I don't know if every bookworm has a special shelf just for those extra precious books (yessss...my precioussss...er..um sorry about that...) that shine like powerful, enchanted gold rings in the dark, but I certainly do. There are just some books that seem to glow, and to give off their own life and light, just as they sit there humming quietly to themselves on the shelf.
I prize these stories, like something rare, irreplaceable, priceless, and unique. I suppose if I were a rich art collector, I would pursue these novels around the world and pay any price for them, then keep them in a special room with a carefully controlled atmosphere so they would not deteriorate ever. I would invite only highly privileged people into my book-treasure room. We would all stand around and savour rare vintages in tiny crystal glasses while contemplating and discussing my preciousssss collection of prized literary acquisitions.
No, wait, that is totally wrong, and not me. I'm much more the down to earth, touchy-feely, hold it in my hands, smell it, read it, casually relax and hang out with it kind of girl. I guess that is one of the reasons why I don't collect rare things that break easily (besides not being rich).
Perhaps that's just one of the reasons why the books I consider special aren't special because they are old, rare, historical, collectable, or worth a great deal of money. They are mass market genre novels and are special only because they've touched me personally in some wonderful way. They stand out from the rest because of the way they are written. They have various, perhaps indefinable qualities to them that I can't always quite pin down or describe. All I know is that I love them more than most of the other books, so they get put together on a special shelf where I can look up at their spines and see them easily, anytime, from where I am sitting reading, or working on the computer.
Right now the books on the special shelf are not many. This is for several reasons. One is because I've just recently moved and most of my books are still packed away. The other is complicated and ancient history by now.
So what are these few, very special glowing books right now?
1. Robin McKinley's _Sunshine_ (I so wish she would write another one of these...a sequel, or another comparable one to this...)
2. Susan Hubbard's Ethical Vampire Series
3. John Ajvide Lindqvist's _Let the Right One In_
If I were to write a book, I'd want it to be as good as Sunshine, to have many of the qualities in it that I am so in love with in Sunshine. Sunshine is both sensual and spiritual, earthy and ethereal, hilarious and scary, homey and alien. When I see Sunshine, I hunger for cinnamon buns AS BIG AS YOUR HEAD. The book has become my good luck charm and my talisman against all evil. How does McKinley do what she does? I want it. I want it bad.
It would also be as powerfully visual as Hubbard's literary images are. I want to move right on in and live in that silvery-turquoise coloured bedroom and I never want to encounter the creepy white faced harbinger in that van, ever.
Also, my imaginary truly awesome book that I'd write would also be as fresh and tart and tangy and startlingly cold and dark and brutal as _Let the Right One In_.
My special list of extra-treasured books is a very short one right now. These are the ones that I can't pack away or go without looking at or thinking about for very long. The present ones also all happen to be about vampires, but they are all very different from each other. None of the vampires sparkle, which I think is good.
The list changes from time to time, but there are some that stay on it. I just don't happen to have the older books with me since my used-to-be larger library is no longer in my possession, and hasn't been for over 10 years now. Obviously there are ones like TLOTR, and the complete set of The Chronicles of Narnia, but I don't own those ones right now. One I really miss from my childhood is Great Swedish Fairy Tales, illustrated by John Bauer, which I think is now out of print.
Anyway, that's my short list for now.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
L.A.Banks, Surrender the Dark
Ahhhh. My memory is really being jogged now that I've spent the day working on my long neglected blog and trying to remember some of the better books I've read over the last few months.
I just remembered another new author that I discovered during my recent, tumultuous and stressful move. L.A. Banks. At first I wasn't certain that I would like her novel because it appeared to be one of "those" romance novels that don't do much for me.
However, I soon found that it was much more than just a romance. I could actually identify with the heroine on a very personal level, how low of a level she had sunk in her life, how depressed and demoralized she was, how far she had to come to heal. I even found myself identifying with her taste in clothes shampoos, soaps, and scents. I could also identify with the values, morals, ethics, and interests of the main characters, including the health foods and the natural cleansing and healing process of the body, and how everything is interconnected, mind, body, and spirit. I wanted to be her. I wanted her love interest.
I was honestly surprised at how well Banks was able to make me care about her story and her characters. So I looked her up to see what else she had written, and I was terribly saddened to discover that she had recently died of cancer just this past year at the young age of 51. Her writing had made me care, not only about those she wrote about, but herself as a person. Here was someone highly intelligent, warm, loving, caring, healing, generous, and with an amazing amount of hope for humanity and a strong belief that good and love will always conquer all. Rare in these days and times. I had just discovered her, only to lose her.
L.A. Banks, whereever your spirit is (and I'm quite sure it's somewhere really wonderful!) I will be looking for the rest of your books to read. It seems you gave a great deal of your wonderful self while you were here with us.
I just remembered another new author that I discovered during my recent, tumultuous and stressful move. L.A. Banks. At first I wasn't certain that I would like her novel because it appeared to be one of "those" romance novels that don't do much for me.
However, I soon found that it was much more than just a romance. I could actually identify with the heroine on a very personal level, how low of a level she had sunk in her life, how depressed and demoralized she was, how far she had to come to heal. I even found myself identifying with her taste in clothes shampoos, soaps, and scents. I could also identify with the values, morals, ethics, and interests of the main characters, including the health foods and the natural cleansing and healing process of the body, and how everything is interconnected, mind, body, and spirit. I wanted to be her. I wanted her love interest.
I was honestly surprised at how well Banks was able to make me care about her story and her characters. So I looked her up to see what else she had written, and I was terribly saddened to discover that she had recently died of cancer just this past year at the young age of 51. Her writing had made me care, not only about those she wrote about, but herself as a person. Here was someone highly intelligent, warm, loving, caring, healing, generous, and with an amazing amount of hope for humanity and a strong belief that good and love will always conquer all. Rare in these days and times. I had just discovered her, only to lose her.
L.A. Banks, whereever your spirit is (and I'm quite sure it's somewhere really wonderful!) I will be looking for the rest of your books to read. It seems you gave a great deal of your wonderful self while you were here with us.
The Desert Spear by Peter Brett
The Desert Spear by Peter Brett
Have I mentioned that I recently purchased and read the sequel to The Warded Man that I was originally so impressed with? I think that I forgot to about this in the midst of all the upheaval going on in my life lately. I was extremely pleased to discover that I was just as satisfied if not more so by the second book in the series as I was by the first. The storytelling continues to fascinate, the characters become more and more interesting, the plot increasingly compelling and intriguing, and the settings convincing enough to make me want to jump on into the pages and wriggle my way right in there myself. And, as a woman who spent a few years studying and practicing the art of Jiu Jitsu myself, I most definitely appreciate the fine martial arts aspects to the book. I can hardly wait to possess and devour the third book in this series. Hurry up Peter, bring it on!
Have I mentioned that I recently purchased and read the sequel to The Warded Man that I was originally so impressed with? I think that I forgot to about this in the midst of all the upheaval going on in my life lately. I was extremely pleased to discover that I was just as satisfied if not more so by the second book in the series as I was by the first. The storytelling continues to fascinate, the characters become more and more interesting, the plot increasingly compelling and intriguing, and the settings convincing enough to make me want to jump on into the pages and wriggle my way right in there myself. And, as a woman who spent a few years studying and practicing the art of Jiu Jitsu myself, I most definitely appreciate the fine martial arts aspects to the book. I can hardly wait to possess and devour the third book in this series. Hurry up Peter, bring it on!
Friday, February 24, 2012
Latest Reads: Simon R. Green, Drinking Midnight Wine, Nevada Barr, Burn
Enough is enough. Time to get back to seriously blogging about my reading adventures.
I've moved house. I'm about half-unpacked a month and a half later. I'm still recovering from the aftermath of being held hostage by dastardly pirate-moving-men who charged me twice what they originally estimated and tacked on all kinds of hidden fees and would not unpack my stuff until I paid them. I had to borrow money from a friend (who is now no longer a friend) to pay them.
In the moving process I also injured a disc in the neck area, leading to some pretty severe nerve pain radiating down my upper arms and hands. That gradually faded as the weeks passed. Then, while unpacking, I dropped a 10 lb dumbell weight on my right big toe and smashed it into smithereens. I will now be hobbling around in an air cast until mid-March/end of March. So my life has been just filled with adventure - but not nearly enough of the proper kind of adventure as compared to what goes on in my beloved books.
Moving has been hell. But it's time to move on from moving and get back to more meaningful things, like books, and reading, and writing. So I've read some stuff here and there in between moving and unpacking and being injured, but not much of it has made a very deep impact - at least not enough to write about it anyway.
I read like I breath. I just can't not read. So I've usually got at least one book on the go at any one time, often more than one. But unfortunately, not everything I read is truly stimulating, nutritious to the brain and illuminating of the soul. Many library books go in one eye and out the other if you will, and then get returned to the library without having left much of an impression on the old brain cells in between the eyes.
Nevada Barr's Burn is one recent exception. It's not my typical sci-fi/fantasy genre novel. The closest this novel got to anything in my beloved "woo woo" range was a few rather unremarkable Voodoo practitioners. This one was all facts: who dunnit, how, when, why, where etc, and I really enjoyed the change of pace.
The Anna Pigeon mystery/adventure/action series is one I'm going to pay attention to in the future when I need to take a walk outside of dark urban fantasy and get bored with vampires, werewolves, witches, goblins, orcs, faeries, godlings, and other worlds in other galaxies and dimensions. In this novel, Pigeon is a very down to earth park ranger who is staying in New Orleans "on leave", and runs across a child-sex-trafficking ring. The characters were extremely well drawn in this novel.
I particularly loved the cross-dressing actress mother. Settings were also very convincing. I wanted to be right there in that exact spot, drinking that exact coffee. How could I possibly resist a story that had not one but two brave, heroic women out to save a houseful of young children from the predations of rich, privileged, pedophiles? Well done!
This one stayed with me. I even had to renew it in order to keep it with me long enough until I could find the time to sit down and hold it next to me while I wrote about it here. So Nevada Barr is going to be added to my favourite author's list.
I just finished reading Simon R. Green's Drinking Midnight Wine. At first I was puzzled, thinking, how come I haven't read this author before? Then I looked him up on my blog here and discovered that I had read his Man with the Golden Torc. Ah ha! Here is proof that my blog is actually useful to me - when I bother to use it.
So, I liked the book. I can't say I disliked it. It just didn't wow me. I hate it when a book doesn't have any surprises in it for me. It's boring when it's too predictable. I know it is often said that there are no new stories, that all stories are just retold in new ways, but that is really where the art lies isn't it? A really good storyteller can retell the same basic story, but never bore the reader.
I really wasn't surprised to discover that the woman the hero fell in love with was actually the human version of Gaia (the earth's soul/consciousness). I had already been guessing that for at least a chapter or two before it was revealed, and the same was true of Luna being the Moon, and the evil Serpent in the Sun, and that the Sun raped the Moon and the Moon had a son she didn't want who became "evil"and hell bent on destroying humanity blah, blah, blah...
I just couldn't get all that involved or upset about any of it, even though Green tried hard to bring it all "down to earth" by serving up scrambled egg with toast soldier breakfasts after a night of really good sex with an Earth Mother incarnate.
I felt like I was sitting in a hard plastic chair in a hall, listening to one of those pale, weedy looking guys who love to lecture on for hours at Masonic Temples and who read endless books on High/Ceremonial Magick. Yah, Yah Kabbalah. Secret hand shakes, signs and all that. Don't get me wrong. Alchemy is interesting and so is Jung. Dion Fortune is cool too.
It's just that some of the people I've run into that take it too seriously don't seem to have much balance in their lives. They make me want to go eat a nice big green salad full of avocado, go for a walk in the sun down by the lake, stick my toes in the sand, roll around in the grass, and play with a big smelly hairy dog. Anyway. That was my reaction to this one. Kind of Ho hum I guess. There you go.
But now I have a big bag full of fat, shiny new novels to read! I will list them here in the hopes that I will guilt myself into writing about them as I read them this time.
Col Buchanan Farlander: Book One
Justine Larbalestier Magic or Madness
Kim Harrison Pale Demon (I think I skipped this one in the series and read around it so it'll be a catch up read)
Terry Goodkind The Omen Machine (I really hope I don't regret getting this one out - I was getting kind of sick of the whole Richard/Kahlan series, but it's been a few years so we'll see what happens)
Nathan Long Ulkrika The Vampire: Blood Forged
Ok. We'll see how this batch turns out...
I've moved house. I'm about half-unpacked a month and a half later. I'm still recovering from the aftermath of being held hostage by dastardly pirate-moving-men who charged me twice what they originally estimated and tacked on all kinds of hidden fees and would not unpack my stuff until I paid them. I had to borrow money from a friend (who is now no longer a friend) to pay them.
In the moving process I also injured a disc in the neck area, leading to some pretty severe nerve pain radiating down my upper arms and hands. That gradually faded as the weeks passed. Then, while unpacking, I dropped a 10 lb dumbell weight on my right big toe and smashed it into smithereens. I will now be hobbling around in an air cast until mid-March/end of March. So my life has been just filled with adventure - but not nearly enough of the proper kind of adventure as compared to what goes on in my beloved books.
Moving has been hell. But it's time to move on from moving and get back to more meaningful things, like books, and reading, and writing. So I've read some stuff here and there in between moving and unpacking and being injured, but not much of it has made a very deep impact - at least not enough to write about it anyway.
I read like I breath. I just can't not read. So I've usually got at least one book on the go at any one time, often more than one. But unfortunately, not everything I read is truly stimulating, nutritious to the brain and illuminating of the soul. Many library books go in one eye and out the other if you will, and then get returned to the library without having left much of an impression on the old brain cells in between the eyes.
Nevada Barr's Burn is one recent exception. It's not my typical sci-fi/fantasy genre novel. The closest this novel got to anything in my beloved "woo woo" range was a few rather unremarkable Voodoo practitioners. This one was all facts: who dunnit, how, when, why, where etc, and I really enjoyed the change of pace.
The Anna Pigeon mystery/adventure/action series is one I'm going to pay attention to in the future when I need to take a walk outside of dark urban fantasy and get bored with vampires, werewolves, witches, goblins, orcs, faeries, godlings, and other worlds in other galaxies and dimensions. In this novel, Pigeon is a very down to earth park ranger who is staying in New Orleans "on leave", and runs across a child-sex-trafficking ring. The characters were extremely well drawn in this novel.
I particularly loved the cross-dressing actress mother. Settings were also very convincing. I wanted to be right there in that exact spot, drinking that exact coffee. How could I possibly resist a story that had not one but two brave, heroic women out to save a houseful of young children from the predations of rich, privileged, pedophiles? Well done!
This one stayed with me. I even had to renew it in order to keep it with me long enough until I could find the time to sit down and hold it next to me while I wrote about it here. So Nevada Barr is going to be added to my favourite author's list.
I just finished reading Simon R. Green's Drinking Midnight Wine. At first I was puzzled, thinking, how come I haven't read this author before? Then I looked him up on my blog here and discovered that I had read his Man with the Golden Torc. Ah ha! Here is proof that my blog is actually useful to me - when I bother to use it.
So, I liked the book. I can't say I disliked it. It just didn't wow me. I hate it when a book doesn't have any surprises in it for me. It's boring when it's too predictable. I know it is often said that there are no new stories, that all stories are just retold in new ways, but that is really where the art lies isn't it? A really good storyteller can retell the same basic story, but never bore the reader.
I really wasn't surprised to discover that the woman the hero fell in love with was actually the human version of Gaia (the earth's soul/consciousness). I had already been guessing that for at least a chapter or two before it was revealed, and the same was true of Luna being the Moon, and the evil Serpent in the Sun, and that the Sun raped the Moon and the Moon had a son she didn't want who became "evil"and hell bent on destroying humanity blah, blah, blah...
I just couldn't get all that involved or upset about any of it, even though Green tried hard to bring it all "down to earth" by serving up scrambled egg with toast soldier breakfasts after a night of really good sex with an Earth Mother incarnate.
I felt like I was sitting in a hard plastic chair in a hall, listening to one of those pale, weedy looking guys who love to lecture on for hours at Masonic Temples and who read endless books on High/Ceremonial Magick. Yah, Yah Kabbalah. Secret hand shakes, signs and all that. Don't get me wrong. Alchemy is interesting and so is Jung. Dion Fortune is cool too.
It's just that some of the people I've run into that take it too seriously don't seem to have much balance in their lives. They make me want to go eat a nice big green salad full of avocado, go for a walk in the sun down by the lake, stick my toes in the sand, roll around in the grass, and play with a big smelly hairy dog. Anyway. That was my reaction to this one. Kind of Ho hum I guess. There you go.
But now I have a big bag full of fat, shiny new novels to read! I will list them here in the hopes that I will guilt myself into writing about them as I read them this time.
Col Buchanan Farlander: Book One
Justine Larbalestier Magic or Madness
Kim Harrison Pale Demon (I think I skipped this one in the series and read around it so it'll be a catch up read)
Terry Goodkind The Omen Machine (I really hope I don't regret getting this one out - I was getting kind of sick of the whole Richard/Kahlan series, but it's been a few years so we'll see what happens)
Nathan Long Ulkrika The Vampire: Blood Forged
Ok. We'll see how this batch turns out...
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