Month: April 2011

Sunday Salon – Arthurian Legend(s)

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Morning everyone.

I’ve said it here before and will say it again — I love all things King Arthur.  Honestly, I have no idea why, I just do.  When I heard Showtime would be airing a series called Camelot, I was on it.  Friday night I talked my husband into watching it with me and I don’t know what to think of it.  The actress in the role of Morgan is great and King Lott is also fantastic but from what we learned from googling the internets while watching, Lott will only be in two episodes so bad news for me.  Merlin, well, they went with the political advisor version which I’m good with and I actually think it works better than the magic-man Merlin here anyway.  There is a fantasy element to the show which could have easily been ignored (Unless it’s all fantasy and you go in with full fantasy blazing, I think you should forget it.  All in or all out is the way I feel.) but they seem to be adding it grain by grain.  I don’t know if it adds anything to the story yet; hard to tell with only one episode.

Notice how I haven’t mentioned Arthur yet?  I don’t know if I like him.  Reading a lot of Arthurian legend based books, I have an ideal Arthur vision and to put it kindly, it’s not him.  Maybe things will change but for now I don’t know.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is this — when you read a book and have a set ideal of the characters, are you willing to edit them to fit a TV/movie version?

I’ll admit I don’t see a lot of movies but when I do, I can usually separate out the differences and move on.  A book is a book and a movie is a movie.  Different mediums, different stories.  For instance, The Lord of the Rings — I loved the books and loved the movies.  I was fine with it all even if it wasn’t what I had previously envisioned in all my readings of the books.

Somehow, I found myself having trouble with Camelot.  I think the reason is that having read so many Arthurian legend books and their numerous takes on the characters, their faults, etc., I have a cobbled together Arthur but one I’ve come to like very much.  Seeing the show and how its writers put together the different people and places, made me a tad annoyed that it wasn’t my version.  But then again, maybe it was something my husband said:

“Ya know, some of the writing and acting here are pretty bad.”

I had trouble not agreeing with that statement.  So maybe that’s it.

A few links to share this week…

A Game of Thrones.  Oh, how I loved this book.  George R.R. Martin, you are a genius.  Tonight at 9PM there will be a 15 minute preview of the series which is set to start April 17th on HBO.  After the above discussion, I still have high hopes for this series but we’ll see what happens. If you haven’t read the book yet and want to; join the book club.

50 books you don’t need to read before you die.

Cooking bibles?  Mine – Julia Child’s Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom.  By the way, I haven’t completely forgotten about the post where I mentioned I would take a look in some of my cookbooks and share a recipe.  I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Want to know what it was like to edit Harry Potter?  Here ya go then.  Oh, and if you want to see the latest movie poster, here.  Funny how they don’t even mention the name of the movie.  Oh, the Harry Potter marketing machine.

Yeah!  A DC landmark bookstore will be here for me still.

The Hobbit is finally in production which means we might see Ian McKellan’s Gandalf looking the same age and not older than he did in The Lord of the Rings.

Happy Sunday.

Review – Fathom

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Fathom

By Cherie Priest

TOR

ISBN: 0-7653-1840-7

3.5 stars

Over the past months and probably years if I’m honest, I’ve read some good things about Cherie Priest’s books (Boneshaker and Four and Twenty Blackbirds come to mind) so when browsing the library for something new, I stumbled upon Priest’s Fathom and decided immediately it should come home with me.  I liked this book well enough but I don’t know how to classify it — it was surely fantasy, felt a little like a fairy-tale re-telling of a few mashed up stories, and then a story about sleeping gods.

Arahab waits in the water for the right moment.  Waiting for a foot to dip in or a body to be thrown overboard so she can find her next pet child to mold into the beast she needs to wake the Leviathan.  She finds her next child in Beatrice a spoiled teenager, murderer, and genuinely wicked person.  Her cousin Nia would have been a better capture for Arahab but it was Beatrice she caught.  Nia, lured into the water as a means of escaping Beatrice on a murderous rampage, runs from Arahab and believes she has escaped until she realizes she’s been turned to stone.  While the beast that made Nia waits for her to awaken, the gods begin to play their own games.

Priest created a strange little world to drop Nia and Beatrice into.  Toyed with by gods in the hope these two mortals will do their bidding, they are surprised by the strength the mere humans possess.  Nia and Beatrice defy both gods that created them in ways the gods never imagined.  The roles they played were interesting even if they were being used as a means to show how the gods have fallen.  What I really wanted though was background.  In some books I’m good with nothing — drop me in and I’ll learn as I go.  Other times, I want ropes.  This time I wanted ropes.  Not because the story was hard to follow, it wasn’t at all, but because I felt I was missing vital information that would have made me love it more.  We know no more of the gods than Nia and Beatrice which is fine and understandable, but I wanted more and that I think is my hang-up.

Would I recommend it?  Yes, to someone who is OK with being dropped in to a story.  If you are, then all good.  Read it because it’s a good book.  I was slightly disappointed with it though but still found it well done.  I’ve been seeing a lot of talk (or maybe it’s only me looking for something specific) about Four and Twenty Blackbirds.  When I get through the stack of towering books threatening to fall off my desk and dent my floor, I’ll be on a hunt for it.