(no subject)
Mar. 29th, 2008 04:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
felis_ultharusThings have been quiet. I've been slowly going over my novel, excising this, re-writing that in preparation for the big re-write when I get feedback.
I've also been doing a fair bit of research for the website, which has involved reading up on a number of fairly obscure political figures, such as British Radical Henry Du Pré Labouchère, and Canadian Prime Minister Sir John Sparrow David Thompson, who served two years before he died at lunch with Queen Victoria.
(For some reason, the ice cream shop around the corner from my house has a very random counterfeit bill on display, with Thompson's face on it.)
I also finished The Farthest Shore -- the last of the original Earthsea trilogy. It's gorgeous -- LeGuin writes the best fantasy I've ever read in English. She gets that sense of beautiful longing that Tolkien is always trying for.
There was a brief kerfuffle awhile back when she said that she didn't think J.K. Rowling was that good a writer. I like Rowling a lot, but it is clear that LeGuin is the better of the two -- she manages to pull off the same themes way back in 1972 that Rowling explores in the Potter series with much better grace and poetry and psychological realism, and does it in 600 rather than 3000+ pages.
'Course, I'm biased toward LeGuin because her gay character wanders in on page six of her third book, where he's announced in plain English. No subtext, no interviews after the book was written -- right there, a newly-introduced character falls in love with another man.
Funny how she was able to do that without the controversy Dumbledore aroused. Was it because fantasy novels weren't yet on the mainstream radar, or because the religious right was not as well-organized back in the pre-Reagan days?
I've also been doing a fair bit of research for the website, which has involved reading up on a number of fairly obscure political figures, such as British Radical Henry Du Pré Labouchère, and Canadian Prime Minister Sir John Sparrow David Thompson, who served two years before he died at lunch with Queen Victoria.
(For some reason, the ice cream shop around the corner from my house has a very random counterfeit bill on display, with Thompson's face on it.)
I also finished The Farthest Shore -- the last of the original Earthsea trilogy. It's gorgeous -- LeGuin writes the best fantasy I've ever read in English. She gets that sense of beautiful longing that Tolkien is always trying for.
There was a brief kerfuffle awhile back when she said that she didn't think J.K. Rowling was that good a writer. I like Rowling a lot, but it is clear that LeGuin is the better of the two -- she manages to pull off the same themes way back in 1972 that Rowling explores in the Potter series with much better grace and poetry and psychological realism, and does it in 600 rather than 3000+ pages.
'Course, I'm biased toward LeGuin because her gay character wanders in on page six of her third book, where he's announced in plain English. No subtext, no interviews after the book was written -- right there, a newly-introduced character falls in love with another man.
Funny how she was able to do that without the controversy Dumbledore aroused. Was it because fantasy novels weren't yet on the mainstream radar, or because the religious right was not as well-organized back in the pre-Reagan days?