Mel Reads

(Saturday, August 15th)
Now I guess I have to go back to Babylon's Ashes, although I'm not feeling it, either. Maybe I should just give it up and finish the re-read later, and go on to something new right now. It's not like anybody is forcing me to do it!

(Sunday) I'm trying to read Crazy Rich Asians - I bought a paperback copy a while back and only got a couple of chapters in. I'm hoping it picks up. It's way too heavy on character details about way more characters than you can keep up with (or than I can keep up with, anyway).

(Later) I got more into it when it got to the Astrid part - where she figures out that her husband is cheating, that is - but overall I'm finding this kind of annoying. I'm not giving up yet but I may have to keep going one chapter at a time until I get more interested. (Note from the "future": pretty sure I never got much further than this & it's on my DNF list.)

Meanwhile, I'm re-reading Howl's Moving Castle (which is a fast read anyway).

(Monday) I forget between times how much I love Howl and Calcifer and Sophie and the dang castle. And I adore Miyazaki, but this is the one time I really disliked one of his movies because it took off and grafted his own obsessions (flying!!) onto the book, where it didn't fit at all. (I did think Miyazaki's version of Howl was terrifically hot, in a very anime kind of a way, but that wasn't enough to save the movie for me!) I did like the parts of the movie that stuck closer to Wynne Jones' original story.

(Later - back to the book rather than the movie) I forget all the ins & outs of the HMC book, too. I don't know, do other people have every bit of their favorite books memorized? Probably not - maybe a few people with exceptionally fine memories - or with fewer favorites! I don't know why I seem to feel I should. I guess I wouldn't re-read so much if I had a photographic memory and could just conjure everything up, so maybe it's a good thing. Re-reading is a pleasure I wouldn't want to forego.

(Wed.) I finished one read-through and now I'm re-reading bits of it again, with two questions: does Sophie curse herself? Or at least, does this version of herself that she's constructed influence what the Witch of the Waste does? (and also possibly how long the curse lasts?) And at what point does Howl realize what's actually going on?

I really can't see - having now read the early chapters again - how the WotW can have known what was in Sophie's head. I mean, there's no indication elsewhere that WotW is a mind-reader, right? But it does dovetail very neatly with Sophie's mindset coming into it. Maybe she was so into the concept of herself as "eldest" that that got turned into "elderly" somewhere along the way!

(Later again) Still re-reading Howl, and trying to pay attention to details - does Howl suspect Miss Angorian from the start? Sophie doesn't think so, but I'm beginning to. Howl has spent time around the Witch of the Waste - Miss Angorian's boss, after all. Apparently he's never seen her in this form, at least, but I still think he smells something fishy, here.

(Can Calcifer change shape like this? "Miss Angorian" is a much older fire demon, though.)

Also, I can't say I understand the thing about falling stars being fire demons. Is there a fire demon at the heart of every sun? (That makes a certain amount of sense, I guess.) I'm probably picking around at the details too much but I'm enjoying it, so whatever.

(possible spoilers!)

Sunday, August 9, 2020
I feel like I ought to read something new instead of re-reading all the time. I like to re-read, but if you never read anything new then re-reading eventually gets very repetitive. I need to pull something out of my unread books list on the Kindle and just read something completely new. (But not until after I finish the Survivor's Club re-read. That won't take that long.) The Expanse books can wait.

I was talking about Flavian and Agnes before, but now I am on to the next one, which is Ralph and Chloe. Ralph is an earl but his grandfather is a duke, and the grandfather dies about, I don't know, a third of the way in. The day after the wedding, in fact - Chloe is nobody one day, a countess the next, and a duchess the one after that.

Monday
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." Apparently that means "it is sweet and right to die for one's country." What hogwash. (That's what the guy in the book - the aforementioned Ralph - is saying too. "There is nothing sweet or right about war," he goes on to say.) This is the Survivor's Club books again, I should say. They're basically a long meditation on the aftereffects of trauma, disguised as romance novels. (The romances are sort of a coping mechanism, I guess you'd say. Most of the woman are traumatized in one way or another as well.)

Tuesday
I just finished that book, at 3 in the morning. It's good but not as good as the one before it. Next is Only a Kiss, a title which always makes a "Mr Brightside" earworm start up in my head for the duration - but this is a really good book, and a funny one, when it's not all about trauma. (The hero, Percy, is the comic relief. The heroine is the Survivor here, so you know she is PTSD personified almost to the very end.)

(written on a separate sheet - front and back)
I forget between times the source of comedy that is Only a Kiss. In fact, I forget the name of the book and the name of the hero and much of the plot. (This is why I reread a lot - because my mind is a sieve - am I spelling that right? I tend to have trouble with ei vs ie - and I re-read to remind myself of the large parts of these books that I've forgotten.) Anyway, parts of this book are quite serious - Imogen's PTSD-inducing experiences in Spain, vicious smugglers lurking around the estate - but it's also quite funny.

A new(-ish) earl decides to visit the "seat" of his earldom, which is in Cornwall and he's never been there before. The book starts during his 30th birthday party in London, with a very drunk Lord Percival meditating on all his blessings. He grew up with adoring, rich parents, an only child. He is good looking and intelligent - "firsts" at Oxford is how historical romance novels tend to indicate intelligence for men - and then he unexpectedly becomes an earl when the older, more stuffy branch of his family fails to produce heirs (or they all get killed in the war, I suppose).

The heroine is the traumatized Imogen, who is the widowed daughter-in-law of the previous earl. The two of them do not initially get along, not surprisingly. Imogen is blond and has been described repeatedly in the (five) previous books as resembling a marble statue - I guess that means she has what the psychiatrists call a "flat affect"?

The late earl's sister lives in the big house with a companion, while Imogen lives in the dower house - only the roof of that house is always under repair so I. is temporarily living in the big house. Percy knows none of this, he just sends a letter (written drunkenly during that first chapter) saying he's coming, and then shows up not far behind the letter. - I haven't even gotten to the part about all the stray dogs and cats. It almost sounds like some kind of 90s Disney comedy, really. One particularly funny thing is that the ugliest of the stray dogs immediately attaches himself to the earl and follows him everywhere. Percy grumbles, of course, but he also has a sense of humor - without it, he would be intolerable in his perfection - and is actually kind, and before long is surreptitiously helping Hector (the dog) over gorse hedges and such.

Both Percy and Imogen have a Lizzie-Bennet type of sardonic humor where they sit back and observe the neighbors, as well. (Before this book, it's been obvious that Imogen is kind but not so much that she has a sense of humor, too.) I guess that's why it's eventually very clear that these two suit.

Wednesday
Have now finished that book and am onto the next - which is the last - it's George the duke (who has always been a duke - for many years, anyway - as opposed to the one a couple of books back who became a duke mid-story). Anyway, George goes and asks Agnes' spinster sister Dora - who he had only met fairly briefly, a couple of books back - to marry him. I don't remember much else about it except that much family drama is involved.

Friday
I don't really think this is the best of Ms Balogh's books, unless there's something I've forgotten that redeems it. Not that it's bad, I'm just not completely enthralled.

early Sunday morning
I've just finished that book, and I haven't especially changed my mind. It does get much more interesting toward the end, but the first half - well, the middle third, especially - is very slow-moving. It may even have been deliberate! I actually had forgotten the whole big drama at the cliff-top but I did remember what the big dark secret was the George had been guarding. It's funny what you remember and what you forget.