A Fan's Playground

Karen Armstrong wrote of her years as a nun in another memoir, Through the Narrow Gate. She joined the convent at age 17 and left after 7 difficult years, realizing that the best thing for her would be to leave, hard as that choice also was. This book then details the years after she leaves, as she tries to find her place in the world.

It's a wonderful book, Armstrong is a very strong writer and has clearly done a bunch of work figuring out her internal journey. I don't know that I have a lot to say about this book, but: it's definitely worth the read. (And I don't think you need to have read Through The Narrow Gate first, this one stands on its own, but both are equally worth reading.)

Has it seriously been 3.5 years since I last read this book? Apparently! Multiple times over the last few years I felt in the mood to reread it but never did because facing that many pages at once seemed like more of a commitment than I was willing to make. But I finally got around to rereading it again and it is, as always, great. I think at this point I've read it enough times that I'm not getting anything really new out of the experience, but it's still an endless pleasure to be able to bury myself in that world for several weeks.

There's two things about the book I particularly want to mention this time around.

1. There's just such an ENDLESS quantity of extremely minor characters who exist for only a couple sentences or maybe a couple pages in this book who could easily get an entire novel or at least a short story of their own and I want to read all of them. The Summer King! Maria Absalom! Francis Pevensey! Mr. Pink! Mrs Brandy! The Half-Finished People and the Lakota! ET CETERA.

2. This book is just so good at summoning up the atmosphere of eerie otherworldliness associated with the Raven King and the King's magic and fairies/Faerie in general. SO GOOD. The Raven King is 100% my favourite character in this book and he just pervades the entire thing even though he only shows up on-page for like...two pages. Which is exactly the right amount of time for him to show up because it means he never has the chance to become prosaic in the eyes of the reader.

The Grand Tour, by Patricia C Wrede & Caroline Stevermer

The Grand Tour is a sequel to Sorcery & Cecelia, taking place directly after the double wedding of the two main characters and their love interests. This book isn't quite as effervescent in its charm as the first one, but I still like it a great deal. Its strengths are somewhat different.( Read more... )

I AM BACKKKK! Well actually I returned late sunday night but then I was exhausted and also I have work and also catching up on the real life things I wasn't doing while on vacation, so. I am still exhausted but I am at least nominally kind of here! AND I COME WITH LOTS OF BOOKS.

Look, my vacation was CANOE TRIPPING, which when you do it right (which obvs I do) leaves you lots of time to hang out in the beautiful wilderness with a book. So. I read NINE BOOKS while on vacation! Plus I had a couple I didn't post about from before the trip. Plus I read a book yesterday. So. Let's go!

( Wired Love: a Romance of Dots and Dashes, by Ella Cheever Thayer )

( Mable Riley: A Reliable Record of Humdrum, Peril & Romance, by Marthe Jocelyn )

( Monks-Hood, by Ellis Peters )

( Complete Fairy Tales of George MacDonald )

( The Confession of Brother Haluin, by Ellis Peters )

( The Android's Dream, by John Scalzi )

( The Wisdom of Father Brown, by GK Chesterton )

( Psmith, Journalist, by PG Wodehouse )

( A Matter of Oaths, by Helen S Wright )

( Murder Must Advertise, by Dorothy L Sayers )

( Strong Poison, by Dorothy L Sayers )

( Princess Academy, by Shannon Hale )

( Gaudy Night, by Dorothy L Sayers )

( Poor Yorick, by Ryan North, William Shakespeare, and YOU )