Book Advent Calendar Day 10: Food and books, and cookbooks stash

   I love Terri Windling's blog Myth and Moor.  On Friday, December 5 she blogged about food blogs that have to do with books.  You have to scroll down to Dec 5's post.  She has put up photos of the most amazing foods recreated from novels, photos of dishes that several bloggers have been recreating  from various literary sources, or from poets and author's diaries and journals.  They are fascinating to look through.  I have listed all of the blogs she mentions under a new setting on my sidebar, Food and Book Blogs.  I will be going to peruse each one in depth.  Some have the most delightful stories and anecdotes about authors.  Glorious pictures about food.  I am so delighted to discover these blogs.  I love the idea of eating the food that characters did, or authors loved.  Especially older books.  Who can resist trying to recreate Jane Austen's Brown Butter Bread Pudding Tarts? 
 Or Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell's Black Forest Raven Cake?

                                                

I also love Terri's blog because she talks about the creative process, what it's like to be an artist in today's world, the struggles to be creative.  She discusses nature, and fairy tales, and so many other interesting topics.  The post on Dec 4 is about the folklore of food.  In this post she talks about books that feature food, like Joanna Harris' Chocolat.  Her blog is interesting, creative, soul-nurturing.  And now I have all these lovely new-to-me food and book blogs to go visit!  This has been like a Christmas present for me, so this was my advent calendar opening for the day.

For your treat, I thought I would show a few photos of the cookbooks I currently have. Cath at Read-Warbler did a post last week on Show Your Bookstash,  from Carolyn at Riedel Fascination who come up with this idea.  Margaret at Books Please and Pat at Here, There and Everywhere blog did a post on Dec 7. So here are my cookbooks stash, on their bookshelf in the dining room:

The only cookbook not on the shelf is The Jane Austen Cookbook by Maggie Lane, which is on my classics shelf with the Jane Austen books.   If I feel like shaming myself in revealing just how double-booked my shelves are in my reading corner, I'll take some photos for you tomorrow.

I'm interested in the history of food, how we eat, how the way we cook and serve food has evolved over the centuries.  A book that I just realized you can't see on my shelves because it was hidden by some papers is Kate Colquhoun's Taste: The Story of Britain through its Cooking.  That's a book I've dipped into on occasion and loved.   The magazines on one of the shelves are all food magazines, which I love to look through and cut out recipes from. 

An idea I am forming is that I think in 2015, one of my goals is to start using my cookbooks more.  I like the idea of cooking my way through a book, like Julie Powell did with Julia Child in her book and the movie, Julie and Julia. 
      

I loved how she cooked her way right the way through the cookbook.  I might try something like cooking a recipe from every cookbook I own, or something along those lines.  I need to try expanding my cooking.  I love how cooking is a marriage of magic and alchemy in the kitchen. I love the comfort I get from making good food for my family, that tastes good and I know is nutritious and healthy.  I definitely want to explore taste and colour and spices more.  And maybe I'll check on those book and food blogs for some other creative ideas to do with cooking over the next year.  A literary feast sounds fun, doesn't it?

Of course I confess I haven't read Julie & Julia, I've only seen the movie.  And I haven't read Chocolat or Like Water For Chocolate yet, though I have seen those movies as well.  *hangs head in shame*

Here is something soul-comforting and immensely nurturing that I baked yesterday:
                                                   

The taste of homemade chocolate cookies is sublime.  Yum.

So what are some of your favourite books that feature food?  Have you discovered a favourite recipe/dish/food because of a novel? 

The Wood Wife - beautiful fantasy

                                        

  The Wood Wife by Terri Windling is the second book I've read for Carl's One Upon a Time Challenge.  I read Doll Bones by Holly Black last weekend, and will post about it next time.  (It's good, don't worry!)  The Wood Wife is one of those fantasy books that comes along a few times in one's lifetime.  It's true in some deep way that my bones recognize. A true story telling, that contains so much wisdom and spirit that the reader is enriched in reading the book.  At least, I was. 

First of all, you should know that I tried twice before in years past to read The Wood Wife, and failed both times to get past the second page.  I despaired, because The Wood Wife won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and everyone who had read it has loved it. So what was wrong with me?  Then, in a lovely moment of synchronicity, I took out Jo Walton's new book What's So Great About This Book? from the library, and there was a lovely review of The Wood Wife.  I say lovely, because as soon as I read Jo's post, I knew that I wanted to read The Wood Wife asap. Luckily for us, Tor has links to past year's posts, and here is the link to Jo's Tor review of The Wood Wife.

What do I think about The Wood Wife?  I think it is beautiful.  It makes something in me sing, the same thing in me that recognizes that spirit lives in all things around us, and that telling stories brings out magic.  Books (telling stories) is a form of magic.  In The Wood Wife, Maggie Black inherits a dead poet's house in Arizona.  She had been corresponding with him for years, deeply moved by his poetry, but not invited to visit him while he was alive.  When she inherits his house, she is surprised, and the novel opens with her arriving at the house.  In a way, this is when Maggie arrives where she is meant to be, and the novel is the unraveling of Maggie the old, to Maggie the true. 

I love how Windling infuses the book with bits of the poetry the dead poet, Davis Cooper, writes, that has so moved Maggie:  a book called The Wood Wife.  The poetry Windling writes is lovely and rich, and each chapter opens with a bit taken from the 'book' Cooper wrote. Here is an example, from Chapter Two:              The hills call in a tongue
                                     I cannot speak, a constant murmuring,
                                     calling the rain from my dry bones,
                                      and syllables from the marrow.
                                                      -The Wood Wife, Davis Cooper.

  The longer Maggie stays there, the more she understands about Cooper and what he was writing about.  The language of the stones, the trees, the howling of the coyotes, the colours in the sky and the brush, the mountain - all these are alive and sing in the way that the earth sings to those attuned to it.  With Maggie hearing this for the first time, we the reader get to experience the land singing, and I found this incredibly moving. I could see the Arizona landscape, the colours, the heat, the way Maggie was experiencing them. It made me want to be there!

There are myths and mythic creatures in this novel, mixing Old World Europe with Native American myths. It feels a bit uneasy, which it is exactly that in real life:  the old myths and native American myths are uneasy with one another, although there is enough similarity that some of the stories and figures have gained a foothold here, even blended with one another when they are the same at their core.  This is the case of the white stag, which appears in this novel.  It is a familiar symbol from European and Celtic mythology, and in the hands of Windling, it becomes something rather more and special with the colouring of the Arizona native people's myths around it. What does the white stag represent?  In The Wood Wife, something a little unexpected, in the end.

Maggie is a poet, although she has lost this ability in looking after her first husband.  It's a failed marriage that ended some time before the novel opens, except that her ex-husband is still attached to looking after her.  It's a theme in The Wood Wife, about artists, spouses, loved ones, some of whom create, some of whom support artists.  What is the price of art?  What kind of art?  When does it become not healthy to seek out the Muse in nature?  In The Wood Wife, however, the land and the myths in the land also reach out to the artists, and the book is an exploration of how what one brings to art, also shapes if one survives being an artist or not.  It's a beautiful novel, tragic and hopeful, with love resounding all the way through it.

As Jo Walton says (and I completely agree with) in her review, it's refreshing that Maggie is 40 years old.  An older heroine, who has life experience already, and discovers how much more there is still to learn, about everything still.  I loved this.  Life doesn't stop once you have had your first adventure.  Sometimes the greatest adventure comes after you have tried and failed at things.  Sometimes it comes when after putting aside creative work, something awakens that true thing in the heart that says, yes.  I need to write/paint/dance/sing/build/grow, whatever it is that a person is really called to do.  This is what makes this novel so true for me, that people are sick when they are not doing what they should be doing, and become well and happy when they are. 
      "Beauty, motion, that-which-moves."
      "Ah.  that's what my Dineh relatives would call hohzo: walking in beauty.  That is how a man should live his life.  If he doesn't, he sickens and dies."

Maggie is wandering, homeless, working as a journalist studying artists and writers, because she is afraid to be open to poetry, and can't hear it any more.  She thinks she has lost it forever.  In coming to learn about and be around what moved Cooper Davis to write, she finds her way back to what she has lost.  That is the way that art works, and creative ideas.  They come to you through following what you love, and what inspires you, until you find your way to your true heart. 

There are also lovely human characters in The Wood Wife.  Dora is sweet and strong, and in despair as she watches her husband Juan pursue what he thinks is true art, though it turns out to be a much more dangerous thing than he realizes.  Johnny Foxxe makes music.  Cooper Davis wrote poetry, and his wife Anna Navarra painted extraordinary pictures of surrealism in the Arizona landscape, pictures that are lovingly described by Windling, so we the reader can picture them too.

There are Trickster figures, and mythic figures, and powers that stalk the land and watch over it.  Once again, as in Charles de Lint's books, there is the sense that the myths are not to be played with.  Juan makes a bargain with one of the figures, and almost dies.  Cooper did make a bargain, and died for it, as did his wife Anna.  Those old stories of faery touching and changing humans, linger here too.  There is a price to be paid for seeing the earth as it is, and walking with the figures of myths and stories.  Everyone who lives on the mountain is changed by living there.

The Wood Wife reminded me a little of Possession by A.S. Byatt.  In fact, I think The Wood Wife is what I wanted Possession to be.  I was a little disappointed in the dryness of Possession, in how the critical literary heritage in the book sapped the passion that is at the heart of creating poetry.  In The Wood Wife, all that passion for creating remains, and grows, so that making art is revealed  as a true calling.

There is a way to tell a story that is true.  Poetry, dance, all art have this sense around them, that if they are done true to how the artist feels and sees it, the listener feels it ringing or tingling through them.  The Wood Wife has this sense for me.  A magical, marvelous true fantasy.  I loved it.

The handless maiden, or how a fairy tale comes alive

               I don't usually get deeply personal on my blog.  However, this year I have had a deep experience with a fairy tale, which is still moving through my life.  I have been thinking on this for a while, and wanted to share with you one example I have found of a fairy tale being true.  I don't have all the answers for what it means for me, as it's a work in progress currently.  As we go through this Once Upon a Time challenge with Carl, I thought it would be fun to share how powerful fairy tales and myths can be.

 As many of you know, Terri Windling has an amazing blog over at Myth and Moor.  She writes about everything from the daily walks she takes with her family's dog Tilly over the moors near her home, to folk music every Monday, to writing and art, to exploring fairy tales and their meaning.  Last spring, she posted about the fairy tale The Handless Maiden, which I read at some point.  I don't really remember being moved at all, or particularly drawn to this fairy tale, even then.

Then, later last spring, I had a dream. In my dream, Angelina Jolie was cutting my hands off, and I had to have another woman's arms attached.  My family - husband and children, the real ones I live with, not dream ones - were waiting for the new hands to go on.  I was okay with it.  I woke up as the knife cut through my hands.  I wrote it down, which I do when I can remember my dreams, and wondered why Angelina Jolie was in it.   Beauty? She is beautiful.  Intelligent, interesting, yes. I don't watch movie stars though I see all the headlines at the checkout at the grocery store.  Then about a month later, I was thinking about the dream on and off, and something about it finally pinged in me.  Something about my hands.   I went back to reread it. And suddenly I thought, my hands were cut off!  The Armless Maiden!  and I ran back to Terri's blog to read what she had written about it in her post.  This time I went through it more carefully, and I was able to see what my dream was telling me:  my arms were being removed because I need to find a new way to care for myself.  In my dream, another woman's hands (anonymous woman, no one I knew) were being attached.  What I realized in the summer that I needed to do, was to grow my own, again.

For me, this has meant looking at how I care for myself, in almost all aspects of my life.  From getting enough sleep (do I?  don't I?  why or why not?) to how I eat (and I am overweight, I'll be honest here), and why do I eat so much?  When do I eat?  To how I care for myself in other ways: how often do I do things for other people because I should?  What do I really want to do?  Why do I struggle to know what is really true for me?  And almost all of it comes down to me living through other people's rules, which we pick up as we grow up.  It's easy to adopt ways of doing things because that's how they are done.  The real purpose of growing up is to choose a way and a life that is true to me, so that living every day is a reflection of me, and what I value most.

In the fairy tale, the handless maiden wanders until she comes to a dark wood, where she finds an orchard and the trees which bear pears, which she is able to eat off the branch.  I have been eating pears for months now.  Every time I eat one, I think to myself, I am the handless maiden.  What do I need to learn?  How am I caring for myself?  Is this me, or someone else I am doing this for, in my life?  And as I eat the pear, I think of taking its nourishment, which represents the feminine strength, according to Marie-Louise von Franz in the Handless Maiden post.

I am middle-aged, and I would think too old for fairy tales, except fairy tales don't work in our ordinary time.  They come when we are ready for them in our souls.  Being 50 is nothing in fairy tale time.   When I went to Clarissa Pinkola Estes' book Women Who Run With the Wolves, which is like my bible for when it comes to understanding how fairy tales reveal women's souls to us, she says the Handless Maiden tale is for women of all ages.  That the fairy tale is about a voyage undertaken several times during a woman's life, for as she ages and changes, so does how she needs to live  changes. 

Particularly relevant to me in that same post is this passage quoted in the post, from Midori Snyder:
"To follow the example of the armless maiden is an invitation to sever old identities and crippling habits by journeying again and again into the forest. There we may once more encounter emergent selves waiting for us. In the narrative, the Armless Maiden sits on the bank of a rejuvenating lake and learns to caress and care for her child, the physical manifestation of her creative power. Each time we follow the Armless Maiden she brings us face to face with our own creative selves."
As many of you know, I am a writer, and a poet, and have struggled with balancing my family, working full-time, with finding energy to create anything, for most of my adult life.  What this fairy tale is bringing me is the opportunity to create my own life, with writing more central to it.  One of the questions I have also been asking myself this year is, what supports my writing? 

Out of this, I am learning things about myself I didn't know.  I'm looking at how I value my creativity, and what place I give it in my life.  Questions I was afraid of asking before, I'm asking now, because I feel a re-awakening of the pull to write, the call to be conscious that I am a writer, and I write poems, and I need to make a real space for this in my life now.  If I am going to be true to myself, and live a life that fully satisfies me every day, then I need to incorporate space and time to be creative every day.  It sounds simple, and it's a sign of how far I have been from myself, that I have to undo so much unnecessary other things I do that keep me from writing.  Most of these are demands that I place on myself, not other people, though much earlier in my life they were placed on me by others.  Or just rules that I assumed for everyone, or really underneath, the fear of being different, which has haunted me every since grade school, when I didn't want to be different from others, even though I was.  I am still learning how to undo that one!

Fairy tales are real, in a way that our souls recognize, some deep wordless place inside us that is connected to the soul of the world around us.  When I think of my dream, I say to myself," no I don't want another woman's hands, I want to grow my own now."  It's not easy, though it is interesting, and fun, and mysterious.  I don't always like what I find, though I do like that I can be more freer in my life, and recognize what I need to create my art (a little bit, at least, now).  The things I craved - silence, being still, listening, solitude - I am beginning to give to myself more.  I am happy to say that my family are very supportive in this also.  If I'm happy, they are happy!  Just so long as I want to be with them, which I do, and it bothered me that I was always waiting to get some time to myself.  It's tricky, learning to balance everyone's needs, and along the way I put mine lower, at the end of the day, or not at all if we were busy.   I am able to be with them in a truer sense now, not always longing  for the time to be quiet, because I know I already have it.  It's not perfect, I still wrestle with when the best time is to be creative, and long for more time to dream, and wander in nature, and let things come to me. 

Have you ever had a dream that had fairy tale elements in it?  Do you recognize themes in your life that resemble any fairy tale in particular?  Has any fairy tale really resonated with you? 

Jane, Carl's challenge, and animal encounters

  I have to thank Stefanie over at So Many Books blog for this:  she linked to the Jane Austen action figure, in her post on March 13.   I have to say, I did not know that there was a Jane Austen action figure in existence.  And now I want it.  She even has a quill pen in her hand!  And a book!  Tell me you don't think that this would look perfect on your bookshelf......did I say that out loud?   *sh-h*

I will be doing my post tomorrow (ok, today, but I haven't gone to bed yet so it's still Saturday in my mind), for Carl's Once Upon a Time VIII challenge.  It's finally here!  I have to make my pile of books first, and decide which part of the challenge I want.  I love the poster: 

It is so beautiful. I'd love a copy to hang on my wall.  It captures the idea of fantasy perfectly.  And there's NO SNOW in the painting!  I will be back tomorrow (later today!) with my sign-up post and possible books. 

Happy (not) spring in Ottawa:
In the meantime:  it is still winter here.  Today we had 10 cm of snow fall, and now the temperature is plunging.  It will plunge further tomorrow night.  I have a dentist appointment Monday morning.  I'm not sure in what universe I thought booking a dental appointment on a Monday morning was a good idea, but it wasn't this one.  Plus, now we might set a record low temperature (for that day) of -20c.  Plus I have had a sinus infection for weeks now, and why oh why did I not think to cancel the appointment?  My upper teeth are sensitive without the addition of the infection.....I put it down to be chronically tired this winter, from being sick through it all.  I apologize, I don't mean to be whiny,  I wanted to explain exactly why I dread the dentist on Monday, and why my blogging has been spotty this month.  Winter just won't let up, so I've been burying myself in books (very good) and not getting out to walk (very bad).  The winter grumpies are hitting everyone here in Ottawa this month.  Blogging takes too much energy when it's all I can do to drag myself to work and home again.  I know that if Spring comes, I will feel better!  and I can get outside to hear the birds singing and watch the green come in and feel the sun on my face.....

I hope you are feeling spring-like temperatures and watching green spring up wherever you are.  Some day it has to get warm enough that I can stop wearing my winter coat and boots. 

Animals and myths and fantasy
One last thing:  over at Terri Windling's blog, she has a lovely post up about animal encounters, and what they can mean, in fairy tale, fantasy and myth.  This is a good way to segue into Carl's fantasy reading challenge.  The mysterious, the fantasy, the fairies, are all around us.  What animal encounters have you had lately?   Do you like to wander over fields or by water, do you cross streams, or walk through parks, wildish places?  All these are places for encounters with the unworldly, with the spirits, and also with the creatures that share this planet with us.  The woman in the painting for Carl's challenge has a crane with her. Do you have a special animal that you are connecting with this spring?  For me, it's been rabbits; for the past year or two I have been seeing them almost everywhere I walk.  I love bunnies, and I'm always surprised and delighted when I see them.  Because I often walk at dusk, or dawn on summer mornings when it's too hot to walk anywhere else, I am out and about when the rabbits are eating.  They also come out when I'm on benches at the park in midday, too, and are often on the edges of the park when I cross the Alexandra Bridge (one of four bridges connecting Ottawa to Gatineau across the Ottawa River) to Ottawa, in the early evening (around 6 pm).  I have started to pay attention to them, as I've been seeing so many over the 8 months of the year that we don't have snow.  They symbolize creativity, fertility, and fear.  All of which I have been wrestling with for the past couple of years.    This is how fantasy and myth intersect with real life, how we take in the world around us, by noticing that which is around us, and how we create stories and create or find meaning  in it. Terri and her horses, I and my rabbits, and herons, and cardinals, and even the occasional snake crossing my path.  This is also where fantasy begins......

Some of the more famous books with rabbits or hares in them are Alice in Wonderland, which  has the most famous rabbit of all, the Mad Hatter. There is also Peter Rabbit, and Flopsy bunny (and all the other bunnies) of the Beatrix Potter books.  Watership Down, of course, which I read many years ago, and loved.  What else, though? Like with Terri Windling and her ponies she sees around her valley, what animals come to you?  Do you have a favourite fantasy tale in which they appear?

Angela Carter, and Alan Garner - fantasy and fairy tale reading for a Saturday night

  I was saving a post for tomorrow on another mystery I read and was enthralled by.  I still plan it, but I just had to share this link with you.  It comes by way of Terri Windling's blog, The Drawing Board, a quick post here about an article on Angela Carter.  She provides the link to The Paris Review, and an astonishing article on Angela Carter and her legacy. It's a wonderful post, by Marina Warner, who is a specialist in writing about fairy tales herself.   Most of the post is about The Bloody Chamber, which I read a few years ago, and to which I also responded to in a deep, subterranean way.  Some of the images and the feel of the stories linger in me, a sign that they (and Carter) have touched a deep place in me.  Imagine if there had been no Angela Carter - what would have happened to fairy tales, which were languishing in the abandoned corner of children's literature?  Scorned as old and after Disney got through with them, sickly sweet? She revolutionized and modernized the fairy tale by re-imagining them, writing in a voice that as Warner says, makes the tales real - using physical location and senses, light, dark, using all the dark and bloody things fairy tales are really about, so something deep in us does sit up and take notice. Fairy tales are alive today, and the article argues that it is mostly because of Angela Carter and The Bloody Chamber. 

Go read the article, and I hope it is as illuminating for you as it was for me.  Then go back to Terri Windling's blog, where she has a very short post about Alan Garner's new book Boneland, and some links to some interesting articles about it and him. 

Fantasy and fairy tale and myth reading for Saturday night.  Enjoy!!

Random book things for a rainy Sunday

New book!
I just had to post about this:  Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow have a new anthology out, and it's a collection of short stories featuring dystopian fiction!!!   Here is Terri Windling's post.  I am so excited!  The cover is interesting, isn't it?  It's going into my annual Christmas book box as soon as I find it!

 Is it too soon to be thinking about this?
To get in the mood for Christmas, Trish at Hey Lady, Watcha Reading, has a post about a lovely advent calendar she has made for her family this year.  It is so cute and whimsical, and filled with lovely little stuffed things that represent what her family loves. It totally got me in the mood for Christmas, even though I am still waiting for Hallowe'en to come.

Long live bookstores
I love this quote from Becca at Lost in Books: " 5. The Frankfurt Book Fair 2012 is going on now and there are already some buzzwords worth noting.  The best news traveling around so far is this: "bookstores are still the best showroom for publishers, and once they are gone, we won’t get them back."  Amen, Frankfurt.  Amen."  Here is the full post.

more on the Frankfurt Book Fair 2012 and some Shakespeare news

Becky at Musings From the Sofa has her post also on the Frankfurt Book Fair, and she has some new books from the publishers coming out this fall and next year, here. Sigh. They ALL look interesting. When she writes, "I’ve been thinking since it launched that Faber’s Shakespeare’s Sonnets app is the best inducement I’ve yet seen to buy an iPad, which just goes to show that I can be tempted by anything involving David Tennant." My heart went thump and I got excited, until I realized it was for an Ipad. Which I don't have, and don't want. Oh though, Shakespeare's Sonnets! Read by David Tennant!!!!!!!! Sir Patrick Stewart too!!!!!! Uh oh......the sonnets brought to life.....Hmm, it also says it is available on iTunes. Possibly I can buy this for my computer?

I'll be back. Off to see if my laptop will let me download iTunes 10. I love me some sonnets today, I hope....... I will let you know in a postscript. A lovely way to spend a rainy Sunday! Happy Sunday reading, everyone.

***Edited to add:
For RIP VII:

 New Susan Hill!!   I just had to add this.  Bride of the Book God has this new post, and in it she mentions a new Susan Hill novella, The Dolly!  It sounds very very good.  Dark and creepy and possibly scary.

Girls who read are COOL

I should be writing my list of favourite books I read this year, which I promised in my last post.  Sadly, I find that my brain has shut down for the evening.  We are finally ready for Christmas - more or less, all the wrapping still awaits, and I'm about to watch A Christmas Carol (Alistair Sims version) with my daughter.  I love the creepy effects. 

In the meantime, I thought I would give you this link to a wonderful post on why it's good to date a girl who reads, here.  I have to thank Terri Windling for the original link, it was on her post a few days ago.  I wish I had had this post to read when I was younger.  It would have saved me when all those people rolled their eyes at me when I said I like to read. Or who asked what I was reading and yawned as soon as I showed them my book. I have never been ashamed of reading, good heavens no!  It's others who have turned away from me because I read, that startled me.  I have often felt alone in my reading habits, especially as a teenager and young adult, before I began working in bookstores and discovered there was a whole world of readers out there, book lovers like me. Now I find through here that there are so many of us who love the pages and bindings and words as much as I do.  How many of you had your own library card when you were twelve?  How did the writer of that post know that I did?

May you find a book you've always wanted to read, under YOUR tree this year, my Gentle Readers!!!  And remember: it's easy to buy gifts for girls who read.  All we want are books!

The Writing Life and My Book of the Year

One of the ways in which I begin to relax is to cruise around the blog world checking in with whatever moves me.  As I have been away from blogging for the past while, one of the first places I head to is Terri Windling's blog.  Not only does she have art that is inspirational for me, but she takes lovely photos, and somehow her thoughts get me going into my own creativity.  She also lists books she's reading on her sidebar, which every so often I go to see what I need to add to my ongoing, ever-growing list of Books to Watch Out For and Try to Find.  Yesterday I pointed you to the December writer's desk series she had going.  Today, I discovered again through her links Midori Snyder and Delia Sherman's blogs, both of whom are writers that I think are among the best fantasy writers in the world.  Midori is on a writer hiatus write now, but earlier this year she had a link to a most hilarious article on the hurdles writers face in just sitting down to write - 'the voices against our work being of any account' hurdle.  Writers among my Gentle Readers, do you recognize any of these voices?  I did, and now I'm going to print out this article and frame it in my writing room.

I found Delia's blog  through Terri linking to a review about Adrienne Martini's Sweater Quest:  My Year of Knitting Dangerously, which I know some of you have been reading this year.  Well, not only does this book sound interesting - and I can't knit! - but I discovered, even more valuable to me, a post about advice to a young would-be writer, that is perfect, here, on her Nov 27th post..  Down in the comments, Edward Gorey's The Unsung Harp is mentioned, as a perfect gift for writers.  Darn if it isn't out of print, though here is the Amazon.ca write-up anyway so we would-be/promising/waiting to be published writers can start haunting online shops and used bookstores in our cities.  I know I will be.  It sounds perfect.  Both the writer advice and the book are classic for us.  And darn if I am not suddenly beginning to feel like I can face reading my first draft of my novel and see what can be saved.  Thank you to these kind, generous writers who take the time to share their thoughts and inspiration with us. 


Honourable Mentions for Book of the Year:

Each of the following were ones that not only seemed to be the best of their genre in the books that I read, but they did something more:  they surpassed their genre and rewrote my general assumptions about what the genre could contain.  I highly recommend all of these books. 

The Speed of Dark - Elizabeth Moon - I first wrote about this book, here. I still feel myself catching my breath at Lou's decision all these months later.  Breathtaking, brilliant, speculative, heart-breaking.
The Speed of Dark, which is brilliant at capturing the structure that a special mind like someone with autism needs to make sense of the world.  Indeed, reading this book, made me wonder how much all of us who are 'normal', need schedules and rules in order to go about our day, too.  And how much a little flexibility in our acceptance of others' differences could go a long way to make everyone feel comfortable in this world.
The Wrong Kind of Blood - Declan Hughes - I did not write about this book when I first read it in September, as it was a library book and I had a pile I was trying to read before returning.  That's my excuse, but it's a sad one, because from the moment I opened this mystery, I felt a frisson of energy that hasn't left me since.  This is noir, gritty mystery noir at it's best.  Ed Loy returns home to bury his mother, and uncovers secrets from his own past in the process.  It's got a lot of plot and the background of Ed is a bit mysterious, but it all works out in the end.  Mostly though it's Ed's reactions to Dublin then and now, and how crime and payouts and politics are the bedrock of life in the Dublin he knows then and now.  Very well done, and unlike anything I've read for quite some time. I am seeking out the rest of the series now. 

The Court of the Air - Stephen Hunt - This is a complex steampunk fantasy mix that I wasn't sure I liked or understood while I read it, until I got to the final chapters and it all comes together stunningly.  The steam men culture, the chilling court of the air, were all fabulous (in the best fantasy sense of the word) but what made the book have feeling were Molly and Oliver, the two orphans at the heart of this Victorian alternate world setting. Fascinating, a bit overwhelming at times, and once done, it has stayed with me and worked on me and now I find I am desperate to read the next one in the series. I understand steampunk better for having read this novel!  and I really have to know what happens next.

Favourite Authors discovered:  tie.  so I've taken my own idea yesterday and an idea from raidergirl3's book review category for 2010, and decided these two authors deserve once again, a special mention from me:
Jo Nesbo
Martin Edwards
I really can't decide between these two - not because they are similar, not at all! But because since discovering them this year, I have devoured the books in their series.
Jo Nesbo:
You all know about my love affair with Harry Hole, which continues unabated, through despair, alcoholism, devious arch-criminals and Harry's own weaknesses.  I have two sitting to be read for this new year, The Redeemer and The Snowman. Really, it's like Christmas the way it should have been, to have these books next to read!

Martin Edwards
The Lake District series: I enjoy the series of Daniel Kind and Hannah Scarlett so much. I think what I like best is the growing relationship between them, even as they try to continue their ongoing relationships with their current partners.  It is fascinating to have a historian's perspective added to the mystery genre, not because it hasn't been done before, but because Daniel explores history as it affects people so of course the cold cases that Hannah opens fascinate him.  Hannah is not an easy female character to like, yet I do.  She is interesting and complex and intelligent, and through her persistence and luck we see cases resolved.  At the heart of these mysteries are two things:  the Lake District and relationships.  The Lake District is beautiful, even as Wordsworth wrote about it almost two centuries ago, with nature ever present then and now as part of the scene of crimes, part of the witness to passions that explode.  Relationships are what all crimes stem from, and one of the many interesting things about this series is that none of the crimes are similar or fall into a pattern.  I'm reading The Serpent Pool right now (the last one published) - oh look!  Oh joy!  A new one is going to be published in April:  The Hanging Woods.  *happy sigh* now I can finish The Serpent Pool, knowing another one is around the corner.  Thank you, Martin!

My Book of the Year: Jack the Giant-Killer by Charles de Lint

Imagine my surprise when I came across a reference to 'placing a sprig of rowan in a pocket' in a recent fantasy novel, and my thrill that I knew exactly what the writer was referencing because I finally read Jack The Giant Killer over 20 years after it was published!  Sometimes books become classics in their field, and Jack the Giant Killer is one of those books for me and for urban fantasy.  This won Canada's science fiction award in 1988, deservedly so.  Even now, reading it so many years later, it brought a flash of magic to our dull city.  I really wished, as I did when I first read Moonheart  when it was published, that Ottawa could be a little more like how Charles imagines it in his urban fantasy novels.  I enjoyed Jacky Rowan, and her best friend Kate Crackernuts, and the Unseelie Court are very frightening, as they ought to be.  If a faerie tale could be called 'realistic', this would be one, and I love the melding of the real with the unreal.  Here is the link to my original review. I like Jacky Rowan too, and I really wish Charles would write more stories featuring her and Kate too. It's my book of the year not just because it's witty, and clever, and wise in the ways of the heart, and full of love and wisdom too, but because it's fun, and magical, and full of bravery.   It brought me back to a sense of myself when I was starting out on my own, and discovering the world of fantasy for the first time.  Charles de Lint was my first love in contemporary fantasy writing (* note: not him, I've met him, lovely man and gorgeous wife Mary Ann) - it's his writing that I love.  Jack the Giant Killer showed me what I love best in fantasy writing: fairy tales and magic and growing up all mixed up together in a bag of adventure and friendship and love.

updates and shout outs

I am so excited for Carl who got a wonderful shout out at Endicott Studios on their April 29 entry.....'My hat is off to the Stainless Steel Droppings blog, which just keeps getting better and better." Wow. Posted by Terri Windling herself. Congratulations, Carl, and well-deserved. He has had an amazing book week, and incredible posts, and is generally as enthusiastic and encouraging towards and about reading and books as you could ever hope to meet. He does so much to let the rest of us find the incredible fantasy art being done, as well hosting the Once Upon a Time and RIP challenges.

Also, in Ian Rankin's Exit Music (to be reviewed shortly), Ottawa was mentioned! Yes, my home city, was in an Ian Rankin novel! One of my favourite mystery writers! It has to do with a Russian poet, so my guess is we got a mention because we have an amazing Writer's Festival held here yearly now, and Mr Rankin came in 2004. I was supposed to go hear him read, with a friend, but she backed out, and as I was very very pregnant at the time, I didn't want to go out at night by myself, so I ended up missing him. To which I really regret, and vow next time he comes, I will be there! I did get to hear Kathy Reichs read from one of her mysteries the previous year, which was very enjoyable. So, Ottawa makes it on the literary map....

Finally, two updates: the new toilets have arrived. They are parked in each bathroom. We are now trying to book a plumber. One would think this would be easier, but it's not,and it's turning into an epic journey. One I would rather not experience! Next week sometime, maybe, they will actually be installed and working.....
And at work, we had our special team-meeting yesterday morning. We all have to work a 9-5 shift for three weeks during the summer. This is the shift I normally work, but can't because of Toby's new job. While everyone was very polite in the meeting, they were rather stunned. Everyone else works 7-3 or 7:30-3:30, so this is a radical change, and previously we could work the hours we wanted. However, we are Operations (code for providing a service to the public) so we have to have staff on during normal work hours. Anyway, two of them did complain, the third who wants to be supervisor next didn't say anything but has avoided me ever since, and the last one made a comment about making sure work (meaning my work, since the work I do has the information needed for the weekends) "should be done as much as possible before 3 pm", to which I'm still furious and am glad he is trying for a job in another department. Just another day at the office!!! But, I will say, my boss and assistant manager went out of their way to point out any new staff have to work the later hours too, that this is required by the department now (ie the directors have said so). They have done their best to accommodate me, and I can't ask for any more. Now I have to hope the buses co-operate and I get to both daycares in time each night!!! The Nanny Diaries didn't cover this aspect of child-rearing, then again, I don't have a nanny!

Happy reading! Hope you have a good book for the weekend! I can pick up The Hero with a Thousand Faces again because it's May - the Non-Fiction Five challenge starts now! - and I'm almost half-way through A History of Reading, and catching up on the stories I haven't read yet in Fragile Things. It's the weekend!

Cadillac Jukebox - Done!

Hurray! It took only two weeks, but Cadillac Jukebox is done. I did end up really enjoying it, and although I complained in another blog about the evil people, by the end, the book was about the depths to which people will go to survive, and to get revenge. It's a reminder, in these days of glorifying gangsters and drugs, that there are people who kill for the sadistic joy of it, but in this book, the sadistic killer is not brought down by Our Hero, but by the only one who could, the one out for revenge. This book makes the swampy heat of Louisiana come to life, and made me really want to try eating a shrimp po'boy! A good read, entertaining, and gritty.
Then I read 'The Safe-Keeper's Secret' by Sharon Shinn. This is a new series of books that I just discovered by Sharon Shinn, whose detective sci-fi/goddess mystery 'Wrapt in Crystal' is the book I best remember her for......I had no idea she was writing young teens books, until I saw the 4th in her Mystic and Rider series (forget the actual title of the series) reviewed in Locus (go to www.locusmag.com - a very good science fiction and fantasy review/book publishing mag that has been out for many many years). So at Collected Works two weeks ago I picked up The Safe-Keeper's Secret, and read it in two days! It is a delightful fantasy for teen readers, and the magic world - medieval setting - where some people are truth-tellers, some are secret-keepers and some are dream-makers, as well as normal things like farmers and kings and herbalists and innkeepers - is well-thought out. Highly recommended for an enjoyable read with fun characters.
So now i am working on Life of Pi. I was having difficulty getting into the story until this morning, when I told myself to think of it as a fable - which, duh! it is! A literary fable with humans and animals. So now I am enjoying it more, but I need a stretch of time to read it in, and getting one or two hours to read a day is difficult these days. It's the time between Hallowe'en, birthdays, and the stretch to Christmas......but I will try to read and finish it this week, so I can move on to one of my other 'Stack' titles.
Though, I keep making lists of books to get. As I get through making piles for the upcoming reading challenges starting in January, I see that my shelves have less and less books I haven't read on them, and I start to panic - what will I read next? Oh no, must have stacks of books to choose through!!! So I spent this morning going through the book recommendations on www.endicott-studio.com which is run by Terri Windling of Annual Fantasy and Horror Collections fame (among others things, like her own book The Wood Wife). This is a fascinating site for people who read fairy tales, study fairy tales, write fairy tales or paint them. As a source for new books in the fantasy world (with reviews accompanying most) it is among the best on the internet. So there I was, making my lists (third list in a month! My LSS is trying not to panic!) and drooling, so much to read! So much to handle, open, read, buy.....some are books I've seen in passing but didn't know much about (and needing to buy the latest ones from my favourite authors, which I have done now, so my heart is a bit calmer.....I have new books to read over the holidays, which I WILL do no matter how hectic the kids make it!).....books to get now include Delia Sherman's The Changeling, Elizabeth Knox's Dreamhunter and Dreamquake, Catherine Valente's The Orphan's Tales Vol 2, In the Night Garden, Sarah Monette's A Companion to Wolves (and I still have to finish her Virtu series which I am really enjoying), Michael Scott's The Alchemist, O.R. Melling's The Lightbearer's Daughter, Kate Thompson's The New Policeman. Oh, and Book three of Stevermer and Wrede's series, The Mislaid Magician. And then Neil Gaiman just wrote about Ellen Kushner's sequel to Swordspoint, called The Privilege of the Sword, which Locus did review a while ago (both positively)............no, no shortage of more new books to buy and read!! So I felt calmer, then, and have started carrying my lists with me just in case I pop into a bookstore ("Look dear, the door was open so I went in and look what I found! And don't worry, we still have money for food and Christmas....") Just need some way to open a time portal so I can go somewhere and read, read, read, then when I'm ready, open the portal and slip back into this world. In this fantasy of mine, no time has elapsed so no one knows that I went anywhere, and I get to read all the books I want to!!! I wonder if I would age in that portal/book reading world???
I wonder if I should add to my books read list every year, all the cookbooks I go through? One day I will write about my favourite cookbooks and chefs.....meantime suffice to say Nigella Lawson and Nigel Slater, plus Sarah Leah Chase and James Barber, reign supreme in this household!! Which reminds me, Holly-Anne has already come to ask me what's for dinner, so I'd better go and start cooking......Life of Pi (and this blog) will have to wait......