Book Lovers Recommendations and Blogging Break

The lovely Ramya at Ramya's Bookshelf has a weekly feature in which she asks other bloggers to recommend five of their favourite books. I was thrilled when she asked me to participate, and my choices are up today. I tried to pick five books I haven't gushed about incessantly here before, but still, my choices will probably not be too surprising for those who have been reading this blog for a while. What can I do, I can't help what I like!

Another thing: I'm going to need to take a break from blogging for some time. I've been having trouble juggling everything lately - school, work, settling down after a move, reading, blogging, life - and well, something's got to give. I love telling you all about the books I read, I really do. But I'm getting a bit burned out, so I think some time away will do me good.

On top of everything, my laptop finally died for good yesterday. It had been threatening to for a while, which at least gave me the chance to back up most of what I had there. And I'm very, very glad it didn't happen during the read-a-thon. I have an old desktop I can use, so at least I won't be completely computerless and internetless, but it's not the same as having my own computer. And that's an added reason to take a break, rather than trying to keep up and forfeiting my sanity in the process.

I won't be completely offline, so you might see me on Twitter or blog hopping occasionally. I'll probably have less time to comment, though, for which I apologize in advance. I promise I haven't forgotten about anyone, and I'll miss you all!

I'll probably be back sometime in early May. Until then, happy reading!

PS: This cannot be stressed too often: Nick Hornby rocks. Ah, the good ol' idea that entertainment is childish, lowly and despicable. I'm so glad people like Nick Hornby and Michael Chabon exist.

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Read-a-thon

Dewey's 24-hour Read-a-thon is (almost) over.


Phew! I'm off to catch a few hours of sleep, even though it's now lunchtime here. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you to all the participants, cheerleaders, prize donors, helpers, and to Trish and Hannah, who did an amazing job. If you didn't participate this time, well, there's always next time, which will be in October.

I missed Dewey a lot today. But I think we all did our best to make her proud.

Gratuitous kitty picture - this time my actual cats, who kept me company the whole time:


And so to bed.

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Read-a-thon! And Awesomeness!

Tomorrow is the 24-hour Read-a-thon. I won't be posting over here, for the most part, but there just might be a sleep-deprived, hyper-caffeinated and high-on-sugar post or two. If there is, don't get scared. Normality will eventually be resumed.

I might not have a book pile, but I do have my faithful read-a-thon companions: mocha, cappuccino, apple and cinnamon flavoured black tea, chocolate, and my cat. To everyone who's participating, either as a read or as a cheerleader, good luck! And above all, have lots of fun.

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And now for the awesomeness: Christmas has officially moved to April. Yep. Look what I got today, courtesy of the lovely Valentina:


The Dangerous Alphabet by Neil Gaiman! A lovely card! A beautiful little bag (which she hand-knitted! In my favourite colours!) filled with Kinder Schoko-Bons! And a CD! Between Amy and Valentina, I have enough chocolate to last me for months. But the sad thing is that it will probably be all gone by the end of the read-a-thon.

The very best part, however, is this:


Valentina had told me before that she was going to get a Neil Gaiman book signed for me, but I still might have squealed a tiny little bit when I opened it. I now have signed books by my two favourite authors! Hooray!

Thank you so much, Valentina! I feel so spoiled. And all this kindness coming my way makes me want to give back, so there just might be a random giveaway in the near future.

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The Tygrine Cat by Inbali Iserles

The Tygrine Cat is the story of Mati, a young cat who travels by ship from his distant homeland, and eventually makes his way to the community of stray cats that lives at Cressida Market. Mati only has vague memories of his life before the long journey. He remember his mother urging him on the ship, and he knows there was something he was meant to remember, something about the three pillars of feline wisdom.

After Mati’s arrival, a series of strange things begin to happen at Cressida Market. Many of the cats are quick to blame the newcomer, but the truth is much darker, stranger, and older than that. In fact, the roots of what is happening go back a long, long time.

I really, really enjoyed The Tygrine Cat. Reading it I was reminded of Varjak Paw by S.F. Said, but that’s only natural as both are children’s fantasies featuring a young cat as a hero. But beyond these superficial similarities, they’re each their own thing, and they each have their own atmosphere. I do think, however, that fans of Varjak Paw are likely to enjoy this book.

The Tygrine Cat is a very gripping, suspenseful and action-packed story. And it’s also a story about belonging, friendship and prejudice. What Mati experiences as a newcomer to the Cressida Market community isn’t all that different from what countless human immigrants experience on a daily basis. The other cats are suspicious of him because he’s an outsider from a different land, with different habits, a different culture. They’re quick to jump to conclusions about him and to blame him when things go wrong.

But I hope I’m not making The Tygrine Cat sound like a heavy-handed allegory of the immigrant experience. This is a book that has something there if you look under the surface, but it’s also a wonderfully told and very fun story.

There was a detail about The Tygrine Cat that really made me smile: in the story, the cats sometimes ask one another, “Have you ever owned?”. Meaning that it is them who own and are responsible for the “hind”, or human, who takes care of them. I think most cat owners will recognize some truth in this.


In conclusion: a very enjoyable book, with just the right amount of suspense and depth. And of course, it's extra fun for those who love cats.

Other Opinions:
Serendipity
Valentina’s Room

(Let me know if I missed yours.)

And you can also read Valentina’s lovely interview with Inbali Iserles.

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Bookmarks & Christmas in April

Mari is hosting a very fun contest: she's asking her readers to post pictures of their bookmarks. Those who do so before the first of May will be entered for a prize. I'm seriously addicted to bookmarks, so I was all over this idea. And plus, I like looking at other people's bookmarks just as much as I like looking at other people's book piles (bookmark snooping?). So I hope lots of other bloggers decide to participate.

I have a huge collection of bookmarks, and I never miss a chance of making or buying more. One of the reasons why I like collecting them is that it gives the chance to, when I start a new book, pick whichever bookmark seems to fit its mood better. Does anyone else do this?

Anyway, this is not my entire collection of bookmarks, as some are inside books, others are packed away and I couldn't find them, etc. (My house is so chaotic right now it's not even funny.) Still, these are some of my favourites:


I have other book bloggers to thank for a lot of these, which makes me like them all the more.


And this last picture has some that I made myself:


Edit to add: It is now May 11th, and this week's Weekly Geeks theme is to share your bookmarks collection. Because I posted this recently, I thought I'd use it as my WG post. But to feel less bad about recycling a post, I decided to include a new picture:


The one on the left came today with a book order from Small Beer Press. I made the one after using clothes tag. The lovely pink ribbon one was made by Chris and I won it during a read-a-thon. The second to last one is home made as well.

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And now: what's this Christmas in April thing, you ask? Well, between yesterday and today, I've become pretty convinced that the postman is, in fact, Santa Claus. Behold:


First of all, I have the lovely Robin to thank for The Raven Steals the Light by Bill Read and Robert Bringhurst, a collection of Haida myths which she sent me after I commented on her review. She also included a beautiful card and a "cozy book corner" bookmark. Thank you so much, Robin! I can't wait to read the book.

Then today I got a set of two beautiful tiger bookmarks that I won from Jeane, plus a handwritten letter from Eva. I love the bookmarks (which you can see on the first picture, along with Robin's) - tigers are among my favourite animals, and now I'm craving a good nature book just so I can use them. (Well, I know could use them elsewhere, but they feel right for a nature book.) And there's just something so special about handwritten letters. Speaking of which: I'm also supposed to to be penpals with Chris, and I have written him a letter. But two months later, I have yet to mail it. I'm terrible, I know. See, this is why I didn't write a post asking who wanted to be my penpal, even though I love the idea. But Eva inspired me to get my act together, so one of these days I will.

And last but definitely not least, everything else in the picture: the one, the only, the amazing Amy sent me a WHOLE BOX full of books. Why? Because she's awesome, that's why. My jaw literally dropped when I opened it. And I waited a few hours to post about it because otherwise my post would consist of nothing but "!!!!!!!!!!1111@#" or "WOWOWOWOW" ad infinitum. She sent me:

• Drood by Dan Simmons
  
• Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr
  
• The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory
• On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness by Andrew Peterson
  
• Lots and lots of chocolate! And marshmallows! Just in time to get me high on sugar during the read-a-thon! Amy, if I stop making sense about midway through it, I'm blaming it on you. (PS: Thanks to you, I now know that even though I don't like peanuts, I very much do like peanut butter.) (No, I'd never peanut butter before.) (We probably do have it, as you can find anything anywhere these days, but it's not nearly as popular as it is in America.) (Is she already high on sugar? I hear someone ask.)
  

Seriously, I'm still a little bit speechless here, and probably not making much sense. (I'll shut up about peanut butter now.) Thank you so, so much. This made my whole month, possibly my year. It was like Christmas all over again. See, if anyone still had any doubts, here you go: photographic evidence of how awesome book bloggers are.

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The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon by Tom Spanbauer

Set in the town of Excellent, Idaho in the late nineteenth century, The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon tells the story of Duivichi-un-Dua (or Shed). Shed, whose nickname comes from what he and his clients do out in the shed at night, is a bisexual boy whose mother was Native American and whose father was white. When he was only thirteen, he was brutally raped by a man who then went on to murder his mother. After that, he was brought up by Ida Richilieu, mayor and brothel owner, who treats him kindly but also puts him to work.

One day, Shed decides to go find his mother’s people, so that he can discover what his Native name mean and make sense of a part of himself he feels disconnected from. Along the way, he meets and falls in love with a green-eyed cowboy, Dellwood Barker. The only problem is that this man just might be Shed’s long lost father.

There’s so much I want to say about The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon. It took me about fifty pages to get used to Shed’s unique voice and to the novel’s dreamlike feel, but I think that says more about my reading mood last week than it does about the book itself. And once I properly got into it, I really got into it. The last third of the story or so just ripped out my heart and stomped on it. Repeatedly. The story is ominous from the very beginning–all along you know it will be about loss and tragedy and that things will not end well. But when it happened, it still killed me.

The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is about race, gender, sexuality and identity. It’s about love, family and loss. It’s about stories, why we need them, and what they say about us. And it’s about violence, intolerance and prejudice. In Excellent, Idaho everyone is suspicious of everyone else. Ida Richilieu is white, but because she’s Jewish she is rejected by, and rejects, the town’s Mormon population. Shed, being a “half-breed” and bisexual, is an outcast in every possible way. And things get even more complicated when the Wisdom Brothers, a travelling band of black singers, all of them ex-slaves, come to town.

You can imagine where this is going, I'm sure. It’s easy to see from the very beginning, and yet the horrible things that happen lose none of their emotional impact because they’re predictable. They’re actually even more tragic because they’re predictable. We know that things like these happened, and that they happened again and again. That's what makes them so tragic.

Despite my occasional doubts about the term, I think I’ll have to describe The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon as magic realism. The book is realistic fiction except when it’s not, and it’s speculative but only ever-so-slightly. Besides, I think that fans of books such as Pedro Páramo are likely to enjoy this.

I was very interested in how the book incorporates the concept of Two-spirit or Berdache, which I’d come across before in Tomson Highway’s work. It has to do with Shed’s bisexuality, but not exclusively. More than about sexuality, it’s about having a fluid gender identity, and that’s something I’m very interested in. “Berdache” is now considered a pejorative term, but The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon uses it, possibly because the book was published in 1991, or possibly deliberately, since Shed is raised in a white community.

Tom Spanbauer is known for creating the concept of “dangerous writing”, which is defined as follows in this interview:

Dangerous writing means putting a piece of yourself in a work, going to the “sore spot,” and discussing taboo topics, particularly sex and violence. It means writing for yourself, a concept that in the literary world was thought to make you go broke. It means exposing yourself to the tiger, not physically, but mentally.

His workshops on writing have influenced authors such as Chuck Palahniuk and Amy Hempel. It’s easy to see how The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is deliberately transgressive, but the book’s strong language, violence and shocking bits never felt gratuitous to me. Each and every scene had emotional resonance.

Above all, The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is a daring, beautiful and immensely sad book.

Notable passages:

Wasn’t til I lost them all, that I heard the story I had forever needed to hear, and I found out things weren’t the way I thought they were, which meant: what I was doing wasn’t what I thought I was doing, and me, in the end, who I thought I was, wasn’t at all who I was.
Wasn’t til I lost them all that things being how they were or not being how they were didn’t matter. As Ida always said, best stories are the true stories, and, truth is, no matter what, we were always a family—better than any Mormon family—Dellwood Barker, Ida Richilieu, Alma Hatch, and me.
A family.

“Smoke and wind and fire are all things you can feel but can’t touch. Memories and dreams are like that too. They’re what this world is made up of. There’s really only a very short time that we get hair and teeth and put on red cloth and have bones and skin and look out eyes. Not for long. Some folks longer than others. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to be the one who tells the story: how the eyes have seen, the hair has blown, the caress the skin felt, how the bones have ached.
“What the human heart is like,” he said.

“What happened to the Indian people is the same as if a giant wind had come along and threw us around for years and years. Killed almost everybody, this giant wind, then left the rest for dead. When the living, like your mother, went back to their homes, they couldn’t find their homes, or the hills or the valleys where their homes used to be. Indian people got thrown around so much, got so used to misery and dying, that they started to forget things like why were they living. ‘Why do we live?’ ‘Why do we live?’ they went around asking each other. But nobody could remember.”

Other Opinions:

Experiments in Reading

(If I missed yours, let me know and I'll be glad to add it.)

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An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks

I am sometimes moved to wonder whether it might not be necessary to redefine the very concepts of “health” and “disease”, to see these in terms of the ability of the organism to create a new organization and order, one that fits its special, altered disposition and needs, rather than in the terms of a rigidly defined “norm”.

An Anthropologist on Mars is a collection of seven essays by neurologist Oliver Sacks about individuals with several brain disorders: “The Case of the Colorblind Painter” is about a painter who, after a car accident (possibly preceded and/or caused by a stroke), develops cerebral achromatopsia – he loses the ability to perceive, remember or even imagine colours. “The Last Hippie” is about Greg, a man who, after a massive brain tumour, is no longer able to form new memories, and so becomes perpetually stuck in the late 1960s. “A Surgeon's Life” is about a surgeon with Tourette's syndrome, whose tics disappear while he’s operating.

“To See and Not to See” is the story of Virgil, a man blind from early childhood who, in his fifties, regains partial sight after a surgery. But Virgil finds sight disorienting, disturbing, and even frightening. “The Landscape of His Dreams” focuses on Franco Magnani, an Italian painter who suffers from temporal lobe epilepsy. His seizures cause him to have almost hallucinatory visions of Pontino, the Tuscan village where he grew up, and he devotes his art to trying to recapture it. “Prodigies” is about Stephen Wiltshire, an autistic boy who’s also a very talented artist. Finally, in “An Anthropologist on Mars” Sacks writes about Temple Gradin, also autistic and a successful professor, author, and humane livestock facilities designer. She finds human interaction impossible to make sense of, but deeply empathizes with animals.

An Anthropologist on Mars is an amazing book in so many different ways. I loved Oliver Sacks’ writing: it’s clear, concise, emphatic and sometimes humorous. I loved that he doesn’t spare us any of the science. The essays have a personal feel, but they also include detailed explanations about how each disorder affects the brain, about its history, about other well-known cases. And these explanations are clear enough that they’re easy to make sense of even for someone with a limited background in science (such as myself). Furthermore, most of the scientific details are in the footnotes – I loved reading them, but if someone happens to be more interested in the personal story, they can easily skip them and not miss anything.

But as much as I loved the science, I probably loved the human side of these essays even more. Oliver Sacks doesn’t write about “cases”: he writes about people. And these are people he deeply respects, so you never feel that he’s treating them like specimens. As distressing as some of these neurological disorders can be, he never forgets that those who have them are still human. I love the fact that he believes that rather than seeing these people as “broken”, we should perhaps see them as having a brain organization that deviates from the norm but is adaptative in its own unique way.

But this isn’t to say that he romanticizes any of the seven people he writes about. Far from it: he acknowledges and addresses all the problems and pain and distress that these disorders cause. But it’s important to keep in mind that a lot of the time, these problems come from the behaviour others expect individuals to have rather than from anything the individuals themselves lack.

(Also, he gets extra cool points for all the literature references: H. G. Wells; “The Country of the Blind”, Proust, Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, G. K. Chesterton, etc.)

My favourite essay was “The Last Hippie”, about the man unable to form new memories. That wasn’t the only consequence of his brain tumour, but I won’t tell you everything. This essay really got to me because I have a thing about memory: of all the strange things that can happen to our terrifyingly frail brains, memory loss is what frightens me the most. Towards the end of the essay, Oliver Sacks describes how he took Greg to see The Grateful Dead, his favourite band, live at Central Park. The next morning, Greg had retained no memory of their outing, but when he listened to some of the band’s new songs, he was able to recognize them.

An Anthropologist on Mars is a fascinating and very readable book. If you’re at all interested in neuroscience, in the brain, or just in what makes people who they are, then by all means read it. Now I need to get my hands on each and every one of Sacks’ other books.

Notable passages:

We long for a holiday from our frontal lobes, a Dyonisiac fiesta of sense and impulse. That this is a need of our constrained, civilized, hyperfrontal nature has been recognized in every time and culture. All of us need to take a little holiday from out frontal lobes—the tragedy is when, through grave illness or injury, there is no return from the holiday, as with Phineas Gage, or with Greg.

Mourning requires that one hold the sense of loss in one’s mind, and it was far from clear to me that Greg could do this. One might indeed tell him that his father had died, again and again. And every time it would come as something shocking and new and cause immeasurable distress. But then, in a few minutes, he would forget and be cheerful again, and was so prevented from going through the work of grief, the mourning.

We achieve perceptual constancy—the correlation of all the different appearances, the transforms of objects—very early in the first months of life. It constitutes a huge learning task, but is achieved so smoothly, so unconsciously, that its enormous complexity is scarcely realized (thought it is an achievement that even the largest supercomputers cannot begin to match). But for Virgil, with half a century of forgetting whatever visual anagrams he had constructed, the learning, or relearning, of these transforms requited hours of conscious and systematic exploration each day.

And yet it would be reductive, absurd, to suppose that temporal lobe epilepsy, seizure of “reminiscence”, even if they do constitute the final trigger of Franco’s vision, could be the only determinants of his reminiscence and art. The character of the man—his attachment to his mother, his tendency towards idealization and nostalgia; the actual history of his life, including the sudden loss of his childhood paradise and of his father; and, not least, the desire to be known, to achieve, to represent a whole culture—all this, surely, is equally important.

Stephen’s voice, his gestures, mimicked to perfection those of a well-meaning but condescending teacher, specifically (I felt with some discomfort) mine when I had tested him in London. He had not forgotten this. It was a lesson to me, to all of us, never to underestimate him. Stephen delighted in reversing roles, just as in his cartoon of himself fanning me.

Other opinions:
books i done read
Dog Ear Diary
Upsidedown Bee

(Let me know if I missed yours.)

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The Sunday Salon - Read-a-thon and Printz Project

First of all, for those who celebrate it, Happy Easter! For those who don't, I hope you have a happy Sunday anyway.

I can't believe there's less than a week to go for 24 Hour Read-a-thon. I'm not participating as a reader this time (I tried to both read and co-host last time, but I ended up stressing myself out way too much), but hey, that's no excuse not to make a list of recommended books, right? You know how much I love a good list.

So if you're still trying to decide what to read, here are some suggested short books that will (hopefully) keep you hooked. The titles link to my posts on the books, in case you want to find out more:

• Skellig by David Almond (170 pages) - I read this recently, so of course I had to include it. This lovely little book only took me about an hour and a half to read.
  
  
• Pobby and Dingan by Ben Rice (94 pages) - another quick and very moving read.
  
  
• Pay the Piper by Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple (166 pages) - a retelling of The Pied Piper of Hamelin fairy tale.
  
  
• Sweethearts by Sara Zarr (217 pages) - a bittersweet story about love, identity and loss.
  
  
• Any of the books in the Canongate Myth Series - they're all very quick reads. I especially recommend Dream Angus, Girl Meets Boy, Weight and The Penelopiad.

• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky - 213 pages of brilliance.
  
  
• Psyche in a Dress by Francesca Lia Block (116 pages) - a lovely little verse novel retelling the myth of Cupid and Psyche.
  
  
• Green Angel by Alice Hoffman (116 pages) - a gorgeous post-apocalyptic fairy tale.
  
  
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (146 pages) - if you're looking for something creepy and disturbing to keep you awake at night, this is the book for you.
  
  
• Gossamer by Lois Lowry (154 pages) - also has its creepy moments, though in a completely different way. Most of all, a lovely story about dreams and compassion.
  
  
• Zel by Donna Jo Napoli (202 pages) - a very dark retelling of Rapunzel. I couldn't put it down.
  
  
• I Was a Rat! by Philip Pullman (179 pages) - and since we're on fairy tale retellings, I haven't plugged this lovely book in a while. No, I can't tell you which fairy tale it retells, because finding out at the end is what makes it so fun!
  
  
• The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo (208 pages) - impossible to put down (and it made me cry).

There. A lot of these are children's or YA books, as in my experience those are perfect for the read-a-thon. You could also argue that it's a better idea to read longer books that keep you engrossed for longer, and you'd have a very valid point. But personally I love the feeling of accomplishment I get when I actually finish a book. Another good idea is to have a nice selection of comics or even picture books so you can feast your eyes on some lovely illustrations. This works particularly well in the final hours of the event.

If you're not doing anything next weekend but don't think reading for several hours straight is for you, you should consider joining us as a cheerleader. You only need to commit to an hour or two minimum (of course, if you want to stick around for longer, that'd be great too). The community feeling and the encouragement from other readers are a big, big part of what makes the read-a-thon so special. I promise you'll have fun, and maybe you'll even make some new friends.

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On a different note, if you like YA you might be interested in knowing that Jessica and Suey started the Printz Project, whose goal is to read all the winners (and if you're brave enough, honour books) of the Michael L. Printz Award.

I think I'm feeling brave and/or crazy enough to go for both. Let's see: my total of winners/honor books read is 8. Total of books I loved: 8. Total of books that made my all-time favourites list immediately: 3 (those would be Nation, Tender Morsels and Looking for Alaska).

So yeah, I'm in. And since there's no time limit, there's also no pressure.

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Skellig by David Almond

Shortly after moving into a new house, Michael’s pregnant mother gives birth to his little sister prematurely. There are no certainties about whether or not the baby will live, and Michael’s mother and sister stay in the hospital for a long time. Back home, Michael feels lost and lonely. He is drawn to the crumbling garage at the end of the garden, even though he’s repeatedly told to stay away from it. One day he goes in, and there, among the dust and spider webs, he finds a winged man, Skellig. For the most part, Skellig refuses to be helped, though he does allow Michael to bring him aspirin and leftover Chinese food. While his baby sister fights for her life, Michael and his neighbour and new friend Mina try to solve the mystery of just who and what Skellig his.

Mariel earned a cookie for not using the word “gentle” once in her review of Skellig, but I’m afraid I’m not that strong: this book is gentle, and tender and subtle and delicate. I read it in a single sitting on Saturday, but I think it took me until now to process it properly. I knew that I’d liked it, but I was having trouble wording why.

There’s a – I’m not quite sure what to call it – more mystical side to this story that other readers might be able to relate to better than I did. But even being the total skeptic and occasional cynic that I am, I absolutely loved it. I loved it because in the end it’s not really about believing in angels hiding in abandoned garages, or that shoulder blades are where our wings used to be. It’s about people, and kindness, and love. It’s about this sense of awe, of wonder, that I definitely can relate to. And it’s about the mystery of what happens between people: how they connect, what they feel, what they don’t say, the almost invisible ways of expressing tenderness and love.

My favourite character was probably Michael’s neighbour Mina. She’s a very bright girl, who is home schooled and is fond of nature and the poetry of William Blake. She takes Michael around and shows him and owls’ nest, blackbirds, the little wonders of the garden that only become visible to him once he learns how she sees the world. And in return, he shows her Skellig. Both are lonely children, and their friendship develops just when both need a friend the most.

I also really loved the writing itself. Skellig is a short book, but there’s so much to it. And yet the story never crumbles under the weight of it all. Nothing is overstated, but the feelings are all there. Take this scene, for example, which just about killed me:

Dad kicked the leg of the table and the milk bottle toppled over on the table and a jar of jam crashed to the floor.
‘See?’ he yelled. ‘See the state you get me in?’
He raised his fists like he wanted to smash something: anything, the table, me.
‘Go to bloody school!’ he yelled. ‘Get out of my bloody sight!’
Then he just reached across and grabbed me to him.
‘I love you,’ he whispered. ‘I love you.’
And we cried and cried.

Skellig is such a touching book. Read it.

Other Opinions:
where troubles melt like lemon drops
Valentina’s Room
Working Title
Jenny's Books
An Adventure in Reading
As usual, I need more bookshelves
Susan Hated Literature
You Can Never Have Too Many Books
somewhere i have never travelled
everyday reads
Serendipity

(Let me know if I missed yours.)

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Here, There Be Dragons by James A Owen

London, 1917. Professor Sigurdsson has just been murdered, and three of his students, John, Jack and Charles, are approached by a strange man named Bert. Bert hands them a book for safekeeping – the Imaginarium Geographica – and tells them that this book is the reason why the Professor was murdered. More: if they don’t accompany him immediately, their lives are also in danger.

And what is the Imaginarium Geographica, you ask? It’s a book that cartographes imaginary lands. All the lands of myth, of legend and of fantasy are there. John, Jack and Charles follow Bert to his ship, the Indigo Dragon, and so begins an adventure that blurs the line between the imaginary and the real.

Here, There Be Dragons is a lot of fun. It’s full of references and allusions to several mythologies, to legends, and to other literary works, especially but not exclusively fantasy works. Some of these are subtle, so it’s likely that the more you like fantasy and mythology to begin with, the more you'll enjoy it. And best of all, the story is a tribute to the imagination, to storytelling, to the joy of an adventure story.

One of the most interesting things about Here, There Be Dragons is only revealed at the end, but I was less than a hundred pages into the book when I guessed it. This quite surprised me, as I’m not usually any good at guessing stuff, and I don’t think it’s very obvious, at least not that early into the story. So either I read a spoiler somewhere and then completely forget about it, or somehow my brain happened to work just like the author’s. When I first began to suspect it, it was more along the lines of, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if...?"

Either way, I’m not going to tell you what this revelation is, but I hope to have made you curious enough to want to read the book. I will tell you this: the revelation is something that is likely to make even those you weren’t captured by the plot summary want to read this book. It’s something that has to do with the premise of the story itself, and it makes it even more interesting.

Another thing I loved were the full-page black and white illustrations at the beginning of each chapter, done by James A Owen himself. I love me some illustrations, and I wish more books had them. An example:

But as much as I had fun with this book, there were a few things I had problems with. First, there’s a Taming of the Shrew vibe surrounding Aven, the character in the above illustration, that really didn’t sit well with me. I had this feeling for the whole book without being able to pinpoint why, and then towards the end there’s an unfortunate comment about how she “kept her sharp tongue” but learned proper deference, which only confirmed my impression.

Secondly, I wasn’t too crazy about the writing itself. Again, I'm not sure if I can quite explain why, but something about it bothered me at times. Take the dialogue, for example: the story takes place in 1917, during WWI, yet the real-world characters sounded much too old-fashioned. I wouldn't mind it as much if it were the fantasy world characters, but I don't think people talked like that in 1917. It’s like the author was going for mock-Victorian dialogue, which doesn't seem to make sense in this historical context. I kept thinking that the book was set much earlier, in the Victorian or at most early Edwardian period, only to be startled by a reference to the Great War and remember this was meant to be 1917. Maybe I'm completely wrong about how people spoke back then, but in any case it felt wrong.

The third and final thing that bothered me is spoilerific, so I can’t tell you about it. It has to do with something that happens to one of the characters. If anyone who’s read the book is curious, feel free to e-mail me to discuss it. I’d love that, actually.

So, while I would have liked some more character depth, as well as more realistic dialogue, Here, There Be Dragons was a very fun read. The final revelation and the literary allusions will surely make most fantasy fans smile.

Other Opinions:
Stuff as Dreams are Made On
where troubles melt like lemon drops
Rhinoa's Ramblings
Here, There and Everywhere
Becky’s Book Reviews
Bookshelves of Doom
Muse Book Reviews
Read Warbler

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Silver on the Tree by Susan Cooper - A Conversation

Silver on the Tree, the last book in the Dark is Rising sequence, brings together Jane, Simon and Barney Drew, and Will Stanton and Bran Davies. The story begins when the Drew children meet Will in Wales. He tells them that the time has come: very soon they will have to help with the final confrontation between the forces of Dark and the forces of Light.

Susan and I read this book more or less at the same time, and, as with for The Grey King, we decided to discuss it. Sadly, Kerry wasn't able to join us this time. Below is our conversation. Rather than answer pre-defined interview questions, we decided to exchange several e-mails and see where the conversation would take us. A warning: because this is the last book in the series, it proved impossible for us to discuss it without at least some spoilers. So proceed with caution, especially when it comes to the questions about the ending.

Me: Early in the book, there's a scene in which Will and his brother stop a group of schoolmates who are harassing a Pakistani boy. Why do you think Susan Cooper included this scene? How do you think it relates to the series' themes?

Susan: Ouch! This is a hard one, possibly one of the most difficult scenes in the book. Actually, when I first read it, it was so unlike anything else in the book that I paused and asked myself, why is this here? I wasn't sure I liked it, at first. It seemed out of place, too real, in a book about higher magic and old magic and light versus dark; but then I thought about what the racism did. It was hard to hear the word Paki - which I remember from my childhood, being used to those of Pakistani descent - it was hateful and hard. But that was the point. The evil that Will and the others would have to face at the end, was going to be on a real, daily world level.

The scene also pointed out, like the bad-tempered Caradog in The Grey King, that people have a choice in how they behave, and sometimes in choosing light or dark, they become tools for that side - open up themselves to do greater good or evil. This is a constant theme in the books, from the agent of the evil in Greenwitch, to Caradog, the painter in Over Sea, Under Stone, to Richie Moore, and later one particular character (nameless to preserve some surprises!). They all are human beings, who in hurt, rage, fear, or greed, chose to do bad things. It's that choice that Susan Cooper is interested in, because she carefully shows one of the good characters always pointing out they could stop, choose another approach, and the bad character always says no. In this particular case, the evil of Richie Moore had its beginnings in his father, who turns out to be the worst prejudiced sort or person. This is Will's reaction:

'The mindless ferocity of this man, and all those like him, their real loathing born of nothing more solid than insecurity and fear....it was a channel. Will knew that he had been gazing into the channel down which the powers of the Dark, if they gained their freedom, could ride in an instant to complete control of the earth.'

At the end of the book Merriman says all the characters, all the people, will still have to fight to keep the world good, that though the battle of time has been won, the daily battle to keep the world good goes ever on.

Me: I love how you linked this scene to Caradog in The Grey King. I made that connection as well. My reasons for liking this scene are similar to yours. I have a hard time taking an abstract concept like “The Dark” or even a decontextualized notion of “evil” seriously, but there are many instances in the series in which Susan Cooper concretizes it in everyday things, and that’s what makes the whole thing work for me.

Also, I agree with you that she’s most of all interested in the choice – what makes people act kindly rather than unkindly, what’s behind hostility, what’s behind compassion. The characters you mentioned are all human, and despite the existence of supernatural forces in the story, their actions are justified in human terms. Again, this is what I love about this series.

Susan: What do you think of the fact that some of the characters had their memories of their contact with the forces of Light and Darkness wiped? Why do you think it was done? Do you agree?

Me: I think this goes with what we were talking about in our previous answers: how regardless of all the magic in the books, Susan Cooper keeps things very human. The characters in question forget so that they may continue to be human. Forgetting means that they remain as lost and as uncertain as the rest of us, making what they hope are the right choices as they go along. If they remembered, they would have definite answers, which in real life none of us do.

I especially liked how one of the characters in particular was given a choice about whether they wanted to remember or to forget. Although the Old Ones have the power to do so, they don’t decide for people. They give humankind the autonomy and responsibility of choosing freely.

Susan: I like your answer, although I have to say at first what happened to the characters very much upset me. I was mad when the first character had it done, because I felt it unfair, and I almost yelled at the book when the other characters had it done. I really had to reason with myself, think it out, because I thought it unfair they should have no memory at all. something great like that should be remembered, that's how our myths get told, and legends. Joseph Campbell says we can't have contact with the numinous without being changed, and I think that is part of the richness of myth and the call to the threshold - each character has done something special, and why couldn't they be allowed to be a little changed? I'm not so sure it was a gift to have their memories wiped, because the whole point of re-enacting a myth, is to bring back something for humanity to use and learn from. The burden of all they saw and did was very much, I agree, and they couldn't have had a normal life after, and the point of the battle, was that in the end, control of the world passes to humans, as the scene with the Pakistani boy in the first question showed, the battle between good and evil continues on a human level.

I just think it's unfair that after all their choices, everything they saw and learned, that they weren't allowed to keep some of it - wouldn't Barney have painted some fabulous paintings, then? And who knows what Jane and Simon would have gone on to do. So in a way, I thought this was the easy way out. You can tell I feel passionately about this question, I really spent a fair bit of time thinking it through, when it happened in the book!

Me: I guess that in this case my uber scepticism influenced my reaction. You see, at the end of the book I did feel that they had been changed, even if they didn’t explicitly remember things. I guess it’s strange, and it's hard for me to explain why I think so, since obviously forgetting an experience would keep you from learning from it. But I guess I justify it to myself by seeing these supernatural forces in more symbolic terms. So for me, by forgetting they internalized what I always saw in more interior terms.

My next question: Without giving it away, were you satisfied with the ending? Why or why not? How do you think this book compares to others in the series?

Susan: Even given how upset I was with the loss of memory in the book (see previous question), I'd have to say that on the whole, I was satisfied with the ending. They are allowed to be children. I still think they should remember something, though! The best touch is what happens with the choice a character has to make in the ending - that touch of love humanizes the whole ending, and shows that in the end, it is our connection with one another that matters most. Love will always overcome darkness, is always the right choice. It is a huge choice at the end that is the right one, and that was very good, and ends the series on a powerful up note. The memory loss, not so good! In a funny way, while the book ends overlooking a lake in Wales, and the series begins overlooking the sea in Cornwall, there are other physical similarities too, such as most of the series takes place in the countryside, and that was satisfying as well. It makes good use of the natural surroundings and highlights the Celtic nature of the landscape to go with the myth being reworked. The book itself was one of the least satisfying to me to in the series, and I wondered why: was it the juxtaposition of the Barney children with Will? This time, no, I think it wasn't that. It was how the items of light were found, and the tone of the book - there was tone of coldness, distance, in this book, that made the book the least likeable for me. It was too remote.

The books are uneven, with Over Sea, Under Stone being universally the hardest one to get into and like (at least I've found, and with other comments sent to me). I did like Greenwitch, I found it very haunting. I loved The Dark is Rising. And I enjoyed The Grey King very much. Those are my favourites in the series.

Me: I was satisfied with the ending, yes. It reminded me of the ending of some other fantasy series, namely The Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Prydain, which makes sense, as they draw from some of the same myths. That whole theme of an era ending and humankind being left with the responsibility for the world they inhabit is there in them all, and I like that a lot.

Silver on the Tree is probably also my least favourite after Over Sea, Under Stone, but I still enjoyed it a lot. My favourites are The Grey King and The Dark is Rising, with Greenwitch in the middle.

Susan: My next question to you is: Did you find a difference in how the Barney children were written versus Will and Bran?

Susan: I've already thought out my answer, so I'll give it here I'm not sure if Susan Cooper liked the Barney children. It is very difficult to warm up to them, although I wanted to, and I liked them. As Over Sea, Under Stone, and Greenwitch went on, I liked the children more and more in each book. I really liked Jane. But Susan Cooper uses a different tone for the characters, and the love she feels for Will spills over whenever he appears. I'm not sure how she does this, but he was such a fully realized character that I wanted the series to be about him, with him as the central character. Which it was! By the fifth book, the children were more familiar with one another, so it wasn't so awkward, except for meeting Bran, and I thought that was well done. And of course Bran was very interesting. I know that she was trying to show that the mythic battle for good and evil must be played out at the personal level, and she needed characters who were ordinary as well. It was always awkward though, I felt, in the series, when the two worlds collided. I'm not sure if that was on purpose, or by accident. I really think I would have liked to know a little more about the Barney children, because they did play an important part, and one of the pivotal scenes in the whole series involves Simon and Barney at the caravan, in Greenwitch. There, they had no help but what was in themselves, to guide them forward. That was very well done and was when I thought all three Barney children had a right to be in the series, if that makes sense! Jane already had because she was involved with the Greenwitch.

Me: I guess we disagree on this one. I didn’t see all that many differences, other than the fact that Bran and Will were more than what they seemed, whereas the Barney children were “just” children. But they all played an important role in the final outcome of the whole thing. But I had no trouble at all warming up to them. I liked Jane best, though, and I like the fact that she was give a more central role as the series advanced, especially in Greenwitch. I fully agree with you on why ordinary characters were necessary, though. That’s really what makes this series work so well for me.

Susan: I think the only question I have left is, would you recommend this series to children to read?

Susan: I know it's kind of a silly question, but we're adults reading this series, and it's written for children especially. Myself, I know I'm going to read it out loud to my kids, and hope one day they read my copies! I really enjoyed this overall, and would have no problems giving this to any child who reads fantasy, or who enjoys reading. I think Will and the Barney kids and Bran are great kids to grow up with, along with the Narnia kids. (My daughter loves Lucy, the one closest in age to her right now).

Me: I'm probably the least indicated person there could be to answer this question, as age appropriateness almost never crosses my mind when I'm reading. I don't have any children myself, and I grew up with unsupervised access to any book in the house. This resulted in my reading The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas, which is about a prostitute dying of tuberculosis, when I was in my pre-teens. And you know what happened? I didn't understand what was going on for the most part, and I was bored by it.

Anyway...my default answer to these questions is almost always yes. I enjoyed the series as an adult, and would have enjoyed it as a kid too. And I'm sure plenty of other kids will as well. I love the fact that you plan to share it with your children!

Once again, my thanks to Susan. I had a lot of fun doing this. And I hope you enjoyed reading it. Apologies again for the spoilers, but it was very very hard to say anything at all without them.

A few bits I liked:

And the emptiness of the mountain, up there on top of the world, was all at once so oppressive that every smallest sound seemed to take on immense significance. The rustle of heather as Barney shifted his feet; the deep distant call of a sheep; the persistent tuneless chirruping of some small unseen bird. Jane and Simon and Barney stood very still; surprised, uncertain.

'For Drake is no longer in his hammock, children, nor is Arthur somewhere sleeping, and you may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now, because the world is yours and it is up to you.'

Other Opinions:
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Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

At the start of Fingersmith we meet Sue Trinder, an orphaned girl who’s being raised in Victorian London’s dark Land Street by Mrs Sucksby and a group of petty thieves – fingersmiths. One evening, Richard Rivers, a ruined gentleman, comes to them with a plan: Sue is to pose as a Lady’s maid and go with him to a country house. There, she will help him win the heart of a heiress, Maud Lilly, and then cheat her out of her fortune.

And that’s all I’m going to tell you, I’m afraid. Nothing in this book is what it seems, and I don’t want to ruin the experience for you by saying too much. Nick Hornby said that this book “has one of the most startling plot twists you’ll ever read,” and he’s absolutely right. The twist – the first of them, because there’s more than one – took my breath away.

And you know how sometimes just knowing there’s a twist can ruin things a little bit for you? Well, that’s not likely to happen in this case. I knew there would be one from the first page, but not in a million years would I have guessed what was coming.

Also, you know how with most books you can, after a certain number of pages, more or less see the shape of the story, and give or take a few details, guess how it’s going to end? With Fingersmith, until the very last page I had no idea how the story was going to end. And this doesn't necessarily have to do with the twist. It goes beyond that. Everything about this book was unpredictable, and my heart was in my hands the whole time.

Being so afraid of spoiling this book for others also means that unfortunately I can’t even say much about the themes, about what I found so brilliant, about why I loved it so much. But please know that I did love it—it’s one of my favourite reads of the year so far, and I seriously suspect I have found a new author to add to my list of favourites.

This is what I can say: sexuality is dealt with, but that's just the beginning of it. More than that, Fingersmith focuses on the silences, the misunderstandings, on how an action can be perceived so differently by the different people involved. It focuses on the little space between people – the almost gestures, what is never said. Sarah Waters is absolutely brilliant at portraying that. Also, it deals with how the concept of madness was used do discredit and control women, and with the horrors that went on inside Victorian insane asylums. And sadly, now I have to shut up.

Recently I mentally gave Ali Smith a Most Beautiful Sex Scene Award, but I’m afraid I just might have withdraw it away to give it to Sarah Waters instead. I realize this makes little sense out of context, but that second “you pearl” simply ripped my heart out of my chest. And finding books with gay sex scenes this beautiful, this well-written and this emotional always makes me happy, as it shows – guess what – that people feel the same regardless of sexual orientation. Which should go without saying, but sadly still does not.

I also loved the atmosphere – Fingersmith is Victorian Gothic at its best. Secrets, crimes, dark alleys! Silent mansions, betrayals, fear of madness! And even more things I unfortunately can’t tell you about. And the writing—the writing is stunning. I guess Fingersmith is a plot-oriented novel, in the sense that the plot really, really matters, but the writing and characterization are every bit as good as the plot. It’s both plot-driven and character-driven, and that’s hard to achieve.

I realize I completely failed to do this book justice, but my hands are tied here. To summarize: I couldn’t put Fingersmith down, and once I was finished with it I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days. I now want to read everything Sarah Waters has ever written. She’s that brilliant.

Sadly I can’t even share most of my favourite passages, because after a certain point in the story everything implies spoilers. But here are a few carefully chosen ones, mostly from early in the book:

All day I sat or walked with her, so full of the fate I was bringing her to I could hardly touch her or meet her gaze; and all night I lay with my back turned to her, the blanket over my ears to keep out her sighs. But in the hours in between, when she went to her uncle, I felt her—I felt her, through the walls of the house, like some blind crooks are said to be able to feel gold. It was as if there had come between us, without my knowing, a kind of thread. It pulled me to her, wherever she was.

There is no patience so terrible as that of the deranged. I have seen lunatics labour at endless tasks—conveying sand from one leaking cup into another; counting the stitches in a fraying gown; or the motes in a sunbeam; filling invisible ledgers with the resulting sums. Had they been gentlemen, and rich—instead of women—then perhaps they would have passed as scholars or commandment staff—I cannot say.

I watch her turn and stretch, walk her random way about the room—see her make all the careless unstudied gestures I have marked so covetously, for so long. Is this desire? How queer that I, of all people, should not know! But I thought desire smaller, neater; I supposed it bound to its own organs as taste is bound to the mouth, vision to the eye. This feeling haunts and inhabits me, like a sickness. It covers me, like skin.

Other Opinions:
Valentina’s Room
books i done read
BookNAround
Fluttering Butterflies
Caribousmon
Farm Lane Book Blog
Jenny’s Books
Bibliolatry
5-Squared
Semicolon
Trish's Reading Nook

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The Sunday Salon Meets Weekly Geeks

Hello fellow readers. I thought it would make sense to combine The Sunday Salon and Weekly Geeks this week. This week's theme has to do with children's books and poetry. A lot of my fellow bloggers have written posts celebrating National Poetry Month. It's not National Poetry Month in my corner of the world, but that's no reason not to join the festivities, right? Plus I love this poster so much:

So to celebrate, this week I bring you mythic, fairy tale and fantastical poetry from around the web. I should start by saying that I always feel horribly self-conscious when writing about poetry (which is silly, I know, and this whole idea that poetry has a special status and is above the reach of mere mortals is part of the reason why so many people don't really read it anymore, and that's a pity, but I just can't help myself), so apologies if this is short and awkward. Which it will be. But at least I'll link to the poems, so you can read them yourself.

I began by reading "Why she howls: A coyote love song" by Kij Johnson, a beautiful poem dealing with desire, impermanence, and of course, coyotes. I absolutely love the imagery:

It was cold
the stars sharp as ice shards
in the river-dark sky.
The ground glittered
underfoot,
hard with frost.

"For I Will Consider My Dog, Bertie", also by Kij Johnson, really made my smile. My favourite line is probably this:

For when he sleeps he does so with charm, a tidy hump upon his ordained pillow, else loose-boned and sprawled upon the forbidden couch.

If you're an animal lover, read it. If you're not, read it anyway.

After reading these two poems I spend some time exploring the poetry archive at Endicott Studio. There I found "Girl Without Hands" by Margaret Atwood, a poem based on the fairy tale "The Girl Without Hands". Margaret Atwood's writing often takes my breath away, and this was no exception. These two lines in particular seem so distinctively Atwood to me:

Then there's the girl, in the white dress,
meaning purity, or the failure
to be any colour.

I guess it's the irony, creeping up unexpectedly. She does that so well. Next I read "'Once Upon A Time,' She Said" by the wonderful Jane Yolen, a poem about fairy tales and storytelling and the unique, precious magic of the imagination. Just take a look at the final lines, and I dare you not to want to read it immediately:

If you ask me,
I would have to say
all the world's magic
comes directly from the mouth.

Yes.

Next stop: Goblin Fruit, a quarterly online journal of fantastical poetry. There I read "The Ballad of All the Things I Might Have Written" by Catherynne M. Valente. I have to confess that I have spend the past few years a little afraid that I wouldn't like Catherynne M. Valente, even though I want to like her and her Orphan Tales sound just like my kind of thing. And this because I remember not liking a short story of hers a long time ago. But I can't even remember what short story it was anymore, and this poem I certainly do like. I love the way she words things, I love the imagery, and I love the irony:

Naked
she looked cat-shrewd at me through weedy strands
of mint-stitched hair, and said in a voice
like the wind through a lunar crater:

"Why do you write such long poems?"

"Donkeyskin" by Midori Snyder is based on the fairy tale of the same title, and like the fairy tale, it's raw and painful and beautiful. I cannot pick a favourite line, so I'll just urge you to read the whole thing.

Finally, Goblin Fruit inspired me to re-read what is perhaps the greatest fantastical poem of them all: "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti.


Illustrations by Arthur Rackman and Warwick Goble
I love it. I love the playfulness of the language, I love the sensuousness, I love how deep down it's serious and dark. I love the rhythm, the imagery, and the way it defies gender roles. I love how daring it was for its time. And I love this audio version, which really makes the language come to life.

Also, when looking for Arthur Rackman's illustrations of "Goblin Market", I came across this illusrated version by John Bolton. Wow. Simply wow.

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Time to announce the winners of my blogging anniversary giveaway: Memory wins a book of her choice that I have posted about in the past two years. Memory is currently fighting an epic battle with her TBR pile, so I almost feel bad to be adding to it, but...free book! Those are welcome, right? As for the Mysterious Awesome Package, it goes to Kailana! Congratulations to you both. I'll get in touch with you via e-mail for the details.

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And now for something completely awesome: Renay is organizing a YA Book tournament for less well-known books. This is the perfect way to discover great YA books we probably have never heard of before. To go through with it, Renay needs help: people willing to suggest books, to be judges, to help with organizational tasks, or to just spread the word. Interested in helping? Just click the link for details.

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The Child that Books Built by Francis Spufford

The books you read as a child brought you sights you hadn’t seen yourself, scents you hadn’t smelled, sounds you hadn’t heard. They introduced you to people you hadn’t met, and helped you to sample ways of being that would never have occurred to you. And the result was, if not an “intellectual and rational being”, then someone who was enriched by the knowledge that their own particular life only occupied one little space in a much bigger world of possibilities.

In The Child that Books Built, Francis Spufford chronicles his reading life: the journey begins when at age six he learned to read with The Hobbit, and it takes us through a childhood spent with fairy tales, Narnia, Earthsea, Greek mythology and the Little House on the Prairie books, to his teen years, when he entered the world of adult literature via science fiction.

I first heard of this book through Nick Hornby, who picked it for his Writer’s Table at Waterstone's. From what he said there, I would have expected the book to be a lot more personal than it actually is. Fortunately, Jenny had warned me that it got quite a bit academic at times. In some ways, The Child that Books Build is a reading memoir, but Spufford also draws from development psychology, linguistics and philosophy and mixes this information with his more personal insights. Perhaps because I was expecting it, I quite liked his approach.

Spufford’s personal story is a sad one: when he was three, his sister Bridget was born. Only a few months after her birth, she was diagnosed with a very rare genetic disease, which was expected to kill her before the end of her childhood. Her whole life was a battle against time, as nobody knew if the next medical breakthrough would come in time for her. Francis Spufford connects the sense of fragility that his sister’s situation made him feel with the fact that he constantly sought refuge in books.

As for the academic bits, they were interesting, except for the fact that there’s entirely too much of Bruno Bettelheim for my taste. But I have to be honest: my ideal amount of Bruno Bettelheim in any book is zero, and only because a negative amount is sadly not possible. And to be fair to Spufford, he does call shenanigans when shenanigans need to be called. This comment on “Bluebeard” is a good example of why Mr. Bettelheim and I would not have been friends:

Leaping past the issue of who did what to whom in the chamber, and taking it as a symbol of forbidden knowledge in a general, sexual sense, he interpreted Bluebeard as a story about a woman’s infidelity and –twisting time strangely—her husband’s anger over it. Bettelheim’s moral: “Women, don’t give in to your sexual curiosity; men, don’t permit yourself to be carried away by your anger at being sexually betrayed.”

From chapter two onwards, each of the book’s sections corresponds to one of Spufford’s reading phases, so to speak, and particular attention is paid to a certain book or series. He writes about the Narnia books, with which he was obsessed as a child, at great length. I read this section with regret – arriving to Narnia at nineteen, I was never able to experience the magic. He talks about Narnia with an appreciation I wish I could feel myself, but he does say something which touches on why I was never able to enjoy the books:

The seductive voice of the stories is also a bully, pushing you into feeling, overwhelming resistance with strong words. I was a very willing reader, but if someone had said this to me when I was eight or nine, I would instantly have known what they meant.

In Narnia, the narrator’s voice is impossible to ignore, and while that draws a lot of readers in, I always felt that it shut me out. I remember talking to Susan last year about a similar kind of narrator’s voice: the found we find in E. Nesbit’s The Enchanted Castle. While I liked it, felt welcomed by it, immediately felt at home in the story because of it, Susan couldn’t stand it. And I could sympathize, because that’s how Narnia always made me feel. Reading the books, I felt like a clandestine visitor: I expected that the owner of the voice would drag me out if he were to discover me. I felt unwanted – in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Eustace’s parents are mocked, and their son is just barely saved from the corruption they have caused. I am Eustace’s parents. How could I not feel clandestine? And this is something that makes me sad.

Anyway. I could tell you a lot more, but this is long enough as it is. Two final things. First, this book made me want to read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books, which for some reason I had never thought of reading. Secondly, at one point he says this about Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness:

...this story, compared to most SF, returned me to emotional reality too, where actions had consequences that mattered, and situations were not as flimsy as thoughts, to be crumpled up and replaced by another if they displeased you. But the emotions in question were of a kind that needed SF’s freedom to invent, in order for them to exist: SF’s power to stipulate a whole worldful of possibilities, this time governing not just the flashy stuff, but the subtle logic gates controlling emotional cause and effect.

I’m not all that sure about that “most”, but yes. This goes for fantasy also, and it’s one of the main reasons why I love it. The emotions are human, always human, but they depart from imaginary situations, without which they couldn’t quite exist. Not in the same way. The question, for me, has always been, “How would we feel if”?

More favourite passages:

The stories that mean most to us join the process by which we come to be securely our own. Literacy allows access to a huge force for development. When an adult in a remote village rejoices that ABC has been mastered, it isn’t just because books bring the world to them; books bring them, in new ways, to themselves.

With real forests or without them, we tell the story regardless, knowing that when the los children recede through deep after deep of the trees, they are plumbing a different geography. They are journeying into the deep spaces of myth, which does not demand a location, only a vivid referent—a tree line imprinted onto the imagination.

Remote from our immediate experience fairy stories may be, but they can’t be remote from our fears and desires, or we would find no urgency in them. ‘Only those voices from without are effective,’ wrote the critic Kenneth Burke in 1950, ‘which speak in the language of a voice within.’

Or longing. My favourite books were the ones that took books’ implicit status as other worlds, and acted on it literally, making the window of writing a window into imaginary countries. I didn’t just want to see in books what I saw anyway in the world around me, even if it was perceived and understood and articulated from angles I would never achieve; I wanted to see things I never saw in life.

Other Opinions:
Jenny’s Books
Libri Touches

(Let me know if I missed yours.)

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Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner

The Hotel du Lac (Famille Huber) was a stolid and dignified building, a house of repute, a traditional establishment, used to welcoming the prudent, the well-to-do, the retired, the self-effacing, the respect patrons of an earlier era of tourism.

Our protagonist, Edith Hope, is an English romance author who has come to Switzerland, to the silent, out of fashion, and nearly empty Hotel du Lac to hide away from her life for a while. At first, we don't know what made Edith decide to disappear for some time – or even who exactly decided that she should. We only know that whatever happened seems to have to do with David, a lover or ex-lover to whom she composes letters she never sends.

During her time at the Hotel du Lac, Edith learns the stories of her fellow guests: Mrs Pusey and her daughter Jennifer, Monica, Mme de Bonneuil, and Mr Phillip Neville. Edith’s observations, as well as her insights about her own life, are what is at the heart of Hotel du Lac.

I’m not quite sure why, but I in my head I've always linked Anita Brookner and Anne Tyler. You might recalls that recently I read Tyler’s Breathing Lessons, and confessed that I had been hesitant about picking it up for a while. I was hesitant about Hotel du Lac for similar reasons. But while Breathing Lessons won me over, unfortunately Hotel du Lac never quite clicked with me.

I’m really not sure why. It shouldn't be because I couldn’t quite identify with any of the characters, as one of my favourite things about literature is that it lets me inhabit the skin or see through the eyes of people who are completely different from myself. And i’s not because it’s slow-paced and quiet and subtle either, because a lot of books I love are slow and quiet and subtle. I can’t tell you what was missing, what kept me from loving it, but something did.

There were things I liked: I liked Edith’s quiet irony, I liked the beautiful writing, I liked that there were surprisingly funny moments. There were moments I found moving too. The book portrays the kind of loneliness, disappointment and restrained despair that normally go unremarked.

Edith makes some uncomfortable observations about gender which I know are not to be taken at face value, and which are probably part of the ways in which she has changed by the end of the story. But all of this, like everything else in this book, happens very subtly. And the truth is that I’m not quite sure what to make of what Edith goes through, of what she wants, of what ultimately becomes of her distrust of other women. Perhaps I’ll return to Hotel du Lac some day, and perhaps then it will click. In the meantime, I invite you to read the reviews below, some of which are from readers who loved this book.

Other Opinions:
A Guy’s Moleskine Notebook
Everyday Reads
Caribousmom
In Spring it is the Dawn
Kiss a Cloud
An Adventure in Reading

(Let me know if I missed yours.)

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