretty wonderful, what with poor old Aunty Mig turning into a warty flying pig and a very grumpy picture to match.

Fun but fairly lightweight, certainly not to the same level as some of Peake's astonishing prose - or even his other, non-nonsense poetry.

Not quite as good as McKay's The Secret Listeners, I think, but still a well-written and interesting exploration of life for the code-breakers in Bletchley Park - with a solid emphasis on that life, to the detriment of details about the code-breaking. On the one hand, that's a bit sad for me as I like the maths and science background in books like these, but on the other it's still very interesting to read first-hand accounts from the people working at BP about their billets, for example, or how they spent their leisure hours. It does give a sense of historical context that is often lacking from more typical science histories, to be fair.

A well-written, thoroughly researched, and entertaining piece about the history of the search for the Loch Ness Monster. It succeeds, unhappily, in convincing me that the thing does not exist (to be fair, I never really believed that it did but hope springs eternal). I find, though, after reading this, that the absence of the monster doesn't make the story less interesting - instead of the story of the search for a cryptid, it's become the story of a search for what we want to believe, the wonder and whimsy of a natural world that we still don't fully understand, and the lengths that people will go to to encourage or maintain that desire to believe. This is fascinating stuff in itself, and something that I can understand on a personal level: being persuaded, as I am now, that the monster does not exist, I still want to visit Loch Ness in the hope that something weird and serpentine will turn up. If that isn't the persuasiveness and attraction of legend I don't know what is.

An atmospheric and often deeply creepy interpretation of water horse folklore. Honestly I felt more for the two featured horses (Dove and Corr) than I did for their human riders, but the real star of this book is the island of Thisby. It's a sort of modern-ancient mix of grudgingly updated tradition and blood, and it felt absolutely real to me, especially in the various and often conflicting ways in which the humans adapted themselves to the phenomenon of the horses. Really, the world-building was excellent and I don't say that often. Never did it get in the way of the story, rather it illuminated it. If only more fantasy authors showed such competence and restraint.

I thought this was amazing, really astonishingly good. If I have to be picky, I would admit that I didn't think the last 50 or so pages were of quite the same quality as the rest - the ending was a little underwhelming. But that pales in comparison to the rest - dense, complex, and with a consistently compassionate and observant humour that leaves no character unskewered and yet is somehow still kind to them in their skewering. I'd like to describe it as thought-provoking (and it is) but if I had to plump for a single descriptor it would be delightful, because I was bloody charmed.

Much more enjoyable than Mrs Dalloway*, that's for sure. There's a fine line here between soporific and lovely, but the natural setting is exploited to the fullest and I like that sort of thing so it worked for me. Still not particularly heavy on plot, but splitting the book into three sections (almost like three connected stories) has helped to keep Woolf's yen for shapelessness from getting too out of control. No coincidence, I think, that the shortest section (the middle one) is also the best. After two books, I've come to the conclusion that for me Woolf works best on a micro level. Her sentences can be beautiful, but there tends to be so much repetition that it bogs down the whole. Almost as if she doesn't trust readers to understand the smallest thing without hammering it over and over...

*Though I have been drinking orange juice and gin as I read this book. Alcohol probably helped it along.

Very easy read - I'm not referring to the fairly disturbing content here, but to the smooth prose and the well-controlled momentum that makes this a pleasure to read. There's nothing dull or snagging that pulls me up or makes me want to put the book down. (Though this may be grateful reaction in comparison to bloody Mrs Dalloway of yesterday.) I read it in one sitting, actually. I believe the book is informed by Plath's own life, and the details and the perception in it is sharp and unsentimental. Almost black-humoured in some parts, and with a distinctly non-melodramatic flavour which must have been difficult to maintain when talking about attempted suicides and electric shock treatments.

Recommended.