Literary obsessions, take 452

So I was thinking about Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy, because I do that a lot. Because it's such good stuff and hits so many of my buttons. Because I am bitterly opposed to total orderings, but The Kestrel is pretty close to the very best book if there was a very best book. And I had recently wanted to press these books upon at least half a dozen people.

Then I thought, hey, most libraries in the US have these books. (I have no idea about other countries.) They are readily available for purchase. It would not be hard for people to get their hands on them to read them and talk to me about them. And they are short, so people who would otherwise be interested in this sort of thing could read them without much investment of time or emotion. So I was wondering whether there was interest in that kind of discussion here on my lj after a suitable time for finding and reading them, and I was wondering what a suitable time for finding and reading them might be.

(Brief description for those of you who are unfamiliar: Ruritanian fantasy, if revolution came to Ruritania. No magic that I recall. YA. Very political and somewhat bloody in spots--bloody, not so much gory, if that distinction makes sense.)

[Poll #1342952]

Westmark online book club!

Okay, we're going to call that enough people to make a Westmark discussion group. So! Here's the outline:

--Discussion of each of the three books of the Westmark trilogy (Westmark, The Kestrel, and The Beggar Queen, all by Lloyd Alexander) will start in this lj on the 9th of each of the successive months. So: Westmark, March 9. The Kestrel, April 9. The Beggar Queen, May 9. I will remind you as these dates approach.

--Because this is a book discussion rather than a brief review, there will be spoilers in the post and in the comments. I will cut-tag the posts, but do not click on the tags or the comments if you are not done reading and don't want to hear how it ends. (I will put this in the texts of the posts, too.)

--Because there are several people who have said they are reading the series for the first time, we will try to limit spoilers in each post to only the preceding material. That is, Westmark only in the Westmark post(s), The Kestrel or Westmark in the The Kestrel post(s).

--There may be more than one post from me per book. There may not. I don't know yet.

--Making your own jumping-off posts about these books or related topics is entirely fair game; please feel free to link to those posts in the comments when the time comes.

--Discussion is open to anyone who wants to behave civilly and who has a livejournal account, which I will remind you are free. If someone else in your household wants to read and post, please indicate, "Hi, this is X posting on Lj user Y's account." I would allow anonymous commenters as long as they signed their posts, but I was getting a bunch of spam, and deleting it is not a good use of my time. I definitely do not put a lower bound on age for readers and commenters on these posts. Anyone of any age whose sensibilities do not permit the discussion of fictional war, however, will probably find these not to their tastes.

Is there anything else anybody wants to know about this?

Speaking of reminding people of upcoming events, I will note that it is now ten days to One Year Closer to Balance, so if you're planning on observing that with me but have not been thinking about balance and what you want to do regarding balance, now might be the time.

In other news, I have a little bit of singing voice back, but the last of the cold is still messing some with my ears. Also I have to do clinic PT tomorrow. Am I looking forward to clinic PT if my ears are still messed up with the cold? Not particularly, no. But then, do I usually look forward to clinic PT? Not so much. Yah. So.