My review of Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
My drama teacher once described Les Miserables as a redemption story, revolving around the journey of the characters from darkness to God's light. To an extent, this is true: the characters' faith plays a fairly central part in the decisions they make and how those decisions affect the other characters. Really though, Les Miserables is an adventure story of the type that would be more expected from a modern high fantasy author than from a stuffy 19th-century author. It has its moments of tedium, but really if you wade through those moments, they're worth it in the end-- like the Council of Elrond, but about Napoleon, Parisian sewers, and the social strata of street urchins.
Knowing the musical well was something of a help in reading it, and it was also fun to look at just how much was lost in adapting it to a musical and how much more there is to the story (one great example being Marius's late-blooming rebellious teenage phase ["gramps, I'm a man now! and a Bonapartist! You can't tell me what to do, you're not my real dad."], followed by his lengthy, ever-so-romantic stalking of Cosette["I shall adjust my normal walk ever so slightly every day and thereby just happen to walk by her and get a good look at her but of course if anyone asks, I just happen to be there"]).
Whatever expectations you might have about Les Miz, either from the musical or from its extensive reputation, I don't really have much influence over you. I am one person on Goodreads among probably millions (and a white, American teenaged girl to boot. Is it any surprise I like this book? I am, in this moment, a walking stereotype). I shall, however, simply say this: Victor Hugo is an amazing writer. There is a reason that there are so many monstrously thick books out there today (Brandon Sanderson's and Pat Rothfuss's novels come to mind), and I think (all conjecture, I've done no research on any of this) that is because Victor Hugo and his contemporaries were the ones to popularize books that have the approximate weight of twelve and a half refrigerators. Hugo wrote a freaking long book, and he did it in a way that probably no one will ever be able to match. It's a really good book, and it's beautifully written:
"Enjolras was a chief; Combeferre was a guide. You would have preferred to fight with the one and march with the other. Not that Combeferre was not capable of fighting; he did not refuse to close with an obstacle, and to attack it by main strength and by explosion, but to put, gradually, by the teaching of axioms and the promulgation of positive laws, the human race in harmony with its destinies, pleased him better; and of the two lights, his inclination was rather for illumination than for conflagration. A fire would cause a dawn, undoubtedly, but why wait for the break of day? A volcano enlightens, but the morning enlightens still better."
Hugo's characterization is so strong, and so completely thought out, from Eponine and Gavroche's younger brothers to Marius's relatives. Honestly if you just read it for Marius's grandfather's sass, your time will be well spent. The sass is strong with this guy. (And also yeah Grantaire, Enjolras, Gavroche, and Courfeyrac are my problematic faves. I would die for those idiots.)
Knowing the musical well was something of a help in reading it, and it was also fun to look at just how much was lost in adapting it to a musical and how much more there is to the story (one great example being Marius's late-blooming rebellious teenage phase ["gramps, I'm a man now! and a Bonapartist! You can't tell me what to do, you're not my real dad."], followed by his lengthy, ever-so-romantic stalking of Cosette["I shall adjust my normal walk ever so slightly every day and thereby just happen to walk by her and get a good look at her but of course if anyone asks, I just happen to be there"]).
Whatever expectations you might have about Les Miz, either from the musical or from its extensive reputation, I don't really have much influence over you. I am one person on Goodreads among probably millions (and a white, American teenaged girl to boot. Is it any surprise I like this book? I am, in this moment, a walking stereotype). I shall, however, simply say this: Victor Hugo is an amazing writer. There is a reason that there are so many monstrously thick books out there today (Brandon Sanderson's and Pat Rothfuss's novels come to mind), and I think (all conjecture, I've done no research on any of this) that is because Victor Hugo and his contemporaries were the ones to popularize books that have the approximate weight of twelve and a half refrigerators. Hugo wrote a freaking long book, and he did it in a way that probably no one will ever be able to match. It's a really good book, and it's beautifully written:
"Enjolras was a chief; Combeferre was a guide. You would have preferred to fight with the one and march with the other. Not that Combeferre was not capable of fighting; he did not refuse to close with an obstacle, and to attack it by main strength and by explosion, but to put, gradually, by the teaching of axioms and the promulgation of positive laws, the human race in harmony with its destinies, pleased him better; and of the two lights, his inclination was rather for illumination than for conflagration. A fire would cause a dawn, undoubtedly, but why wait for the break of day? A volcano enlightens, but the morning enlightens still better."
Hugo's characterization is so strong, and so completely thought out, from Eponine and Gavroche's younger brothers to Marius's relatives. Honestly if you just read it for Marius's grandfather's sass, your time will be well spent. The sass is strong with this guy. (And also yeah Grantaire, Enjolras, Gavroche, and Courfeyrac are my problematic faves. I would die for those idiots.)
Goodreads reviews I admire/liked
(Most of which, in hindsight, have turned out to be written by Patrick Rothfuss)
(Turns out he and I read and love a lot of the same books)
Patrick Rothfuss's review of The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett
I will never be able to write a book as good as this.
I just finished reading it again. This is probably my third or fourth time.
I love all of Pratchett's books. It's easy to do, as the best of them are utterly excellent, while the worst of them is merely great.
This, I think, might be his best. And I love it for so many reasons. It is diamond beyond price among the other brilliant (but perhaps lesser) diamonds.
Part of me wants to quote parts of it to you. But I won't. Out of context you can't feel the weight of them.
I love the main character. A little girl who is smart and strong and uncertain and proud.
I wish I had a little girl, so I could give her this book.
I wish I could give a copy of this book for every little girl in the world. I want them to meet Tiffany. And even if they don't want to be like Tiffany, I want them to know that she exists. That she is possible.
I wish I could give a copy of this book to every little boy in the world, too. I want them to meet Tiffany. And even if they don't want to be like her, I want them to know that she exists, that she is possible.
I wish I could read this book to my little boy. But he's only five, and parts of it would spook him, and other parts he wouldn't understand. Maybe in a year he will be ready.
If you haven't read this book, you really should. You'll enjoy it a little more if you're familiar with Pratchett's Work, but that's not essential.
When I grow up, I want to be Tiffany Aching.
I just finished reading it again. This is probably my third or fourth time.
I love all of Pratchett's books. It's easy to do, as the best of them are utterly excellent, while the worst of them is merely great.
This, I think, might be his best. And I love it for so many reasons. It is diamond beyond price among the other brilliant (but perhaps lesser) diamonds.
Part of me wants to quote parts of it to you. But I won't. Out of context you can't feel the weight of them.
I love the main character. A little girl who is smart and strong and uncertain and proud.
I wish I had a little girl, so I could give her this book.
I wish I could give a copy of this book for every little girl in the world. I want them to meet Tiffany. And even if they don't want to be like Tiffany, I want them to know that she exists. That she is possible.
I wish I could give a copy of this book to every little boy in the world, too. I want them to meet Tiffany. And even if they don't want to be like her, I want them to know that she exists, that she is possible.
I wish I could read this book to my little boy. But he's only five, and parts of it would spook him, and other parts he wouldn't understand. Maybe in a year he will be ready.
If you haven't read this book, you really should. You'll enjoy it a little more if you're familiar with Pratchett's Work, but that's not essential.
When I grow up, I want to be Tiffany Aching.
Review by Patrick Rothfuss (again) of The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente (Warning: contains two instances of language, left in out of respect for Pat Rothfuss and his writing, but slightly censored)
I walked into the bookstore in a bit of a mood.
Wait, that's my Midwestern nature talking. We tend to understate. The truth is I walked into the bookstore furious at the world. I can't remember why. I am prone to dark moods, and when I'm in the middle of one, I tend to rumble through the world like an angry old-testament god.
I went directly to the Sci-Fi Fantasy section. That's where I live for the most part. That's where I go when the world gets to be too much for me.
I looked at the titles. I'd read about a quarter of them. I read a lot. But nothing looked particularly good. Nothing does when I'm in one of my moods.
A friendly bookseller walked over. "Can I help you find anything?" she asked.
"I want to read something good," I said. "I'm tired of gritty depressing sh*t. I want a fun, light book that isn't going to leave me wanting to put a gun in my mouth."
I'm not hyperbolizing. That's what I actually said. It wasn't a nice thing to say, but I can be unpleasantly brusk at times.
The bookseller didn't bat and eye. She pointed out a couple books, then asked how I felt about YA.
"I'll read anything if it's good," I said.
She pointed out this book. I'd heard of it before, appreciated its awesome title. I like faerie stories. Most importantly, I've read Cat Valente's work before, and I know she has a marvelous grip on the language.
Five pages into this book, I thought, "Why didn't I read this years ago? Why haven't I heard about this book before?"
I flipped to the back cover and saw blurbs from Neil Gaiman and Peter S. Beagle. "Oh," I thought. "Probably because I'm an idiot who lives under a rock."
Ten pages in, I was irritated. Fifteen pages in, I was jealous. Twenty pages in, I was in love.
So. A review:
This book is beautiful. The language is lovely without being pretentious. The story is careful and playful and smart. This book made me tear up in places. Not because it is particularly sad. But because sometimes when a story is true and sweet and perfectly shaped, it puts its hand around my heart.
This book is everything I love about Victorian faerie tales without all the tedious b*llsh*t.
This is the best book I've read all year. And I read a *lot* of books.
I look forward to reading this book to my little boy. And that, ultimately, is the best thing I can say about a book.
So yeah. Read it. Read it ten times.
Wait, that's my Midwestern nature talking. We tend to understate. The truth is I walked into the bookstore furious at the world. I can't remember why. I am prone to dark moods, and when I'm in the middle of one, I tend to rumble through the world like an angry old-testament god.
I went directly to the Sci-Fi Fantasy section. That's where I live for the most part. That's where I go when the world gets to be too much for me.
I looked at the titles. I'd read about a quarter of them. I read a lot. But nothing looked particularly good. Nothing does when I'm in one of my moods.
A friendly bookseller walked over. "Can I help you find anything?" she asked.
"I want to read something good," I said. "I'm tired of gritty depressing sh*t. I want a fun, light book that isn't going to leave me wanting to put a gun in my mouth."
I'm not hyperbolizing. That's what I actually said. It wasn't a nice thing to say, but I can be unpleasantly brusk at times.
The bookseller didn't bat and eye. She pointed out a couple books, then asked how I felt about YA.
"I'll read anything if it's good," I said.
She pointed out this book. I'd heard of it before, appreciated its awesome title. I like faerie stories. Most importantly, I've read Cat Valente's work before, and I know she has a marvelous grip on the language.
Five pages into this book, I thought, "Why didn't I read this years ago? Why haven't I heard about this book before?"
I flipped to the back cover and saw blurbs from Neil Gaiman and Peter S. Beagle. "Oh," I thought. "Probably because I'm an idiot who lives under a rock."
Ten pages in, I was irritated. Fifteen pages in, I was jealous. Twenty pages in, I was in love.
So. A review:
This book is beautiful. The language is lovely without being pretentious. The story is careful and playful and smart. This book made me tear up in places. Not because it is particularly sad. But because sometimes when a story is true and sweet and perfectly shaped, it puts its hand around my heart.
This book is everything I love about Victorian faerie tales without all the tedious b*llsh*t.
This is the best book I've read all year. And I read a *lot* of books.
I look forward to reading this book to my little boy. And that, ultimately, is the best thing I can say about a book.
So yeah. Read it. Read it ten times.
Pat Rothfuss once again, this time on The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman
(I swear I didn't plan this. Pat just keeps popping up, reviewing my favorite books and doing it really well, too)
Sitting down to write a review of this book, I don't quite know where to start.
I was going to quote a passage that I particularly loved. But no good can come of that. Once I opened that door, where would I stop quoting?
So let me say this. I genuinely loved this book. I look forward to reading it again. I will buy copies for my family as gifts. I will listen to the audio and lament my own lack of narrative skill. I will gush about it to strangers.
In short, it is a Neil Gaiman novel.
There is truth here, and beauty, and joy, and a sad, sweet melancholy that moves through my chest like distant thunder.
I realize that what I am writing here is not really a review in any conventional sense. It is a paen. A panegyric. It is the textual equivalent of a huge, happy, gormless grin.
And you know what? I'm fine with that. Let the professionals write their reviews. Let them get all jargony about it. Let them try to pin this book to the page, not realizing that a pinned butterfly holds no delight. A pinned butterfly is nothing like a butterfly at all.
I make no claims to impartiality in regard to Gaiman's work. Sandman changed how I thought about stories. Neverwhere was a talisman for me. Stardust is a golden bell hung in my heart. And American Gods taught me that there was a *name* for the sort of book I was struggling to write. It was a picaresque.
So if you're looking for impartiality, this is not the review for you. Look elsewhere.
Me? I will enjoy The Ocean at the End of the Lane without dissection. It made me happy. It made me feel less alone. It made me love Neil Gaiman a little more than I already did, and that's something I didn't think was possible.
Do I hope to someday write a book like this? No. I never could. He's done something odd and strange and lovely here. I couldn't hope to replicate it.
Instead, this is what I hope.
In the future, when Joss Whedon and I are best friends and hanging out together in my tree fort, I hope Neil Gaiman comes over too. Because then the three of us will all play Settlers of Catan together. And I will win, because I'm really great at Settlers of Catan. But I will also be very gracious about it, and apologize for putting the bandit on Gaiman's wheat twice in a row.
Then we will make smores, and I will toast a marshmallow with such deftness and perfection that they will be amazed and realize I am kinda cool. Then we will talk about Battlestar Galactica, and which Doctor is our favorite, and we will tell ghost stories late into the night.
God I'm tired. I should really go to sleep. I have no idea what I'm saying anymore.
I hope I don't regret this in the morning.
I was going to quote a passage that I particularly loved. But no good can come of that. Once I opened that door, where would I stop quoting?
So let me say this. I genuinely loved this book. I look forward to reading it again. I will buy copies for my family as gifts. I will listen to the audio and lament my own lack of narrative skill. I will gush about it to strangers.
In short, it is a Neil Gaiman novel.
There is truth here, and beauty, and joy, and a sad, sweet melancholy that moves through my chest like distant thunder.
I realize that what I am writing here is not really a review in any conventional sense. It is a paen. A panegyric. It is the textual equivalent of a huge, happy, gormless grin.
And you know what? I'm fine with that. Let the professionals write their reviews. Let them get all jargony about it. Let them try to pin this book to the page, not realizing that a pinned butterfly holds no delight. A pinned butterfly is nothing like a butterfly at all.
I make no claims to impartiality in regard to Gaiman's work. Sandman changed how I thought about stories. Neverwhere was a talisman for me. Stardust is a golden bell hung in my heart. And American Gods taught me that there was a *name* for the sort of book I was struggling to write. It was a picaresque.
So if you're looking for impartiality, this is not the review for you. Look elsewhere.
Me? I will enjoy The Ocean at the End of the Lane without dissection. It made me happy. It made me feel less alone. It made me love Neil Gaiman a little more than I already did, and that's something I didn't think was possible.
Do I hope to someday write a book like this? No. I never could. He's done something odd and strange and lovely here. I couldn't hope to replicate it.
Instead, this is what I hope.
In the future, when Joss Whedon and I are best friends and hanging out together in my tree fort, I hope Neil Gaiman comes over too. Because then the three of us will all play Settlers of Catan together. And I will win, because I'm really great at Settlers of Catan. But I will also be very gracious about it, and apologize for putting the bandit on Gaiman's wheat twice in a row.
Then we will make smores, and I will toast a marshmallow with such deftness and perfection that they will be amazed and realize I am kinda cool. Then we will talk about Battlestar Galactica, and which Doctor is our favorite, and we will tell ghost stories late into the night.
God I'm tired. I should really go to sleep. I have no idea what I'm saying anymore.
I hope I don't regret this in the morning.
Nataliya's (blessedly not Pat) review of Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. Photos are in the original review, but could not copy over from Goodreads
The Middle Ages are a shady back alley of history. They are a juvenile delinquent to which all the 'proper' historical eras give the proverbial side-eye.
“Life expectancy in 1300 was thirty-eight years,” he had told her when she first said she wanted to go to the Middle Ages, “and you only lived that long if you survived cholera and smallpox and blood poisoning, and if you didn’t eat rotten meat or drink polluted water or get trampled by a horse. Or get burned at the stake for witchcraft.”
And yet, despite the filth, the ignorance, the ever-present dangers, the rats and the Plague - the dreaded Black Deaththat wiped out a third to a half of Europe - a young Oxford history student Kivrin Engle gets her way: to be sent to the Middle Ages for a few weeks of full-immersion research armed with nothing else but a voice recorder to create her own version of the Domesday Book, an account of what it was to live in those times.
“She’s seven hundred years from home, Dunworthy thought, in a century that didn’t value women enough to even list their names when they died.”
Nothing could go wrong on this carefully planned time travel, of course - well, except for nothing going as expected: the sudden severe illness, the incomprehensible language that apparently was very different from what we thought Middle English was supposed to be like, the inability to find the place from which she is supposed to be transported back into the present. Oh, and a slight mistake that happened during her time travel - the mistake Kivrin is unaware of, the one that resulted in her arriving not in the relatively boring 1320, but in a slightly more eventful 1348, the year the Black Death made in appearance in England. “People who have the plague don’t wonder if they have it. They’re too busy dying.”
“Nothing, she thought. There’s nothing you can do. It swept through village after village, killing whole families, whole towns. One third to one half of Europe.”
----------
Despite what textbooks have you believe, history is not only about the columns of dates, the battles, the pivotal events, and the decisions made by those in power. History is about people, and even though everything around them may change over hundreds of years, people remain the same in their essential humanity.
“They’ve all died, she thought, and couldn’t make herself believe it. They’ve all been dead over seven hundred years.”
And that's how Doomsday Book packs such a powerful emotional punch with the sci-fi time travel story turned historical observation turned historical tragedy. Because Connie Willis makes you, the reader, slowly inhabit the world she imagines and come to care about the people she creates. To me, the bunch of characters in the story of the Middle Ages slowly became people, with realistic flaws and strengths, with motivations and desires that are colored by the gap of seven hundred years and yet so relatable in their humanity, and with lives unfolding along their own trajectories until an unstoppable force of nature rolls over them, leading to a tragedy grief-stricken Kivrin can best compare to "The slaughter of the innocents.”Through the strength of Willis' writing, they come to life, reflecting history the way it unfolds - through the stories of people who live that history, strands blending together to create a broad tapestry.
“Kneeling on St. Mary’s stone floor she had envisioned the candles and the cold, but not Lady Imeyne, waiting for Roche to make a mistake in the mass, not Eliwys or Gawyn or Rosemund. Not Father Roche, with his cutthroat’s face and worn-out hose.
She could never in a hundred years, in seven hundred and thirty-four years, have imagined Agnes, with her puppy and her naughty tantrums, and her infected knee.
I’m glad I came, she thought. In spite of everything.”
The trivial concerns, the petty squabbles, the bloated righteous selfishness - all of this disappears once the horror strikes, and it's the last third of the book that becomes so powerful as we through the eyes of Kivrin see the tragedy that cannot be stopped, see the people who rise above the everyday pettiness and become heroes when necessity calls.
And as Kivrin first almost mantra-like hopefully and the with the tired and angry resentment recalls the percentages that perished in the Black Death onslaught, the realization hits - it does not matter whether everyone died or some survived because they all, every single one, the brave and the weak and the innocent and the scheming and the petty and the evil and the stupid and the saint-like - they all mattered, all of them, every single one, "frightened and brave and irreplaceable".
“I wanted to come, and if I hadn’t, they would have been all alone, and nobody would have ever known how frightened and brave and irreplaceable they were.”
This bell, as we all know, "tolls for you" - tolls for all of us.
----------------
And yet I know this book was not nearly perfect, despite my sincere love for it. I see where those who found this book unpalatable come from. There is a reason why, after devouring this book twice in a month, I reread it again - but only half this time, skipping all the modern day chapters and instead choosing to remain in the Middle Ages with Kivrin. Because yes, the present-day parts have flaws that stand out like a sore thumb. The endless scrambling around to get a hold of someone just to figure out that the landlines are not working properly. The characters inserted for little but comic relief. The seriously stretched parallels to the things Kivrin experiences in the Middle Ages. The most annoying child character since that kid in the second Indiana Jones film (Colin, you make me go into a near-murderous rage every time your 'necrotic' whine appears on page!).
“Most of it was terrible,” she said softly, “but there were some wonderful things.”
But all this - at least for me - is so easily overshadowed by the magic the Middle Ages sections hold. And all this, as I discovered, is so easy to just flip through and ignore while searching for the next Kivrin section. And so to me the flaws are there, but not quite there, and I choose to skim them without hesitation.
Because falling in love with a book is no different than falling in love with a person. You don't stop seeing the flaws; it's just that the connection you feel is stronger than any flaws can ever be.
“I got it all on the corder,” she said. “Everything that happened.”
Like John Clyn, he thought, looking at her ragged hair, her dirty face. A true historian, writing in the empty church, surrounded by graves. I, seeing so many evils, have put into writing all the things that I have witnessed. Lest things which should be remembered perish with time.
Kivrin turned her palms up and looked at her wrists in the twilight. “Father Roche and Agnes and Rosemund and all of them,” she said. “I got it all down.”
“Life expectancy in 1300 was thirty-eight years,” he had told her when she first said she wanted to go to the Middle Ages, “and you only lived that long if you survived cholera and smallpox and blood poisoning, and if you didn’t eat rotten meat or drink polluted water or get trampled by a horse. Or get burned at the stake for witchcraft.”
And yet, despite the filth, the ignorance, the ever-present dangers, the rats and the Plague - the dreaded Black Deaththat wiped out a third to a half of Europe - a young Oxford history student Kivrin Engle gets her way: to be sent to the Middle Ages for a few weeks of full-immersion research armed with nothing else but a voice recorder to create her own version of the Domesday Book, an account of what it was to live in those times.
“She’s seven hundred years from home, Dunworthy thought, in a century that didn’t value women enough to even list their names when they died.”
Nothing could go wrong on this carefully planned time travel, of course - well, except for nothing going as expected: the sudden severe illness, the incomprehensible language that apparently was very different from what we thought Middle English was supposed to be like, the inability to find the place from which she is supposed to be transported back into the present. Oh, and a slight mistake that happened during her time travel - the mistake Kivrin is unaware of, the one that resulted in her arriving not in the relatively boring 1320, but in a slightly more eventful 1348, the year the Black Death made in appearance in England. “People who have the plague don’t wonder if they have it. They’re too busy dying.”
“Nothing, she thought. There’s nothing you can do. It swept through village after village, killing whole families, whole towns. One third to one half of Europe.”
----------
Despite what textbooks have you believe, history is not only about the columns of dates, the battles, the pivotal events, and the decisions made by those in power. History is about people, and even though everything around them may change over hundreds of years, people remain the same in their essential humanity.
“They’ve all died, she thought, and couldn’t make herself believe it. They’ve all been dead over seven hundred years.”
And that's how Doomsday Book packs such a powerful emotional punch with the sci-fi time travel story turned historical observation turned historical tragedy. Because Connie Willis makes you, the reader, slowly inhabit the world she imagines and come to care about the people she creates. To me, the bunch of characters in the story of the Middle Ages slowly became people, with realistic flaws and strengths, with motivations and desires that are colored by the gap of seven hundred years and yet so relatable in their humanity, and with lives unfolding along their own trajectories until an unstoppable force of nature rolls over them, leading to a tragedy grief-stricken Kivrin can best compare to "The slaughter of the innocents.”Through the strength of Willis' writing, they come to life, reflecting history the way it unfolds - through the stories of people who live that history, strands blending together to create a broad tapestry.
“Kneeling on St. Mary’s stone floor she had envisioned the candles and the cold, but not Lady Imeyne, waiting for Roche to make a mistake in the mass, not Eliwys or Gawyn or Rosemund. Not Father Roche, with his cutthroat’s face and worn-out hose.
She could never in a hundred years, in seven hundred and thirty-four years, have imagined Agnes, with her puppy and her naughty tantrums, and her infected knee.
I’m glad I came, she thought. In spite of everything.”
The trivial concerns, the petty squabbles, the bloated righteous selfishness - all of this disappears once the horror strikes, and it's the last third of the book that becomes so powerful as we through the eyes of Kivrin see the tragedy that cannot be stopped, see the people who rise above the everyday pettiness and become heroes when necessity calls.
And as Kivrin first almost mantra-like hopefully and the with the tired and angry resentment recalls the percentages that perished in the Black Death onslaught, the realization hits - it does not matter whether everyone died or some survived because they all, every single one, the brave and the weak and the innocent and the scheming and the petty and the evil and the stupid and the saint-like - they all mattered, all of them, every single one, "frightened and brave and irreplaceable".
“I wanted to come, and if I hadn’t, they would have been all alone, and nobody would have ever known how frightened and brave and irreplaceable they were.”
This bell, as we all know, "tolls for you" - tolls for all of us.
----------------
And yet I know this book was not nearly perfect, despite my sincere love for it. I see where those who found this book unpalatable come from. There is a reason why, after devouring this book twice in a month, I reread it again - but only half this time, skipping all the modern day chapters and instead choosing to remain in the Middle Ages with Kivrin. Because yes, the present-day parts have flaws that stand out like a sore thumb. The endless scrambling around to get a hold of someone just to figure out that the landlines are not working properly. The characters inserted for little but comic relief. The seriously stretched parallels to the things Kivrin experiences in the Middle Ages. The most annoying child character since that kid in the second Indiana Jones film (Colin, you make me go into a near-murderous rage every time your 'necrotic' whine appears on page!).
“Most of it was terrible,” she said softly, “but there were some wonderful things.”
But all this - at least for me - is so easily overshadowed by the magic the Middle Ages sections hold. And all this, as I discovered, is so easy to just flip through and ignore while searching for the next Kivrin section. And so to me the flaws are there, but not quite there, and I choose to skim them without hesitation.
Because falling in love with a book is no different than falling in love with a person. You don't stop seeing the flaws; it's just that the connection you feel is stronger than any flaws can ever be.
“I got it all on the corder,” she said. “Everything that happened.”
Like John Clyn, he thought, looking at her ragged hair, her dirty face. A true historian, writing in the empty church, surrounded by graves. I, seeing so many evils, have put into writing all the things that I have witnessed. Lest things which should be remembered perish with time.
Kivrin turned her palms up and looked at her wrists in the twilight. “Father Roche and Agnes and Rosemund and all of them,” she said. “I got it all down.”
Freaking Pat Rothfuss again, reviewing Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand, with all the style and eloquence that he uses for his own freaking books. (More language near the end, partially censored because Pat has the mouth of a sailor as well as that of a poet)
I read this book in 1994, and it changed the way I thought about stories.
Up until that point in my life, the vast majority of the books I'd read were fantasy and science fiction. Many of them were good books. Many, in retrospect, were not.
Then I read Cyrano De Bergerac. For the first half of the play I was amazed at the character, I was stunned by the language. I was utterly captivated by the story.
The second half of the book broke my heart. Then it broke my heart again. I cried for hours. I decided if I ever wrote a fantasy novel, I wanted it to be as good as this. I wanted my characters to be as good as this.
A couple months later, I started writing The Name of the Wind.
Over the years, I've read many translations of the original and seen many different movies and stage productions. In my opinion, the Brian Hooker translation is the best of these, head and shoulders above the rest.
The problem is this, the play was originally written in French, which is a relatively pure language, linguistically speaking. Because of the way it's structured, French rhymes very naturally.
English, on the other hand, is a total mutt of a language. It's as pure as a rabid dog. We're linguistically Germanic at our roots, but that's like saying a terrier used to be a wolf. Modern English is a rich, delicious gumbo full of Latin, Old Norse, French... and well... pretty much whatever we found laying around the kitchen that we wanted to throw into the pot.
(BTW, what you see up in the previous paragraph is the very definition of a mixed metaphor. Just so you know....)
Modern English doesn't rhyme naturally. You really have to stretch to fit it into into couplets. And unless this is done *masterfully* what you're doing ends up sounding arty and pretentious, or like Dr. Seuss to the English speaking ear. And those are best-case scenarios.
Brian Hooker was a proper poet, and he realized that the rhyme was secondary. He knew the most important thing was that Cyrano speak with eloquence, wit, and beauty in his language. So that's what he focuses on. There's a little rhyming, but just a little. Just when it works.
The result is lovely, and at no point do you ever feel like you're reading a kid's book or an Elizabethan sonnet. Cyrano sounds like a f**king badass.
So yeah. It's the best. If you're going to read one piece of drama before you die, read this.
Up until that point in my life, the vast majority of the books I'd read were fantasy and science fiction. Many of them were good books. Many, in retrospect, were not.
Then I read Cyrano De Bergerac. For the first half of the play I was amazed at the character, I was stunned by the language. I was utterly captivated by the story.
The second half of the book broke my heart. Then it broke my heart again. I cried for hours. I decided if I ever wrote a fantasy novel, I wanted it to be as good as this. I wanted my characters to be as good as this.
A couple months later, I started writing The Name of the Wind.
Over the years, I've read many translations of the original and seen many different movies and stage productions. In my opinion, the Brian Hooker translation is the best of these, head and shoulders above the rest.
The problem is this, the play was originally written in French, which is a relatively pure language, linguistically speaking. Because of the way it's structured, French rhymes very naturally.
English, on the other hand, is a total mutt of a language. It's as pure as a rabid dog. We're linguistically Germanic at our roots, but that's like saying a terrier used to be a wolf. Modern English is a rich, delicious gumbo full of Latin, Old Norse, French... and well... pretty much whatever we found laying around the kitchen that we wanted to throw into the pot.
(BTW, what you see up in the previous paragraph is the very definition of a mixed metaphor. Just so you know....)
Modern English doesn't rhyme naturally. You really have to stretch to fit it into into couplets. And unless this is done *masterfully* what you're doing ends up sounding arty and pretentious, or like Dr. Seuss to the English speaking ear. And those are best-case scenarios.
Brian Hooker was a proper poet, and he realized that the rhyme was secondary. He knew the most important thing was that Cyrano speak with eloquence, wit, and beauty in his language. So that's what he focuses on. There's a little rhyming, but just a little. Just when it works.
The result is lovely, and at no point do you ever feel like you're reading a kid's book or an Elizabethan sonnet. Cyrano sounds like a f**king badass.
So yeah. It's the best. If you're going to read one piece of drama before you die, read this.