This is a long delayed post which I am going to blame on Nanowrimo. I actually finished the book late on October 31 and then fell asleep immediately in anticipation of writing an impressive amount of words the next day, so I’ve been putting off writing my thoughts on Stardust for quite some time. Why the shady introduction? Well, of course, to tell you that I’ve forgotten everything insightful I was going to say about the book.
I do, however, have one recollection that has stuck with me since I completed it. Tristan’s relationship with his mother doesn’t make a lick of sense to me. And by “his mother,” I don’t mean the one with the fuzzy ears; I mean the one who adopted him when he showed up with a note at his father’s door. I mean the one who knows he’s fairy folk, and who nevertheless seemed to form some kind of emotional bond throughout the years of raising him, and yet who didn’t even say good bye or seem to miss him while he was gone.
I don’t mean to make this a movie vs. book post, but I think the movie dealt with this inconsistency wisely. I had more to say about it but, again, I’ve forgotten all my brilliant remarks. I really should consider writing these things down in notes while I’m reading, instead of relying on my memory after several hours of writing my own stories to come to life and give me all the information needed for something I finished nineteen days ago.
The writing style was perfectly elegant, as I recall, though there were a few things that bugged me, the first being how distanced it seemed. It’s all very well to write in fairy tale fashion (as I call it, because I’m not sure if there is a name for it, but it makes one think of fairy tales) but I didn’t personally form any kind of attachment to any of the characters and thus didn’t feel happy or sad when things happened. It was a good story, and as I said, well-written, but I was yearning for some kind of something that would grab me and pull me into the story.
That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy the matter-of-fact style of writing, because I do, and will often times find myself writing in that way, but there are ways of writing matter-of-factly while also drawing the reader into the text until they’re struggling to get out because they’re so emotionally bonded. I usually prefer that kind of writing, because, well, I suppose it “speaks” to me better. It could have standed to be a little longer. I wouldn’t have complained one bit.
Excellent story nonetheless. It doesn’t make me want to read any other Gaiman, but it does make me want to buy the graphic novel version and compare the illustrations with what I saw in my head, what the movie showed, and perhaps even ask what everyone else thought. This is a definite re-read and recommendation.
By the end of today I will officially be halfway through my Nanowrimo project. It’s actually going pretty well. As I mentioned in the last post, if you want updates on my status, you can visit my NanoLJ, stayawaystar. I’m a day ahead of schedule and I’m pretty excited to take Sunday as an opportunity to really belt out a lot of words. Next week is going to be excruciatingly busy.
[Image removed because it no longer shows progress. Sorry!]
Here you can see my progress this month, so far. The red days mean I didn’t write any words at all, and the light green days mean I wrote enough words for that day (1,667+). Dark green boxes mean that I wrote more than double the required. Light red boxes mean I wrote words, but less than the required.
In other news, yesterday a family of five came in - three kids, two adults. As far as I’m concerned, they seemed to have only come in to destroy our store. The adults were each on their cell phones the entire time, and while they may have been looking at books where I couldn’t see them, they didn’t seem interested when they came in and didn’t even give the store a second glance when they left. Meanwhile, their children ran around sans babysitter, pushing books in, throwing things out of place, and otherwise being very destructive little people. Tried to step up and take my place as the righteous bookstore employee and tell them, could they please stop doing that, it’s giving me a headache, but they looked at me as if they had no notion of the word “authority” and continued as they pleased.
It’s times like those when I don’t know how rude it is to interrupt cell phone conversations.
Later I told my coworker that I think people have children just because they hate bookstore employees, and this clearly proves it.
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