Comments for Bibliotrek

Comment on Fictional Crushes: Detective Sergeant James Hathaway by bibliotrek

bibliotrek — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:13:37 +0000

Thanks, and welcome!

It’s amazing how crime-ridden the Oxford of the Morse/Lewis universe is… :)

Comment on Fictional Crushes: Detective Sergeant James Hathaway by Brian Murphy

Brian Murphy — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:19:57 +0000

Nice Post, I’m another American Anglophile and got into Lewis through the classic Inspector Morse, Lewis was Morse’s sergeant, and have loved them all since then.

Comment on Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles: Book 1, The Game of Kings by bibliotrek

bibliotrek — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:26:29 +0000

Welcome, and thanks! I’m glad you enjoyed.

Comment on Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles: Book 1, The Game of Kings by Francis

Francis — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:16:04 +0000

Excellent musings. Unpretentious without being common and with enough bite to escape the trap most Lymond fandom succumbs to — blind adoration.

Comment on Fictional Crushes: Detective Sergeant James Hathaway by bibliotrek

bibliotrek — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 20:19:31 +0000

Ooh, thanks for the update! And welcome! :) I’m always delighted to meet other fans of Inspector Lewis!

Comment on Fictional Crushes: Detective Sergeant James Hathaway by Laurel Ann

Laurel Ann — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:24:29 +0000

I enjoy Inspector Lewis also for it’s intelligence, acting and Oxford locations. Hathaway is enegmatic and that makes him appealing intellectually and physically. The new season on PBS starts August 29th with 5 new episodes. Enjoy!

Comment on Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles: Book 2, Queens’ Play by bibliotrek

bibliotrek — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 01:21:38 +0000

I can’t even imagine reading this series out of order!

The funny thing about the 16th century is that you end up with so many powerful women in Europe: Mary of Guise; Mary, Queen of Scots; Mary I of England; Elizabeth I… plus the unrecorded powerful women of history (patronesses of the arts, political powerhouses, the queens’ ladies-in-waiting who had access to the monarch). Women may not have had many legal rights, but the women of Lymond’s status and circle clearly exercised certain types of power, as they do in just about every other book in the series except this one. They do things that drive the plot, instead of merely existing to give the male characters a reason to act.

Which is to say: I don’t find Oonagh unbelievable for her time, but she’s not as active and doesn’t have as well-defined of a personality as the other female characters in the series. She exists in this book to be beautiful and an object of contention. And I wanted more for her, really.

I totally know what you mean about missing the sunshine of Book 1, though! Queens’ Play is much darker.

I really appreciate your thoughtful comments!

Comment on Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles: Book 2, Queens’ Play by Roxana

Roxana — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 23:57:51 +0000

Queen’s Play does have a different tone and I wonder if I would have loved it as much as I do now if I hadn’t read The Game of Kings first…Not because the writing isn’t excellent, but because the gratification-seeking romantic in me missed the sunshine brought by characters such as Christian and Will Scott in the first book, and it’s almost as Lymond misses them too, his charm more tinged with depression, hin loneliness more palpable. Oonagh is fascinating and a tragic character, but hard to warm up to. So is realism. I found her position with men entirely believable, especially in that era. And I must give Dorothy Dunnett credit for not prettifying history or human nature…

Comment on Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles: Book 1, The Game of Kings by bibliotrek

bibliotrek — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:28:17 +0000

Also, I don't know whether you saw, but I posted a much shorter review of Queen's Play a few days ago here.

Comment on Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles: Book 1, The Game of Kings by bibliotrek

bibliotrek — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:24:29 +0000

You wrote that “through music he sublimates his emotional needs. As a narrative ploy, Lymond’s love of music allows the author one more way to hint at Lymond’s real self, his passionate and deeply humane soul” — I like this way of looking at it, too! And thinking of the series as a whole, that reading resonates more strongly than mine does. I do think that there’s an element of mastery to his love of music as well, but that element appears most strongly in Game of Kings and not so strongly later in the series.