Biblio Beau

Thursday, November 15, 2012

70.

Title: The Girl in the Steel Corset
Author: Kady Cross
Pages: 480
Genre: Steampunk - just ask Cross
Medium: Kindle
Acquisition: LT rec
Date Completed: November 11, 2012
Rating: ***

Everything about The Girl in the Steel Corset is, well, typical. This is typical YA (poor estranged girl finds that she's special), typical romance (two handsome boys fight over the seemingly-plain girl), and typical steampunk. The later is both the draw and downfall of the book; Cross attempts to include all elements that have been established as core features of the genre (clockwork, steam-powered technology, goggles, dirigibles), but many of the allusions are extraneous to the actual storyline - most of the references literally serve no purpose other than to shout "THIS IS STEAMPUNK!" But despite these narrative faux pas, the book has some fun moments, and is worth a quick blustery-day look.

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"To tell people what to read is, as a rule, either useless or harmful; for the appreciation of literature is a question of temperament not of teaching [...]. But to tell people what not to read is a very different matter, and I venture to recommend it as a mission..." - Oscar Wilde, "Letter to the Pall Mall Gazette on the Subject of 'The Best Hundred Books'" (qtd. Wright, Built of Books, 317).

"I wish you joy o'th' worm" - Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, 5.2.270.

"The world must be peopled!" - Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." - Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

"That a man who has sons brings up chickens for his own table ... whereas daughters are chickens brought up for the tables of other men." - Samuel Richardson, Clarissa (77).

“No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” - Samuel Beckett

And then there is more Oscar Wilde:

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."

"You can never be overdressed or overeducated."

"You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit." - The Picture of Dorian Gray.

"Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal." - Personal Impressions of America

"A poet can survive everything but a misprint." - "The Children of the Poets", The Pall Mall Gazette

"There is no sin except stupidity." - The Critic as Artist

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"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." - The Importance of Being Earnest

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--- A.E. Newton