Skip to main content

Six Gun Snow White

 Catherynne M. Valente and I have this relationship: I think her books sound interesting, pick them up, and then I start to read them and stop. I can't exactly say why. This has happened with Palimpset and The Girl Who Circumvented Fairy Land in blah, blah, blah. Honestly, it's me. I just can't shovel through the mucky muck to get to the real story. That is,  Valente takes a very long walk around the garden, pointing out butterflies in order to make her point and by the time she does, I have forgotten why I cared in the first place.
   It's like listening to a charming old person rattle on about a war you are interested in. They wander in the storytelling, and in fact jump decades on you every once in a while. After a half an hour, you begin to plot how to remove your sense of hearing without the old person noticing and your neck hurts from bobbing your  head up and down politely. It's not that you don't want to like the story. It's not that you don't like the person telling the story. It's the "how" of the delivery.

So. I made it through 6 Gun, and that either means that it sucks (because I really liked it) or the reason why I liked it is because Valente really reigns it in.

The chapters are short. Some are only a paragraph long. The chapter titles do not make sense until you read the chapter (like cheeky hints), Snow White is kick ass, and the world Valente created  is so VERY interesting.
Why is it interesting? Because she does not give us too many details and instead we need to fill in the gaps by using our own imaginations. A boardwalk with a saloon created as a child's paradise! A personal petting zoo! A magic mirror! A deadly mine!

No spoilers, and I plan to give this a 4 as soon as Goodreads comes back up, but Snow White meets.....we shall say, "a group of characters" who I adored and wanted to stay with and learn more about. In fact, I wish those characters could have their own book.

Overall, I'm a bit tired of fairy tale retellings. I do appreciate the effort to be original here.

I may just be crazy enough to try The Melancholy of Mechagirl, but probably not.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Teddy Bear Storytime

Tonight's storytime followed the same format I use for all of my day storytimes as I have temporarily suspended my idea of doing storytime in reverse in order to get the kids sleepy. They only seem to run out into the library to pick out movies and books and the effect is lost. So here is what we did tonight. Our theme was teddy bears, but our night storytime is always wear jammies, bring a lovey, and low action. My opening song is Hello Bubbles which I learned from Read Sing Play here . BTW this woman is a storytime goddess and I have picked up many great ideas on her blog. Story the 1st: The Red Hat by Lita Judge  Why? Because I want to get across to my kids that books do not always have to have words in order for us to "read" them, and I want to give pre-readers a chance to feel proud they finished a book on their own. I plan to try to read or highlight at least one wordless read for the next couple of storytimes. Flannel Board: Ten in the Bed I used a mod

Nebula Award Nominees 2017- Short Stories

This post is my progress report on my self-challenge to read all of the 2017  Nebula nominees! So far, I have completed the short story category and most of the the novelettes. I have 3 novellas and 3 novels to go. Nebula Award Nominees 2017- Short Stories What fun! I would never have read any of these stories on my own, although I expect some of these will show up in some future anthologies. I have one personal gripe, and this will come up again in another category, and that is the death of the horror genre. Because they have just killed "horror" and lumped scary stories in with science fiction and fantasy, we get stories like Sabbath Wine trying to compete with Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies and it's not fair. It really is apples and oranges. Don't believe me about horror? Go find the horror section in the Barnes and Noble. Go ahead, I'll wait.       Griping over, this selection of stories was AWESOME and heavy on the fantasy stories. Seasons and Ward

The Perfect Giveway!

Christi the Teen Librarian and I had the great fun of meeting Ellen Hopkins in Princeton last week. I want to share this great event with a reader who would love to own an autographed copy of Ellen's latest YA novel: Perfect. This is a finished copy, not an arc. Here's the skinny. No fancy forms, no extra entries (you know, I think those things are bunk anyway!), and no hoops to jump through! *you must be 13 to enter *I can only ship to US addresses only (sorry!) *Giveaway runs until November 11 *winner will be determined by Random.org So leave a comment with your name, and a way to contact you. Follows are NOT required, but I have more giveaways planned so you may want to follow just so you have a head's up on those.