03 March 2008

As I write, I'm really dying to get back to reading The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke. For some irrational reason I've been avoiding reading this for years. I keep looking at it and thinking I ought to read it because it's such an important book. But of course, we tend to read things either because we want to or because we have to - but rarely because we ought to.

Anyway, last week I overcame my irrational reluctance (I think I thought it was full-on fantasy which isn't my cup of tea) and opened it up. And it is just lovely and brilliant. It's set in the modern day though it has a rather timeless feel about it, despite the mention of television, cinema and so forth. It's about a group of runaway children who make their home in an abandoned Venetian cinema, and are able to buy food and clothes because of the 'Thief Lord' - a mysterious boy barely older than themselves with an incredibly talent for stealing, who visits them late at night with his spoils.

An element of fantasy is creeping in as I read, and I'm dying to get to the end and see how that is going to develop, and whether I think it's a good or bad thing.

I am still a bit perplexed by the software for this blog, so I hope this entry registers as being written by me. Susan, that is...

1 comment:

Daniel said...

How odd that I had the same resistance to reading Cornelia Funke, in spite of the fact that everyone said how wonderful she was.

And having come at last to 'Inkheart' just the other day felt (just as many great books make you feel) as though I'd personally discovered something utterly amazing, and that somehow surely no one else has really ever noticed quite how great this personal discovery is...

D.