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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
I find DeLint's novels tedious, but his short stories are great urban fantasy. My one quibble: he has a bit too strong a crush on all things hippie and punk (anyone who's not hippie, punk, artsy or fantasist is probably gonna be a bad guy or at least problematic, and no hippie, punk, artsie or fantasist is going to be bad).
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I've long loved Charles de Lint's storytelling. It captures you to his way of seeing colours in the world that weren't there before. However, once you see them you cannot unsee them. I've read most of his books and whilst I liked some better than others, they are all still spellbinding pieces of literature that take you to places you haven't been before.
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The stories, especially in the beginning of the book show an author with a lot to learn about the craft of writing, but they've got the same soul as his later, more polished work. It's really interesting to contrast this collection with his fantastic novels like Someplace to be Flying and The Onion Girl.
Except for the story Bridges, these short stories were formulaic, a bit dated and dull. I keep getting recommendations from Goodreads and Amazon for Charles de Lint and thought I'd start with a book of short stories but based on this, I probably won't be reading anymore of him.
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
This is a collection of short stories set in Newford, a town with more than its share of mysterious residents and magical occurrences. Charles de Lint writes beautifully, and with a deep respect for the humanity in all.
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
mysterious
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
A long, long time ago, I read a fantasy short story collection called [b:My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales|7945295|My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me Forty New Fairy Tales|Gregory Maguire|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348752105l/7945295._SY75_.jpg|11460338] and was almost uniformly disappointed with the results. At some point, I distinctly remember worrying that I remembered the surname de Lint hanging around at least one other work on my TBR, but then life came along and the whole connection slipped my mind until I came round this section of my TBR again. I can't remember the specifics of what disappointed me with the de Lint story that I first encountered so long ago, but if it were anything like this, there are a few hypotheses I could generate: the endless manic pixie dream girl women, the banal attempts at coupling magic to your typical mildly white urban space, and the rise/fall/conflict/closure/characterization/dehumanization that powered each and every story and tended to be nothing more than a twist on the usual story that Fox News scares its audiences into kyriarchical compliance with. Now, this isn't the first time I've dealt with such things in the white male section of literature, and as I've said in reviews of similarly grounded books, if there was any sort of qualities that compensated for such drab disappointments, I'd stand the middle ground and argue either side. However, four-hundred pages later, I've gotten my fill, and unfortunately, I can see exactly where the praise and relative popularity must be coming from in this paranoid, self-absorbed, cishet WASP homeland of mine.
I remember back in the day imbibing the kind of histories and historical fiction that cultivated in me aspirations of writerdom in some vein, or indeed whatever could be squeezed on the side of my still ongoing engineering career path. At some point, I began to notice how often the writing was a second step after a trust fund, a wealthy beneficiary, a medical career, any number of things that provided the nest egg first and the creative initiative (or perhaps the sheer boredom) to write and the skills (aka the approved social habitus) necessary for achieving success, and after failing at a PhD in English and succeeding as a full time librarian, I have largely grounded (although there's time for that to change) my artistic inclinations in collection development and these reviews. The perspective of these stories is as if one never grew out of that magical assurance that the arts would reward those who truly deserved it with fame, or at least enough money to put food on the table. Such a blinkered perspective is not unforgiveable, but when the kind of self-esteem extends into pure egotism and isn't even balanced by anything but more than the most basic of prose or simplistic of characterization of triteness of plot, well. Those disgruntlements aren't so bad for being almost purely narratological, but the last is the last thing I need as a genderqueer librarian looking for a bit of escapism is just another box, and the fact that is so well rated makes me wonder how much reading, let alone living, these folks actually do.
It's been a long 2023 already, and with all these reports of extraordinary high levels of book banning during 2022, most of them singling out the work [b:Gender Queer: A Memoir|42837514|Gender Queer A Memoir|Maia Kobabe|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1553583580l/42837514._SX50_.jpg|66595691], I'm feeling especially less than charitable as a genderqueer librarian in my reading. I don't expect all books to successfully promote a course that truly saves the world, but if a work fearmongers about addiction and homelessness and settler state enforced poverty and then turns around and wants to talk about magical sources of hope only available to the truly worthy, I can't find it in me to care anymore. These days, my kind of magic involves much of what was violently drowned out by various hegemonies pushing for a certain kind of 'civilization' that a book like this loves to treat as the norm, and anything that falls short but still professes to be 'urban fantasy' is, well. That kind of attitude will easily win you a seat on the city council, but my supernatural lies deep in queer wells, long before there were more empty homes than there were homeless folks and health became a pay per meter, and anything that purports to be fantastical and wants to succeed in my book these days is going to have to keep up.
I remember back in the day imbibing the kind of histories and historical fiction that cultivated in me aspirations of writerdom in some vein, or indeed whatever could be squeezed on the side of my still ongoing engineering career path. At some point, I began to notice how often the writing was a second step after a trust fund, a wealthy beneficiary, a medical career, any number of things that provided the nest egg first and the creative initiative (or perhaps the sheer boredom) to write and the skills (aka the approved social habitus) necessary for achieving success, and after failing at a PhD in English and succeeding as a full time librarian, I have largely grounded (although there's time for that to change) my artistic inclinations in collection development and these reviews. The perspective of these stories is as if one never grew out of that magical assurance that the arts would reward those who truly deserved it with fame, or at least enough money to put food on the table. Such a blinkered perspective is not unforgiveable, but when the kind of self-esteem extends into pure egotism and isn't even balanced by anything but more than the most basic of prose or simplistic of characterization of triteness of plot, well. Those disgruntlements aren't so bad for being almost purely narratological, but the last is the last thing I need as a genderqueer librarian looking for a bit of escapism is just another box, and the fact that is so well rated makes me wonder how much reading, let alone living, these folks actually do.
It's been a long 2023 already, and with all these reports of extraordinary high levels of book banning during 2022, most of them singling out the work [b:Gender Queer: A Memoir|42837514|Gender Queer A Memoir|Maia Kobabe|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1553583580l/42837514._SX50_.jpg|66595691], I'm feeling especially less than charitable as a genderqueer librarian in my reading. I don't expect all books to successfully promote a course that truly saves the world, but if a work fearmongers about addiction and homelessness and settler state enforced poverty and then turns around and wants to talk about magical sources of hope only available to the truly worthy, I can't find it in me to care anymore. These days, my kind of magic involves much of what was violently drowned out by various hegemonies pushing for a certain kind of 'civilization' that a book like this loves to treat as the norm, and anything that falls short but still professes to be 'urban fantasy' is, well. That kind of attitude will easily win you a seat on the city council, but my supernatural lies deep in queer wells, long before there were more empty homes than there were homeless folks and health became a pay per meter, and anything that purports to be fantastical and wants to succeed in my book these days is going to have to keep up.