Laurabelle's Blog

Last night a Seattle radio station called The End hosted a concert by a UK band called Muse that has recently become very popular over here. It was at a club called Neumo's in Capitol Hill; I'd heard about Neumo's (which is located at the same spot as an old club called Moe's — get [...]

For my last birthday, Ralph and Lori gave me Booklust, Nancy Pearl's bookful of booklists. In the first lines section I found a mention of Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle, whose first line is I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. I had Amazon send Maggie a copy for Christmas, because it seemed [...]

A few days ago I finished Robin McKinley's latest novel, Sunshine, which had been languishing on my shelf since December. It's a vampire novel, but it's strange in a very McKinley way (unlike Pete Hautman's Sweetblood, which is strange in an entirely different way). I wouldn't have expected McKinley to write a vampire novel, but [...]

I just finished reading a retelling of Bluebeard called Fitcher's Brides (from a version of the tale called Fitcher's Bird). I bought the book because I'm a sucker for fairy tales, and because I loved another of Gregory Frost's stories, The Root of the Matter, a retelling of Rapunzel. That story contains what has become [...]

I'm a sucker for fairy tales, and when Angie Benedetti (KCLS youth selector) got up in front of my Young Adult Materials class last quarter and told us about a retelling of East of the Sun, West of the Moon called East, I was hooked. Edith Pattou has done an excellent job of bringing this [...]

I recently finished Juliet Marillier's latest novel, Wolfskin, which had been languishing on my holds list for months after I read her fabulous Sevenwaters Trilogy. I loved the Sevenwaters books and liked Wolfskin also but not quite as much, probably because her first trilogy is very much a woman's story as well as inspired by [...]

Ursula LeGuin's website features a rejection letter for one of her first books. The book is so endlessly complicated by details of reference and information, the interim legends become so much of a nuisance despite their relevance, that the very action of the story seems to be to become hopelessly bogged down and the book, [...]

Every so often I get an email from Lance Whalen, whom I know through Emily. A few years ago he had an even harder time of it than I did, so I'm thrilled to see that he's picked himself up and is having some success as an indie musician. I finally got around to ordering [...]

I have a strange relationship with King Lear. A few years ago I read it in conjunction with Oedipus Rex and found that in comparison, Shakespeare's play was positively uplifting. Now I'm much less convinced. Yesterday evening, Jeff and I attended a preview performance of King Lear by the Seattle Shakespeare Company, invited by Jeff's [...]

Jeff and I saw The Return of the King, and it was great except for several glaring mistakes that ruined my suspension of disbelief. For example, the sword of Isildur was fragmented so badly that if it were repaired, it would be ugly as hell, not the shiny perfect blade shown in the movie. The [...]