Since we have, to quote Shang:
I was thinking it might be fun to recommend summer reading to tide us over until September.
I'll start:
Four British Fantasists: Place and Culture in the Children's Fantasies of Penelopy Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones and Susan Cooper, by Charles Butler (2006)
Though only half way through this book, I find it a lively and entertaining discussion on how these four authors have used magic, myth and a sense of place in their books. I've been reading Susan Cooper and Diana Wynne Jones for years, so it's interesting have their works discussed in detail. Alan Garner and Penelope Lively are new writers to me, but now I know about them, I am going to hunt down their books to read. The interesting links between these four writers is that all of them grew up during WWII, and in some form experienced life under siege. All four went to Oxford about the same time and two of the writers actually had classes with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, two of the best known British fantasy authors.
Susan Cooper's books The Dark is Rising Sequence, Seaward and others are able to invoke a sense of landscape, myth and history while staying in the realm of the everyday world. Diana Wynne Jones is one of the most popular writers in the book, you may have encountered several of her books over the years: Howl's Moving Castle (turned into an excellent anime movie a few years ago), Fire and Hemlock, Dogsbody, and The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, among lots of others. Lively is interested in landscape history (esp. as it pertains to England) and Garner has the uniqueness of living on the same land his ancestors have lived on for several generations.
Good stuff!
... correction now that the days have been counted accurately...
We have seventeen and a half weeks.
Three months and thrity days.
8.5 more paychecks (4 for RV)
I was thinking it might be fun to recommend summer reading to tide us over until September.
I'll start:
Four British Fantasists: Place and Culture in the Children's Fantasies of Penelopy Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones and Susan Cooper, by Charles Butler (2006)
Though only half way through this book, I find it a lively and entertaining discussion on how these four authors have used magic, myth and a sense of place in their books. I've been reading Susan Cooper and Diana Wynne Jones for years, so it's interesting have their works discussed in detail. Alan Garner and Penelope Lively are new writers to me, but now I know about them, I am going to hunt down their books to read. The interesting links between these four writers is that all of them grew up during WWII, and in some form experienced life under siege. All four went to Oxford about the same time and two of the writers actually had classes with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, two of the best known British fantasy authors.
Susan Cooper's books The Dark is Rising Sequence, Seaward and others are able to invoke a sense of landscape, myth and history while staying in the realm of the everyday world. Diana Wynne Jones is one of the most popular writers in the book, you may have encountered several of her books over the years: Howl's Moving Castle (turned into an excellent anime movie a few years ago), Fire and Hemlock, Dogsbody, and The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, among lots of others. Lively is interested in landscape history (esp. as it pertains to England) and Garner has the uniqueness of living on the same land his ancestors have lived on for several generations.
Good stuff!
)
