Overtime Blues

[sdelmonte]

So here I am at work and am likely to be here until 10. Sigh.

See, there's a program tonight, a pretty cool one as it will include a brief conversation between Maurice Sendak and Tony Kushner regarding their collaboration on the book and opera Brundibar. (The rest of the program is an inc-ncert performance of the opera.) It's the kind of program that requires we hire a photographer and get photos for our publications.

Problem is, my boss can't work this since she has a cold and the person in teh department who would fill in is on vacation. So here I stay, not needed in the auditorium till 7:15.

So no Veronica Mars tonight. Not much of anything but staying late, and hoping that the combination of Kushner - who loves The Jewish Museum and is always interesting - and Sendak - who is very funny in person - is worth sitting through a rather tepid musical piece.

But that means I have time to tell you that...

- I read Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell and can only offer a mild recommendation. It's clever and fairly original, but it never seems to add up to an entire story, and the title characters are just not that interesting or likeable to me.

- I finally finished The Wee Free Men, Pterry's second YA novel. It took me two months, which is unheard of for me. But it never grabbed me. I like Tiffany Aching very much, but the Nac Mac Feegle get a little dull after a while, and the plot fails to come together in a way that hooked me. Never mind that it's too much like the plot in Lords and Ladies. The most interesting thing about WFM is that Tiffany is in some ways the second coming of Esk Smith, the (slightly more complex witch-wizard combo) one-off heroine of Equal Rites. I wonder if Pterry always wanted to revisit the idea of a child witch, and felt that to go back to Esk would have been a mistake, given how mucn in that book is not consistent with current canon. Tiffany is likeable but tough, engaging and smart, and worthy of a series that will hopefully improve.

Have a good one, folks!

Comments

[doeeyedbunny.livejournal.com]

Ooh, wish I'd known about it before now. I might have come to see Sendak.
Did you know Columbia gave him an honorary degree the year I graduated? He looked so cute sitting next to Lauren Bacall on the podium.

[mneme]

I suspect you'll enjoy Hat Full of Sky...which is, IMO, much better than Wee Free Men (which I nevertheless rather liked).

OTOH, I liked Strange and Norrel quite a bit too (though not as much as Glen Cook's _The Wizard Knight_.

[innerbrat]

See, this is why Milli!Esk and Milli!Tiffany have to meet. I think they have a lot in common.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

The story of Strange and Norell is the story of how magic returns to England, and of what it means that there is magic in the world. I liked the book a great deal, but it is not flawless. The Greysteel section in particular could have been done better, IMAO, including by cutting the Greysteels and assigning their function to others.