March Reading Log

• Midnight is a Place, by Joan Aiken
• A Curse Dark as Gold, by Elizabeth Bunce
• Wildwood Dancing, by Juliet Marillier
• Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery
• Tamsin, by Peter Beagle
• 84, Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff *
• The Mirror Cracked, by Agatha Christie
• Third Girl, by Agatha Christie
• By the Pricking of My Thumbs, by Agatha Christie
• Looking for Alibrandi, by Melina Marchetta
• The Sword in the Stone, by T.H. White
• Saving Francesca, by Melina Marchetta

*Denotes a title I resolved to read this year.

Dickinson Friday: 593

In honor of Lucy Maud Montgomery--my Foreign Lady

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I think I was enchanted
When first a sombre Girl —
I read that Foreign Lady —
The Dark — felt beautiful —

And whether it was noon at night —
Or only Heaven — at Noon —
For very Lunacy of Light
I had not power to tell —

The Bees — became as Butterflies —
The Butterflies — as Swans —
Approached — and spurned the narrow Grass —
And just the meanest Tunes

That Nature murmured to herself
To keep herself in Cheer —
I took for Giants — practising
Titanic Opera —

The Days — to Mighty Metres stept —
The Homeliest — adorned
As if unto a Jubilee
'Twere suddenly confirmed —

I could not have defined the change —
Conversion of the Mind
Like Sanctifying in the Soul —
Is witnessed — not explained —

'Twas a Divine Insanity —
The Danger to be Sane
Should I again experience —
'Tis Antidote to turn —

To Tomes of solid Witchcraft —
Magicians be asleep —
But Magic — hath an Element
Like Deity — to keep —

Scoop of the e-e-evening: Anne of Green Gables

“I read it to Marilla and she said it was stuff and nonsense. Then I read it to Matthew and he said it was fine. That is the kind of critic I like.” ~Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery

If you’re looking for an unbiased review, keep looking. Anne of Green Gables was one of the earliest influences on my independent reading life—right after The Boxcar Children, right before Nancy Drew. No matter how old I get, or how many times I traverse Montgomery’s unfashionable, flowery prose, as a critic I’ll always say it’s fine. More than fine. Just right.

Coming back to an author’s first novel after reading her later work is an interesting experience. I’ve been dipping into the Pat books again, gathering brogue for my own Irish character, and then, of course, rereading The Blue Castle is practically an annual ritual with me. Anne contains more authorial monologues, in a simpler, more moralistic tone than she later grew into, but it’s in keeping with the sweet simplicity of her main character.

Montgomery will always be my favorite author. As a fourteen year old, I devoured every single story she ever produced. As a twelfth-grader, I chose Prince Edward Island for my “senior trip.” And as a twenty-one year old who is increasingly aware of the fact that my obsession with children’s literature is not something I’m going to grow out of, Montgomery still casts the same spell: “…when she began to sing I didn’t think about anything else. Oh, I can’t tell you how I felt. But it seemed to me that it could never be hard to be good any more. I felt like I do when I look up at the stars. Tears came into my eyes, but, oh, they were such happy tears.”

Traveling over a story when you know every inch is both comfortable and comforting. A book that withstands—even demands—such familiarity from the masses is a book that will no doubt endure another hundred years of time and tide.


Note on the text: You’d think after a century of editing, the anniversary edition would have a pretty clean text. Not so! It contained more errors than I’ve read in a single book in ages. Not just trifling “on”s for “or”s … but “Mania” instead of “Marilla” … a comma between Katie and Maurice! I absolutely had to buy this edition because of the cover (the “special introduction” is worthless), but the printing errors are something to rant about.

$0.99

That's all it takes to hire a muse nowadays. I'm listening to "The Kiss" from Penelope's soundtrack ... if you like instrumental, dig 99 cents out of your jeans and download this song.

While I'm on the topic, I just have to say how totally amazing an idea it was to use typewriter keys as percussion in the "Briony" track of Atonement's score. Total genius.

Okay. Back to work.

Scoop of the e-e-evening: Tamsin

Cheesecake. Thick and velvety and rich—none of your ready-made graham crusts, no instant pudding, but four packages of Philly, whole milk, a real vanilla bean.

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Peter Beagle writes cheesecake.

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I had to take small bites the first hundred pages, or risk overwhelming myself. It has that much depth and flavor. Lines like, “All my insides would jump right up from a standing start, the way crickets leap up out of the grass.” He grounds the reader with astounding strength before trickling out boggarts and pookas. You nod, you accept them, and what’s more, you accept them into modern England.

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His similes are personal. Specific and personal, that’s the best I can describe them. No faces turning white as paper. Every simile is pulled from the story and takes you deeper into the story. Beagle’s prose is simply right. And his characters—they’re like Shakespeare’s Jews … when you prick them, they bleed.

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He had my willing suspension of disbelief the entire first half. Towards the end, I found it a little harder to take things seriously, but that first half, I was thinking, “What am I doing, reading this at night?!” The sense of history and age he breathes into the countryside is amazing. That’s not quite the right way of putting it—maybe, the sense of everything having a past, a long, full, rich past.

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Americans stopped thinking of our land as the New World ages ago, but glance through one world history book, and just watch our timeline shrivel. I don’t think people living in such a mewling nation can ever really grasp the ghosts other lands possess. What is 1776 to Celts, Chinese, Babylonians, Sumerians? I love traveling down that thought.

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Of course, Beagle’s worldview is very different from mine. I knew from the rough language at the start that we’re not the sort who would get along at parties—I may adore myths and legends, and ascribe much more truth to them than the common realist who views the world scientifically, but when it boils down to bits like this, I purse my lips and sigh. “We [says the Lady of the Elder Tree] was here when your Almighty woon’t but a heap of rocks and a pool of water. We was here when woon’t nothing but rocks and water. We was here when we was all there was."

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And so, I savored this book like a slice of cheesecake, but kept my wits about me. Voraciously enjoyed it, but didn't totally succumb.

Check Out This Jammy Blog!

A wonderful blogger is back in business—Sally Apokedok, of All About Children's Books. She is, among other things, a children’s writer, no-nonsense reviewer, and Shannon Hale fan. You should get along fine. :)

She is also liking my novel … did I mention she’s smart, chic, and in possession of flawless taste?

But anyway, scorning to dip her toes, Sally rejoined the kidlit blogosphere with a cannonball splash, posting on sexuality in Christian YA novels, and posing the question: what is it that editors want?

I’ll tell you what I want: I want Mr. Merriam or whoever it is in charge of the dictionary nowadays to remove “edgy” and “gritty” from his next edition. For the longest time, that’s all I heard in CBA circles. “Editors want gritty, realistic fiction.” “People want edgy novels.” It was like an entire city discussing the same tabloid, month after month, instead of waking up to the fact that millions of newspapers are printed every day.

The American Booksellers Association is not obsessed with gritty—gritty is run of the mill. It’s such an enormous publishing world that anything is acceptable. Of course, that’s good and bad, but in the end, there’s no Establishment tugging you down a narrow passage.

The image all this brings to my mind is Jesus, telling his disciples to be in the world, but not of the world. It seems many Christians have gotten it backwards: they’re of the world, but not in it. We’ve created a sort of sub-culture, and in the desperate attempt to reach the people around us, we clutch at a naïve assumption about ABA readers, that they all prefer gritty novels. In fact, it’s just not true.

Five years down the road, edgy Christian novels will be so yesterday, and we’ll have moved on to something else, some other buzzword, some other innovative effort to attract outsiders. But the ABA world will still be publishing all across the board, as they’re doing now. Crap Clique books alongside sweet tales like The Penderwicks. Stupid Captain Underpants beside gems like Leepike Ridge.

And maybe—you never know—maybe even a debut about a “hot, humid swamp at the bottom of a mountain and a crisp ice city at the top,” by an author who explores the “differences between contentment and apathy, lust and love, and greed and a proper desire for quality of life.”

Who knows?

Happy Easter!

Springtime Musings

I’ve been rather like this tea kettle lately. On the burner all February, typing like mad—a kettle at full pressure—and finally pouring out a not-too-shabby cuppa tea. Now, however, my whistle is spent. I perch on the stove, quiet and comfy, and there’s no smidgen of desire to type. Instead, I’m blissfully devouring old Agatha Christie’s, spending my days in general lazy enjoyment of life. Eventually, the heat will mount under me again and the softest whistle will begin. At that time, I’ll pull out my laptop and start editing. But until then, let Spring reading continue!

Anne is Invited out to Tea

Today was my Anne of Green Gables tea, celebrating the book’s 100th anniversary—we had a splendid time, drinking raspberry cordial, eating biscuits, pound cake, tarts, cucumber sandwiches and madelines, and sharing favorite bits of Anne. (Notice the sprig of hydrangea next to the book on the table: a souvenir from Montgomery's birthplace.)

I read from Montgomery’s journals, including the following bit:

Today has been, as Anne herself would say an "epoch in my life". My book came today, fresh from the publishers. I candidly confess that it was for me a proud, wonderful, thrilling moment! There in my hand lay the material realization of all the dreams and hopes and ambitions and struggles of my whole conscious existence—my first book! Not a great book at all—but mine, mine, mine—something to which I had given birth—something which, but for me, would never have existed.

And of course, I couldn’t get through that without crying—but can you blame me, having so recently finished my own first book?

Then we chatted some more, mostly about books, and looked at photos from our family’s trip to PEI in 2005 ... the recreated Green Gables, Montgomery's birthplace and grave ...

All in all, a splendid time was had by all.

I'm at Novel Journey Today

Check out my interview with Elizabeth Bunce, author of A Curse Dark as Gold, at Novel Journey today.

Dickinson Friday: 581

I found the words to every thought

I ever had — but One —

And that — defies me —

As a Hand did try to chalk the Sun

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To Races — nurtured in the Dark —

How would your own — begin?

Can Blaze be shown in Cochineal —

Or Noon — in Mazarin?

Scoop of the e-e-evening: The Sword in the Stone

Pretty much everyone has seen the Disney cartoon, but T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone is a story that must be read. Nowhere in the movie do you get delicious bits like:

"The cottage had a brass plate screwed on the garden gate. It said: Madame Mim, B.A. (Dom-Daniel) Pianoforte, Needlework, Necromancy."

Or how about the casual mention of Merlin in running shorts ... Merlin knitting his beard into the nightcap he's making ... Merlin's dishes washing themselves up, shouting, "Hey! Let's dunk the tea pot!"

Or a falcon who's been mewed up too long and cannot keep from quoting all the bloody passages of Macbeth? My personal favorite bit of deliciousness, since I have a similar character in my story.

Most people pick up the story of King Arthur from the day in the churchyard, when young Art pulls the sword from the stone and is hailed by all of Merry Old England as their sovereign lord. T.H. White, however, looks back to the innocent childhood of England's once and future king, the days when outlaws like Robin Wood (read: Hood) roamed the Forest Sauvage and knights spent their entire lives questing mysterious beasts.

While certain passages did drag on and I felt like someone should remind White that young boy readers aren't interested in philosophy, and he harped about evolution more than once, this would make a wonderful read-aloud ... Ay say, the dialogue is absolutely lovely, what?

Camp Narnia

The library where I work never uses prefab summer reading programs. In a way, that’s good, because we can be creative and aren’t locked in by what the State chooses. On the other hand, I’m the one who plans the programs. Lots of work. The past three years, we’ve hosted Art Camps, where kids learn about famous artists and then create projects in the styles of those artists. This summer, in honor of Prince Caspian’s release, I’m planning a Camp Narnia.

One small problem: there are no Camp Narnia ideas out there. Believe me, I’ve looked. It’s all “discuss these questions, play freeze tag and go home.” I need to fill an hour and a half with twenty elementary kids. And so I beg to put before you Camp Narnia—bring on the brill ideas!

I already have our t-shirts planned:

Ten Signs You’re a Narnia Fan

10. You randomly knock on the backs of wardrobes
9. Before eating venison, you ask “This isn’t a talking stag, is it?”
8. You’re grounded for calling your mother a dem fine woman
7. You drink Shasta soda just because of the name
6. You always check behind sofas before discussing secret plans
5. You plant toffee in your backyard
4. You never push bracelets above your elbow
3. Every morning, you recite the signs, in order
2. You have a list of words that rhyme with “balmier”
1. You’re not afraid of railway accidents

Dickinson Friday: 13

THE SOUL selects her own society,
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.

Unmoved, she notes the chariot’s pausing
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.

I ’ve known her from an ample nation
Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.

Six-Word Memoir Meme

Erin tagged me with a challenge: write a six-word memoir of my life. Make that "my life (so far)" and this is what I have to say:

That dull Girl with the laptop.

Referring, of course, to poem #704 by Emily Dickinson. Croopus, I love that one with gleeful adoration.

I'm horrible about tagging. I never sent any of those stickers or recipes in chain mail letters when I was little, either. I guess I'm a failure in the propagation department. If you want to try your hand at a six-word memoir in the comment box, however, consider yourself dubbed!

Reading Challenge: Anne of Green Gables

It's March, everyone! The 100th anniversary of the publication of Anne of Green Gables! Happy Anneiversary!!

No matter how many times you've read the book, you really must reread it this month. I insist. And I guarantee you'll enjoy yourself--Anne is a breath of fresh air. In fact, why not reread the entire series?

While you're at it, find out which L.M. Montgomery heroine you are. My results were no surprise: Valancy. Perhaps because I've read The Blue Castle about twelve times?

If you're just not an Anne person, at least read The Blue Castle with a tall glass of raspberry cordial by your side.