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kilroyPrint date: 2007 (20s: 1, 50s: 1, 60s: 2, 70s: 6, 80s: 6, 90s: 4, 00s: 12)
This is one of the books that reminds me of why I read in the first place. It got me, not just once but over and over again. The vividness of it, the obvious love in the writing, the clarity... just kept opening something that is usually closed in me. It was like reading good Bradbury when I was eleven years old. I was unprepared for my own response to the book, surprised at the joy and sadness and desire it provoked.
It would be easier for you to read it than it would be for me to explain it, really; and I intend to get as many of you as I can to read it. But let me try and explain anyway. Probably the very trickiest thing about writing is that the author has to reach out using only words to touch something in people that they've never met. It's the art of being intimate with strangers; no one knows what kind of person is going to pick up their book, they just have to toss it out there like a message in a bottle. Good stories have universal themes for precisely that reason, so that anyone can read the words and see a piece of themselves there.
Klages has staked out a corner of the world at the meeting of two ideas, bounded on one side by the desire we all have for life to be magic and on the other by the knowledge we all have when we're young that it is. The stories exist so that the characters can escape into lives that they already have and become people they already are. It's a world where the highest virtue is recognizing the power of simple things. It reminds me of documentaries about deserts-- everywhere, everywhere life.
They're stories that I can't really talk about without sliding towards poetry. It doesn't feel so much like reading a book as receiving a gift. There is beauty here; beauty that I've always known. And that I've missed terribly.
Verdict: Keep and lend to as many people as possible. (19.5/58 keepers)
Page count: 207 (11368 total)
Completed: 32 (16 female authors, 16 male authors)
Rejected: 26 (14 male authors, 12 female authors)
Next book due: Sat. 10/23
This is one of the books that reminds me of why I read in the first place. It got me, not just once but over and over again. The vividness of it, the obvious love in the writing, the clarity... just kept opening something that is usually closed in me. It was like reading good Bradbury when I was eleven years old. I was unprepared for my own response to the book, surprised at the joy and sadness and desire it provoked.
It would be easier for you to read it than it would be for me to explain it, really; and I intend to get as many of you as I can to read it. But let me try and explain anyway. Probably the very trickiest thing about writing is that the author has to reach out using only words to touch something in people that they've never met. It's the art of being intimate with strangers; no one knows what kind of person is going to pick up their book, they just have to toss it out there like a message in a bottle. Good stories have universal themes for precisely that reason, so that anyone can read the words and see a piece of themselves there.
Klages has staked out a corner of the world at the meeting of two ideas, bounded on one side by the desire we all have for life to be magic and on the other by the knowledge we all have when we're young that it is. The stories exist so that the characters can escape into lives that they already have and become people they already are. It's a world where the highest virtue is recognizing the power of simple things. It reminds me of documentaries about deserts-- everywhere, everywhere life.
They're stories that I can't really talk about without sliding towards poetry. It doesn't feel so much like reading a book as receiving a gift. There is beauty here; beauty that I've always known. And that I've missed terribly.
Verdict: Keep and lend to as many people as possible. (19.5/58 keepers)
Page count: 207 (11368 total)
Completed: 32 (16 female authors, 16 male authors)
Rejected: 26 (14 male authors, 12 female authors)
Next book due: Sat. 10/23