seraphcelene (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seraphcelene) wrote2005-06-14 06:57 pm
seraphcelene) wrote2005-06-14 06:57 pm
Entry tags:
Tamarind
I am eating Tamarind fresh from Mexico. Pattycakes brought it home from her vacation. She's brown as a nut, the little minx. I have promised to adopt her into the race. If we 'fro her hair I swear she could pass.
In the meantime, while we're waiting for her papers to come through, I have recs for you. And not just any recs, published fiction type recs because I have been a busy girl and reading up a storm.
1.)The Bride Stripped Bare by Nikki Gemmell
The best second person narrative I have read, ever! Not actually counting cofax's The Moneychanger's Tale which I thought was might fine. This is languid and beautiful and biting, tragic and edge of your seat. I started the book and within the first chapter I was committed. The litany on loop in my head? "This can't end well." It is the story of a woman's search for herself. Discover and then re-discovering identity in the face of and in reaction to other people's expectations. It is hard and frightening and terribly real. I identified. It's extreme in places, but there is a truth in the prose. That somewhere out there, somewhere in the world, there is this woman. That all women carry fragments. She is you.
"You haunt the cafe in Soho. Want to crawl away from the world, curl up, want to shrink from the summery lightness in the air, the flirty pink on the girls in the streets."
"For it is the long, long nights that defeat you. When you are blown out like a candle."
2.)Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman.
If you've only seen the movie then you need to read the book. You're missing so much and that is such a shame. The movie is only a wildly adapted slice of what the book contains. Gillian is even more flawed than Nicole Kidman could have handled and Sally is as rigid as rebar. These are older, wiser, more complex characters than the film portrays. Although the aunts, delightfully fleshed out by Stockard Channing and Diane Weist, are only background characters here, Sally's daughers are given front and center attention as girls becoming women. It is, I think, an even trade. Hoffman tells the story of the Owens' sisters simply and beautifully. The tone is almost matter-of-fact, not unlike wisdom shared, sage advice given by the older and the wiser.
"He knew exactly how to hit a woman, so that the marks hardly showed. He knew how to kiss her, too, so that her heart began to race and she'd start to think forgiveness with every breath. It's amazing the places that love will carry you. It's astonishing to discover just how far you're willing to go."
3.)As Hot As It Was You Ought to Thank Me by Nanci Kincaid.
Beautiful coming of age story. Charming, devastating and all wrapped up in a mystery. The first person narrator, Berry Johnson, is compelling enough and disarming enough that all you want to do is see how the whole mess turns out. Her father disappears, her mother shacks up another man, there's a tornado and then the chain gang comes to town. Berry falls in love with a pretty convict while her hand-me-down-dress-wearing boy neighbor and best friend goes more than a little crazy.
"...that night, the three boys who loved me most in the world - the only boys who love me - and not a one of them thought I was anything close to pretty, which I already knew but did not want to give in to knowing, like I was holding out hope that I was wrong about this and it would be brought to my attention, to my surprise, that in fact I was a pretty girl after all."
4.)The Lost Daughter of Happiness by Geling Yan, trans. by Cathy Silber
This is beautiful and atmospheric, although towards the end the entire thing starts to grind down. Too much of a good thing, I guess. The narrative is a mix of second and third person limited, illuminating three characters over the course of years. Two men bound by their obsession over one woman. A enigmatic girl that noone, not even the author, can crack. I think it's that mystery that wears after a while. Because the author gives very little away about her, her appeal ultimately disentergrates. The charm wears thin. It is however, an interesting commentary on a culture and a historical period.
"This is who you are.
The one dressed in red, slowly rising from the creaking bamboo bed, is you. The embroidery on your satin padded jacket must weigh ten catties, the parts stiched most densely are as hard as ice, or armor. From a distance of one hundred and twenty years, I am amazed by the needlework, so throughly beyond me."
5.) The Dim Sum of All Things by Kim Won Keltner
Fucking funny. I can't comment on how perfectly accurate it is in terms of cultural truths and idiosyncrasies, but I thought it was charming and funny and touching. Kelnter sneaks the heart of the book up on you and by the end you're ready for a hanky when all you thought you'd get out of it was a good belly laugh.
"Many strange tales have been told about sassy receptionists and their antics in the urban wild, but none so strange as the story of Miss Lindsey Owyang, a Chinese-American wage-slave who turned twenty-five last summer."
6.)Anti-rec: Incubus Dreams and A Stroke of Midnight by Laurell K. Hamilton.
Point.Less. Except for the sex. Both books felt like a stall. Like she had to make her deadline but had no real idea what to do with her characters, so she made them have lots of sex. With everybody. Anybody. I was really, really, really disappointed. A Stroke of Midnight disappointed me more than Incubus Dreams because the Anita Blake franchise has been going down hill since before Obsidian Butterfly. Around the fourth book of the series, I think LKH just starts attempting to drag out the story. More book equal more money, right? ASM is the fourth book of the Merry Gentry series and it suffers from all the problems that the AB books do. The plot is scant and goes NOWHERE. ASM, the entire book, covered about one whole day. And they had lots of pointless sex. Not as much sex as AB, but close. Incubus Dreams was ... I can't even say what it was. I'm just glad that I picked it up at the library because if I had bought it I would be royally pissed! It's a really big book. LKH has turned into Anne Rice and that's sad.
7.) Because I can't let this get away without a fic rec. Just couldn't do it.
In the Orchard by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tiasmatchild (Farscape. Stark/Zhaan)
Summary: There is a kind of fairy tale that plays at a happy ending before it breaks it and sends its unfortunate characters tumbling on down their ways again. I’m addicted to them, particularly those quieter middle bits.
Notes: In response to the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
farscapefriday Fairy Tale Challenge.
This is surreal and beautiful. I don't really know why I like it, just that I do. I love the images and I love the language and I think it makes an absolutly gorgeous fairy tale.
Finally, my tamarind was yummy. Bitter and slightly sweet. Tangy and Peppery. Sticky. Meaty with hard bits. It reminds me of childhood and the trundle of the ice cream truck down the street in the slowmoving dusk of a perfect summer's day.
In the meantime, while we're waiting for her papers to come through, I have recs for you. And not just any recs, published fiction type recs because I have been a busy girl and reading up a storm.
1.)The Bride Stripped Bare by Nikki Gemmell
The best second person narrative I have read, ever! Not actually counting cofax's The Moneychanger's Tale which I thought was might fine. This is languid and beautiful and biting, tragic and edge of your seat. I started the book and within the first chapter I was committed. The litany on loop in my head? "This can't end well." It is the story of a woman's search for herself. Discover and then re-discovering identity in the face of and in reaction to other people's expectations. It is hard and frightening and terribly real. I identified. It's extreme in places, but there is a truth in the prose. That somewhere out there, somewhere in the world, there is this woman. That all women carry fragments. She is you.
"You haunt the cafe in Soho. Want to crawl away from the world, curl up, want to shrink from the summery lightness in the air, the flirty pink on the girls in the streets."
"For it is the long, long nights that defeat you. When you are blown out like a candle."
2.)Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman.
If you've only seen the movie then you need to read the book. You're missing so much and that is such a shame. The movie is only a wildly adapted slice of what the book contains. Gillian is even more flawed than Nicole Kidman could have handled and Sally is as rigid as rebar. These are older, wiser, more complex characters than the film portrays. Although the aunts, delightfully fleshed out by Stockard Channing and Diane Weist, are only background characters here, Sally's daughers are given front and center attention as girls becoming women. It is, I think, an even trade. Hoffman tells the story of the Owens' sisters simply and beautifully. The tone is almost matter-of-fact, not unlike wisdom shared, sage advice given by the older and the wiser.
"He knew exactly how to hit a woman, so that the marks hardly showed. He knew how to kiss her, too, so that her heart began to race and she'd start to think forgiveness with every breath. It's amazing the places that love will carry you. It's astonishing to discover just how far you're willing to go."
3.)As Hot As It Was You Ought to Thank Me by Nanci Kincaid.
Beautiful coming of age story. Charming, devastating and all wrapped up in a mystery. The first person narrator, Berry Johnson, is compelling enough and disarming enough that all you want to do is see how the whole mess turns out. Her father disappears, her mother shacks up another man, there's a tornado and then the chain gang comes to town. Berry falls in love with a pretty convict while her hand-me-down-dress-wearing boy neighbor and best friend goes more than a little crazy.
"...that night, the three boys who loved me most in the world - the only boys who love me - and not a one of them thought I was anything close to pretty, which I already knew but did not want to give in to knowing, like I was holding out hope that I was wrong about this and it would be brought to my attention, to my surprise, that in fact I was a pretty girl after all."
4.)The Lost Daughter of Happiness by Geling Yan, trans. by Cathy Silber
This is beautiful and atmospheric, although towards the end the entire thing starts to grind down. Too much of a good thing, I guess. The narrative is a mix of second and third person limited, illuminating three characters over the course of years. Two men bound by their obsession over one woman. A enigmatic girl that noone, not even the author, can crack. I think it's that mystery that wears after a while. Because the author gives very little away about her, her appeal ultimately disentergrates. The charm wears thin. It is however, an interesting commentary on a culture and a historical period.
"This is who you are.
The one dressed in red, slowly rising from the creaking bamboo bed, is you. The embroidery on your satin padded jacket must weigh ten catties, the parts stiched most densely are as hard as ice, or armor. From a distance of one hundred and twenty years, I am amazed by the needlework, so throughly beyond me."
5.) The Dim Sum of All Things by Kim Won Keltner
Fucking funny. I can't comment on how perfectly accurate it is in terms of cultural truths and idiosyncrasies, but I thought it was charming and funny and touching. Kelnter sneaks the heart of the book up on you and by the end you're ready for a hanky when all you thought you'd get out of it was a good belly laugh.
"Many strange tales have been told about sassy receptionists and their antics in the urban wild, but none so strange as the story of Miss Lindsey Owyang, a Chinese-American wage-slave who turned twenty-five last summer."
6.)Anti-rec: Incubus Dreams and A Stroke of Midnight by Laurell K. Hamilton.
Point.Less. Except for the sex. Both books felt like a stall. Like she had to make her deadline but had no real idea what to do with her characters, so she made them have lots of sex. With everybody. Anybody. I was really, really, really disappointed. A Stroke of Midnight disappointed me more than Incubus Dreams because the Anita Blake franchise has been going down hill since before Obsidian Butterfly. Around the fourth book of the series, I think LKH just starts attempting to drag out the story. More book equal more money, right? ASM is the fourth book of the Merry Gentry series and it suffers from all the problems that the AB books do. The plot is scant and goes NOWHERE. ASM, the entire book, covered about one whole day. And they had lots of pointless sex. Not as much sex as AB, but close. Incubus Dreams was ... I can't even say what it was. I'm just glad that I picked it up at the library because if I had bought it I would be royally pissed! It's a really big book. LKH has turned into Anne Rice and that's sad.
7.) Because I can't let this get away without a fic rec. Just couldn't do it.
In the Orchard by
tiasmatchild (Farscape. Stark/Zhaan)Summary: There is a kind of fairy tale that plays at a happy ending before it breaks it and sends its unfortunate characters tumbling on down their ways again. I’m addicted to them, particularly those quieter middle bits.
Notes: In response to the
farscapefriday Fairy Tale Challenge.This is surreal and beautiful. I don't really know why I like it, just that I do. I love the images and I love the language and I think it makes an absolutly gorgeous fairy tale.
Finally, my tamarind was yummy. Bitter and slightly sweet. Tangy and Peppery. Sticky. Meaty with hard bits. It reminds me of childhood and the trundle of the ice cream truck down the street in the slowmoving dusk of a perfect summer's day.