The Prestige

The Prestige by Christopher Priest is the story of a feud between two stage magicians, around the beginning of the 20th century (mostly) in England. Rupert Angier (stage name "The Great Danton") and Alfred Borden (Le Professeur de la Magie) spend almost as much time retaliating against and spying on each other as they do rehearsing and improving their illusions. It all starts when Borden interrupts a seance being held by Angier. He later regrets his actions, but to Angier, it is unforgivable. The rest of their lives are spent trying to sabotage each other's shows, and when Borden begins performing an illusion he calls The New Transported Man, Angier will stop at nothing to discover the secret to the performance and improve upon it for use in his own act.

I saw the movie adaptation of this when it came out, and knew I had to read the book when I got the chance. I have to admit, though, I was a little disappointed. Don't get me wrong - the book isn't bad. It's just not what I expected, exactly. It starts off slow, and no matter how many times I thought the pace would surely begin to pick up, it did not. That's not to say it was necessarily boring, though! It's been a long time since I saw the movie, so I didn't really remember much about the story, so I was constantly intrigued about how certain things were going to play out, and what was going to happen next. I'm glad I didn't remember the details regarding The New Transported Man from the movie, since I think that would've just made the book boring for me.

Top Ten Tuesday and Teaser Tuesday - The Prestige

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish - every week, a new top 10 list is posted, and as with Follow My Book Blog Friday, it seems an excellent way to both find new blogs and get to know your fellow bloggers a little better. This week's list is:

Top 10 Books I Want To Re-read

And here's mine...

01. Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

02. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

03. Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry/Ridley Pearson

04. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

05. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

06. Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

07. Red Dragon by Thomas Harris

08. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (I still haven't read the rest of the series)

09. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

10. Watership Down by Richard Adams

What's your top ten? Mine's not really in any particular order.

Teaser Tuesdays is another weekly meme, this one hosted by Should Be Reading. What you do is just get whatever book you're currently reading, turn to a random page, and post a teaser sentence from that page (careful not to use any spoilers, though!). Be sure to say what the title and author of the book are, so anyone who might be interested can find it!

From The Prestige by Christopher Priest:

"In semi-darkness, half inverted in the chair, tied hand and foot, and entirely submerged in cold water, I began to drown-"

Please visit Should Be Reading, and feel free to also link to your own Teaser Tuesday (or Top 10) in the comments!