The Magician's Book

The Magician's Book: a skeptic's adventures in Narnia / Laura Miller
New York: Little, Brown, c2008.
311 p.

Even though I haven't posted in more than a week, I have been reading -- in between all the other necessary duties of the season. This is a book I recently received from Hachette, and I absolutely loved it. It's a gorgeous physical object; the cover is so very beautiful, and even the paper it is printed on is pleasing. I am so glad I got to read it; Miller is someone who makes her living from books and her love of the bookish life comes through loud and clear. I found many passages to copy out and ruminate over.

This book is the story of her lifelong adoration of Narnia, and the dismay she felt when she learned that many people saw the Narnia series only as Christian propaganda by the Christian apologist and writer C.S. Lewis. I recall this moment in my own life; because of growing up Christian I saw the parallels between Aslan and Jesus when I first read the books, but I never saw the whole series as a "Christian" tale. Most of the books written specifically for a "Christian" children's audience that I read were dull and didactic and really not very well written at all. Narnia was real literature. Even at 12 I could figure this out. Narnia was something different; something magical. As the Christian themes became heavier I lost interest in the series, eventually stopping before I finished all seven books. But I read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe numerous times, and I can't even count how many times I reread The Magician's Nephew, my favourite.

This was a fascinating book; part memoir, part biography, part lit crit. I enjoyed the memoir bits most; Miller is a wonderful writer and her love of childhood reading is clear. She points out that the books we love shape our self-perception in ways we don't always recognize immediately, and that books in childhood have a stronger influence because of the unguarded manner we read them, without worldly concerns or reservations about the author coming between us and the story. That all comes later, as it did for her.

The literary criticism was interesting for me, and I realized how little of it I've been reading in the past few years. Digging into the books the way she did really made me want to read them again; her enthusiasm for this series is contagious. I'm actually rooting around trying to find my old copy of The Magician's Nephew. I know it's here somewhere...

If you are comfortable with the idea that a great work of literature can be more than one thing at once, perhaps even two opposing things at once, you will probably enjoy reading this. It's thought-provoking and beautifully written and I completely understood what she was talking about when she stressed that these books are so much more than apologetics. C.S. Lewis was a complicated man, and so is his creation. I'll finish up with a quote or two from my favourite bits of the book:

The relationship between book and reader is intimate, at best a kind of love affair, and first loves are famously tenacious... The meeting of author and reader has a similar soul-shaping potential. The author who can make a world for a reader -- make him believe that the people, places, and events he describes are, if anything, truer than his real, immediate surroundings -- that author is someone with a mighty power indeed. Who can forget the first time they experienced this sensation? ... If we weigh the significance of a book by the effect it has on its readers, then the great children's books suddenly turn up very high on the list.

Insofar as they are stories at all, all stories are escapes from life; all stories are unrealistic, or at least all of the good ones are. Life, unlike stories, has no theme, no formal unity, and (to unbelievers, at least) no readily apparent meaning. That's why we want stories. No art form can hope to exactly reproduce the sensations that make up being alive, but that's OK: life, after all, is what we already have. From art, we want something different, something with a shape and a purpose.

Read an excerpt over at Salon.com

Listen to an interview at blogtalk radio (featuring our very own Bermudaonion!)

Send in your photos of Narnia-like places to Miller's contest on Flickr. Or just take a look, it's great.

A Magical Giveaway!

Thanks to Miriam at Hachette Bookgroup, I have 3 copies of Laura Miller's The Magician's Book to give away! As I recently said in my review, this is a beautiful book about the love of childhood reading; she talks about her childhood passion for the Narnia books as well as giving us some biographical information about Lewis and some literary criticism as well. And it's a gorgeous cover!

To get your name into the draw just leave a comment sharing one of your favourite moments from anywhere in the Narnia series. (mine is in The Magician's Nephew, when Aslan sings Narnia into being).

I will draw for it in just over a week, at 9 pm, January 6th, Ukrainian Christmas Eve. That way I will let the 3 winners know on January 7th, as a Ukrainian Christmas gift!

**Almost forgot to mention: this giveaway is limited to US and Canada only, sorry to all other readers

Magician's Book winners

First of all, Merry Christmas to all the Ukrainians out there! If I had a Cyrillic keyboard I could wish you a proper holiday. :)





As my Christmas gift to you all, I've drawn the 3 winners for Laura Miller's The Magician's Book. They are:

Kim from Sophisticated Dorkiness

Kate from Kate's Book Blog

JaneFan from The Bookworm's Hideout



Congratulations to the winners!
But don't lose hope, if you didn't win this time around, pop over to Fresh Ink Books, where Sandra has a giveaway of this book in the works. Good luck!

Best of 08

It's that time of year again... the time to review what I've read this year and do a bit of analysis. This year I read 181 books, the highest number since I began keeping track back in '95. I think it is all the blogging! It's funny that my 'best of' list has changed even since October when I did a preliminary list as part of a Weekly Geeks assignment; if I looked over my year's reading in another few months perhaps my choices would all be different again. I found many of the books I read this year to be satisfying, absorbing reads but here are some of the highlights:


Books Read 2008
181 (182- just finished The Golden Notebook a few hours before midnight on the 31st...)

By Women: 112

By Men: 56
Non-gendered reading (multiple authors etc.): 11

Non-Fiction: 64

Rereads : 4

In Translation: 11
Russian 4; Ukrainian 3; French (from Quebec) 2; Portugese 1; German 1

Challenges undertaken: 7

Challenges completed: 3

And an interesting stat I'm stealing from Joanne at Book Zombie:

Review Copies Read: 18

Library Books Read: 133

My own Books Read: 31

(you can see I use the library a lot!)

The Best of the Year

Fiction:

The Gipsy's Baby / Rosamund Lehmann (short stories with interesting technique)

Three Bags full / Leonie Swann (really enjoyable)

Three Men in a Boat / Jerome K. Jerome with To Say Nothing of the Dog / Connie Willis (these 2 together made the perfect reading combo; pure entertainment)

Saltsea / David Helwig (a beautiful vacation of a book)

And 3 serendipitious reads which I found fascinating for their original storytelling:

Blasted / Kate Story (interview as well)
The Queue / Vladimir Sorokin
Mary Modern / Camille DeAngelis


YA:

An Abundance of Katherines / John Green
The Loser's guide to life and love / A.E. Cannon
Wildwood Dancing / Juliet Marillier


Non-fiction:

Faust in Copenhagen / Gino Segre (a wonderful read discovered for the Science Book Challenge)

The Magician's Book / Laura Miller (and don't forget you have a week in which to win a copy)

The Ancient Tea Horse Road / Jeff Fuchs (the subject of this one was unique and fascinating)


My reading goals for next year are simple: read for the Challenges I've signed up for, but otherwise try to reread some of my old favourites and catch up on classics and older, TBR books. I enjoyed my reading this year, but did feel a bit as if I was neglecting all the books not newly published. I'll be trying to read widely and profitably in the Year of Readers!

Happy Halloween!

What is the best way to spend Halloween? Reading, eating chocolate, and updating my RIP V status, of course!

I nearly finished my reading for this year's RIP, but still have about a third of the way to go in The Woman in White, so can't count it -- though I will finish it, soon, as it is great entertainment. I do love Wilkie Collins.

I did read two books by Ray Bradbury, one vintage reread (The Slayer of Souls), and a new novel, the spooky magician's tale The Art of Disappearing. So I've actually completed the Challenge even while I still have the Collins to finish up.

It's amazing how many participants there are in this Challenge, and the resultant HUGE additions to my reading list. Some of the authors I want to explore are Arthur Machen, who I put on my list but never got to; Marghanita Laski; and Ludmilla Petrushevskaya. So many more to read! But, as I've said before, a large TBR is a reader's life insurance plan.

Ocean at the end of the Lane

The Ocean at the End of the Lane / Neil Gaiman
New York: William Morrow, c2013.
181 p.

This small book holds a big story. But it's Neil Gaiman, so of course it does.

There's not much to say about this that hasn't already been said -- many bloggers have raved about it already. Like:

Andi, who says that "The Ocean at the End of the Lane is one of those rare books that I want to re-read immediately as I turn the last page. In short, a new favorite is born!"

Nymeth who has a great point   "Interpreting any successful narrative is a bit like seeing light through a prism: a story will reveal new themes and layers depending on the eyes of the individual reader through which it’s being filtered. What this particular reader saw here was what is perhaps best described as a dark, wistful, mythologized account of the process through which a constant hunger for stories gets lodged into your heart. This hunger is part of what keeps pulling you towards a bookish life, but it’s also something that has the potential to separate you from your social world."

 or Aarti ,who points out  "In The Ocean at the End of the Lane, you are not quite sure how you feel about the narrator.  You know what he was like as a child of seven - lonely, quiet, and scared - but you don't quite know what he's like as an adult.  And that moral ambiguity - the uncertainty that the boy grew up to become a man who was worth all the effort - is really the lynchpin of this story."

(and if you have thoughts to share please leave them and/or links in the comments, too)

Still, there are some elements that I really found fascinating, that I wanted to talk about here. This is a brief book, which suits the story. There is a mythic sense to the story that is increased by the brevity, and the fact that Gaiman doesn't explain everything, that there is still mystery. I like reading and not knowing, I like that sense of the mysterious. Gaiman also shares his own spooky creations, like the existence of hunger birds, or nanny Ursula (otherworldly) and the inchoate rage of the narrator's father (very of-this-world, perhaps even more frightening).

The element that I was most drawn in by was the ocean itself, a pond on the Hempstock farm which set up echoes, for me, of the ponds in the Wood Between Worlds in C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew. It's the world's womb, the place of creation, the source of all life. It's very dreamlike, very enclosing.

I also loved the Hempstocks. Our narrator, as a traumatized 7 yr old, meets 11 yr old Lettie. She takes him home to where her mother and grandmother also live, to be cared for and protected. The Hempstocks are a clear representation of the triple goddess, Maiden, Mother, and Crone. They've been around since the Old Country drowned, and the Old Old Country exploded.

And yet, throughout the story, Granny Hempstock is both extremely powerful and given to taking long naps that she can't be woken from, despite any need for her. Mother is a vague comforting presence, one who nurtures at times of crisis. And Lettie is a practical child, leaving the farm and stumping about in both our world and the world beyond, quite regularly. She befriends our narrator and lives in the present. And in the end, she sacrifices herself for him and leaves this world to sleep in the ocean, the source.

This might also be seen as a representation of the Trinity, Father God who is all powerful but awfully hard to pin down; Holy Spirit who is more of an amorphous figure, a comforter of souls; and of course the Son of God who lived among us and sacrificed himself to save us all. The story supports both male and female conceptions of triune divinity, and makes it seem utterly believable that these 3 figures are ancient beings, that they are of course always there looking out on this world.

There's more to this book than the Hempstocks, there is the idea of trauma and forgetting, the question of how much of the child is in the man, there is a line near the end that shakes up our understanding of the narrator's return to a place from long ago. There is a lot to think about and discuss. Like the best fairy tales and myths, there are layers and layers, and many interpretations possible. The story also delves into one of my favourite themes, the reliability of memory and what role our memories play in the reality of our lives.

But I'm going to leave my further thoughts on this as mysterious as the reading, as I don't want to share any more spoilers for anyone who hasn't as yet read it. Even if you've seen spoilers already, the book really isn't about the plot anyhow -- it's about the emotion of reading it. So go and try it out for yourself!

The Ten Thousand Doors of January

The Ten Thousand Doors of January / Alix E. Harrow
NY: Redhook, c2019
374 p.

I have to start by saying how much I loved this book. It was a popular one, lots of buzz, but I really loved it anyhow ;)

In the early 19th Century, young January Scaller lives with wealthy Mr. Locke, while her father is off on exploratory expeditions to feed Mr. Locke's collections of rarities. Mr. Locke is convinced he can make January into a young lady, despite her rude beginnings -- nurture over nature. The fact that January has browner skin certainly plays into his fantasy that he can 'raise' her up despite her father's influence.

January, however, has other ideas. When she finds a strange book that hints at the existence of other worlds, some of her early experiences begin to make more sense to her. Doorways into many worlds are now open to her, to the chagrin of Mr. Locke and his secret society of magical doorcrashers.

With hints of classic fantasy novels like the Earthsea Trilogy or The Magician's Nephew, Harrow creates a new and wonderful world of magic and familial love. The characters grip the reader; their circumstances drive the plot. The magical aspects of this novel are well developed and fully integrated into the story, making them seamless and necessary to the narrative. 

Alongside the magic, a good dose of bookishness and the power of language will draw in book loving readers. The writing is strong, developing complex characters who I really started to love, and the style is quick moving despite the complexity of the story. 

With a viscerally real setting, strong characters, and a beautifully told story of love, loss, and longing, this is a marvellously made debut novel. Speaking of doors, I think this book is one of the rare ones that meets all of Nancy Pearl's Doorways of reading -- character, writing, plot and setting are all equally strong and interwoven. As long as someone is open to fantasy, I think they'd like this one! 

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Readalikes:

Jo Walton's Among Others is another fantasy novel about a young girl in strange circumstances who depends on books to keep her going.

Seanan McGuire's Every Heart a Doorway is a darker tale of children who've been in other worlds and can't readjust to this banal one when they return.

Griffin Poetry Prize

Since I've talked a little about Gil Adamson, it's only fair to share something about her spouse, poet, editor and arts journalist Kevin Connolly. Especially since he has just made the shortlist for the Griffin Poetry Prize! This is a major prize, awarding one Canadian and one International poet $50,000 (Cdn.). Julie Wilson over at Seen Reading has posted a wonderful collection of recordings by this year's shortlist nominees as well as a couple of past nominees and judges. Take a listen!

And take a moment to read this poem, one of the selections from his nominated book, Revolver.
You can also find this poem, as well as a few links to great interviews with Connolly, at his Griffin Poetry Prize profile.

Counterpane

Hello, lady people! Pigeons are good.
Winter is good. Stoolpigeons are good –
though they’re in league with the government,
trying to kill all spontaneity.
Hello everyone! Time to start losing.
Losing is good. Losing is what we came
here to do, and it’s going quite well,
thanks for asking.

This morning I was passed by a minivan,
“Someday” printed on the vanity plate.
I wonder what she meant? “Someday soon,
goin' with you” or “I’m gonna get out of
here someday?” or “Someday my prince,
or a real rain’s going to come.”

Given the words in advance, it
might all be easier. Interpretation –
that’s where the problems start.
Take counterpane, for an example.
Sounds like a magician’s con,
a glass counter you’d bounce coins
off, but really it means something
comforting – a blanket to keep you warm.

Coins bounce off the counterpane
and under that blanket, where they exist
now in the mind only, and so will multiply
at my request. Nothing too greedy,
enough for coffee and a newspaper,
somewhere I can look for a job, anything
to reverse the recent downturn.

People like people who stand for things.
Like Shakespeare arrived at Ellis Island with
a trussed-up suitcase and the equivalent of
$3.50 in badly out-of-date currency.
And look where he ended up.
A real job – I’d like that.
People like people who have jobs.
People like people who stand for things.

From Revolver, by Kevin Connolly
Copyright © 2008 Kevin Connolly

Kate's Food & Fiction Meme

I spent last week away from my blog, and a few of those days involved visiting with my oldest friend, someone I've known since age four. A lot of that time passed quickly in laughter and reminiscences, so when I saw Kate's Food & Fiction meme, it fit right in to all the recent rehashing of childhood. All those books my friend and I read (we were the bookish, bespectacled girls at the front of the classroom) and traded back and forth and used for the source of our Halloween costumes --we were even inspired us to try the food our favourite characters ate. So you can see that this meme is quite timely! Here it is:

Food from fiction that you'd like to sample:

There are quite a few books that I recall causing gustatory dreams; so much so that I now own the Little House cookbook and one called Aunt Maud's Recipe Book -- LMM's family recipes. I loved the idea of raspberry cordial from Anne of Green Gables, and I am sure that my fixation with tea comes straight from Anne and Diana's pretension to adulthood in serving tea to one another. In Emily of New Moon there is mention of the pickles that the New Moon ladies are known for, and that seriously made me want to make my own pickles. Thank goodness my mother was skilled at it and could teach me! Then there are all those Enid Blyton books that made me want some ginger beer.

From The Magician's Nephew, in the Narnia series, I have always wished I could try the toffee tree which grew from a candy in Polly and Digory's pockets. Here's a land that is newly formed and still magical enough to grow a tree from the stickily wrapped toffee he and Polly plant:

The low early sunshine was streaming through the wood and the grass was grey with dew and the cobwebs were like silver. Just beside them was a little, very dark wooded tree, about the size of an apple tree. The leaves were whitish and rather papery, like the herb called honesty, and it was loaded with little brown fruits that looked rather like dates.... Polly and Digory got to work on the toffee-tree. The fruit was delicious; not exactly like toffee - softer for one thing, and juicy - but like fruit which reminded one of toffee.

A fictional meal you would like to have attended:

The Mad Hatter's tea party, of course! It still makes me laugh reading it over. But there are many more I'd like to sit in on.

Any of the Austin family dinners from Madeleine L'Engle's books; they are always so genteel and discuss Bach and science while Mother sits down calm and fresh from making a huge meal for all six of them plus various last-minute guests.

Or, while not a meal per se, the Sunday School picnic from Anne of Green Gables when ice cream is still a novelty and Anne tastes it for the first time. It was only one page long but Anne's first church picnic filled me with longing to be in Avonlea; I always felt like I was missing a party.

A memorable work of fiction set in a restaurant or a café:

Anne DeGrace's Wind Tails is a novel of many stories. It is centred around Cass' Roadside Diner, in an Albertan mountain pass, and follows a large cast of characters who move to, from and back to the diner again. With hitchhikers, truck drivers, bored policemen, hippies and diner staff alike taking their parts, this is a varied collection of tales to fascinate you.

And perhaps not set in a restaurant, but food related is the iconic short story "To Serve Man", by Damon Knight.

Food you've tried that didn't live up to the expectations raised by a fictional account:

As everyone's been mentioning, from reading The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe I thought that Turkish Delight would be heavenly. It wasn't.

Or how about a book that didn't live up to the memory of food? I read Miss Osborne the Mop around Grade 3 or so, and the main thing I remembered about it was that the female character found a magic pair of glasses that would bring to life anything looked at through them. She and her boy companion look at a chocolate cake in a magazine and it pops into reality, and my goodness, how that cake lived in three layer glory in my imagination, shining with its chocolatey potential. How disappointed I was upon rereading it when I found that the children were unsatisfied with the cake; it didn't fill them or please them the way a Really Real cake would have. I suppose there's a didactic lesson to be learned there, since the rest of the book was mainly about housecleaning.

An unappetizing food description from fiction:

From one of my favourites from childhood, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, a lesson in how not to make cornmeal mush:

Toward evening they set her to the easiest task they could devise -- the making of corn pudding. The corn meal had to be added to the boiling kettle a pinch at a time. Before half of it was consumed, Kit's patience ran out. The smoke made her eyes water, and there was a smarting blister on one thumb. She suspected that Judith had invented the irksome procedure just to keep her busy, and in a burst of resentment she poured in the remaining cupful all at once. She learned her mistake when the lumpy indigestible mess was ladled onto her wooden trencher. There was nothing else for supper. After one shocked stare, the family downed the mess in a silence that made Kit writhe.

A recipe you've tried or a meal you've recreated from fiction:

I've had madeleines and linden flower tea in honour of Proust (though I must say that linden itself turns rather slimy which is a bit offputting when cleaning the pot. Use teabags.)

As for a direct recipe, I once made banana filled cinnamon buns from a recipe in one of Diane Mott Davidson's mystery novels. It was for a library luncheon and the dough was rising so much it was overflowing the mixing bowl so I quickly tried to fill it and roll it out before it became The Blob. It was my first try at yeast bread and despite everything they turned out AMAZING and everyone asked which bakery I'd got them at. He he he.

Food you associate with reading:

I don't really associate anything much besides tea. I love to have a cup of tea with my reading, which often leads to a surfeit of caffeine, all the better to stay up late reading... Otherwise I don't eat and read at the same time very often; I can't recall doing it very often as a child either.

Your favourite food-focused book/writer:

I discovered Colette Rossant and have really enjoyed her family memoirs, especially Apricots on the Nile. She is a marvellous writer who interweaves family and social history, and includes recipes. Her writing is completely infused with nostalgia and is irresistible. She is part French and part Egyptian, but grew up in Cairo in her paternal grandparents' household, and every element of all those things shows up in her books. They are a delight.

I've also just finished a wonderful book, Where our food comes from, by Gary Paul Nabhan, about the importance of seeds and maintaining genetic diversity in the world's food supply. He's an ethnobiologist (what a job!) and a professor and the book traces Nikolai Vavilov's footsteps through the world's centres of diversity. Fascinating, and up for a full review soon.

Booklovers' links for the New Year

Here's a book we all need as we head into another year of reading from our vast lists. I was tempted when I found a mention of this in January Magazine; reviewer Steven Miller summarizes it in the following way:

In just five short chapters, Leveen explores audio books (one of my New Year’s resolutions is to be less snobbish about reading a book with my ears), how to develop a sensible “to be read” list (which he agreeably calls a “List of Candidates”), how to regain the feeling of being in “book love,” and offers a passionate defense of marginalia (the writers of which he calls “footprint leavers”).

Giveaways!

Don't forget, you have until the 6th to enter my giveaway for Laura Miller's The Magician's Book. But there is another one I'd like to point out.

Remember when I talked about local author R.J. Anderson's faerie story, Knife? Well, she's giving a copy away and you can enter until Jan. 8. This book looks great, and you'll have a chance to read one of the first copies. And when you click over you can also read a few of her entertaining posts!

And just because it's beautiful, take a look at the Vancouver based Regional Assembly of Text. What a store! If you like stationary and paper goods as well as vintage typewriters, you'll wish you lived in Vancouver. I love their idea of regular letter writing nights. I need to get back in the habit of sending postal mail; I used to quite often!

The Art of Disappearing

The Art of Disappearing / Ivy Pochoda
New York: St. Martin's, c2009
311 p.

This a perfect title to review after my week long absence from the blog ;) Although my disappearance was not as exciting or unusual as the characters' in this book, being only a regular busy time.

This is Ivy Pochoda's first novel, and it features Toby Warring, a magician whose dream is to get to Las Vegas, and Mel Snow, a travelling textile designer; the two cross paths in small town Nevada, and end up marrying two days later in the Silver Bells All-Nite Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. The atmosphere of the story is full of mystery, glamour, love & passion, reality vs. the imagination, and just a little bit of sadness as well. The idea of illusion permeates the book, but Toby's magic is a little more authentic than other performing magicians. While Mel realizes that he is a real magician, so does a guild of old magicians living in seclusion in Amsterdam.

They invite Toby to join them, but he turns them down; that is, until his confidence in his own powers causes his big breakthrough performance to turn into a tragedy. Toby and Mel flee to Amsterdam to recover themselves, and their relationship. Toby's longed-for salvation reveals itself, taking the form of a final and irresistible magical apparatus in the home of the mysterious magician they are staying with. Unfortunately, the pull of the apparatus, The Disappearing World, is stronger than any other for Toby, upsetting Mel and causing her to wonder about their future together.

The book is set primarily in the deserts around Las Vegas, with the contrasting watery world of rainy Amsterdam appearing in the second half. The descriptions are wonderful. Some of the images are as impressive as the landscapes Toby conjures from sand; they seem real and three dimensional, and create a real place in the imagination. I found this descriptive skill one of the highlights of the book.

Various odd and magical things happen all around these two, always. Toby, who is a real magician, meets Mel, who hears fabrics speaking to her -- she really does, it is not just a fanciful metaphor. Mel's brother was a water baby who finally disappeared into the ocean as an adult, and his particular story is revisited throughout the book as well. In Amsterdam, they meet a group of designers and artists who are just as bohemian, unexpected, and unusual as the failed magicians who hide themselves away.

Unfortunately, I felt it was an overabundance of riches; a first book with everything crammed into it like an overstuffed magician's bag of tricks. There is so much fancy in it, and yet it seems to be set in a perfectly realistic world. I had trouble throughout my reading, as I couldn't tell where to put this book. It has blurbs from literary authors, and seems to be presented as a literary novel, and yet it feels more like a speculative novel, following some genre conventions. Plus the cover somehow reminded me of the Odd Thomas books by Dean Koontz, and I just couldn't get that out of my mind. Also, the layers of Toby's imaginative worlds which he inhabits as a living being started to confuse me. Which one was real? I am guessing the point of those worlds was to highlight the illusion that was a theme of the book, but it just started to tire me out. This was a book that I really wanted to love, but just didn't. I read it to the end and saw a lot of interesting potential in her writing; I would easily try again with her second novel when it appears.