Books!

Yep, these days you'll rarely see a woman in her 50's with grey hair. Frumpiness is being expelled.

I think its more than grey hair. Miranda on SATC had grey hair but she didn't look like a granny. The Golden Girls did look ilke old grannies. I think people actually age slower these days, maybe its diet, or maybe its a ton of cosmetic surgery. If you look at old Hollywood stars like Fred Astaire, he looked ancient but he was probably quite young when he was dancing around.

I know that my childhood vision of age I am is quite different from how I look; but lack of sleep or a few drinks and my face sags into the expected shape.

{{ Ive opted for growing a huge red beard that way I cant see most of my face, and nor does anyone else have to suffer it. Only problem is longer I have it more difficult will be if I ever have to shave it off, as the face underneath I suspect will be a lot older than the one I remember before the beard. Like when you havent seen someone for years and then you se them again and they look really old, you dont tend to notice when its incrimental. So I think my beard is here to my grave.}}

I can't grow a beard because it comes in with splotches of grey instead of salt and pepper. The hair on my head hasn't gone grey, though I was sitting with my ex in a bar watching an old man flirt with the young adorable bartender and noted that I can't do that without being creepy until I turn grey and harmless. She glanced at me and nonchalantly announced I have some grey hair. I haven't noticed it yet against my reddish blonde, and my mind only let me see it once she pointed it out. Could use a nice drowning, that one.

Being grey is ok for men. Silver Fox is sexy.

But the reason I was here was to ask out of the blue if anyone has read the Swordspoint series by Ellen Kushner?

I haven't read any of the books in while, but discussions of fantasy brought it back to my mind, because the books sort of bend the definition of fantasy.  Everyone assumes it's fantasy because it's a clearly European Renaissance setting, yet a totally made up world.  But there's no magic, at least until a touch of it appears in the third book.

The first book is so well written that when you discover it's actually a droll homosexual romance it doesn't throw you off at all.  In fact you realize that part of the fantasy element is the idea that nearly all characters have fluid sexuality in a renaissance setting and nobody bats an eye.  It's all delightfully spicy.  Like Game of Thrones it has strong females without a hint of messaging, and in that is the message of course.  Kushner blithely ignores reality to construct her fantasy society where low born and high born rub up against each other with crusty friction and use each other to satisfy their perverse etiquette of duelling (hence the swords).

The characters are fascinating, and once I got past the annoying mannerisms of the high class society (essential to the plot) it becomes impossible to put down.

I can only strongly recommend the first two books (Swordspoint and the Privilege of the Sword), since others were diluted by collaboration with other authors. What you want is pure Kushner; anyone else playing in her world feels contrived.

My new Harry Potter book arrived today.

Still not sure if I will read them before I have the full set... can't be waiting after I get through the last one I have and can't jump to a different version!!

Why didn't you just order them all at once?

You have read them before, right? If not, waiting until you have them all is a good move, they're a fast read.

These are special illustrated editions. The Order of the Phoenix only recently released so now have to wait for Half blood Prince and Hallows to be illustrated and released.

I haven't read any of them before! Only seen films.

They are fun. I won't say films or books are better because she's not a great writer, just an imaginative and playful writer. It's the scenarios that are memorable rather than the sentences used to portray them. You won't be going back to reread favorite passages, though you may revisit entire chapters.

I think she is an excellent writer, otherwise she wouldn't have been able to enchant millions of kids. She may or may not be technically brilliant, but she has a skill that you cant buy, that is storytelling and you enter her magical world and never forget it. I envy you Lance for having all that world to discover for the first time.

{{ Well that Agatha Christie Tuppence book with the detective agency- first one I just cant finish, got 3/4 through it and was a slog almost every single page. The structure is flimsy, the excuse for it happening weak, and the individual cases that make up each chapter are either dull, pointless or both.

But the thing that finally made me throw the book down in disgust was the character of Tuppence. I simply cant stand her. Im not sure what Christie was going for exactly but I found her cruel in a worrying sort of way. She treats her husband appalingly, they tease each other, at least I think thts the idea but she always goes that one step further and twists the knife unnecessarily.
For example there is a scene where he jokes for going undercover he should have a pretty young thing on his arm, and she replies that maybe she should get a nice young man, to which he laughs and then she adds that she would know of course the girl was just a fancy at best, but he could never be sure as she is a woman, if she had real feelings for her young man or not.
And she does this all the time, goes that step to far, moving banter into something more akin to emotional abuse, if the roles were reversed you wouldnt tolerate it.

So I couldnt take anymore of it. So Ive moved onto one thats could be interesting. I didnt realise sh ehad written pure historiicals, this one is set in ancient Egypt. }}

Check the date - how close was it to when her marriage fell apart?

{{ Good call Halfy, just checked, was published 1929, the year after her divorce. Well that explains it, still doesnt make it any more palatble to read or Tuppence any less a dislikeable character sadly.}}

I didn't like Tuppence either. I seem to remember her as being falsely chipper and gay in that stagey bad play kind of way. And brittle and not very pleasant. Don't remember what he was like. I didn't like that book about ancient Egypt either. That was one book I put down after 3 pages it was so boring and weird. I guess these were her experiments in writing.

Hahaha, one year after her divorce.
I haven't read either of those books myself.

I just finished The Longest Winter, about the Korean war. It became a little dry when it got deep into American politics, but otherwise it was an excellent read.

I had expected The Three Musketeers to be a little dull or dated, but I'm some thirty-odd pages in and it's delightful. The bit where the brawl in the street leaves the Cardinal's men defeated and retreating into their hotel, and the Musketeers outside talk big about setting fire to the building! ...But settle for chucking some stones at the front door and then heading off to boast about their victory.

Good call. I have never read the 3 Musketeers. I might try the Man in the Iron mask first.

edit. meant The Count of Monte Cristo.

just reading a Wodehouse omnibus, and the first book, 'Thank You, Jeeves', is actually chock full of the N word. So maybe a slight tweak might be in order there. Just don't approve of the wholesale censoring of old books. But how on earth could they translate Jeeves and Wooster into foreign languages, its so quintessentially English I think it would be almost impossible. How do you translate pip pip! or tally ho old bean?

{{ Yeah I am sure it must lose something in translation, dont see how it couldnt given the way Wodehouse plays with words. }}

Forest Shepherd wrote:
I had expected The Three Musketeers to be a little dull or dated, but I'm some thirty-odd pages in and it's delightful. The bit where the brawl in the street leaves the Cardinal's men defeated and retreating into their hotel, and the Musketeers outside talk big about setting fire to the building! ...But settle for chucking some stones at the front door and then heading off to boast about their victory.

The Three Musketeers will always feel fresh, though there's a bit of darkness at the end that doesn't play well and I think the book would be far better without it. Every film I've seen has rightly skirted it. You'll know it when you read it.

I'm not sure I know of any other book from that period which remains such a cracking good read. Dickens comes close, though a bit later. Writers a generation later (HG Wells, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson) also feel remarkably fresh, but Dumas is startling given when he was writing.

Almost finished reading James Clavell's Shogun, it's the first historical fiction book I've really read (not sure why I decided to start with one so long! ) and although I can't say medival Japan was something that previously interested me a great deal I've found the book an absolutely incredible read so far.

Great characters (even if I still loose track of who is who at times), detailed plot and packed with lots of interesting historical references and details (I'm aware the book isn't entirely historically accurate), it's very long but paced extremely well, I can see why it was such a popular release when it was first released (though some of the depections of the Japanese have daterd the book somewhat). It's very different to the things I usally read (mostly fantasy/sci-fi/military history) but very glad I have, certainly plan to read the sequels (or more accurately, the further entries in the 'Asian Saga) eventually...once I clear my (ever increasing) To-be-read pile a bit...

Shogun is an amazing read, and I think it really woke up a lot of people to the complexity of Japanese history. Some of the images still haunt me, though all to do with torture and death unfortunately.

{ Same Halfy, Ive never read the novel but I saw the Tv adapation as a kid and even brought up on a diet of Doctor Who and Sapphire and Steel and the like I was not ready for people being boiled alive in oil and such. That stuck with me a very long time }}

Netflix has a series about the rise of the Shoguns (Age of Sumarai). When it comes to the brutality of clannish warfare Japan puts Europe to shame. The book was no exaggeration.