Ice Age Giants – A Most Unreliable Narrator

Johann Georg Hainz's Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons — Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Dear Internet,
I was thinking the other day with using only one post on the landing page and the titles are almost never indicators of what I am writing about, it would be a good idea to pull together a list of the top tags of topics I cover. Which you can now see in the right hand side and the list is long.

Reading

11093962
13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson
(Amazon | WorldCat | GoodReads | LibraryThing)
Status: Finished
I need to admit I am a huge fan of Maureen Johnson’s Twitter, but had not, until this point, read any of her books. When this came along as a freebie on Kindle as a promotion to reel you in for one of her newer titles, I grabbed it. I admittedly rarely dip into YA, so this seemed like a good gateway drug.
Erm.
Not terribly sure what I read but I’m having a hard time reconciling the erudite, witty, and hilarious MJ could write such a bland book. There is no character development, no setting, no plot movement – it’s just all action. Ginger follows these steps to get to this point. The problem is the underlying premise of the book is about the growth of Ginger when her favorite aunt dies, because who else would push her to developing into something that was not just a dependable, reliable old hag. But you don’t really see any growth going on with Ginger as she flits about Europe chasing after her dead aunt.
A couple of other reviewers pointed out some major flaws of the book, such as the Mysterious Parents who apparently had zero problem letting Ging flitter her way across Europe with not a single contact to them. In fact, we never even meet the parents The second criticism has to do with the money spent by Ginger, given to her by her Aunt, which was such an exact number, £1826, that the travelling she does, even on the cheap, is not necessarily going to cover it all. Even more importantly when she has to give £500 away and ends up being charged £500 for a weeks room / board while in Amsterdam. She’s apparently crossed EU several times, via plane and train, ate, and got rooming for under £800? There is suspending belief and there is being so fucking arbitrary it’s kind of ridiculous.
I’ll give ole MJ another go a later time, but overall the only positive thing about this book is that I finished it in 1.5 hours.
Watching

Weekly watching: Reign, Dracula, Project Runway All-Stars, Breathless, Atlantis, Masters of Sex, Elementary, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Sleepy Hollow, Survivor, Boardwalk Empire, Doc Martin, QI, Peaky Blinders, Sons of Anarchy, The Vampire Diaries

Tag: Ice Age Giants

Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes December 7, 2013

Reading

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