bookage and bright colors, etc.

[anotheranon]

Ever since I got back from Seattle, I've been like a magpie in my attraction to bright colors: vivid and so saturated that if you put it in the washer it will turn your socks [insert color here]. I fed it a bit this week by playing with peacock blue sari fabric but what's satisfying it now is my long-backordered copy of Moda a Firenze 1540-1580. I don't know whether it's the lush artwork within or imagining the original red of Eleanora of Toledo's surviving burial dress, but ... I want to make something with that kind of intense color. I keep flipping back to a blue green dress with gold sleeves (a color combo I've never seen described in Northern Europe for the same time period).....

Am also reading the first Pern book. I want desperately to like this book - it's been recommended to me by many and after whinging about the lack of Strong Female Characters in my fiction stack it's fair to argue that Lessa fits the SFC bill, but....maybe I'm just being too cynical, but the psychic link with dragons (dragons!) just reeks of new-age-huggy-cuddly fantasy cliches (dragons!) to me. Should I stick with it or not?

And it's amazing the things one learns on Teh Interwebs: cat hair does, indeed, felt. I've been threatening to take all of Spice's shedding and knit a "Spice sweater" for Kisia, but beads dyed with Kool Aid sound so much easier (because I can't knit) :P

Comments

[hrj.livejournal.com]

the psychic link with dragons (dragons!) just reeks of new-age-huggy-cuddly fantasy cliches (dragons!) to me

While one can't argue taste, I think you may be being as unfair to the books as those who now accuse Tolkien of being "riddled with fantasy cliches". When you recall that the first Pern book was written in the late '60s when the concept of "new age" in it's current sense hadn't even been invented yet .... Is it fair to blame McCaffery for having been relentlessly imitated in the intervening years? (I won't argue that McCaffery wasn't, at heart, a romance writer dressing up in sf clothing. But at least the clothing was new and hand-sewn at the time, not a second-hand knock-off from the thrift store.)

For its day, those were pretty cutting-edge SFCs.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Is it fair to blame McCaffery for having been relentlessly imitated in the intervening years?

See upthread - I didn't realize that the Pern series was written in the 1960s, and I fully admit that my aversion is likely fueled by poor imitators who came after.

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

I see that everyone else has already pointed out how long ago these were written. It's kind of hard to be accused of in effect imitating yourself.