I haven’t posted this before, but I feel the need to announce I’m now the parent of a teenager and have been for a few months. I don’t feel old enough to have a teenager. Nor do I feel capable of keeping up with feeding one. How does one do that? Add an addition to our pantry? Daily drop-offs from the grocery store? Buy intravenous feeding tubes? If ever there were black holes on earth, they would be teenaged stomachs XD
Monstress Vol 1: Awakening & Monstress Vol. 2: The Blood
by Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda
The first thing you notice about these graphic novels is the gorgeous artistry by Takeda. She brings such detail into every panel, making every page a thing of beauty to be admired. The world itself, as grim as it is, is vast, multi-cultural, with layers hidden within layers. Just for those two aspects, Monstress is worth reading. But there’s more. The character of Maika is conflicted, blunt, and horrible, yet also one who evokes sympathy. She fits in that classic trope of the abrasive character who does her best to keep people away from her for their own good. Yet she’s failing even in that and desperate for answers to what is happening to her. There is a cast of secondary characters both interesting and strange and Liu does not shy away from showing the dreadful sides of avarice and bigotry through them all.
Both my children stole all three volumes from me to read. I haven’t even read the third volume (though they have), so I guess it gets the stamp of approval from a younger generation too :)
As You Wish by Cary Elwes
Does this count as Fantasy or Science Fiction? Maybe not :) It’s all nonfiction, relaying fun stories through Elwes’s eyes during the process of making The Princess Bride, one of the most iconic movie/book combos of the last century.
There was at least one vignette I was already familiar with, so I’m assuming I read an excerpt of the book at some point, but most of the information was new to me, and given it was filtered through Elwes’s eyes, it carried an air of nostalgia with an overlay of all of his excitement, nervousness and, occasionally, embarrassment.
You get to walk through the process, from him first getting the job to the final days. Get to hear about the arduous process of creating the duel between Cary Elwes and Mandy Patinkin. For me, it felt like traveling back in time to my childhood.
The Princess Bride
by William Goldman
Speaking of The Princess Bride, why yes, I was inspired to pick it back up. I’d never read it all the way through, just bits and pieces. And before I get to the story, I’m going to fully admit that I was one of those many people (long ago) who thought the book was actually abridged and searched for the unabridged version to no avail. Luckily, I don’t also have to admit that this happened recently (but I did have a moment–just a moment--when I picked it up off the shelf and thought wait–what? In my defense, I had just learned that Dune had an abridged version and I went searching to figure out whether I’d read the wrong damn book some twenty-five years ago. Spoiler alert: I hadn’t. I read it in all its wonderful glory the first time.)
The story is almost completely the same as the movie, with the notable exception being the Zoo of Death, which was understandable in its absence in the movie, but also pretty entertaining. There are other smaller changes as well, but none of them huge or plot/character changing. This is one of those, if you love the movie, you will undoubtedly love the book and vice versa. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth the read if you’ve already seen the movie. Just the opposite.
Marie Croke 