Eh...books
Mar. 11th, 2019 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Books
My mother gave me an Amazon and B&N gift certificates for my birthday, they were tucked inside a lovely card with a beautiful peacock on the front. So, looks like I'm buying books? Although don't quite have space for books...
She also gave me a good book recommendation:
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Sample:
"Marsh is not a swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows into sky. Slow-moving creeks wander, carrying the orb of sun with them to the sea and long-legged birds lift with unexpected grace - as though not built to fly - against the roar of a thousand snow geese."
Now that's good writing. It's prose poetry. Good writing should make you want to fall inside a book and curl up in it. It paints pictures in the mind. You are immersed. Bad writing tends to...well kick you out of the story and you feel or rather I do as if I were chomping at a jungle of twisted words and phrases to get at the meaning. Or, in some cases trudging through quicksand.
Other book that was rec'd was from SmartBitches and I bought it already, it was cheaper.
What the Parrot Saw
It's a subversive pirate romance, with a huge gender flip. The pirate is a black woman and the damsel is a white Englishman. Also I read the first few paragraphs and the writer has a sense of humor. Huzzah!
Sample:
"I don't need a useless white boy. Find someone else to take him off your hands."
"Not a boy, a man. The sort you favor Captain - golden curls, pouty mouth. He's quite pretty, I know you'll agree."
....
"If I bring a pretty lad aboard my ship, everyone will want one. I don't share my toys."
Hee Hee.
I suppose I can get Where The Crawdads Sing from the Library...
2. Currently reading..Three Wishes by Kristen Ashely which...feels weirdly like either a satire or parody of a romance novel, possibly unintentional. Hard to tell. It's rather outrageous...sort of falls into the category of so outrageously bad you can't quite stop reading...because it's fun? So I'm thinking definitely an intentional parody of a specific romantic trope.
The plot? A genie is given to a woman who is mourning her husband. The woman only wants her husband back, which is a wish the genie cannot grant. So she doesn't ask anything and the genie sticks by her (actually the genie is stuck with her), and she gives all her wishes to her daughter -- who gets married and wishes for a baby. The baby grows up and at the age of 14, feeling rather miserable and ugly and unloved, asks the genie for a man to love her straight out of one of her romance novels. He has to be impossibly handsome, with great cheekbones, great lover, who can make love to her with his eyes, etc. Oh and also a little bad, with a wretched past, but insanely wealthy and power, ruthless, and someone she has to save and melt his heart, and he will love her above all things -- but they can't get together immediately, they have to go through all sorts of horrible trials and tribulations first and earn their love. The genie, because he loves the little girl (and apparently doesn't know any better) grants the wish. And lo and behold when the girl turns 22...she runs into the hero. And they have a moment of insta love...which is like the hyperbole version of a romance. The description is...all physical love. How outrageously beautiful both are...
I don't know if I should laugh or roll my eyes?
And all the romantic tropes/cliches are there -- but they are put there in a sort of wink-wink way. As if the writer is all too aware that this is the case. The hero has a adopted sister (he's adopted) who adores him and wants him and doesn't want to share him with anyone else, and is rather venomous, and when the heroine seeks out the hero who hasn't called her (because she never gave him her phone number and is unlisted -- so sort of hard to do) and doesn't know why she left (because for some reason or other she declined to tell him that her parents were just killed in a plane crash and she had to rush home for the funeral) and just left suddenly with no warning...the adopted sister looks at her with pure hatred and tells her that the hero is dead. Which of course she believes with no corroborating evidence, because obviously this woman is truthful.
And I'm thinking...okay is this a parody of a romance novel? Because it certainly feels like one. But I can't put it down. It's so outrageous. And sort of on point.
3. I convinced Amazon to resend the heel protectors that they claimed to have sent me, but never arrived. So they are sending them tomorrow. I hope I get them. Stay tuned.
The Amazon Customer Service Rep sounded like a heavily accented computerized voice. Or automated voice. It was very odd.
4. Am rather pleased that Captain Marvel did so well at the box office, after quite a few silly reviewers tried to tank it on Rotten Tomatoes.
Eh. That didn't work with Black Panther.
Folks? Superhero flicks are rather review proof. Also, as my co-worker put it -- he doesn't read reviews of movies until after he sees them. Nor do I. Spoiler territory. Also I don't agree with most movie reviewers. So there's that.
My mother gave me an Amazon and B&N gift certificates for my birthday, they were tucked inside a lovely card with a beautiful peacock on the front. So, looks like I'm buying books? Although don't quite have space for books...
She also gave me a good book recommendation:
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life--until the unthinkable happens.
Sample:
"Marsh is not a swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows into sky. Slow-moving creeks wander, carrying the orb of sun with them to the sea and long-legged birds lift with unexpected grace - as though not built to fly - against the roar of a thousand snow geese."
Now that's good writing. It's prose poetry. Good writing should make you want to fall inside a book and curl up in it. It paints pictures in the mind. You are immersed. Bad writing tends to...well kick you out of the story and you feel or rather I do as if I were chomping at a jungle of twisted words and phrases to get at the meaning. Or, in some cases trudging through quicksand.
Other book that was rec'd was from SmartBitches and I bought it already, it was cheaper.
What the Parrot Saw
Hijacking an Englishman from a brothel is all in a day’s work for Captain Mattie St. Armand. She needs protective coloration, and a naïve (and expendable) white man will keep the eyes of the authorities off her as she smuggles slaves from the Florida Territory to freedom in the Bahamas.
Oliver Woodruff wanted a spot of travel in the Caribbean before he settled down, but he never expected “Marauding Mattie.” He’ll help her, but he knows there’s no place in his world for the bastard daughter of a pirate and a freedwoman.
It's a subversive pirate romance, with a huge gender flip. The pirate is a black woman and the damsel is a white Englishman. Also I read the first few paragraphs and the writer has a sense of humor. Huzzah!
Sample:
"I don't need a useless white boy. Find someone else to take him off your hands."
"Not a boy, a man. The sort you favor Captain - golden curls, pouty mouth. He's quite pretty, I know you'll agree."
....
"If I bring a pretty lad aboard my ship, everyone will want one. I don't share my toys."
Hee Hee.
I suppose I can get Where The Crawdads Sing from the Library...
2. Currently reading..Three Wishes by Kristen Ashely which...feels weirdly like either a satire or parody of a romance novel, possibly unintentional. Hard to tell. It's rather outrageous...sort of falls into the category of so outrageously bad you can't quite stop reading...because it's fun? So I'm thinking definitely an intentional parody of a specific romantic trope.
The plot? A genie is given to a woman who is mourning her husband. The woman only wants her husband back, which is a wish the genie cannot grant. So she doesn't ask anything and the genie sticks by her (actually the genie is stuck with her), and she gives all her wishes to her daughter -- who gets married and wishes for a baby. The baby grows up and at the age of 14, feeling rather miserable and ugly and unloved, asks the genie for a man to love her straight out of one of her romance novels. He has to be impossibly handsome, with great cheekbones, great lover, who can make love to her with his eyes, etc. Oh and also a little bad, with a wretched past, but insanely wealthy and power, ruthless, and someone she has to save and melt his heart, and he will love her above all things -- but they can't get together immediately, they have to go through all sorts of horrible trials and tribulations first and earn their love. The genie, because he loves the little girl (and apparently doesn't know any better) grants the wish. And lo and behold when the girl turns 22...she runs into the hero. And they have a moment of insta love...which is like the hyperbole version of a romance. The description is...all physical love. How outrageously beautiful both are...
I don't know if I should laugh or roll my eyes?
And all the romantic tropes/cliches are there -- but they are put there in a sort of wink-wink way. As if the writer is all too aware that this is the case. The hero has a adopted sister (he's adopted) who adores him and wants him and doesn't want to share him with anyone else, and is rather venomous, and when the heroine seeks out the hero who hasn't called her (because she never gave him her phone number and is unlisted -- so sort of hard to do) and doesn't know why she left (because for some reason or other she declined to tell him that her parents were just killed in a plane crash and she had to rush home for the funeral) and just left suddenly with no warning...the adopted sister looks at her with pure hatred and tells her that the hero is dead. Which of course she believes with no corroborating evidence, because obviously this woman is truthful.
And I'm thinking...okay is this a parody of a romance novel? Because it certainly feels like one. But I can't put it down. It's so outrageous. And sort of on point.
3. I convinced Amazon to resend the heel protectors that they claimed to have sent me, but never arrived. So they are sending them tomorrow. I hope I get them. Stay tuned.
The Amazon Customer Service Rep sounded like a heavily accented computerized voice. Or automated voice. It was very odd.
4. Am rather pleased that Captain Marvel did so well at the box office, after quite a few silly reviewers tried to tank it on Rotten Tomatoes.
Eh. That didn't work with Black Panther.
Folks? Superhero flicks are rather review proof. Also, as my co-worker put it -- he doesn't read reviews of movies until after he sees them. Nor do I. Spoiler territory. Also I don't agree with most movie reviewers. So there's that.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-12 02:19 am (UTC)