Bookclub City of Bones: Chapters 14-20 (4/5)
We’re continuing with our reading of The City of Bones, the first in The Mortal Instruments series with chapters 14 – 20. We spent half the podcast with mating seagulls outside our window, so we apologise for any… excited bird calls in the background.
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10th August 2018 @ 2:03 pm
Again with the spam… I’ve added the email address to my contacts, let’s hope it does the trick!
9th August 2018 @ 2:55 pm
Thank heaven for Ruth’s computer skills! And yet again your replies ended up in my spam folder… sigh.
9th August 2018 @ 5:13 pm
have you added the email they replies get send from to your contacts? that’s what official websites always tell you to do, so their stuff doesnt end up in spam haha so maybe that works?
23rd July 2018 @ 9:43 am
Hey, I listened to this installement last friday. It’s always fun to hear you guys get so animated about the story and I loved the sound of the seagulls in the background. 😄
Don’t know what to say about the actual book itself though. You know I haven’t read them and even listening to your wonderful discussions, I still feel like I’m missing out on stuff. Which is only natural, you can’t go over every line that is written in the book. It’s just, right now, I don’t like anyone in this story. Apart from Alec and Magnus (duh), Alec shoving Clary up against a wall notwithstanding. It’s frustrating because I love everyone on the show! I admit that I didn’t like Clary much in s1 but I got over that so it’s sad that I’m brought back to that feeling because of the book. I always liked Jace and I really don’t here. I don’t care one way or another about Izzy because the book is giving me nothing. Simon just seems annoying and always there. It just feels like the author is concentrating so hard on her two main characters that everyone else just seems incidental. They’re just there in the background or mostly ignored. Maybe it bothers me more cause everyone is a teenager and I can’t be doing with all that teen angst. Also, I just can’t picture a menacing, intimidating 16-year old Jace… Ugh, I just don’t like anyone! Please tell me it gets better.
I have a few questions. This hate between Clary and Izzy, is this something that continues through the books? Does the timeline in the books go as slow as it does on the show? I mean, do the books span years or months? Cause the thought of an 18-year old Alec married to a 400+ warlock with 2 kids seems kind of weird. Do we get a discription of Raphael? Is he also supposed to be a teenager? I can’t remember if you mentioned that. Also, wasn’t there an Abadon demon in Buffy? I can vaguely remember something like that. I’m planning a Buffy rewatch during my vacation, I haven’t watched the show since it ended.
Looking forward to your Shag, marry, kill episode! 😎😆
24th July 2018 @ 2:53 pm
Hey,
Glad you’re enjoying the podcast, if not the book…
I mostly agree with you – if my memory serves the books get better, but its not a book that has benefited from close inspection imo.
In answer to your few questions (answering as spoilerlessly as possible):
1 – yes i think the hate is pretty much gone after the first book.
2 – no, the books cover more time, and certainly the married with kids thing doesn’t happen til years later (it doesn’t happen in the main series at all, but in the sequel stories), but it is a bit weird, and something we’ll talk about if we ever get there 😉
3 – we do and i think he is supposed to look very angelic and young – i think clary says he only looks a little older than her.
4 – I do not think so. however in doing a quick google to check I discovered this fun fact (thank god for wikia): The Big Bad of season 9 of the CW show Supernatural, Abaddon, was based on Glory. Like Glory, Abaddon was immensely powerful, near-invulnerable and took a lot to kill.
Enjoy your buffy rewatch. Prepare to be amazed 😉
1st August 2018 @ 10:50 pm
Okay, going to try this again. Sorry for the late reply, both of your mails ended up in my spam folder for some reason.
It’s weird that the show puts such strange time restraints on the story when it obviously doesn’t happen that way in the books. I don’t think the show would have suffered any if they story had been told over a period of several months instead of weeks. I still find it hard to believe that Malec have only been together 2 months. It also implies that Clary got over her mom’s death really fast… 😮
Hmm, that’s strange. I could have sworn it was on Buffy. I’ve only ever seen s1 of Supernatural so that can’t be it. Could it have been on Angel?
4th August 2018 @ 1:08 pm
It’s interesting, we actually just discussed the timeline of the first book in our last episode and pretty much concluded that the timeline is fuzzy enough for us to not really when exactly things happened and how long they took. but that until you stop and try and work it out, it really doesn’t matter. which is kind of what I’ve always said about the show. some episodes have to open directly after the last one, due to a dramatic cliff hanger, but most of the time, there could be a week inbetween and there’s no need for there not to be, so why wouldn’t you put some time jumps between episodes? sigh.
I now want to do a Buffy rewatch, because I’ve got a Buffy A-something demon on the tip of my tongue and just can’t quite grasp it. grr.
7th August 2018 @ 9:28 pm
I haven’t gotten round to my Buffy rewatch yet. I have nother week off next week so maybe I will do it then. But I kinda want to rewatch QAF as well and I’m behind on so much stuff! 😥
25th July 2018 @ 12:05 am
it is kind of shocking that I read most of the book in a few days on holidays and I didn’t really worry too much about anything. I rolled my eyes at the kids a couple of times, when they were all just being brats or when they talked like they had swallowed a dictionary, but that’s about it.
On close analysis though? wow! really does not benefit. It does however really make me want to read the next book, as we’ll talk about this next tuesday, in our last part, but the last 10 pages of City of Bones pretty much re-set all the characters. Alec & Clary are talking to each other in a friendly manner and Alec is 25x happier than he was at the beginning. Clary & Izzy are suddenly best friends. Jace is nice and normal to Clary. so that’s interesting because I did get to that point and thought ‘Huh! I might actually like you guys!!’
I guess we’ll see… would help if we got a S3b announcement date any time soon…
1st August 2018 @ 11:04 pm
Well, I guess it’s good that all the characters evolve in the books. I wanted to ask, are there characters in the books that are very diferently portrayed on the show character wise? And are there important character developments on the show that don’t happen in the books and vice versa? Like, does Alec become head of the institute in the books as well? I know that Jocelyn lives in the books and Max dies… and I’m still very grateful for that! 😁
Just listened to your fic rec podcast and am now going through all of the stories you talked about. I have read some of them but I am happy that there are still some that are new to me. I really liked the one with the little dragon. I wish they could have kept it!
Looking forward to your new podcast! I was cleaning out a cupboard today and came across several slash zines. Do you remember those? Can you even buy them anymore? It made me nostalgic about all the fandoms I’ve been into in the past. It’s a sure sign of me loving a show when I get all invested in the fanfic. So I was wondering, what fandoms have you two been into in the past/present? Perhaps it could be a topic of one of your future podcasts? That would be very interesting. 😉
4th August 2018 @ 1:12 pm
I’ll let Ruth answer the book questions, mostly because I don’t know haha
Ah man, I’ve got some Buffy fic zines somewhere on my bookshelf! those were the good old days! there’s also my first and only long form fic which I had printed into zine form, not to actually publish, but just to give to a few friends. that’s somewhere up there on a shelf somewhere. I DO NOT ever want to re-read that hahahaha
We will definitely do something on fandoms! With Thinky Thoughts, we’re planning to discuss themes (strong women, masculinity, LGBTQ, adaptations etc) across multi fandoms, so we’re going to do a lot of delving into our previous fandoms I reckon, but both of our most recent high intensity one was definitely BBC Merlin, which I still miss so much!! 🙁
7th August 2018 @ 9:26 pm
I think I might have a couple of stories posted in a zine yeaaars ago that should never again see the light of day. 😂 Looking forward to you discussing fandom. I’ve seen some of Merlin but not everything. Never saw the final. Doesn’t Arthur die? How many seasons were there? I think I might have stopped watching after Luther (?) died. Maybe I should give the show another go sometime…
6th August 2018 @ 12:43 pm
I think it’s safe to say that all the characters are a little different. The thing I’ve always said is the core difference between the book and the show is that the show has an ensemble cast and the book does not. The show is the story of Jace and Clary and Alec and Isabelle and Simon and Magnus and to a lesser degree Luke and Maia. The book is really Clary and Jace’s story – everyone else is a supporting player.
So Jace and Clary are more or less the same, other than being aged up. Their arcs are the most similar to the book version.
I think Alberto’s Simon is a little sweeter, a little happier, but his arc too is pretty similar.
Alec and Isabelle both have a lot of story lines that just don’t exist in the book, Alec’s leadership arc – he’s only 18 in the book so not really in a position to become HotI, and Jace and Clary are HotI later on. Alec’s only solo stories are around Magnus. Isabelle likewise is given stories that just don’t feature in the book at all, her relationship with Raphael is completely the show’s creation.
Magnus is mostly quite similar, I’d have said that where the rest of the characters have been aged up Magnus has been sort of refined to make him match more neatly with a more adult Alec and other characters. Book Magnus is a little more party boy, glittery-er, more chaotic.
I think quite a lot of things happen in the book to motivate our characters to get involved – because they’re young, and not in a position of leadership, or really even active Shadowhunters, circumstances have to drive them to action – things like Max’s death motivate Alec and Jace and Izzy in the book in a way that wasn’t necessary in the show because they were leaders and active NYC shadowhunters, it’s their job to get involved.
7th August 2018 @ 9:20 pm
Damnit, all your replies ended up in my spam folder again. Thank you for your excellent reply. I think I will stick to the show, it sounds like the books would leave me very wanting as a Malec shipper or even just a fan off all the other characters apart from Clace. Having watched the show and as a fan, are you still able to enjoy the books for what they are?
8th August 2018 @ 3:44 pm
Lookit! Ruth made the reply button come back! I don’t know how, she’s a genius!!
8th August 2018 @ 12:35 am
so this is the only one of your comments in this thread I can reply to. I have no idea what’s going on!!! 🙁
8th August 2018 @ 1:23 pm
I know, I don’t know why that is either….You could just send me a mail instead?
8th August 2018 @ 3:33 pm
I think I’ve fixed it!