lady hero

[ironymaiden]

i tore through Sunshine over the weekend. a synopsis makes it sound exactly like a book i would dismiss immediately, but it turned out to be layered, mostly surprising, and a pleasure to read. webcowgirl has been selling this one for ages, and i often love Robin McKinley, sorry i waited.

unfortunately, this led me to look up the book so that i could link to it here. where i found a great horror of my life as a consumer of artistic endeavor - the creator doesn't really like my favorite anymore. *

my puppy has been roundly kicked. i love The Blue Sword. it was the first of her books that i read, and has remained my favorite. i just sent a copy to my niece for Christmas. (i started a mental list of the books i would be giving A a few months before she was born. i'm that aunt.) Angharad is totally on my list of baby names.(however unlikely it is that they get used.) i just babbled at people this weekend about how McKinley never wrote a third Damar book and it's set up in the other books and i don't care so much about her thing for fairy tale adaptations and The Hero and the Crown was okay but The Blue Sword, damn it's awesome, would you like to read it? i don't fangirl about fantasy novels too often, but it just makes me go wobbly inside. maybe it's because Our Heroine is awkwardly tall and reads novels? damn damn damn.




*(this stung enough when i was in college and Trent Reznor was dissing Pretty Hate Machine, the album that was the soundtrack of my life in '91-'92. it's difficult to recreate the experience now, what with being a pretty happy adult and the lack of the seamless playback of a cassette. but it was all right there in one package at the right time, and the day i read that interview was the day NIN lost a fan.)

Comments

[varina8.livejournal.com]

I'm also a Sunshine fan. My friend LK loaned me her copy a few years ago and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I haven't read any of her other books.

[shellyinseattle.livejournal.com]

I think it's common for people to look back at earlier efforts and cringe, so it's not surprising some very public artists do, too.

Whether that means these efforts really are cringe-worthy to others is a different matter, for art is always two-fold: (1) what the artist strives to do and (2) how others interpret it. Therefore, what the artist says now about their own work should really be independent of how it makes you feel.

It's a lesson we should all take to heart when re-examining our sophomoric efforts at XYZ.

Also, different works can have a profound effect on us depending on what life-stage we're in. Tolkien came along at just the right time for me. C.S. Lewis was about 10 year too late.

[pixxelpuss.livejournal.com]

I'm very irritated by artists I like dissing their own work that I love. Only slightly less so than I suspect that artists hate having people ask them to do the same old favorite stuff over and over and over and never work on new projects. How many times have I been at a concert where everyone in the room only wants to hear stuff from five years ago, and the artist only wants to play stuff he hasn't played 800 million times?

I haven't read Sword, but I will. I loved Pretty Hate Machine. I'm a Big fan of Outlaws of Sherwood.

Dang it, hasn't there been a new one published in the last two years?

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

I thought A Door in the Hedge was Damar #3.

Thanks for the props. I should trust you and get on reading Red Thunder.

[raevnos.livejournal.com]

I think the Damar books are the only McKinley ones I've read. As a kid, it was The Hero and the Crown all the way, probably 'cause Dragons Are Cool. I re-read them a few years ago as an adult, and wow. It was like a whole new, much better book.