Your Humble Blogger heard good things about Inkheart, and the first chapter was terrific, so it’ll be our new Bedtime Book. Which means we won’t even start it for months, and won’t finish it for a while after that.
In the meantime, I picked up Cornelia Funke’s previous book (in English translation by Oliver Latsch), The Thief Lord (New York: Scholastic 2002). It was ok, but not wonderful. I think that Venice is supposed to be magical enough all by itself, but it wasn’t for me. The characters were good, both the adults and the children, which is an achievement, but I could have done with a lot more plot and a lot more wonder. Oh, and the ending didn’t satisfy me.
That sounds pretty negative, doesn’t it? I enjoyed it, and I’d give it, I don’t know, three and a half or so motion-sensitive laughing pumpkins out of five, if I used such a scale.
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.
I’m engaging in the time-honored tradition of leaping off on a tangent (sparked by an offhand phrase) that has nothing to do with what you were talking about:
I’ve noticed that a lot of people (especially moviemakers) seem to find Venice (and/or other parts of Italy, but especially Venice) magical enough by itself. It happens with other areas too—I’m one of the people for whom Emma Bull’s loving descriptions of Minneapolis in War for the Oaks did very little—but Venice seems to get more than its share of this. (Also New Orleans.) I’m thinking of movies like Summertime (I always confuse the titles of that, Roman Holiday, and Holiday), where a large part of the point of the movie is “Hey, look at all this cool exotic scenery!”