Librarian living in Northern California.
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Comments for The Conjure Wife
The Conjure Wife: 01/17/07
Ian enjoys Fritz Leiber's fantasy novels so we own a good number of them. I think he started buying them back in 2003 or 2004 but so far I haven't read an of Leiber's work. I've been swamped under my own "to be read" pile and BookCrossing commitments to spend time on one of my least favorite genres. However, when I saw a copy of Dark Ladies, a two book volume of what now-a-days would be classified as "paranormal fiction" by Fritz Leiber, I had to grab the book and give it a read.
So far I've flown through the first of the two stories, The Conjure Wife, a novel originally published in 1937. This story of a young and up and coming professor and his liberal minded wife reminded me of what would happen if Christopher Moore decided to rewrite The Witches of Eastwick (John Updike) and The Stepford Wives (Ira Levin) as one novel. Save for the mention of some outdated technology (like phonograph needles) the novel reads like a modern paranormal fiction.
I absolutely loved this story and managed to tear through it in a couple of hours. It is part romance, part satire, part mystery and part horror. All these pieces work together beautifully to tell the story of a skeptical husband learning that magic is real and his wife suffering the recoil of magic for personal gain.
More School News:
Yesterday Sean got a 100% on a math assignment. His teacher asked me if we had been spending a lot of time studying addition. I replied that we've done some but mostly we were just playing with addition. We weren't treating it as home work. She replied that she only had to show Sean once and that he remembered over the long the weekend all the addition she had taught the class last week. He has trouble writing his answers but not in knowing what the answers were. We're so proud of him!
Tomorrow is Sean's first Mandarin class. It will be a full class of six students from the preschool. Sean sounds a little reluctant but I think once he gets started he'll enjoy the class. He's always a little shy about trying new things for about the first five or ten minutes. I hope he learns enough to teach us a thing or two.
He's also still doing "nastics" (gymnastics) at school. The new session starts next week. He's learning how to walk on the balance beam, do summersaults and do cartwheels along with some "cooperative play." He really enjoys these classes offered through the school.
Steps: 5000