Among Others in Around the World

Jul 14, 2012 Kevin Xu rated it it was ok

There are few problems I had with the book. First, as far as fantasy goes, I'm not really a big fan of the magical realism type of fantasy like this book is, I like to be transported into a new world with great world building. Second, I'm also not a big fan of geek nostalgia like this or Ready Player One. Third, I thought there could have been more to the book than basically about discovering the genre.

The book is about a fifteen year old girl who gets send to boarding school after the death of ...more

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Sep 06, 2011 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it really liked it

Shelves: location-england, nebula-winners-or-nominees, read2012, audiobook, around-the-world, location-wales

I finished this in the car ride to work today, and really enjoyed the Welshish accent of the audiobook. I didn't want to like it but gave up in the end because of the sheer love of reading, interlibrary loan, and book clubs that the author clearly has. (Or in Welsh accent - reeeeadin, enterLIBraaary lowan, and booyk clobs)

The fairy elements seemed beside the point, and obviously Walton wrote this to give her canon of SF, but I still enjoyed it just the same.

ETA: The list of books mentioned with ...more

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Sep 04, 2012 KayG rated it really liked it

Shelves: audible-audiobooks

Odd, charming, clever.

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Jun 27, 2012 mussolet rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: region-europe, language-english, type-audiobook, g-magical-realism, 2024-shelf-read-question

EDIT:
I have thought about this a lot, and am now counting this as "Magical Realism". It is a love letter to the SFF genres, but I would not count this as Fantasy itself. Thus, I feel Magical Realism is more appropriate.
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"Among Others" is set up as a diary, written by Welsh girl Mori, who has lost her twin, is at odds with her evil magic mother, and is sent to a posh English boarding school by her father. Mori loves books, and half of this bo EDIT:
I have thought about this a lot, and am now counting this as "Magical Realism". It is a love letter to the SFF genres, but I would not count this as Fantasy itself. Thus, I feel Magical Realism is more appropriate.
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"Among Others" is set up as a diary, written by Welsh girl Mori, who has lost her twin, is at odds with her evil magic mother, and is sent to a posh English boarding school by her father. Mori loves books, and half of this book is actually her talking about Science Fiction. If you're not into that, you should probably stay away from the book.

I wasn't too sure what to expect, but somehow "Among Others" managed to miss my inexistent expectations.
Although I'm quite a bookworm as well, I couldn't relate to Mori, and it seemed to me that she shied away from the reader as much as she shied away from the people at her school.
She is really set in her ways and her opinions, a little bit too much so for my taste. There was a line about someone she'd just met, which immediately jumped to my attention: "And even if he's wrong about some fairly fundamental things, he's prepared to listen."
I felt like Mori could go a long way, if she would take everything she has learned from books, and actually applied it to her life. Because she seems like a good judge of characters and reasons within the boundaries of the books she discusses, which makes me feel a bit sad that she doesn't take it a step further.

What I missed a little bit was an emphasis on England and Wales. Mori does seem to miss her home, but it is more about the fairies and her grandparents, than it is about actually describing the difficulties a Welsh girl might encounter at a posh English boarding school.

As there is a lot (a lot!) SF in this book, it will certainly inspire you to read something new. But I hope that the message the readers take from this is not
"Don't be like Daniel here, always reading stories and no time for anything real. I'm the opposite. I have no time for stories."
Mori seems to find a kind of balance between the two by the end of this, and I think that is the best message you can get. ...more

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May 29, 2020 Stephanie rated it liked it

Shelves: i-own-a-hard-copy, fantasy

I feel like a large portion of this book went over my head since I haven't read the dozens and dozens of pre-1980 SFF books it makes reference to. At least I understood the repeated references to The Lathe of Heaven and some other Le Guin novels, and of course Tolkien, but that was where my uderstanding ended.

The beginning was rough; lots of long-winded explanations that brought the story to a grinding halt. I nearly put the book down at about the 20% mark, but I kept reading it for the tactile ...more

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Jan 13, 2012 Amanda rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: female-authors, around-the-world-challenge, scifi-fantasy, united-kingdom, requires-re-reading, hairpin, wales

I missed this book somehow in the last year, and all of a sudden in the span of one week everyone was talking about it. I downloaded a sample to the kindle and was hooked.

This book is the book for those little girls who grew up reading science fiction and fantasy, who were a bit outside of their peers, who were loners. This book is for me. And I loved the great use of historiography -- I have a wishlist chock full of scifi writers I hadn't even heard of thanks to this book. I know this year is ...more

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Jan 05, 2024 Emma rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-in-2024, ya, bookbound

Among Others is classified as fantasy, a genre I rarely read.
There’s definitely some part of fantasy (or mental illness, or emotional PTSD?).
But it’s basically the coming of age novel of the teen Mori, told as a journal.

Read all my thoughts here:
https://wordsandpeace.com/2024/01/07/... ...more

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