Mortal Love, Peter Lovesey, and The World's Wife - reviews!

I have been remiss at writing on here.  I plead shopping for birthdays and Christmas.  And another trip to the emergency room last week.  All that aside,  I have so many books I want to write about that I've read this year!  I've debated on writing about each book separately, or choosing a character series, or grouping them.  I still can't decide, so meanwhile, here are 4 that I have wanted to write about for the past couple of weeks, all of which I highly recommend and really enjoyed.

Mortal Love by Elizabeth Hand.  Remember when I wrote about this book in November, and I was disappointed in it about halfway through?  I am here to say that this is probably the number one reason I don't often blog about a book while reading it - I am often wrong in my assessment, and I am delighted, completely thrilled to say now, I was wrong.  Ok, the beginning of the book is slow, and feels muddled because we are getting viewpoints and stories set in different times.  It all works so very well at the end.  What the book is about, is art, and faerie, and myth, and how when we get a glimpse of the Otherworld, it can shatter us for our daily reality.  It's about how some people spend the rest of their lives trying to capture that moment, that beauty, over and over again.  It's also about how other people find a way to hang on to their sanity, to let the strangeness of the glimpse of the other realm wash over them, and change them so that daily life is enriched, vibrant, and tinged with melancholy because it's not what was glimpsed.  It's about art, and how art changes our perceptions.  And it's brilliant.  I don't want to say who the myth is who is brought to life, because that is part of the mystery and enchantment of this story.  The myth is so well written and brought to life so beautifully that it works.  The reason myths are so powerful is because somewhere deep within us, we know them, we relate to them - this is what gives the myths their power.  It's an archetype we instinctively, deeply in our minds, know without having words to fully explain how and what we know. Mortal Love is about this deeply held knowledge, and how it inspires longing for whoever glimpses the myth.  I highly recommend this book, especially for anyone who enjoys art and wants a glimpse of what it is like to have to write, to paint, to sing, to create.  Once again, here is Nymeth's excellent review which convinced me to try the book.  Thank you, Nymeth!

This leads me to The World's Wife, by Carol Ann Duffy.  This is a collection of poems that take the myths we all know, Greek and Roman and Norse, and give the woman's point of view - the hidden voice, the other, the silent one.  The wife.  The one we never hear about.  What was it like to be married to Aesop?  to Darwin?  to Midas?  to be Penelope, waiting for Odysseus to return - or maybe not. The poems are filled with the voices of real women.  Penelope isn't waiting for Odysseus, pining away - she is enjoying her solitude, and using her cunning in weaving to keep all the suitors away, so she can be alone.  How clever!  and then she hears Odysseus' footsteps and her precious private life is gone.  Mrs Midas is about what it was like after Midas made his wish to turn everything to gold.  Of course he can't touch her, he can't touch anything. She misses the touch of his skin so much.  One of my favourites is Little Red-Cap, which opens this book of poems.  I love how the wolf lures her by holding - what else?  a book of poems.  Poetry.  And how he has a wall of books, and how in the end she becomes free.  It's a true poem, about how knowledge is always the lure, and with enough wits and courage and hunger to know, you can survive the wolf and the woods.  Brilliant.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book of poetry.  It has given me a new way to look at the fairy tales and myths. It  reimagines the world through the eyes of the women who don't explore (or make) the world but who through loving men, and determining if they stay or go in the marriage, find that determination is just as exciting as anything their more famous husbands have done. 

The last book I want to talk about is really an ongoing mystery series by Peter Lovesey,  featuring Peter Diamond.  Last year I reviewed The Last Detective, here.  Now I want to talk about the next two in the series, Diamond Solitaire and The Summons. In Diamond Solitaire, Diamond is on his own.  He quit the force at the end of The Last Detective, and we see him struggle to find his place in the world.  He tries being a Santa Claus, one year!  And it's being a security guard that leads him to find a silent girl asleep in the department store he is guarding.  He is fired as the security guard since he didn't notice her before, and of course it is not as simple as the girl wandering away from her parents.  This little girl is from Japan, and very special. It is delightful to see how protective and caring Diamond is of this abandoned little girl, and when his suspicions are aroused by the people who claim her, he follows them all the way back to Japan.  A very solid second book in the series.  The Summons opens with Diamond depressed because he has not been able to find any permanent work  It's been two years now since he left the force.  Unexpectedly, a summons arrives: a criminal Diamond helped put away, has escaped, and is holding the daughter of the ACC hostage and has asked specifically for Diamond.  The criminal claims he is innocent of the charges.  This is the book about how Diamond discovers he made a mistake, and that he is a policeman through and through.  How he gets his job back, and what he learns while going back over the case and reinvestigating the original crime, makes for a solid mystery with excellent characters and very good dialogue. It's fast-paced and while I spotted who was involved early on,I didn't know for sure, nor why, and I was thrilled when I was right at the end!  which makes for a feeling of being clever (and a really good mystery writer makes the reader feel clever, I find).  I really like this series.  This has to be one of my favourite discoveries in the past year, and I thank Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise for reviewing the 10th book in the series - Skeleton Hill - last year and pointing me to this character. I also find it hard to resist a series that uses the real life author Jane Austen as a sort of ongoing backdrop to the series.  In The Summons, it is one of Jane's supposed houses that she lived in while in Bath, that plays a part in the book. 

If you have reviewed any of these, let me know and I will link to them.

I hope you are ready for Christmas, and enjoying the season.  We are planning a games party for the children on Saturday, as a way to give them something to do and share in the excitement leading up to the holidays.  As it's my daughter's 9th birthday on Christmas Eve, the tension excitement around here is so high in the final weeks to her birthday that this is when we build our gingerbread houses and try to keep them busy.  We don't have any snow yet, so there is no playing outside and making snowmen. I am enjoying the lack of snow, utterly content to not see any this winter, while my knee continues to heal. No snow means no slippery patches.......no hats, and no boots either!  I could get used to this!

Happy reading moments for you, my Gentle Reader, in the build-up to the big day.

The Power of Poetry

 We are down to one computer now, and as the children are now able to play games online, my time to be here is less than usual until we can afford a new computer.  So I haven't been on as much as I hoped the past two weeks, and right now it is 1 a.m. and I am heading to bed. Before I go though, I wanted to ask a question: 

If you read poetry, do you have a poem, a book of poems, or a poet, who saved your life?

I ask this because over at Terri Windling's blog, she has some Friday recommendations, among which is a link to a post by Michael Bourne, called Embracing the Other I Am, Or How Walt Whitman Saved My Life.  This is a wonderful post, about how at the bottom of his despair, he discovered the original poems Whitman published back in 1855, and they literally saved him. 

This has got me thinking about the power of words, of writing, of poets and poetry.  As many of you know, I read some poetry - Mary Oliver is my current favourite poet, teaching me how to bring my love of nature into my own writing even as I fall in love with hers.  There is something about poetry that lets our souls talk to one another that I've only found rarely in novels or other writing. 

The poet that comes to my mind who saved me, is Sylvia Plath. I found her at a difficult time in my life, when I was young and just leaving home - I left when I was 18, so very young it seems now looking back!  Her poetry was angry, and it was a revelation to me, that poetry could be powerful and say things that weren't nice.  Sylvia's poems are full of difficult ideas and themes, alienation from herself as well as her family, struggling to be an artist and to trust herself, and it was as if I suddenly saw myself reflected back to me in her words.  I could be angry, I could feel grief, I didn't have to be nice and pretend to be happy all the time.  It was shocking, and if now there are many more women poets who also write about what it means to be a woman today, for me Sylvia writes about what it is to be young and angry and trying to find out why, what it all means. Because of her I dared to begin writing poetry about how I really feel, and to stop hiding from even myself.  I think she saved me, also.  Ariel was her book of poems I discovered this way.

So, is there a poet whose words reached out to you and showed you yourself, or life, in a new way? 

The wonder of books, is that they are just waiting for us to find them, no matter how much time passes. This is a miracle I am grateful for, this very early Sunday morning at 1 a.m.   May we always find the books we need, when we need them.

Happy reading, everyone!

*Aw, shucks* I'm blushing....and Mary Oliver

Today I received the most beautiful award for being a blogger, and what means most to me about it, is what the award is for - for being friendly, and welcoming, and here, this explanation says it better:
"This blog invests and believes in the PROXIMITY-nearness in space, time and relationships. These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement! Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this clever-written text into the body of their award."
Jeane at Dog Ear Diary nominated me, which I am thrilled about. She reviews the most amazing amount of animal books - psychology, adventure, life with, everything you can imagine, as well as reading as widely in everything else as the rest of us. And she is very friendly and funny, and has many fun draws also.

I'm not into blog comparison, because this isn't a sport or competition. We each create a blog we love, about the things we love: books, our families, life. I think each blog I visit has something original and creative about it, because it reflects the person. So I am touched when something about my blog reaches out to another person. It's like in a book, when a connection is made - when I understand perfectly what the author is saying; blogs allow each of us to touch one another and be in one another's lives, even if we never meet in person. I certainly am enriched by all of you that I have met through blogging. My hope is actually that if this award goes around, eventually everyone will get it!

With that in mind, I would like to give this award to some very special blogs who light the way for me:
1. Bybee at Naked Without Books
2. Deslily at Here, There and Everywhere
3. Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings
4. Cath at Read-Warbler
5. Raidergirl3 at An Adventure in Reading
6. JS Peyton at Biblioaddict
7. Geraniumcat at Geraniumcat's Bookshelf
8. Bride at Bride of the Book God

Onto a very special book I am reading: New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver, volume Two. Volume One is on order at the bookstore. I mention this because - not waiting for my eventual book review - I am reading a poem or two at night, and I already have two that I have taken
to heart.

From "Everything":
I want to make poems
that look into the earth and the heavens
and see the unseeable. I want them to honor
both the heart of faith, and the light of the world;
the gladness that says, without any words, everything.


and from "Work, Sometimes":
As for myself, I swung the door open. And there was
the wordless, singing world. And I ran for my life.


I simply had to share that. Because when I read those words, I feel a ripple of delight in my soul. That is what I do, I run into nature. At this moment in March, when it is sub-zero temperatures and still too much snow to wander into the fields and by the river, I am simply waiting for the snow to go so I can go out into the' wordless, singing world' again. what a lovely, perfect vision of nature.

I have only recently discovered Mary Oliver, this is her second book of poetry I am reading, and if it's possible to fall in love with words on a page, that's what I'm doing.

I haven't given up on Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes, on the contrary, I've had to take it down to the living room where i can dip into it when I'm wide awake. Those poems are so passionate, and angry and sad and loving at the same time, that I can't read them just before sleep. I have to be wide awake to take them in and consider them. Mary Oliver I can take with me into sleep, into my dreams where there is singing without words sometimes too.

I know poetry isn't widely read anymore, but I just had to share what I'm discovering, because Mary Oliver's work is of such beauty to me. Poetry doesn't have to be difficult, or obfuscate, or confuse or tongue-tie (though the latter is fun!); poetry for me is about seeing the world as it is, as directly and honestly as possible. At least that is how I have written my own poetry, trying to find the clearest way to say what I mean. Oliver's poetry is about being in love with nature, while seeing with a clear eye the predator-prey relationship. Isn't that a lovely way to be, to live one's life, in love with the world?

May you find a some beauty in your day today. And find a good book to capture you!