the girly who shall end all girls

i didn't intend to let this slide.

22. Your "comfort" book
Discussed in question 13, rereads. The Blue Sword, moving on.

23. Favourite book cover including a picture!
This is tough. Part of me wishes that books not have representative cover art. Covers are a marketing tool, and often they misrepresent characters or even act as spoilers. (my favorite example of this is the cover for the very fine Transformation by Carol Berg.) i love the first edition dust jacket for The Hobbit because it emphasizes the big journey and the dragon is so tiny and subtle. i think though, that this is my favorite:



while i'm not crazy about the text treatment, the art captures the setting of the book and the nature of the protagonists. i love the angles and the contrast of the ice with the dark sky. you can read so much into the image before and after reading the book. are there tears on those faces? strong or weak? serene or trapped?

my current favorite book art direction has to be Boneshaker. really great marriage of text and image, and as kylecassidy says, it's so Steampunk the text is brown. (really. my copy is printed in dark brown ink. it's subtle, but a great effect that is still easy on the eyes.)

24. Favourite fictional relationship (romantic, friendship, familial)
oof. let's do all three.

romantic: i can't quite answer this one. so often in genre books romance is a thing we do not get into because it is covered in girl cooties. the truth is that everyone has a soft spot for a love interest as long as it doesn't feel pasted on and stays true to the characters. (most hated romantic relationship, Bean/Petra in the second set of Ender books. Card has a lot of issues anyway, but damn. making Petra rabid about bearing superbabies? really? i stopped reading right there.) i have a hard time separating the relationship itself from "these two people i like". and often my favorite couples will drop into the background as soon as they're happily together, because seemingly writing stories about people who are happily together is extra-hard. that issue is discussed very well here.

friendship: the easy answer is Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. they grow and change together, live through good times and bad, have misunderstandings and annoyances, and make up when they argue. it's good, and (as much as fans might want it to be) it's not slashy. we just don't have very many good models of men being good friends to one another these days. the less easy answer is Mac and Brymn - introvert marine biologist and extrovert alien archeologist in a complex situation...i love their relationship and the contrast through the series of Mac's friendship with Brymn and with her human colleague Emily.

familial: the Vorkosigans. i don't know where to start or stop - there are multiple generations now, there are different parenting styles and generational thinking represented, there are great parents, awkward children, chips on shoulders, rakish cousins...it's as slopplily complex as a real family, complete with occasional blurring of lines between friends/family/business. i like them so much that i'll forgive Bujold for the bug butter.

30 questions

i read all the damn Twilight books. even though they are awful. i literally threw the latest book across the room while shouting out a reference to the author's religion and a gender-based slur. and then i picked it up several hours later. and finished it. but not without "that's retarded" slipping out a few times. (and OMG "Union Lake" look at a map you stupid bint. shame on you and your editor.)

if you feel any desire to read them, please borrow mine and do not give that vapid woman any more money.

that said:
"...it was the best series starting with a teenage girl in love with a mysterious boy in her class that ended up with a teenage girl defending her growth-accelerated mutant hybrid baby from an ancient clan of evil vampires with her magical psychic shield that I ever read, THE END."-cleolinda

e_bourne handed me The Carpet Makers after the Oscars on Sunday. done now. this is the only Andreas Eschbach novel translated into english :(

i'd been struggling to get through Vellum recently (i like it so far but it's not holding my focus) so i wasn't sure that i was in a place to tear through a novel. apparently it just has to be the right novel. (should have known. i also recently ripped through Always, which i recommend to anyone interested in a mystery featuring totally kickass lesbians. it overflows with details about food, self-defense, stunts, and Seattle-love. and yes, the cherry tree is a metaphor. i was a little bummed that she hasn't been writing SF, but yay the not-SF is good. this book stood alone well, but apparently there are two earlier Aud Torvingen books for me to read.)

The Carpet Makers is a series of intertwined vignettes that tell the story of the end of a galactic empire. i'm glad that Orson Scott Card helped to get it into english, but his name on the book isn't bringing it to the right set of fans. i was repeatedly reminded of The Martian Chronicles, and sometimes Dune. the book seldom stays with one character for long. sometimes we see them again in the background, but Eschbach never spends time reminding us who they are again or unpacking their motivations. we are here to learn the history of the empire and the mystery of the carpets made of human hair, carpets that take a lifetime to complete. to an attentive reader, the ending is not a "twist" but the conclusion of a careful logical structure. lovely. e_bourne was right that it was the sort of thing i would like. interested readers need only try the first chapter to determine if they want to consume it all. five god-emperors out of five.