What is JacketFlap

  • JacketFlap connects you to the work of more than 200,000 authors, illustrators, publishers and other creators of books for Children and Young Adults. The site is updated daily with information about every book, author, illustrator, and publisher in the children's / young adult book industry. Members include published authors and illustrators, librarians, agents, editors, publicists, booksellers, publishers and fans.
    Join now (it's free).

Sort Blog Posts

Sort Posts by:

  • in
    from   

Suggest a Blog

Enter a Blog's Feed URL below and click Submit:

Most Commented Posts

In the past 7 days

Recent Posts

(tagged with 'Ali Shaw')

Recent Comments

Recently Viewed

JacketFlap Sponsors

Spread the word about books.
Put this Widget on your blog!
  • Powered by JacketFlap.com

Are you a book Publisher?
Learn about Widgets now!

Advertise on JacketFlap

MyJacketFlap Blogs

  • Login or Register for free to create your own customized page of blog posts from your favorite blogs. You can also add blogs by clicking the "Add to MyJacketFlap" links next to the blog name in each post.

Blog Posts by Tag

In the past 7 days

Blog Posts by Date

Click days in this calendar to see posts by day or month
new posts in all blogs
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Ali Shaw, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 2 of 2
1. The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw: Some Thoughts

I am not, by nature, a reader of fable, but I was sufficiently intrigued by recent reviews of Ali Shaw's The Girl with Glass Feet to go out and get myself a copy. This week, between too many things and in the midst of forceful weather, I read Girl through.

My experience reminded me of just how much room there is in the world for differing points of view. There's so much that is lovely about this book, particularly in the early pages when it doesn't matter, yet, whether things will coalesce; what matters is the quality of the imagination. And Shaw does have an imagination—conjuring odd, winged creatures, albino beasts, an icy bogland, and human characters who are strangely morose and strangely uplifted and on an increasingly complex collision course. The star of the story is a woman named Ida, monochrome and slowly turning to glass, who has come to St. Hauda's Land in search of answers. There she meets Midas Crook, a loner, and they become involved. Because everyone on the island seems to know everyone else, far more complications arise.

This is Shaw's debut novel, and in it he has uncorked so many plot lines and possibilities that the book began to feel, to me, deluged and, in places, forced together. Sometimes the language—often deliriously original and at once lyrical and crisp—spools away from itself, breaks down. Sometimes less happening might have been more powerful than more—might have given the reader more room to empathize with this purposefully unusual cast.

So that I am left wondering about this book and at the same time thrilled that a publishing house the size and heft of Henry Holt took on something so unexpected and rare. I like to see such chances taken—by a novelist, by a house, by a reading public that has very much put The Girl with Glass Feet on the map.

4 Comments on The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw: Some Thoughts, last added: 1/31/2010
Display Comments Add a Comment
2. The Books I Bought This Week

I have a funny habit of buying books when I know—it's an unbeatable, unbearable fact—that there will be no time to read them. They sit on the chair that sits opposite my desk, their lovely perfect spines toward me. They tease, they seduce until I finally give in—slip one into my bag and take it with me, everywhere.

I steal into a page or two while waiting in the Whole Foods line. I read while warming up for Zumba. I hover over pages while on hold on conference calls. I say to my husband, "Go ahead. No, seriously. You watch that show on the air battles of World War II; I'm just going to go upstairs."

It feels so good it almost feels wrong.

Here are the books that came into my home this week, in the order in which I believe I will read them. (I've already started The Disappeared, and so far it's the dream I thought it would be after reading the review in last week's Times):

The Disappeared (Kim Echlin)
The Girl with Glass Feet (Ali Shaw)
How I Became a Famous Novelist (Steve Hely)
A Jury of her Peers (Elaine Showalter)
Unfinished Desires (Gail Godwin)

12 Comments on The Books I Bought This Week, last added: 1/18/2010
Display Comments Add a Comment