octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

Wonderfully written and affecting story. Amir and his father in particular were excellently drawn, but I never quite connected to Hassan in the same way. It can be hard to connect to absolute goodness, I find, so I'm not entirely sure if it's his total lack of flaw or Hosseini's depiction of him that's the reason for the disconnect. Hassan's just so very good one wants to prod him a bit to see if he's real.

I tend to think that the reason this book is so good at provoking emotion is the structure of it. The Kite Runner is almost like a small contained puzzle-box, and while all the connections in it are emotionally satisfying, the fact that there are so unrealistically many never lets you forget that you're reading fiction - that is, a piece constructed entirely to play upon your emotion. Which it does extremely well, I have to say, almost well enough to let you forget the artificiality in all that coincidence.

Mostly fascinating look at what happens to a society - to an entire population - when reproduction fails. As every human on Earth ages, with no more to come, the social and political changes that come alongside this quiet extinction are explored. And under the peaceful surface, there are some truly horrifying compromises.

The vast strength of this book lies in the characterisation of the main character. Theo is painfully and accurately drawn, with a level of honesty and self-knowledge that refuses to skim over the flaws in his character. And he is flawed, terribly so, and the book ends with the implication that he has the capacity to become just as bad as the dictator he replaces. If only this scalpel view of character had been applied to Julian, who - with one exception, that being her perception of her own infidelity - is shot through with soft lighting and lowered expectations. She and Luke are really monstrously selfish, risking as they do the regeneration of the species for their own selfish comfort, but James never quite grapples with their flaws in the same way as she does with Theo. That's the one thing that knocks this otherwise excellent book down from five stars for me - the unevenness of the observation, and the apparent decision by the author to award free passes to some characters but not others.

A quick easy read, though the character development (especially of the supporting characters) is a little thin. I saw some other reviewers say this might be better as a movie, and I think they're probably right.

You know, if anyone ever asks me why my horror novella The Convergence of Fairy Tales is so bloody dark, I'm going to blame Roald Dahl. I've just dug my old copy of this up - I had it as a kid, and loved it - and it's as much fun as ever. Half a dozen fairy tales are here, with the violence factor turned up to eleven (and deservedly so, does Goldilocks really think she can invade a house full of bears and not get eaten? I THINK NOT). I haven't read this book for 20 years, it must be, but I came across a number of lines I recognised as old friends... I'd just forgotten where they'd come from.

You know, I said yesterday that Revolting Rhymes must have had an impact on my own fairy tale writing, but rereading this volume today - another of my childhood staples - I'm forced to wonder about all the work I do on food and horror. Because most of the stories here are about food! About being food, I should say. They're snarky and darkly hilarious and I can't believe how long it's been since I've read them. And Quentin Blake's illustrations are as always fabulous, I've been laughing for the past five minutes at the picture of the pig who is realising he's about to be lunch.

I've read and reviewed each of the two volumes in this collection separately, so this is basically just for my own records. I unearthed these childhood staples from a bookshelf recently and was delighted to find that, though I haven't read them for 20+ years, I still remember parts of them very clearly, even if I didn't remember where the lines came from. "The huntsman's heart began to flutter / it melted like a pound of butter" is engraved on my memory, for instance, and there it was! I can't tell you how many times I read these two books as a kid. It was LOTS, that's for sure, and now that I've rediscovered them I'll no doubt be reading them lots again.

A dense and complex novel about an extremely long love affair. The writing is accomplished and evocative - no surprise, considering the author - but for me the strength of the piece lay in the atmosphere. It's a desultory sort of read, slow and humid and reading it I was almost in the setting: the city and the river were just so clear in my mind, almost as if I could see them. The characters, too, are generously painted. Alright, so one of them at least is a bit of an obsessive who crosses the line way over to weird and creepy, but there's so much feeling for them from the author, so much gentle compassion even for the very dodgy Florentino, that you're sort of mesmerised into keeping reading, because the prose itself is just so beautiful it sort of lulls you along regardless.

Fun collection of nonsense poetry for kids, enlivened by some truly entertaining drawings - I think I liked the art better than the poems, to be honest. The drawings reminded me a bit of Mervyn Peake, and his illustrations for his own similar verse collections. Peake's poems are I think a little more fantastic, a little sharper, and a little darker than these, though. Silverstein's tend to have an undertone of kindness that occasionally verges on sap, which is no surprise when you remember that he's the one that did that horrifying, hateful little book of self-sacrifice, The Giving Tree.

Brief overview for kids of some of the centres of ancient astronomy. Asimov's approach covers the Middle East, Asia, Central America, Europe and so on. Because this is a picture book the astronomical work of these civilisations is only very superficially covered, but it's still a good way to convince kids that science and stars have always been a global endeavour.

Look, Tolkien isn't the greatest poet in the world. At times he is positively painful - but he's particularly readable here, and I think it's partly because he's given himself the challenge of writing in a very structured and difficult form, one that's heavy on stress and alliteration. It plays to his strengths (and prevents him from attempting rhyme, nearly always a mistake). And he's largely successful in the two long poems included here, although I liked The New Lay of Gudrun better than The New Lay of the Völsungs. I really did enjoy reading them.

It's a shame I can't say the same for the accompanying material, which I slogged through, achieving not much more than a feeling of relief when it was over. It's unfortunate that Tolkien himself isn't around to explain his writing and research, because when relevant parts of his lectures were quoted they were clear and compelling. But my goodness can the editor make dull work from such an interesting topic.