The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf should continue to update as normal.  If I miss a post, it'll be because of the new holiday blog I'm co-writing with my husband! http://www.mainliningchristmas.com/ Come visit!

Outlander Diana Gabaldon, 2004 This was a Kindle freebie, and the longest book I've read on my Kindle yet. Premise: Claire Randall is visiting Scotland with her husband in 1945 when she tumbles through a time-portal to 1743. Unable to return home, she falls hard for Jamie, a fugitive Scotsman.  This book felt uncomfortably caught between genres. The time travel aspect was somewhat clumsily added to the romantic plotline, and so I was left unsure how much fantasy is possible in that world. Some things, like time travel and possibly the Loch Ness Monster, are real, but witches are an obvious myth? Really? It just feels like it wasn't completely thought through. Claire bugged me as a heroine at times, because she was sometimes clever, and sometimes PAINFULLY dense and naive. Maybe I'm just used to YA style world-travel, but she comes from the 40's, after the start of science fiction, after the publication of The Time Machine and Princess of Mars . If I fell ...

This is the Book Blogger Hop, hosted at crazy-for-books.com This week's question for discussion: "What is your favorite book cover?" I have to say, I am a sucker for covers with pictures of the characters, rather than abstract images.  When I was young, I took all my favorite ones to the color copy place, got them copied and enlarged, and decorated my bedroom with book covers.  Mostly of Dragonlance Books.  A few Redwall and Mercedes Lackey here and there too.  One of the best of those was The History of Dragonlance, which features this painting on the cover: On the other hand, our hardcover of Lord of the Rings is lovely. It's this edition: The dust jackets have beautiful Alan Lee paintings, while the cover itself is a lovely dark fabric with the Eye of Sauron inlaid in foil. Of course, I'm also proud of the book covers that I worked on, although neither depict characters: See Facsimile and For Love of Children on Amazon.  (Hint, ...

With Tangled opening, I thought it would be a good time to touch on fairy tales again, this time to talk about interpretations thereof. One of the complaints I've always heard about Disney flicks is that they 'tone down' or 'sanitize' the old stories. While I understand where the idea is coming from, sometimes I want to ask, tone down compared to what? Fairy tales and folk tales have been altered, changed, made more or less sexual, more or less violent, etc. throughout time. The people who finally collected and wrote down the stories had their own agendas and made their own changes.  Tales change from region to region. There is no true “original” version, just the oldest we have extant. I'm not saying I always approve of Disney's editorial decisions, just that you can't fully justify the argument that the writers are being “untrue” to the “original” story. Well, not when the story is a fairy tale.  When it's a history, okay.  Then I comple...

Favorite Book this Week: Batman Beyond #6 First three books new in stores on 11/24, Avengers was new on 11/10. Action Comics #894 (1st story) Writer Paul Cornell, Artist Pete Woods (2nd story) Writer Nick Spencer, Pencils by RB Silva The first story, Vandal Savage's obsession with Luthor, was entertaining and clever, but I think I needed some more background in what's been going on in DCU proper to fully understand.  I kinda skipped that whole Black Lantern thing.  Of course, I bought the issue to get the rest of the story with Jimmy Olsen and the partying aliens.  It didn't disappoint; lots of fun was had by me.  (I am including this, my favorite, panel for my super-knitting friends.) Batman Beyond #6 Writer: Adam Beechen, Pencils: Ryan Benjamin Inker: John Stanisci Art continues to be up and down, (faces could use a little less detail in some shots, actually) but the story really came together for the last issue of this miniseries.  A litt...

Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle Peter S. Beagle, 2010 Premise: Collection of short fantasy works by Peter S. Beagle. Mirror Kingdoms is a collection of short works, but not quite a book of short stories. Many are a little long for that term, and I find that I am not properly appreciative if I think of them as short stories. Most are more like modern fairy tales than anything else. The writing style is loose and dreamy in some, tight and present in others. I must admit, I didn't feel in the mood to read a whole book of them this week, though that's a fault in me, not in the writing. I'm glad I stuck with it, though, as the stories saved for late in the book are phenomenal. Let's get the main thing out of the way first: what did I think of "Two Hearts", the "coda" to The Last Unicorn ? Mixed, honestly. The tone is fine, the voice is great, but I'm just not sure of the point, either of the story itself or the reason fo...

Kiss for a Killer G. G. Fickling, 1960 I picked up this book because: 1) It was $1.00 2) Awesome cover art 3) Back cover copy claimed: “The Ficklings are widely credited with creating American fiction's first female detective” Premise: Honey West is a private investigator, and like most, she has a talent for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.  This time, however, her sometime flame Rip Spensor is messily dead, and Honey heads the list of suspects.  The rest of the list includes a Italian movie starlet, a reporter, and the leaders of a nudist cult. I'm a fan of classic noir and pulp, but I haven't read any in a while, and most of what I've read was from the 30's and 40's, not the 60's.  In short, I had to readjust my brain to get into this, but then I flew through it.  It's really short. I was disappointed with this book.  It starts strong, and has some good parts, some clever turns of phrase, but it's just not great.  I like ...