{"id":3626,"date":"2011-02-13T10:14:55","date_gmt":"2011-02-12T21:14:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=3626"},"modified":"2011-02-13T10:14:55","modified_gmt":"2011-02-12T21:14:55","slug":"what-im-reading-the-elegance-of-the-hedgehog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/02\/13\/what-im-reading-the-elegance-of-the-hedgehog\/","title":{"rendered":"What I&#8217;m Reading: &#8216;The Elegance of the Hedgehog&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em> <\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3444\" style=\"width: 136px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><em><em><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-3444\" href=\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/02\/05\/what-ive-been-doing-and-whats-coming-up\/wall2-ms-001\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3444\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3444  \" title=\"WALL2 MS 001\" src=\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/WALL2-MS-001-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"126\" height=\"95\" srcset=\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/WALL2-MS-001-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/WALL2-MS-001-150x112.jpg 150w, https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/WALL2-MS-001-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 126px) 100vw, 126px\" \/><\/a><\/em><\/em><p id=\"caption-attachment-3444\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Work in Progress: WALL2<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em>Mainly<\/em> what I&#8217;m doing write now is reading the manuscript for <strong><em>The Gathering of the Lost <\/em>(The Wall of Night Book Two)<\/strong> with my editor&#8217;s comments in mind&#8212;and in general it&#8217;s rocking along, which is great. I remember reading the ms for <em><strong>The Heir of Night<\/strong> <\/em>at a similar stage, when I had been away from the story for a time&#8212;and finding, when I got to the final confrontation in the book, that I was holding my breath as I read. &#8220;How does that work?&#8221; I thought. &#8220;You <em>wrote<\/em> this, you <em>know<\/em> what&#8217;s going to happen!&#8221; But I took it as a good sign that I found\u00a0 the story exciting reading! And I guess it always <em>is<\/em> a good sign&#8212;for any book, but especially for your own manuscript&#8212;when you find yourself caught up in the story&#8217;s flow!<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-3628\" href=\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/02\/13\/what-im-reading-the-elegance-of-the-hedgehog\/hedgehog\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-3628\" title=\"Hedgehog\" src=\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/Hedgehog.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"98\" height=\"153\" srcset=\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/Hedgehog.jpg 98w, https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/Hedgehog-96x150.jpg 96w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 98px) 100vw, 98px\" \/><\/a>But I still need a book to read and at the moment it&#8217;s French author, <strong>Muriel Barbery&#8217;s <\/strong><em><strong>The Elegance of the Hedgehog.<\/strong> <\/em><em>Hedgehog <\/em>is not SFF or speculative fiction of any stripe at all, but I have been meaning to read it for quite some time&#8212;and in fact, I don&#8217;t exclusively read speculative fiction; far from it! <em><strong>The Elegance of the Hedgehog<\/strong> <\/em>comes highly recommended&#8212;the first three pages of the book comprise glowing reviews and the legend on the cover proclaims that it spent <em>&#8220;over a year on the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">New York Times<\/span> Bestseller List.&#8221; <\/em>So it has to be good, right?<\/p>\n<p>Well, not necessarily, but I did find the first few pages intriguing, which is always a good start. I have found the subsequent chapters a little slow going, but I am only about a 1\/5<em> th<\/em> of the way through, so it&#8217;s early days.\u00a0 &#8216;Watch this space&#8217;, as the saying goes.<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-3052\" href=\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/01\/07\/its-friday-5\/samihas-song\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-3052\" title=\"Samiha's Song\" src=\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Samihas-Song-191x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"115\" height=\"180\" srcset=\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Samihas-Song-191x300.jpg 191w, https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Samihas-Song-654x1024.jpg 654w, https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Samihas-Song.jpeg 656w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 115px) 100vw, 115px\" \/><\/a>Speaking of &#8216;watching this space,&#8217; tomorrow I am interviewing <strong>Mary Victoria<\/strong>, author of <strong><em>Tymon&#8217;s Flight<\/em><\/strong> and the <strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Chronicles of the Tree<\/span> series<\/strong>,<em> <\/em>about <strong><em>Samiha &#8216;s Song<\/em><\/strong>, the second book in the sequence&#8212;which I have read and talked about <a href=\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/01\/30\/what-im-reading-13\/\">here<\/a>. I have very much enjoyed putting the interview together and been fascinated by the discussion around both the world of the Tree and the characters so am excited to be sharing it with you at last.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mainly what I&#8217;m doing write now is reading the manuscript for The Gathering of the Lost (The Wall of Night Book Two) with my editor&#8217;s comments in mind&#8212;and in general it&#8217;s rocking along, which is great. I remember reading the ms for The Heir of Night at a similar stage, when I had been away [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-im-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3626"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3634,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3626\/revisions\/3634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}