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Jigs & Reels (Joanne Harris)
I always find Joanne Harris' writing magical and absorbing. It doesn't do it for me quite as well in this collection of short stories, though. Some of them are enjoyable -- and I do like the 'punchline' of her stabs at the beauty industry -- but the quality isn't very consistent. I really like her way of describing things, and her descriptions of food are always amazing, but some of these stories just weren't as vibrant and colourful as I'd hoped.
I like that she has short introductions with each story. I like knowing what's in a writer's head that sparks the story.
Joanne Harris' books/stories are like comfort food for me -- goes down easy, doesn't satisfy for long. I always want a little more.
Hannibal (Ross Leckie)
I loved learning about the Punic Wars in my Classics classes, so I hoped for a lot from this book. Hannibal's an interesting figure, and the lessons never really made me understand him. Not, for example, in the way I understood what drove Alexander the Great. I hoped this book would help, but it ended up being, despite the first person narration, too superficial. I never really felt for Hannibal, through it, and it felt like a history lesson: a lot of dry figures, lists of what he learnt, and passionless descriptions of atrocities.
Mansfield Park (Jane Austen)
I really enjoyed the beginning of Mansfield Park: if it had been shorter, I might have given it four stars, but there were parts that dragged a lot, for me, and the part I was more interested in was shockingly truncated. I couldn't care less about Henry Crawford, I wanted Edmund! I was somewhat prepared for that, from reading reviews of it, but the social commentary didn't really replace strong characters for me.
I didn't hate the character of Fanny in the way some people do -- I could sympathise with her a lot, being pretty shy myself -- but she wasn't bright and intriguing as some other Austen heroines are. Edmund is nice, very nice, and I was quite fond of him from the beginning, but he was perhaps too nice. That might've been counteracted if there'd been more of his and Fanny's feelings for each other, a few extra chapters, but as it stands, neither of them particularly stood out for me, not even in affection for each other.
Around the World in Eighty Days (Jules Verne)
I read the Project Gutenberg version of this, in the end: I don't know who translated it, but the translation was really quite nice. I enjoyed this book more than I expected to. For all that he bribes his way around the world, really, Phileas Fogg has some interesting adventures, including saving a lovely young woman and commandeering a ship. I thought the characters were all quite fun. There are stereotypes and so on, and it's very very biased toward all things English, seemingly, but knowing about that in advance, I could ignore it.
I loved the end a lot more than I expected to. I thought it was clever, and I enjoyed seeing a softer side of Phileas Fogg (one that I had, of course, been suspecting for a while).
I always find Joanne Harris' writing magical and absorbing. It doesn't do it for me quite as well in this collection of short stories, though. Some of them are enjoyable -- and I do like the 'punchline' of her stabs at the beauty industry -- but the quality isn't very consistent. I really like her way of describing things, and her descriptions of food are always amazing, but some of these stories just weren't as vibrant and colourful as I'd hoped.
I like that she has short introductions with each story. I like knowing what's in a writer's head that sparks the story.
Joanne Harris' books/stories are like comfort food for me -- goes down easy, doesn't satisfy for long. I always want a little more.
Hannibal (Ross Leckie)
I loved learning about the Punic Wars in my Classics classes, so I hoped for a lot from this book. Hannibal's an interesting figure, and the lessons never really made me understand him. Not, for example, in the way I understood what drove Alexander the Great. I hoped this book would help, but it ended up being, despite the first person narration, too superficial. I never really felt for Hannibal, through it, and it felt like a history lesson: a lot of dry figures, lists of what he learnt, and passionless descriptions of atrocities.
Mansfield Park (Jane Austen)
I really enjoyed the beginning of Mansfield Park: if it had been shorter, I might have given it four stars, but there were parts that dragged a lot, for me, and the part I was more interested in was shockingly truncated. I couldn't care less about Henry Crawford, I wanted Edmund! I was somewhat prepared for that, from reading reviews of it, but the social commentary didn't really replace strong characters for me.
I didn't hate the character of Fanny in the way some people do -- I could sympathise with her a lot, being pretty shy myself -- but she wasn't bright and intriguing as some other Austen heroines are. Edmund is nice, very nice, and I was quite fond of him from the beginning, but he was perhaps too nice. That might've been counteracted if there'd been more of his and Fanny's feelings for each other, a few extra chapters, but as it stands, neither of them particularly stood out for me, not even in affection for each other.
Around the World in Eighty Days (Jules Verne)
I read the Project Gutenberg version of this, in the end: I don't know who translated it, but the translation was really quite nice. I enjoyed this book more than I expected to. For all that he bribes his way around the world, really, Phileas Fogg has some interesting adventures, including saving a lovely young woman and commandeering a ship. I thought the characters were all quite fun. There are stereotypes and so on, and it's very very biased toward all things English, seemingly, but knowing about that in advance, I could ignore it.
I loved the end a lot more than I expected to. I thought it was clever, and I enjoyed seeing a softer side of Phileas Fogg (one that I had, of course, been suspecting for a while).
