If I haven't mentioned it: I'm working on a novel, and not one of the ones I've mentioned here before, either. It's a YA contemporary fantasy about an evil imaginary friend. I called it Creatures of the Mind back when I was wandering through the first draft, but now that I'm on the rewrite I think it needs another title. Usually I have no trouble with this, but for this one my mind keeps throwing up ideas like Walking With Julian and Walking Through Mountains, which sound like Nicholas Sparks novels. No disrespect to Mr. Sparks, but that's not really what I'm writing and I'd like something more... sinister. I briefly considered Julian's Last Week, but decided it was too ambiguous. What do you guys think of Julian's Bodies?
Anyway, I'm on Chapter 5 now out of a projected ten or eleven, so that's pretty good-- and then I have to come around and rewrite the beginning, because that is how it always goes with my stories. And I'm also working on that winter story I mentioned on Twitter. I must admit that that one's really slow going-- but I shall persevere!
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So I finally finished reading The Scar by China Mieville.
And you guys.
YOU GUYS.
It is so amazing. I keep trying to explain to people how amazing this book is. They laugh at my enthusiasm and don't really seem to get it. But... it's like a perfect storm of flawless literary craftsmanship. The plot is complex and twisted in a way that drops the world out from under you every time a new secret is revealed. The characters are original and nuanced. I know a lot of people don't like Bellis Coldwine, but I personally was really able to sympathize with her. And poor Tanner Sack was just the perfect noble everyman. I didn't know when I picked up the book that it was the second in a trilogy, but apart from a lot of "foreign" vocabulary that was hard to stumble through I didn't have any trouble with it-- it stood alone just fine. I will definitely be reading the other two New Crobuzon books, and everything else by Mieville I can get my hands on. (And possibly discovering how to make the little accent mark over the e so I can fangirl while spelling his name correctly.)
*cough* Anyway. So that's what I've been reading. Now I'm working on All The King's Men, which I did not appreciate properly when I failed to read it in college-- and after that is P.D. James' Pride and Prejudice sequel, Death Comes to Pemberley. (I am so excited about that one, I cannot tell you.) And there are other things, too. I love books, did I ever mention?
So. That's the news from Lake Woebegone. What are you up to now?
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