#Mal Peet

[hellenhighwater]

augh! The newest part of my hundred and fifty year old house is the den and sunroom, which were added on...sometime between the 60-80s, if I had to guess. And they are by far the poorest-constructed parts of the house. The sunroom had a leak last winter, which I initially attributed to an ice dam in the gutters (cue me on a ladder in an ice storm, chiseling ice out of the gutters with a pick and my bare hands while getting pelted with chunks of sleet) and that seemed to have done the job. But I've cleaned the gutters out plenty and for the last three rainstorms, there's been a leak in the sunroom every time, so I think it's a more serious issue.

On the other hand, I have a rube goldberg machine of houseplants feeding ceiling-drip water into each other before all dripping into the rainwater bucket, so that's certainly saving me some watering. The fiddle leaf feeds into the philodendron; the philodendron feeds into the rubber plant; the rubber plant feeds into the monstera; the monstera feeds into the parlor palm, and into the bucket on the floor.

[marquis2007]

Stardom, Mal, Erebus, & Iris

Commission for CoolBeanz521 Presenting his new characters~ Hope you like ^^ Stardom, Mal, Erebus (shadow), & Iris © CoolBeanz521 Art © Marquis2007

Posted using PostyBirb

[i-got-the-feels]

Ken

Mal Peet/Bruce Dickinson, What Does This Button Do?: An Autobiography/Nathaniel Branden/Holly Black, The Cruel Prince /Stefan Emunds/Cassandra Giovanni, Love Exactly/Lewis Carroll

[thatfanfictionchick]

2023 Reading List

For absolutely no reason whatsoever I've decided to start keeping track of every book I finish during the year.

Some will have been left out because it's April, as would happen

What Happened in Vegas - Sylvia Day

Flipped - Wendelin Van Draanen

Switch - Ingrid Law

Dying of Whiteness - Jonathan M. Metzl

The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin

Bambi - Felix Salten

Bunnicula - Deborah and James Howe

Morning Sun in Wuhan - Ying Chang Compestine

Cinderella - illustrated by K.Y. Craft

Moldilocks and the Three Scares - Lynne Marie

Sleeping Beauty - illustrated by K.Y. Craft

Cloud Tea Monkeys - Mal Peet

I'm Glad My Mom Died - Jennette McCurdy

The Land of the Blue Flower - Frances Hodgson Burnett

I'm Just Saying - Milan Kordestani

Murder at the Mayfair Hotel - C.J. Archer

Nightmares! - Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller

Vera Warden and the Two-Faced Demon - J. Rose

Nightmares! The Sleepwalker Tonic - Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller

Island Affair - Priscilla Oliveras

Ancient Night - David Alvarez and David Bowles

Nightmares! The Lost Lullaby - Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller

Moving the Millers' Minnie Moore Mine Mansion - Dave Eggers

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands - Kate Beaton

Murder at the Piccadilly Playhouse - C.J. Archer

A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow - Laura Taylor Namey

The Only Purple House in Town - Ann Aguirre

Yenebi's Drive to School - Sendy Santamaria

Murder in the Drawing Room - C.J. Archer

Murder at the Dressmaker's Salon - C.J. Archer

50 Below Zero - Robert Munsch

Murder at the Debutante Ball - C.J. Archer

The Woman in Me - Britney Spears

Murder at the Crown and Anchor - C.J. Archer

*I said every book and then immediately realized that wasn't exactly true. I read 2394803958 picture books a week for my kids, which I won't include, but if I pick up Sherlock Hound or something and read it because I want to it's going on the list.

[eyebright-iris]

Review: The Murdstone Trilogy by Mal Peet

Content warning: this review will discuss misogyny, homophobia, sexual assault, transphobia and ableism.

It appears I am having terrible luck with reading this year. I should have known when the gap between by last book I finished and this one (not counting the two graphic novels I blazed through in like two hours in between) has been six months. I started reading The Murdstone Trilogy in January/February time, after the disappointment of Empress of Flames. I hoped that the things I heard - a Pratchett-esque satirical take on fantasy literature, full of good humour and entertaining challenges of the clichés we all know - would make this a fun and easy read, lighthearted and quick.

Oh God, I was so wrong.

Not wanting to pick up another book and brand my 2022 reading a two-for-two of DNFs has meant I haven’t really read in six months. I did not want to finish this book. It sat on my bedside table like a piece of set dressing, collecting dust, seven chapters in and I was loath to pick it up again. But what is it that’s so bad about this book?

Well, let me tell you. It is utterly devoid of heart. It is a book so concerned with cynicism, with belittling others, with being removed and aloof and bitter, that it removes any fun it might have had. I wondered if, perhaps, the use of an ableist slur twelve pages in meant that this book wasn’t for me. Maybe, I thought, trying to be generous, it was from the early 2000s, some time where the R slur got thrown around casually without thought for its actual cruel ramifications. Where the hatred of disabled people was challenged only really by disabled people themselves, where the publicity surrounding not being a fucking monster to minorities was nowhere near what it is today, where the “woke mob” is decried every time someone famous and beloved is revealed to be a fucking monster.

Unfortunately, this book was published in 2014.

And it only got worse from there. Aside from the frankly disgusting way the protagonist talks about women - any women, as often as possible - there’s also the use of transphobic slurs and casual discussion about if a gay man with social power sexually assault the male protagonist, he should just smile and not make a fuss. It’s funny! Queer people existing - trans people, gay people - are actually a way to show off how weird and not like good old Blighty the USA is. Queerness is a side-effect of modern-day image-obsessed celebrity culture, and considering how bitterly and viciously this book rails against the progression of the world through technology and social media, it is distinctly not a positive thing.

Now, I know. Books do not have to be moral. Protagonists can be horrible people, I know. I’ve read books with horrible protagonists, and loved them. This book felt like a gut punch, over and over. How far did I make it into it? Seven and a half chapters. I reached a point where I realised I wasn't enjoying myself, and I did not need to martyr myself to this bitter and dull piece of shit book for the sake of proving that no, I do understand that flawed protagonists exist and can be good to read. I have a Masters degree in literature. I am required to prove nothing to no one, thank you.

BELOW ARE JUST A FEW OF MY “”FAVOURITE”” PASSAGES. THESE WILL BE MISOGYNIST, ABLEIST, RACIST TRANSPHOBIC AND HOMOPHOBIC, AS WELL AS CONTAINING A MENTION OF SEXUAL ASSAULT. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO READ THEM, PLEASE SKIP TO “FIN”.

“It made Asperger’s cool” (page 11)

“You’ve made that whole area, you know, boys who are inadequate, your own.” (page 11)

“No one wants to publish another book about sensitive retarded boys” (page 12)

“It’s about a sensitive adopted boy of mixed race with learning difficulties who’s good at football and believes his real father might be a Premiership footballer” (page 12)

“He picked at the wrongly hinged boy in the wheelchair whom Minerva had pointed out” (page 71)

“Viscid filaments stretched between his lips” (page 72)

“The boy’s eyes swivelled and his buckled fingers clawed the air” (page 72)

“His teenage son is a tranny” (page 76)

“He’s as gay as bunting, and if he cops a feel of your bum I want you to promise me you won’t make a fuss, OK? It won’t come to anything.” (page 77)

FIN

It was at this point, having slogged through ableism and transphobia and more misogyny than would be practical to list in the above section, but trust me, this protagonist is an incel through and through, than I threw the book down. I had only picked the damn thing up again after months of not touching it because I was waiting for my phone to update and couldn’t be asked to get out of bed on a Sunday morning to go to my laptop. What a vile, sad, disgusting little book. What a waste of ink, what a waste of my time and money.

There is one, final thing I’d like to touch on, before I hurl this mistake of a book to the winds. It’s less…skin crawling, shall we say, than the rest of the above bullshit. But it hurt me very personally, in ways different to how the ableism and homophobia and transphobia hurt me.

I do LARPing. For those who don’t know, that’s Live Action Role Play, like a renfaire or cosplaying your own OC, but with plot and worldbuilding. I run LARPs and I play them. They are tremendous fun, and require a level of unabashed love for what you’re doing, authentic and honest and joyful. I love fantasy in the same way, the way it is so often unabashed that yes, the evil in the text can be defeated and we will come home, the world saved but we irrevocably changed, but we won, we won, we won. Fantasy is a genre of pretending and refusing to allow that to be strangled out of you by common sense or grown up nonsense. Mal Peet does everything he can in this novel to strangle it out of me. He is cruel and dismissive. Murdstone calls Tolkien “pretentious escapist nonsense”, as if The Lord of the Rings was invented out of nowhere so Tolkien could feel clever about himself, as if there isn’t a rich history of fantasy being written in reference and reverence to texts that have come before that goes all the way back to Beowulf and beyond - a history I have personally studied at university. Books, and fantasy, is all capitalistic nightmare foolishness, according to this book. The publishing industry churns out only what sells, and writers write only what sells, and there is no joy or authenticity in it, only cynicism and money.

It’s no wonder I quite literally tossed it aside 77 pages in.

Mal Peet, I’m sorry your protagonist is so much smarter than the rest of the world. I’m sorry that this book was marketed as a fun romp through fantasy tropes, something that I picked up hoping for just that. And I am so, so sorry that it led to me not reading anything for six fucking months because I thought I should at least have the decency to try and finish it.

To the bin with it. I move on to better things.

Verdict:

A cynical and bitter, boring book that has the additional gall to be cruel to minorities. A lot. A waste of my time and money that I could never recommend to anyone. 0/5, 0/10, whatever rating you choose, I hated it.

[ijustkindalikebooks]

Picked up these from the library today.

[atlantidekids]

Il nostro albero

C’è qualcosa che resta sospeso in questo racconto di Mal Peet illustrato da Emma Shoard. E non è il finale, perché quello lascia intendere che una strada, una direzione, dopo una inversione a U radicale, la si possa imboccare. È piuttosto la sensazione che nessuno tra queste pagine sia felice, lo sia stato, possa esserlo compiutamente.

Il nostro albero, di Mal Peet ed Emma Shoard – 2019 Uovonero

[thebooksanctum]

The Murdstone Trilogy By Mal Peet - Review

The Murdstone Trilogy By Mal Peet – Review

What does every writer want, more than anything? More than a book deal, along with a movie adaption deal? Someone to write the book for them, that’s what. And don’t try to tell me you don’t, every writer has, at least once in their writing life, wished the book would either write itself, or for someone to do it for them. That’s exactly what Philip Murdstone gets. Murdstone starts this book as an…

[lunaslittlelibrary]

Good Boy by Mal Peet

GOOD BOY by MAL PEET #illustrations by @emmashoard "... so effective." @BarringtonStoke

Sandie has been battling it since childhood: the hulking, snarling black dog of her nightmares. For years, her precious pet dog Rabbie has kept the monster at bay, but when he is no longer there to protect her, the black dog reappears to stalk Sandie in her sleep …

Illuminating the undeniable power of Mal Peet’s pared-back prose, Good Boy is an evocative examination of fear and anxiety that will…

[e-volt]

Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet

AVAILABLE FROM:

Amazon Barnes & Noble Google iBooks Kobo

An epic tale of young love against the dramatic backdrop of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Can love survive a lifetime? When working-class Clem Ackroyd falls for Frankie Mortimer, the gorgeous daughter of a wealthy local landowner, he has no hope that it can. After all, the world teeters on the brink of war, and bombs could rain down any minute over the bleak English countryside – just as they did seventeen years ago as his mother, pregnant with him, tended her garden. This time, Clem may not survive. Told in cinematic style by acclaimed writer Mal Peet, this brilliant coming-of-age novel is a gripping family portrait that interweaves the stories of three generations and the terrifying crises that define them. With its urgent sense of history, sweeping emotion, and winning young narrator, Mal Peet's latest is an unforgettable, timely exploration of life during wartime.

[mockturtle8]

She gazed at herself, dispassionate.  Was she really waiting?  Or was this solitary life merely an excuse, a failure?  Had she come to believe that being different required her to be alone?  That independence meant she could never depend on another?  And what about pleasure?  What about companionship?  Was it possible that solitude was the compromise?

from Beck, by Mal Peet & Meg Rosoff

[love-booksandtea-blog]

Beck 

[bookwormsshallruletheworld]

This new review is up! We have given 'Tamar' by Mal Peet our Queen Wilhelmina Award; for being an excellent Dutch war history novel. Let us know what you think! https://bookwormsshallruletheworld.wordpress.com/2017/02/26/tamar-by-mal-peet/

[the-forest-library]

I read before bed every night and that routine helps me stick to it. I feel like there are less distractions then, and I keep electronics far away so I won’t be tempted.

Also, I picked up Tamar a little bit ago because @all-these-paperback-dreams recommended it. Glad to hear you’re liking it. I’m hoping to get to it soon.

2017 tbr list

Tagged by @lilymaidofgallifrey

I hope to finish Tamar by Mal Peet, which is excellent so far. And I’d love to get through Out of Heart, Duels and Deception, The Firth Room, and Woman and Power, but at my current rate, it’s not looking likely. Does anyone have any advice for improving attention span? I’m terrible at sitting down and reading for any significant length of time, or even starting at all. I attribute that to tumblr…

[fullygrownboy]

So many ways to be wicked 🍎

[gatheryepens]

Recent book haul:

Release by Patrick Ness

Annexed by Sharon Dogar

Beck by Mal Peet