Good books
May. 2nd, 2021 02:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethYesterday I stayes up late to finish The Dark Lord of Derkholm, and today I read Year of the Griffin. Comfort reading by Diana Wynne Jones.
I like them every time I read them, and I feel like I need to read them to clear my brain a bit when I've read too much of certain tropes. Wiki called Derkholm a parody but that doesnt seem quite right. Tumblr called it something like a scathing critique of colonialist tourism, and that seems more like. It's sort of a story of visitors arriving via portal to defeat the dark lord and set the world to rights. It's just from a whole other angle that makes the standard tour of fantasyland seem like it has many holes for questions. It is fun, with some important points mixed in.
And then Year of the Griffin is a bit about consequences from Derkholm and a lot about arriving at university and finding it is and isnt the font of wisdom one might have dreamed of. There's teachers who want to rush back to their private projects instead of teaching, and teachers who only recently graduated and probably dont know what they're doing. And since this is magic university the consequences of accidents are wild and fun. But there's a whole section about getting out maximum numbers of library books and getting that lovely feeling of having chosen the right thing to study and seeing how knowledge can just unfold for you if you keep looking. Made me miss studying. Which is a good trick.
Year of the Griffin is also about a whole set of students who are studying despite what their parents or family or homeland would think, and are pursuing knowledge as a way of getting free. They support each other while the scale on the consequences keeps going up and up and up. I like that a lot too.
All that and some happy endings.
Good reading days.
I like them every time I read them, and I feel like I need to read them to clear my brain a bit when I've read too much of certain tropes. Wiki called Derkholm a parody but that doesnt seem quite right. Tumblr called it something like a scathing critique of colonialist tourism, and that seems more like. It's sort of a story of visitors arriving via portal to defeat the dark lord and set the world to rights. It's just from a whole other angle that makes the standard tour of fantasyland seem like it has many holes for questions. It is fun, with some important points mixed in.
And then Year of the Griffin is a bit about consequences from Derkholm and a lot about arriving at university and finding it is and isnt the font of wisdom one might have dreamed of. There's teachers who want to rush back to their private projects instead of teaching, and teachers who only recently graduated and probably dont know what they're doing. And since this is magic university the consequences of accidents are wild and fun. But there's a whole section about getting out maximum numbers of library books and getting that lovely feeling of having chosen the right thing to study and seeing how knowledge can just unfold for you if you keep looking. Made me miss studying. Which is a good trick.
Year of the Griffin is also about a whole set of students who are studying despite what their parents or family or homeland would think, and are pursuing knowledge as a way of getting free. They support each other while the scale on the consequences keeps going up and up and up. I like that a lot too.
All that and some happy endings.
Good reading days.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-02 02:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-05 02:41 pm (UTC)🖖
no subject
Date: 2021-05-18 10:55 am (UTC)getting that lovely feeling of having chosen the right thing to study and seeing how knowledge can just unfold for you if you keep looking
<3333 I love those characters to pieces. Merida and Querida and Dirk and Kit and Blade and Elsa and Olga and and and