Mischief Managed

I sat and read an entire book this weekend which I haven't done for a while (since HBP came out actually). Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner - a melodrama of manners, as it's described on the cover. It was written in the late 80's and it's a fantasy/romance. The two main characters, Richard and Alec, are thoroughly amoral, messed up and not very nice people but I couldn't help but love them and I just couldn't put it down. Good stuff. The only little niggle I had is that the POV sometimes annoyingly shifts mid scene, but I got over it.

niannah wrote a lovely and bittersweet Sirius/Remus snippet for scarvesnhats (which I'm not reading nearly enough of) - All This Time. Ooooh - and another one from scarvesnhats which I really liked this week was Seven Years of Blanket Abuse, Marauder-Style by shaggydogstail. Very cute!

I'm up for reccing science fiction novels this month over on cracked_spines and I've started with Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks. I think I've just about decided what else I'm going to pimp but I keep changing my mind!

And just in case you missed it: the massive Sirius/Remus fic rec list that I posted yesterday.

ETA: And bloody hell, it's August already. How the hell did that happen?!

I feel all weird and restless. Rah.

I finished Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro  last night. What a strange book. I really liked it - one that you can't stop thinking about. It's all very dream-like and serene and seems very mundane until you realise what the book is about. It's kind of sci-fi but not really - a bit of alternate history if you like. If you're going to read it, try to do it without reading any reviews first that might spoil the story for you. I went into it knowing more than I should and it would probably have worked better had I learned things more slowly as the book went on. It really pulls you in and I just had to finish it before I went to bed last night.

I think I may go to bed now to read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell now as my mum has finally finished with it. God, I'm a dynamo of energy and excitement aren't I.

I'm currently reading Spartacus thanks to niannah's rec. It's a really good book and I picked up a really cheap used copy off amazon that was published in 1965. What's really entertaining though are the little adverts in the back for other books. One of my favourites is:

Special Friendships
Roger Peyrefitte
Young Georges de Sarre, son of a Marquis, at an expensive Catholic boarding school forms a 'special' friendship with a beautiful fellow-student, Alexis. This is the theme of the novel: on the one hand the hot-house atmosphere of boarding school life that tends to force such 'special', sensual - yet often curiously pure - friendships; on the other the unremitting war waged against them by master and priest. The result, as here, is sometimes tragic. 3/6

Unfortunately you can't buy it from amazon. I looked.

The best title award goes to: Many Slippery Errors. And there's also one about a reluctant 'friendship' between two seamen.

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In other news, I think I'm making a break-through with my Mal icon!