powering through them!

Yes. It's lucky books aren't food, otherwise I'd be full as a goog and fat as Humpty Dumpty by now. Although I suspect it will be a little longer until the next book review, because the book that I'm on now is (although an easy read) mega FAT at over 1000 pages.

Nail Gaiman's Stardust is another recommendation from my brother (although the other one this time). Again, I found myself sans books and too pauvre to go and buy one.* It's a newish book, but a fairytale about a boy named Tristran Thorn who adventures beyond Wall into Faerie to bring back a falling star in order to convince the prettiest girl in town to marry him.

So I kind of liked it, I suppose, but I didn't love it, not enough to imagine re-reading it sometime anyway. On the whole it's a good story, and reasonably well written, but I just wasn't sure what it was trying to be. If it was trying to be an old fashioned fairy tale, then the language was too modern. If it was trying to aim at teenagers, then there were a few details that I thought not necessary and perhaps ill-advised for that age group. If they were aiming at adults then it was a bit too simplistic and not charming enough. Yes, I guess that's my problem - for a fairytale it wasn't charming enough. The transformation from boy to hero wasn't convincing enough, nor was the transformation of the star from captive to love-object. I could see these things were happening, but they didn't drag me along, it was more just that in the storytale format, these things are expected. There were a few fun twists, but again they seemed a bit too format driven to be exciting. I don't know. I'm beginning to think that this English degree has made me too critical and hard-to-please. On the whole it was a pretty good, easy, fun read, and I'm nitpicking. If you're into fantasy type stuff, you'll probably quite enjoy it, but I sadly found the overall sense of adventure and suspense somewhat lacking. The end.

*See! This French must be working! Also, yes I know there are such things as libraries, but I really like owning books in case I really love them - then I can reread them. Also, I'm quite uninspired by Adelaide's bookshops. BUT I saw an ad for a second hand booksale at the Walkerville city hall (? the corner of Walkerville and Stephen Tces anyway) this Saturday morning. Maybe I will be lucky there.