flemmings | (no subject)

Sadly, it's now undeniable.

rushthatspeaks is my anti-reader. An anti-reader is a person who likes the same kind of books you do, but whose tastes are the reverse of your own. What works for them, the things they love, leave you unmoved or worse, blankly uncomprehending. With luck, what they hate will be your cup of tea, but that's a much less likely criterion to meet.

I suspected the anti-reader-dom when Rush listed her favourite Pratchetts at one point, all of which are minor and indifferent works by me. And now here she is talking about Bellairs' The Face in the Frost.

I don't read John Bellairs very often because of the thing that keeps happening with The Face in the Frost. This thing, which I will eventually learn to stop doing to myself, is that I remember that it has been a long time since I read The Face in the Frost, and that it is one of the great fantasy novels-- smart, funny, compassionate, knowledgeable about Renaissance magic-- and I start to reread it in circumstances which involve it being after dark, or being by myself in a strange city, and only then do I remember that it is also one of the two or three books which reliably scare me senseless, every single time.

And here is me talking about the same:

And on another topic- over at Yuletide someone was asking for Face in the Frost fic. 'Slashy or gen, adventure-ish or just playing around with the world.' ... I remember reading that years back and not thinking much of it one way or the other, let alone that slash was possible. Got the re-released version from the library and am trying to read it again and not having much luck. I find a serious lack of any kind of there there. 'Oh I hear the sound of Roger's head being cut off. But I think I'll just assume he's not really dead and go on doing this other stuff I have to do.' Never mind slashiness, that rather undercuts any kind of narrative tension at all.

The sadness is that

rushthatspeaks is a voracious reader, and it would be nice if our tastes coincided because I'd have a never-ending list of more stuff to read. My wonderful and utterly reliable aligned-reader,

paleaswater, to whom I owe more fandoms than I can count, now confines herself pretty much solely to Chinese. I'm sure the stories are ones I'd love if, like, I knew the language. So, yes, well; must just make my own way. Shall still enjoy

rushthatspeaks' daily reviews for as long as they last.

Otherwise saw The Illusionist today. Having never seen a Tati film, I have now seen a Tati anime. Very beautiful in the visuals department but not at all what I'd have expected from the guy who did Triplets of Belleville. And while Belleville did give me the fantods, I missed some of that gung-ho attitude from this sweet and melancholy effort. Once again, should have googled first. There's virtually no dialogue, and the print was dark so I may have missed something, but I wonder where the reviewer got the idea that 'Alice believes the downtrodden performer possesses genuine supernatural powers.' Also had her pegged as an innocent gold-digger, not a naive girl looking for a father figure.

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Oh, but you're my aligned-reader in English. I follow you. :P

I follow you ^__^ and tag stuff I would want to read (an ever growing list) when I (ever) get that time to myself.

I don't know what that makes me though. Hmmm.

I too went into the Illusionist expecting something very different. My friends left very depressed--I just felt frustrated. I felt like that story could have been told in less than ten minutes. I still might have thought it was pointless, but at least it would have been 80 minutes shorter....

Really? I did like it well enough. It's very what I've heard about Tati-- small scale, little details, never wholly over the edge into pathos. I liked the landscapes and the feel of place, and I liked the happy bar out in the Scottish islands where people love the illusionist's show and dance to their own music-- until the jukebox comes in.