Saturday, September 1, 2007

The Thirteenth Tale


I started out loving this book and fully expected to add it to my favorites when done. However, it sort of lost its luster somewhere along the way. Still, it was a very good book and does certainly make the cut (so far) as one of the best books I've read this year.

I can't really find the words to say what I thought of this book. It drew me in with its talk of books at the beginning, but overall it was the story of Angelfield that was so haunting.

I have two quotes that I marked, which I'll share.

"Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes -- characters even -- caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you."

and from the same page...I know this feeling so well. I have this very distinct memory of sitting in chemistry class in high school and being called on by the teacher while I was in another world. This describes that feeling perfectly.

"I jerked out of my reverie and fumbled for an answer. Had I been listening? At that moment I couldn't have told her what she had been saying, though I'm sure that somewhere in my mind there was a place where it was all recorded. But at that point when she jerked me out of myself, I was in a kind of no-man's-land, a place between places. The mind plays all kinds of tricks, gets up to all kinds of things while we ourselves are slumbering in a white zone that looks for all the world like inattention to the onlooker."

Other reviews can be found here:
Bookin' It
Reading Adventures

1 comment:

alisonwonderland said...

i'm going to read this one for R.I.P. II. i just picked it up at the library.