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Friday, February 1st, 2008
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8:22p - Reading for January '08
( Fiction for January )
In the Night Garden was the best book I read this month. I knew it was necessary for me after ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) coffeeandink posted about its sequel. It is amazing, filled with stories within gorgeous stories, with invented mythology, and characters who choose to be monsters. Now I am waiting for In the Cities of Coin and Spice.
( Non-fiction for January )
The best non-fiction book was The Norton Classic Fairy Tales, mostly because it gave you several different versions of various tales all next to each other, and it was really interesting to compare them. Maria Tatar writes an introduction for each type of story, then you get versions of the story from different cultures, including a modern-day retelling for most. At the end of it, you have a bunch of essays by various fairy tale scholars - some of which I enjoyed, others that irked me. I'm not very big on Freudian interpretations, see.
It amused me to see the way in which the stories changed - particularly Little Red Riding Hood. When you know the version where the woodchopper rescues them (The Grimms' version), people say, ah, but originally there was no rescue (Charles Perrault). But here we have 'The Story of Grandmother' - which is a folk version on which Perrault's was presumably based - in which the girl tricks the wolf, and rescues herself. Score!
And next to these, two modern retellings, in which Red Riding Hood is not conned by the wolf - 'she whips a pistol from her knickers', as Roald Dahl says (and you really should read that poem, and then this one).
A most worthwhile book!
( Manga for January )
Aside from the joy of more Nana, the most exciting manga for me was Eternal Sabbath. I liked the simplicity of the art, and the female scientest protagonist Mine, and how she related to Ryousuke, who is a genetically engineered being who can pretty much infiltrate himself into anything. Mine knows what he can do, and he knows she knows, but neither can do anything about it. I'm looking forward to reading more - and also pleased it's only eight volumes. I'm very bitter about all these series that run into the twenties.
( Comics for January )
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