Once Upon a Bookshelf

Instead of heading to Mexico with some friends for the winter holidays, Emily Albright signs herself up for a literary tour through England. It sounds positively perfect - “Spend a week with Mr. Darcy. Explore the world of Jane Austen and Pride & Prejudice in the English countryside.” What Emily didn’t expect, however, is that meeting the real Mr. Darcy, especially not when there never is anyone else around.

I didn’t hate the book. I didn’t love it either. In all honesty, I was rather indifferent to it. I didn’t care about 95% of the characters, and the plot dragged a fair bit. All in all, I won’t be reading any more of Potter’s books.

Firstly, the book embodied everything I dislike about the chick lit genre. Flakey characters, unrealistic plot, predictable plot, ad nauseum. (Yes I read fantasy, however, the identity of the tour guide trumps a good majority of the fantastical plots as far as unrealism goes.) Plus, one of the big parts of the story never gets explained - how on earth does Emily and Mr. Darcy meet all the time when not only do they not live in the same time period, but also when Mr. Darcy is a fictional character.

Secondly, as Lisa put it, “The Mr. Darcy in this book is certainly not my Mr. Darcy.” It feels like Potter didn’t do any actually research into Darcy (watching the movies does not count if you haven’t read the book as well), because he is just so . . . not right. I don’t even know how else to explain it.

However, as I said, I did not hate this book. It had some redeeming qualities. Mainly in the form of Mae, a cute, shy, sad Irish woman on the tour. The character growth made me all squishy inside. She becomes such a confident and happy woman by the end of the book that my heart couldn’t help but being touched.

Then there’s also the fact that Mr. Darcy recites poetry to Emily. And while he’s not the Mr. Darcy I love, what woman could ever not find the idea of Darcy reciting her poetry positively entrancing?

With all that said and done, I think this book has cured me of my desire for more books based on Austen’s works. For a while at least. If I were to find something that sounded exciting about Col. Brandon or Henry Crawford, though…

I’ve been putting off this post for a while thinking that I would pick up another scaryish book, but as there’s only a few days or so left until Hallowe’en and as I have no cravings for a scary story, I don’t think I will get around to it.

But it’s been a good challenge. I didn’t stick to my list (as per normal), but I did get a bunch of books I had been wanting to read done, and read about so many other books on other blogs that I have added to my TBR list. Next time I’m looking for something gothic or scary, it won’t be a struggle to find something, let me tell you. Anyway, I managed to read the following for this challenge:

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
The Strange Case of Ambrose Small by Fred McClement
Dreamquest by Brent Hartinger
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
Among the Shadows by L.M. Montgomery
Mirrormask by Neil Gaiman
Prowlers by Christopher Golden

It was a fun challenge, and I want to thank Carl for hosting it. :)

Okay, it’s that time of the year. If you want a Christmas Card from me this year, please leave me you address - either at my LiveJournal (comments will be screened), or e-mail me.

This is my first book for the Canadian Book Challenge, and I’ve been meaning to read it for a very long time. O.R. Melling was born in Ireland, but raised in Canada, and as I’ve been wanting to read more Canadian YA books, as well as the fact that Sabrina recommended it again and again, I thought this challenge was the perfect time to pick up The Hunter’s Moon.

Gwen is visiting Ireland for the summer to go exploring the country with her cousin Findabhair. The two plan to explore all sorts of places mentioned in Irish mythology, and decide to spend one night in a Sidhe-Mound. When Gwen wakes up the next morning, it’s to find that Findabhair has been magicked away by the fairies. Thus starts Gwen’s quest to free her cousin from the fairies that have kidnapped her.

It was all very well to set out on a quest for things unimaginable, fantastical and unknown. It was quite a different matter to encounter them. Only now did Gwen realize that she hadn’t really believed in the existence of another world. It had all been in the realm of the imagination. Till now.
“She’s been stolen by the fairies.”
The words issued from her mouth like mist on her breath, quivering with incredulity.
“What am I going to do?” she wailed.

I think Gwen may be one of my new favourite YA characters. She’s charming without realizing that she is. She’s a little awkward, and she struggles with body image. She’s more real than a lot of characters in books, which contrasted so nicely with the fact that there are fairies and leprechauns and Excalibur in the story. (And we all know that any book that mentions Excalibur gets cool points.)

I loved Melling’s Faërie - it was so real, and exactly as one would picture it. Definitely made me want to go for a visit, even though we all know that would only be looking for trouble.

I picked up a used copy of this book, lucky for me. A while back, Sabrina posted about how, when this book was rereleased, Melling made the main character American instead of Canadian. From a marketing perspective, I suppose I can understand why - she wanted this to appeal to the American market, but it is still disappointing that she would feel she needs to make that change. And it may seem insignificant to some people, but to me it just feels like something like that would completely change a character. I don’t know if there were any other changes made with the rerelease, but I think that one is enough to make me happy that I got an older copy of the book. I’m definitely going to be looking for used copies of the other books in the series too, in order to read it how they were originally published. It may mean that it will take much longer to get through the series than I want to, but I think it will be worth it.

I will admit right now that I picked up this book because I am addicted to shoes. Hated them until I spent 4 years of my life working in a shoe store. It will change a person. No joke. So between my obsession with shoes and the cute cover on this book, I couldn’t walk out of the store with this book.

I have to say that I was rather disappointed. It got off to a really good start - it was funny as well as informative, but as the book went on it got drier and drier and drier. It picked up again at the Epilogue, but by then I just wanted to be finished with the book.

Not that it was all bad. Like I have already said, it was very informative. Jacobbi tells the history of shoes, why certain shoes are called by certain names, who made what famous, as well as why they are still around today. It brings in bits of pop culture and relates it to shoes - for example, Jacobbi talks about how Sex & The City made the name Manolo Blahniks such a well known name to the average woman.

Another good thing about this was the illustrations, done by Sara Not. They were utterly adorable.

And it does give good insights as to why women love having a different pair of shoes for every outfit:

As adults, we ask shoes to be our representatives in the world. The beauty of this is that they needn’t define us permanently. At any given point in our lives, and even at different times in a single day, shoes are indicators of our age, mood, desires. Shoes say everything about a woman.

So, in those respects it was a good book. But boy, am I glad this was as short as it was (125 pages, if you include the glossary), because it was just so dry for the majority of the book.