some good news

    I am still - will for some time, I think - be mourning what happened in Newtown.  One of the things that is helping is all the love and forgiveness coming from the families, in the midst of grief, and focussing on the bright light of each child  and  the special gifts  and talents each child and adult brought into their families and the world.  It's healing, and it's helping.

So I thought I would share two pieces of very good news, personal news that I want to celebrate:
- our foundation is finally fixed.  Not all the foundation yet, it took us a long time to find a contractor we liked and were comfortable with.  So he was only able to get the hole and the garage door fixed, and not the rest of the house foundation, which has to be checked and the cracks filled (not many, but they do have to be fixed.)  That will wait for spring.  For now, it is such a huge relief to have the hole fixed, and the foundation under the hole sealed and waterproofed.  Especially as we have had 48 hours of snow, rain, freezing rain since Sunday, it's been so comforting to know our foundation is in much better shape now.
- my husband and I had separated last year, and I am very happy to say that this fall, we were able to find our way back together again.  So we are a family once more, and it is much better now than it was.  I am very happy and contented, and have learned a lot this past 16 months, about myself, about marriage, about love.

In this next week before Christmas, I want to slow down  and appreciate each moment of life. It is a gift, and loved ones are the most precious of gifts to us. 

Sunday Salon - It's all about Neil Gaiman

Fragile Things, Coraline, The Graveyard Book.

I've decided to do a post about one of my favourite authors, in honour of RIP3 challenge, AND that these three books fit this time of year, spooky and ghost-filled. I know that for many of you, my Gentle Readers, you also love Neil Gaiman. I thought I would try to show some of what I admire and love in his books, and his writing. Most of all, it's as if he pierces my heart, but instead of ripping it into shreds, he gently puts it back together with love and hope and faith.


Fragile Things

I read Fragile Things earlier this year. I didn't post on it because I got caught up in other things, but it never left the side of my computer where I pile the books I really want to review. I am in awe of this writer. Fairy tales, fantasy, gothic, and horror, all with a touch of melancholy about them. Even the poem about Bluebeard, The HIdden Chamber, isn't straightforward, instead mixed with doom - unlike the fluttering butterfly he (the writer) sets free, this is what will happen to his new love:
If you are wise you'll run into the night,
fluttering away into the cold
wearing perhaps the laciest of shifts.
The lane's hard flints
will cut your feet all bloody as you run,
so, if I wished, I could just follow you,
tasting the blood and oceans of your
tears. I'll wait instead,
here in my private place, and soon I'll put
a candle
in the window, love, to light your way back home.
The world flutters like insects. I think this
is how I shall remember you,
my head between the white swell of your breasts,
listening to the chambers of your heart.

The horror, the real horror, is that even if she escapes, she will come back again. He - the writer, Bluebeard - understands the secret to a woman's heart, that even if she senses danger, she has to know all the secrets: "You'll see/the heartbreak linger in my eyes, and dream/of making me forget what came before you walked/into the hallway of this house."
And he is right! It's a play on Harlequin novels, gothics, that sense that the right woman will heal a man. Wise, and heart-breaking, the collection of stories and poems in this book are all like this. Some succeed more than others - in past posts, here and here, and here , I've referred to my favourites: October in the Chair, A Study in Emerald, The Problem of Susan , and my favourite poems of all: Instructions and Locks.

If you are looking for short stories to read before Hallowe'en, I highly recommend this book. It is magical and fantastical, creepy, unsettling, spooky, funny, everything that is good in fantasy and horror writing today. It should be in every serious reader's library.


Coraline

I read Coraline over the past three days, mostly because I kept getting interrupted. I finally finished it late last night. It has to be one of the scariest books for children I've read, and I really wish it had been around when I was a kid. I would have loved it! I would have read it over and over! My children are just a little bit too young for it - I think the 'other family' would confuse them, and the horrible button eyes and the other mother creating the world, is for children about 7-8 years old. I can hardly wait to read it to them, though! Coraline is the spunkiest, bravest heroine ever. I mean it, I'm not sure I could have survived the other world. I was possibly holding my breath during the last 50 pages of the book. It was awful, in the awe-inspiring sense that real terror can take. And beautiful, because she makes it right in the end, and the sense of relief was palpable to me, at least! I was able to get to sleep last night. I think if Coraline hadn't gotten out and back into her world, I would have nightmares about her being trapped, for a very long time. That is how real Neil makes his characters, and how real the story is. Especially as I live in a semi-detached house, though thankfully there are no doors between our houses, in the wall!!

I think one reason Neil Gaiman is so popular a horror/fantasy writer is because the underpinnings of his writing is love, and faith, and hope. This is what saves his characters. It is a real treat in today's world of endless bad SAW movies (I haven't seen one and never will) and stupid slash and gash horror movies where fatalism means no one escapes, that there are writers who deal with the mysteries, the ghostly and ghastly, with the emotions and characteristics that make us our best as humans. No matter the danger, or the eeriness, it all comes down to the heart. Whether Bluebeard's uncanny understanding, or Coraline's bravery, most of Neil's characters are on human journeys of finding love, recapturing love (several of his short stories deal with both these topics), or surviving love. He explores the dangerous pathways of the world, in myths (American Gods), folktales, children's stories, the underground literally in Neverwhere, horror in Coraline, and in my next book to review, The Graveyard Book, and in all of them, he never loses sight of what makes people human, good or bad, and he lets his heroes and heroines be brave. And if any of you have had to face real nightmares in the world, as I have, you know that bravery and courage are needed as much today as ever. He's writing to you, to me, to his children, to the world, telling us the stories we need to hear to survive. To me, Coraline is one of the best heroines for girls to ever be written. It's a truly good horror story for kids that deserves every award it received. And the illustrations are truly creepy and delightful and my kids will pore over them. They are the stuff of nightmares. Most excellent!


The Graveyard Book

I read this today. I couldn't put it down!! I love this story! I thought it could be good, the premise is certainly interesting - little boy raised in a graveyard by ghosts - and this story is everything I hoped for, and more. It is enchanting. How I can say that about a book that involves murder, ghouls, vampires, werewolves, witches and ghosts, is almost a mystery, but it's not - it's Neil, so it's heart-breaking even as it's beautiful and haunting and funny. It's a ghost story for families. In case you are one of the 10 readers left on the planet who haven't read the book yet, I am not going to give the plot away here - I'm just going to give you how I felt reading this book, and why I think everyone can read it. First of all, it's not scary, even the opening, even my most faint-hearted, sensitive Gentle Reader can be assured that no matter how it starts out, you will not have nightmares. Yes, it's scary in places. Have you ever spent a night in a cemetary? Me either. Nor do I want to. Why? Because the dead walk at night. I don't care what anyone says, they do. I love the melancholy beauty of graveyards, I think about the people gone before and try to imagine their lives as I read the headstone inscriptions, but I would not spend a night in a graveyard. Well, The Graveyard Book is about a boy who lives in one. And how he does, and how the ghosts help him, and what wonders befall him - make this book truly worth reading. It is a magical tour through the world of a graveyard. Not necessarily the land of the dead, mind, just the world here of the dead. And yes, I cried at the ending. I hate change, even though I know it's necessary, I hate loss of people, change in relationships, and the loss here in this book is inevitable, and piercing.

Of all the amazing characters that people this book, the one I love is the Lady on the Gray Horse. Much is made of Neil's remarks at the back of the book to Rudyard Kipling and The Jungle Book, how there is inspiration from that book in this one. I've never read The Jungle Book, but I have read John Keat's poem The Belle Dame Sans Merci, and seen the Pre-Rahaelite painting of the same name, and that is who the Lady on the Gray Horse reminds me of. When Bod Owens (the main character) first meets the Lady, this is his impression and what they end their conversation with:
"There was a woman riding on the horse's bare back, wearing a long grey dress that hung and gleamed beneath December Moon like cobwebs in the dew.
....."Can I ride him?" asked Bod.
"One day," she told him, and her cobweb skirts shimmered. "One day. Everybody does."
"Promise?"
"I promise."

Every time I read those lines, I get a lump in my throat. She is Lady Death, and isn't she a better figure to come carry us away, than the Grim Reaper Spectre with th scythe that we are more familiar with?

For a book about death and ghosts, it is filled with whimsical moments and ideas like this. So it's not a scary book. It's filled with love and humour, and ghosts and graveyards, and I think it is perfectly wonderful. As soon as my kids are old enough - I think sometime in the next year Holly-Anne at least will be able to listen to the story being read (albeit with 5,000 questions in between!) - I will be reading this to them. And the illustrations, of course - line drawings that leave the mind to fill in the gaps, setting the tone, and I've forgotten until I read Coraline and The Graveyard Book how much I enjoy drawings with my stories!

Recapturing childhood wonder, somehow that seems to be the essence I get from reading these two books. So I recommend them highly, as marvelous work that must be read. Come, take Neil's hand, and let him show you how to survive the night, and face the dawn, and live to tell the marvelous frightening tale.......

*sighs happily, contentedly*

I hope your ghostly reading is taking you to fantastic places today, too!

Other reviews:
Bart's Bookshelf
Nymeth
Stuff as Dreams are Made On

Stainless Steel Droppings (Carl)
Eva (A Striped Armchair)

Weekly Geeks 5 - Second Favourite Form of Storytelling

So I'm a little slow. I actually wrote a whole post on this topic, and then didn't post it because i didn't like what I wrote. This was last Wednesday or so. Since then I've been giving it alot of thought. Do I write about all my tv shows? Movies? Favourites? How do I go about showing why this is my second favourite form of storytelling? And, as usual I am too late to make Dewey's wrap-up post...but who cares! I finally know what I want to say:

This past week's Weekly Geek was to post about our second form of favourite form of story-telling. Mine is tv shows. I kept trying to make it movies, because I do enjoy them, but the ones I get caught up in, and argue and discuss about, are tv shows, for the most part. By the way, I have to give a big thanks to Bride of the Book God, because she wrote about tv shows as her 2nd favourite form, and some of what she says crystallized what I had been trying to say last Wednesday in the unposted post. So thank, Bride! And you can go here to check out her post. TV are one of the things my family and I sit down to together to do. Over the years, my eldest son and I have watched Babylon 5, the old Star Trek (he still thinks it's cool that I can name the episode within seconds of the opening scene/music!), Lost, and Heroes: he, my daughter and I watch Smallville, the new Battlestar Galactica, my husband and I watch House (our tv show!), Life on Mars, Vicar of Dibley and host of shows from England (mostly on DVD now) and our whole family watches the new Dr Who from Britain. So, after watching the final episodes of Season One of Dr Who this weekend at my daughter's request, I realized that I want to talk about this episode as it encapsulates everything good about tv and visual storytelling.

"The Parting of the Ways" is an episode that even after viewing at least 4 times, still makes me cry. In fact, there were very few episodes that I didn't find myself moved by, because the new Dr Who is exploring who we are by going into the past - both Earth past and other worlds - and the future, again sometimes ours, sometimes ahead in the universe somewhere. The best of the episodes involve something personal, and Parting of the Ways is as personal as it gets: the Doctor sends Rose back to Earth to save her, and he and Captain Jack face annihilation, as well as the entire Earth, from the Dr's old foes the Daleks, and she does the unthinkable to save him and Jack. The power of this episode, and in this series as whole, is in its exploration of love. The Doctor, we learn in this episode, when faced with the dilemma of being a coward or a killer, chooses coward. He can't - he won't - kill to wipe out the Daleks, even though he is dooming the human race to painful extermination. He can't because at the bottom of his being is the hope that some way out can be found. The will to live, to survive, even when all hope is lost - that is the Doctor's secret. And in this episode, for the first time, we see what the Tardis is really formed of, for Rose, the Doctor's companion, looks into it, in order to save her Doctor from that annihilation at the Daleks. The picture as she emerges from the Tardis with the light pouring from her eyes and face, the light that is Wisdom incarnate, what the Goddess Sophia (who is Wisdom in Christian mythology) would look like if She walked the Earth - and what Rose says about time, is haunting and beautiful. She is beautiful, and how she destroys the Daleks and restores Jack, before the Doctor stops her, is magnificent. That is a perfect scene that understands the power of Spirit made bodily, and it is so beautiful that I am moved to tears - because Spirit - nor all of time, can't be contained in our bodies. We simply can't hold all that much power, and the Doctor tells her that; even he can't hold it. He can only touch it as a Time Lord, and because it powers his ship. It destroys his current body, and we all meet the new Doctor at the very end. Rose has no memory of what she has done, which is also fitting, because if she remembered, everything else that happened in her life would not mean anything in comparison to that moment she was All and saw all Time.
This episode is about saving the ones you love, if you can, and also about letting them go. When the Doctor sends her back to earth the first time, he tells her, "Have a good life. Have a fantastic life." So I started thinking about what is a good life? Do I live a good life? And Rose says to her mother (who doesn't understand Rose's need to try to get back and save the Doctor), "The Doctor showed me a better way of living my life. You don't give up, you don't stand around, you do something about it." And I thought, that's the recipe for a good life, both in tv land and in the real world. And that's part of why I love Dr Who so much - he goes into time that needs fixing or correcting, he acts. He can't stop time, he can't restore dead people - see the episode when Rose goes back to see her Dad, and what happens! Which Rose refers to in this episode, and how Jackie (her mother) reacts when she finds out - this show is all about love and the things we do for the ones we love, and how the impossible becomes possible if you do something about it. For a main theme of a tv show, that's not too bad! This episode contains all of the season's themes within it. Science fiction is a vehicle for showing us to our selves. What would we be like through other's eyes? What is the best of us? The worst of us? Dr Who shows us all this, with great storytelling and superb acting. I especially love long-arcing storylines, and most of my favourite tv shows (with a few exceptions) have had this as part of the writing. I love to see how one story impacts later on, how one character's actions come into play later. Because that is how our life works, even though we don't always slow down enough to see it. Stories, written and visual, allow us to see that causal effect.
This particular episode also featured the words "Bad Wolf", which were encountered in earlier episodes as well. We finally get an answer to what those words mean, and I thought about it later and I am intrigued by how two little words could catch our attention. And like almost nothing else - except other fairy tale words - do. "Bad Wolf", no matter what context we see it in, immediately grabs our attention because it recalls the fairy tales with the big bad wolf. We know these words mean something. And even as they are a signpost for us to pay attention, so do the Doctor and Rose pay attention, and follow them to the source. So once again I find fairy tales turning up at the most unexpected, least likeliest places!!
And it's one more reason for me to love Dr. Who and this episode!
And, by the way, my daughter has said that if the doctor came by in his blue phone box, she would hop in and travel around the universe with him. She's 5. That Doctor, he appeals to females of all ages!!!!

Does your partner share your love of books?

It's late so this will be quick, but I just discovered this marvelous post over at Biblioaddict
about partners and books and relationships, and so my question is: does your partner share your love of books? Did your partner have to, for you to be with them? I'm curious if it is important to have a partner who loves books also, because we all love books so much.

Biblioaddict's blog raises some interesting points. I have a confession to make: I horrified all my friends - who all read - when I married a man who rarely reads anything beyond his footie magazine FourFourTwo (which is the best of all soccer magazines, well-written, smart, and fun besides). Well, how could I, book-a-holic, who can't go anywhere without a book, who spends all her money on books, and whose idea of horror is to go into a house where there are no books at all - how could I marry someone who doesn't read? Easy. My first love is my books, and my husband had to accept that I will always read and always buy them! I ended a relationship long ago because my then fiance made a comment about me buying a book I loved for my mother's birthday (well, it was one of many things, but helped tip the scales to leaving.) He didn't understand that books are my life. Toby does. So, when I arrived in England with some clothes and 4 boxes of books mailed over by ship, and he didn't bat an eyelash, I thought, h-m-m, I do have someone worth keeping. And though he jokes about giving some books away, he is quite happy to see me happy reading, and he's delighted for me when I come home dancing over my book finds. He's even bought me some "airport books" (hee) by John Grisham when he went to England a few years ago for a funeral, because he was thinking of me and couldn't remember what books I had (since I like to read just about anything, bookslut that I am....). Last year he did better when he came home with *Nick Hornby*'s A Long Way Down, whom he accepts I love because *Nick* and I both love Arsenal (and Toby loves Chelsea Football Club, and that is another whole story!!)

There are other things than books in love and marriage that are important, for me at least. So I can agree with the publisher in Biblioaddict's blog who said it didn't matter if her spouse read, because she could go to her book group etc. This is what I do, with my friends and family, and now you, dear book bloggers!! Because I do love talking and sharing about books. In the end, so long as I can read to my heart's content, then it wasn't important that my husband read too. My love affair with books is deeply personal, and I knew it was more important for me that my love for books be accepted as part of any relationship I had.

A Touch of Panic

So.....finally finished A Touch of Panic by L.R Wright, 2nd book in my Canadian Book Challenge list. It's nice to get another one done! it took me far longer to read than it should have, though, because life has intruded on my beautiful reading schedule: Christmas - no matter how I plan, I always have to shop for Christmas for several days in mid-December!; work - taken on a supervisory role - temporary - that is creating stress with other members in my group, that I didn't know was affecting me until this week; and then the news that my brother went into the hospital for emergency surgery earlier this week, for a tumor in his intestine, all very unexpected. He is making a recovery, but as we have a family that has broken down, he is not speaking with any of us so it's been hard, and much harder than expected to want to be able to support him but not be able to. It was hard to read these past two weeks, hard to concentrate on much when not working. While we wait for news on whether the tumor was cancerous, my brother is heading home tomorrow. Normally I can turn to books but with everything else going on in my life, and Christmas preparations, yiiyiiyii!!! My reading has dropped again.
We are just ending our second snowstorm in a week. At least 20 cm have fallen today, wild winds making it dangerous to go out......so I did get A Touch of Panic finished, in the brief moment that the kids let me read! I have to read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert as it is out from the library on 'express loan' and I've already renewed it the one time allowed! It's due back Thursday. So, A Touch of Panic is a good read, a solid mystery, with believable characters that continue from one book to the next. It's 4th in the RCMP Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg series, set in the wonderful Sunshine Coast of BC, in Sechelt. The ending has a twist that is rather interesting, and i might pick up the next one to see what happens. The one thing that was disappointing was the serial killer......there is no satisfactory conclusion regarding the number of women he may have killed, nor the discovery of the one hidden around the house (I don't want to give everything away for the Gentle Reader who does want to read this). However, the portrayal of his madness is creepy and effective, and his stalking of Cassandra (love interest and recent move-in girlfriend of Alberg) is realistic. The book ends with an unfinished feeling, because several storylines are continued (or should be), instead of being a complete book within a series. It feels like a linkage book. I can recommend it, as a light, enjoyable read that has the air of British Columbia's coastline about it, and for anyone who has been to Vancouver (the Sunshine Coast begins just north of Vancouver), the scenery will bring back memories.
Now, onto Eat, Pray, Love, which I have seen appearing on many TBR lists or books read this year, which is part of what prompted me to pick it up. As I love food, have been divorced, and often thought running away to Europe to soul search was a wonderful idea!! - I think I will enjoy this book. I hope so!
Having made chocolate chip cookies - homemade cookies soothe my soul, at least - I am now attending to the Christmas cards that have been waiting for my daughter's school pictures to arrive, which still aren't here. At least if I get the cards ready, I can pop them in the mail as soon as the photos do arrive. The school promises this week! So, I hope wherever you are, Gentle Reader, you are enjoying the preparations for Christmas or whatever you may celebrate, and remember - or find time! - to hold close and spend time with those you love. Merry last week before Christmas!!!