We Have Ways of Making You Talk…

The very kind and talented Brian S. Creek (check out his blog, ladies and gentlefolk) nominated me for a Liebster Award just before Christmas. Now, things have been sort of all over the shop for me since then, and so this is the first chance I’m getting to address the questions asked of me. Also, it’s true that this nomination makes my third (count ’em!) Liebster nomination, and so, at this stage, there’s probably very little left about me that y’all don’t know.

But, nevertheless, let’s give these here questions a shot. Ready? Buckle up!

And make sure your trays are in the upright position, while you’re at it…
Photo Credit: frankieleon via Compfight cc

If you could have any super power for a day, what would it be?

I’ve often thought about this question, and I remember answering it before in terms of how I’d love to have the words to solve all arguments, without causing anyone any offence. I’d still love to have that power, but I think – given the world we live in, and the events of recent times, and my feelings of utter helplessness in the face of all of it – that I’d quite like to be a version of a human Care Bear, or something. I’d love to have the power to spread love and compassion throughout the world, and to make everyone think first of others, and then themselves. I’d love to be able to make people see the world from the point of view of another person. That would be an amazing superpower – except, to have any effect, I’d have to have it for a lot longer than one day.

One day would be a start, though.

Who is the most famous person you’ve met?

So, if you’ve been hanging out here for a while, you’ll know about this. I reckon Neil Gaiman is probably the most famous person I’ve ‘met’, if squeaking at an author at a book signing counts as ‘meeting.’ Besides that, I’ve met a President (of Ireland, so not as cool as some other presidents), and I almost met the Princess Royal once (that’s Princess Anne, Her Majesty the Queen’s daughter, for those not in the know). I was in the same room as her and breathed the same air, but didn’t quite get to shake the royal gloved hand. Oh, well.

If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be and why?

Argh, you see? One of these ‘impossible to answer’ questions. I’d love to live in Reykjavík, just because I’ve been in love with it, and with Iceland, all my life. I’d love to live on Svalbard. I want to live in Tromso. I would love to live in Paris, because I adore that city. I’d love to live in Dubrovnik, because it’s beautiful (and old). I’d love to live in the middle of nowhere in the wilderness of northern Canada. I’d love to live in Tasmania, because one of my favourite people in the world is there.

So I guess I should probably say I’m happy where I am. *sigh*

What was the first story you can remember writing?

I had a great teacher in primary school named Mrs Mythen. I loved her, and she – I’m pretty sure – was fond of me, too. She knew I loved English and writing, and that whenever the class had a spelling- or writing-related task to complete, that I’d be done before the others, and so she used to give me extra work to keep me quiet. We used to write little stories together, and we used also to write poems together, where I’d write one verse and the teacher would write another, and so on. One of these poems was about a witch and her overflowing cauldron, I remember, and it was lots of fun. It also got me used to taking criticism – Mrs Mythen was a hard taskmistress!

I’ve talked before about how my first ‘story’ was a sequel to The Little Prince, and this is true, but upon giving the question some serious consideration this morning, I think perhaps my witchy poem was earlier. I’d have been about six years old, maybe.

Which book do you wish you’d written and why?

I’d love to be facetious here and say ‘The Little Red Book’ or ‘The Bible’ (because sales, darnit), but no. I wish I’d written so many books (the Earthsea books, The Dark is Rising sequence, basically anything by Neil Gaiman and/or Jeanette Winterson), so I’ll say this: I wish I’d written my own next book. I hope to always have ideas, and the space in my mind to complete them, and the peace in my heart to do them justice, and so I’ll always wish to have written the book I’m currently working on to the best of my ability, just to have to opportunity to move on to the next.

If you could write a sequel to a movie that doesn’t already have one how would it go?

This is easy. I’d write a sequel to Labyrinth where I was Sarah, and I’d fight my way to the goblin city just so I could sweep Jareth the Goblin King off his booted feet. Mrs Goblin King has a ring to it, right?

Image: crafthubs.com

If you could be on a writing panel with three other authors, who would they be?

Good question. I guess it depends what sort of writing panel we’re talking about: if it was a kidlit writing panel, then I’d choose Frances Hardinge, Alan Garner (even though he doesn’t technically write for children, apparently) and Catherine Fisher. If it was an SF/fantasy writing panel, it’d be unlikely I’d be asked, but I’d choose Ursula leGuin, Neil Gaiman and the late, lamented Robert Holdstock.

You’re given a time travel device that allows only one time jump. What date do you go to?

I’d love to say Chaucerian London, but I know I’d last about three seconds in the mud and dirt and ordure, so I wouldn’t want to go there and have no way of getting back. In fact, I don’t like going anywhere without a clear escape plan, so this question is giving me the sweats.

Let’s say I choose ‘tomorrow’, and leave it at that. (Phew!)

What’s your biggest regret to date?

My regrets are mainly for stuff I didn’t do, rather than things I did. I have fallen out with friends, which I regret terribly, and I didn’t say something to someone when I could have which might have changed the course of their life entirely – but then, things have worked out extremely well for that person, regardless, so maybe things happened just as they were supposed to. I find it very hard to forgive myself for ‘failings’, so I try to live my life regret-free as far as possible. It’s just neater that way.

If you could live in any fictional world (filmed or written) where would it be?

Another question I’ve often thought about. I love Hobbiton (because who doesn’t?) and Lothlorien, either the filmed or written versions, but actually I think I’d love to live in the world of Star Trek. Post-money, post-race, post-gender discrimination, the entire galaxy working for peace and reconciliation, and on top of all that we get to fly spaceships and use ray guns? Sign me up, Scotty.

What are your goals for 2015?

To look after my health; to spend more time with my family; to stop beating myself up psychologically (hahaha!); to write as often as I can and as well as I can; to work very hard on a particular project and bring it in on time; to work on being as happy as I can be; to work on being the best person I can be, for everyone I love (and everyone else!)

So, those are the answers to the 11 fiendish questions posed by Brian. I’m not going to tag anyone, mainly because everyone I know who’d be interested in doing a Liebster post has already been Liebstered, repeatedly, but if you fancy taking a punt at these questions, have at it. Just make sure to link back here so I can check out your answers! Thank you, Brian, for including me in your nominations, and I hope you’ve enjoyed getting to know me a little better.

Happy Monday, everybody – may your week be wordy and bright!

Flash! Friday – ‘Monkey on Your Back’

 

Barbary Macaque, Gibraltar. CC 2.0 photo by David Stanley.

Monkey on Your Back

Tired. So tired.

My last success a distant memory. Scraps, and leftovers, and charity, have been my portion ever since, but the sun is warm, here; the pace slow. It is the perfect place to start looking. The ideal spot in which to begin again.

I swing, lightly, onto a pitted metal balcony. My nose twitches with the scent of effort. Through an open window I hear muttering, the clack-clacking of a typewriter.

Soundlessly, I pad toward the room. A man sits at a desk. Novels, all bearing his likeness, lie scattered around, but he struggles, it seems, with today’s words.

I smile. I can help with that.

He screams as I climb onto his back and sink my claws in, but then his fingers reach for the keys. He begins again. It is good work. His best. With every word, I feel my strength returning.

Soon, and until it is too late, he won’t even notice I am here.

**

Years ago, I’m sure I read a vintage short story about a monkey which acted as a sort of ‘twisted Muse’ to a writer, driving him mad as he strove for greater and greater success. I can’t remember how it ends – and I also can’t remember the name of the story, so if anyone can help, please let me know – but when I saw today’s prompt, I knew this was where I had to take my tale. Flash! Friday‘s nefarious rules for today’s challenge stated that we had to write a story based on the image prompt above, and ‘a famous writer’ – not necessarily a named famous writer, but simply one which features in the story. So, what was a gal to do?

I’m not sure if the monkey in the original story was a soul-vampire (or whatever the monkey in my tale is; I’m afraid to really look) – I just know that it was about an unhealthy relationship between hard work, inspiration and mental and physical health, which is why the phrase ‘monkey on your back’ has come into use now as a shorthand way of describing a drug addiction, or something which is a burden but which the sufferer cannot, or will not, part with. Writers and their muses have long had a tortured relationship in fiction, but usually it’s the writer who torments the Muse – just check out the way Calliope is treated in Dream Country if you don’t believe me – and so I like the idea of it being the Muse tormenting (and quite possibly destroying) the writer, this time around.

Anyway. Whatever your feelings on monkeys, Muses, or drama-queen writers, I hope you enjoy my tiny tale this Friday. Tune in tomorrow for a book review (it’s fun, I promise), and I’ll see y’all next week for more travels through the labyrinthine torture chamber that is my mind. Adios!

Surprised by Books

This weekend, we spend some time with dear friends (and their darling little girl), which was very book-centric in the best possible way. I am far from being the only writer they know – and I’m very much on the bottom rung of the ladder of success in comparison to the others – and we are all big readers (including the darling little girl, of course). So, we talked about agents and book deals and academia and thesis-writing and books we love and Jane Austen and books for children and a whole heap of fabulousness.

Over the course of all this chit-chat, a book token was given by them to my husband as a gift. ‘There’s a bookshop in (local town)’, they told us. ‘And it’s open on Sundays. And there’s plenty of parking.’

Well.

We took our leave, and we trucked on down to this local town, and we sniffed out the bookshop, and – inevitably, dear readers – we went in.

We’d been warned that it only had a ‘small’ children’s section down at the back, so I was expecting maybe one bay of books, or a couple of shelves. However, I was met instead by five full bays, with more displays on the floor, and a whole wall of children’s picture books. This, of course, was ignoring the rest of the shop, which was just as cool. I immediately glued myself to the section in which I am most at home while my beloved went rummaging in the non-fiction sections.

But wait. Are you ready for this bit?

Between special offers and the generally excellent prices, I managed to purchase three books for the princely sum of twenty euro fifty cent, including (finally!) a replacement copy of my missing Stardust; now, my Gaiman collection is once more complete. Twenty euro! For three books! I practically danced to the register.

I was blown away not only by the great selection of books, the size of the children’s and YA section, the general appearance of the shop and the helpfulness of the staff, but also by the prices. I’m not a person who balks at the cost of books – I firmly believe they are objects worthy of a little expense (which is why I don’t buy very many any more, unfortunately) and that the knock-down prices offered by certain vendors, both online and off, are doing extraordinary harm to the book industry. Perhaps that’s a naïve viewpoint, but it’s mine, and it’s formed from years of experience. So, I like to buy books at full price where possible, in a bookshop – preferably, like this one was, an independent – and I don’t care that it costs more. For me, when it comes to book purchasing, cost is the least important factor, and I try to cut my coat to suit my cloth – in other words, I only buy books I really want, when I can. If I can’t afford something, I don’t even consider running to a piracy website and downloading an illegal free copy (because it’s infringing my ‘right to read’, apparently, to have copyright on books and actually, shock horror, charge money for them), or even downloading a legal, but dirt-cheap, copy; I just don’t feel that’s giving a fair deal to the people who worked hard to bring that book to the marketplace. If I can’t afford a book, I wait until I can. If a shop doesn’t have a book in stock, I wait for it to come in.

I think, sometimes, we’ve lost the art of waiting for stuff.

I’ve been looking for a copy of Stardust for ages – it’s funny how, even though Neil Gaiman is a writing superstar, not all his books are easy to find – but I wanted one, and so I persevered. Unfortunately the one I now have is the movie tie-in edition, which is a bit annoying because it makes me seem like an ‘ooh, look! There’s a lovely shiny movie! Let’s get the book and pretend we’ve been fans all along!’ type…

Ta-daa!

…but it’s better than being Stardust-less, and so I take what I can get. I will always miss my original copy, though, with its lovely (albeit Claire Danes-lite) cover art.

Gosh. Well this post started off being about the wonder of an undiscovered bookshop and has sort of devolved into a mini-rant about fair book pricing and copyright theft; I don’t mean to preach or sound ‘worthy’ or make anyone feel bad for their choices, so I’ll wrap it up here. My choices are mine, and I don’t judge anyone else for theirs (except those terrible people who run piracy websites and the equally terrible people who buy books from them while knowing they’re not sanctioned); I just worry about the future of the book industry, and my future choices as a consumer. I don’t want to live in a world without bookshops which take your breath away when you walk into them, and where just the right book is sitting, waiting for you to take it home. I don’t want to be a reader in a world where our only choice is to download the text to a screen. I don’t want to feel like, with every book I read, I’m hurting the industry and making writers work for nothing.

I’ll comfort myself with the thought that the bookshop we spent a happy hour in yesterday was full for most of the time we were there, and that our modest purchases were far from being the only ones put through the register. I hope, though, that our speed-obsessed, have-it-now society will start to slow down a little and realise that there are things worth waiting for, and worth paying a fair price for. Books, I feel, should definitely be included in those categories.

 

 

Top Ten Tuesday – Books I Almost Put Down (But Didn’t)

Last night, about 2 a.m., our fire alarm started to go bip every thirty seconds. Just out of the blue, you know? Like it was lonely, and wanted to sing itself a little song. Anyway, it dragged the Husband and I out of a sleep which was, until that point, deep as oblivion. There followed nearly an hour of trying to figure out what the heck was wrong and how to fix it without setting off either a) the fire alarm proper or b) the house alarm – which wouldn’t have made us very popular with our neighbours or, indeed, each other.

So, we woke this morning feeling rather worse for wear.

Artist: Charles M. Shulz
Image sourced: biblioklept.org

As a direct result of this (and the fact that all the writing I’ve done over the past twenty-four hours has either been on social media or in preparation for the Date with an Agent event this weekend, which I’ll be attending), today’s blog post is a Top Ten Tuesday, hosted as ever by the fine folks at The Broke and the Bookish.

The theme this week is:

Top Ten Books I Almost Put Down (But Didn’t)

1. The Divergent Trilogy (Veronica Roth)

I wrote a bit about these books on the blog when I read them and I went through the issues I had with them, particularly with book one, Divergent. While the books did improve a bit as they went on, I found the voice (or rather ‘voices’, because there were supposed to be more than one) in book three (Allegiant) to be a challenging read. Some of the illogical bits in the first book did get explained by the end, but I found myself no warmer towards the characters at the end than I was at the beginning. I finished these books because they’d been blockbuster smash hits and I wanted to see if I was missing anything, but also because they were a birthday gift. I feel awful including them in this list because of that fact, but there you have it.

Image: yabookreviewer.wordpress.com

2. The Maze Runner Trilogy (James Dashner)

I don’t want to say too much about these, because I’ll be reviewing them on Saturday. Let’s just say I was challenged to read them, and that was one of the main reasons I didn’t fling them against the nearest wall.

3. Anansi Boys (Neil Gaiman)

Well. Isn’t this a surprise? Did you think a Neil Gaiman book would turn up on a list like this? I bet you didn’t.

Image: genreforjapan.com

Now, nobody who reads this blog is unaware of my adoration for Neil Gaiman. However, it is the truth that Anansi Boys was a challenge, and the only reason I finished it was (of course) because it was a Neil Gaiman book. I didn’t like the characters, I think – it’s been almost ten years since I read this book, and I only read it once. Something about the sheer nastiness in the story put me off. I appreciate it’s about a trickster god and, common misperceptions about Loki aside, they’re not generally very nice individuals, but still. I might give Anansi Boys another go in a year or two and see if I’ve grown into it.

4. The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (Diana Wynne Jones)

I had never heard of this until one day, while looking up a Diana Wynne Jones book for a customer in the bookshop in which I used to work, I came across it. I read the title out in surprise, and the customer said ‘Oh, haven’t you read that one? Give it a go, it’s great.’ I immediately ordered it for myself (this was the only drawback to working in a bookshop, for my bank balance at least), and when it arrived I was delighted.

Image: books4yourkids.com

However, I began to read it as soon as I got home and – bleh. The humour didn’t grab me, the concept behind the book (a sort of spoof travel guide to a generic ‘Fantasyland’, which pitilessly lampoons the conventions of fantasy writing) left me cold and I found it boring. So, I did put it down – for a while. I came back to it a few months later, though, possibly in a better frame of mind, and read it cover to cover with huge delight.

The customer was right: it is great. I’m glad I gave this one another chance.

5. Red Shift (Alan Garner)

Have I taken leave of my senses, I hear you ask? A book by my all-time literary hero Alan Garner is on a list of books I almost didn’t finish?

Well, yes.

Image: freebooknotes.com

Alan Garner is an immensely intelligent man, and he brings that intelligence to his writing. His books can often be twisty, complex, filled with scientific, cosmological and philosophical ideas. All this is wonderful, of course, and I’m normally all over it. But, somehow, in Red Shift it’s just a little too much for me. I have read this book four times, with difficulty, and I don’t think I’ve ever understood it. It tells a time-slip story where three periods of history are interconnected through a Stone Age axehead, an artifact which is important to all the characters despite the fact that they are separated by hundreds of years. It’s a marvel of imagination and language, and I have been meaning to give it another go. Perhaps I’ve finally grown a big enough brain to finally be able to read it all, start to finish, without stopping.

6. Gold Dust (Geraldine McCaughrean)

I love Geraldine McCaughrean, too. She’s a legend in children’s books. I feel almost like I’m letting off fireworks in a church just by saying that I came within a hair’s breadth of not finishing one of her novels, but I cannot lie. Gold Dust just didn’t work for me. I didn’t enjoy the voice, or the story, or the characters. I’m sorry about it, though, if that helps.

7. The Last Four Things (Paul Hoffman)

I picked up this book because I thought, stupidly, that it would be about ‘the four last things’ – Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell – of medieval eschatology. It’s not, of course. It’s about a character named Thomas Cale and his induction into a shady secret society whose aim it is to bring the world to an end. I finished it only because I bought it on honeymoon and it has sentimental value; if this wasn’t the case, it’d have ended up in a second-hand shop a long time ago.

8. The Vision of Piers Plowman (William Langland)

Image: hachette.com.au

Right, so this is a text I had to read for college; I fought it all the way, though. It’s possibly my least favourite of all the books (technically, it’s a long poem) I had to read for my studies and I freely admit I only finished it because I had to. Having said that, I appreciate it as a masterwork of allegory and symbolism, but holy heck is it hard.

If any of my old students are reading this, disregard the last few sentences. I read this because it’s a work of genius and everything I told you in class about how great it is is completely, one hundred percent true. All right? Good.

9. Tristram Shandy (Laurence Sterne)

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a crazy thing. Filled with exaggeration, digression, tangents which ramble on not for pages but for entire volumes, pages which are left blank, taking its sources from all over the place, and some of the most refreshing language of its age, it’s almost like a book that should have been written during the postmodern era. It’s insane. It’s hard to read. But it’s worth the struggle. It dates from the mid-eighteenth century and even the language is a challenge to modern eyes, but I’m glad it’s under my belt.

10. Every Dead Thing (John Connolly)

I am a huge John Connolly fan – now. At the time I first began to read his work, it was almost too much for me; too creepy, too scary, too gory, too everything. A friend recommended him, and so I bought the first four of his Charlie Parker novels, beginning with Every Dead Thing. It took me four attempts to finish it, but after that I was on a roll. I ripped through the rest of Connolly’s work, and I’ve been a religious collector of his books ever since. Genius. But scary.

Image: johnconnollybooks.com

So, that’s me. Care to share your own top ten list of books you almost put down – but didn’t?

My Top Ten Literary Turning Points

Life is full of ‘crucible’ moments, isn’t it? Moments which, when you look back, you recognise as being particularly important for one reason or another, influential in your development as a person, and pivotal in your individual history. I have plenty of these moments; not all of them revolve around books, but – me being me – the most important ones do. I’ve already discussed, at some length, the importance of books like The Little Prince and Elidor to me so I won’t revisit those here (you can check out this post if you’re interested), but what follows is a roughly chronological list of books which, when I first encountered them, had a profound effect on the direction of my life.

1. The Diary of a Young Girl

I was introduced to Anne Frank’s diary at around the age of seven or eight, when our teacher set it as a class text. We were only supposed to read sections of it but – of course – I ended up reading the whole thing in my own time. All our teacher told us about Anne Frank was that she had written her book when she wasn’t much older than us, and that she had lived at the time of a terrible war. I don’t think I can over-emphasise, then, how it felt to read to the end of this incredible book and learn, out of the blue, that Anne did not survive this war. By the time I’d read the first few entries, I was already in love with Anne and her family – a love which has endured to this day – and it broke my heart when I read the postscript describing how the Franks had been betrayed, and how they’d died. I felt like I’d lost a friend, and it was the first time I’d been faced with the evil that can exist in the world, made all the more terrible by being juxtaposed with some of the greatest good I’d ever read about.

Reading The Diary of a Young Girl changed my life and left an indelible impression on me, and so it was a shoo-in for my list.

Image: annefrank.org

2. Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters

I know I’ve mentioned pTerry on the blog before (by the way, if you don’t know why he’s called pTerry by his fans, I exhort you to find out), but he’s important enough to be included on this list again. The first Pratchett book I read was Wyrd Sisters, which I remember begging my father to buy me one sunny Saturday afternoon when I was about eight or nine. He’d long accepted the fact that I was a bookaholic by then, and in lieu of pocket money (an alien concept to my brother and I as kids) he’d agreed to buy me a book every week or two. So, on this particular book-hunting trip, I spotted the thrilling cover of Wyrd Sisters, fell instantly in love, and it was that book or no book.

Image: en.wikipedia.org

My dad was a bit dubious about buying this book for his teeny-weeny child (which, if you look at the cover, is entirely understandable), but he trusted my judgement and it came home with us. I devoured it, didn’t understand the plot at all, but loved it anyway. I told myself ‘I’ll put this book away until I’m bigger and I’ll read it again then,’ and I did exactly that.

I loved it, and I love it still. It was the first ‘big person’s book’ I read, and for that reason it’s one of my pivotal reads.

3. Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret and Then Again, Maybe I Won’t

I think I’ve read pretty much every Judy Blume book in existence – Deenie and Tiger Eyes very nearly made this list, too – but I’ve chosen Margaret and Then Again because I read them both in quick succession the year I turned twelve, itself a pivotal age. Margaret taught me a lot about what was facing me as I teetered on the brink of adolescence, terrifying and tantalising me in equal measure, and Then Again gave me a much-needed window into the mind of the average teenage boy. From Margaret, I learned all about menstruation and complicated friendships, and from Then Again I learned that, underneath all their inexplicable mystique, boys were just like me. That was a mind-blowing lesson.

4. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights

I read loads of books during my time at secondary school, but for some reason this one sticks out the  most. I guess this is because I studied it during the last two years of my post-primary education and then took an exam on it, and during that time I probably read it six or seven times. I’d never really been in love with a fictional character before I met Heathcliff, and even though I now see him as an emotionally manipulative loon, some of my heightened hormonal adoration remains. I adored this book when I first read it, and it was my first classic.

5. Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!

I studied English Literature at university, and – naturally enough – I read a ton of books. I could have picked any volume out of hundreds, but this one made the cut as a pivotal read because its protagonist, Alexandra Bergson, nestled in my heart and has never left. A big-boned, hard-working country girl, Alexandra is determined to make the farm she inherits from her father viable once again, and she pours every drop of her effort into her land. At one point in the novel she has a dream where she is picked up and carried effortlessly by a golden man, a man the colour of her cornfields, whom she senses loves her with the sensual passion that is missing from her real life. She is particularly moved by the fact that he is strong enough to carry her, as in reality she knows no man who would be capable of such a feat, and she wakes in tears. Alexandra is all about deep-seated passions – feelings buried so deep she can’t even admit them to herself – and, at the time in my life when I first met her I identified with her in a very profound way.

6. Donna Tartt’s The Secret History

The Secret History is the book which almost got me fired from my first real job after college, because I was caught repeatedly reading it under my desk. It was, to the best of my recollection, the most unputdownable book I’d ever read up to that point in my life. It stuck straight to my brain because it described the kind of milieu I had just left – the world of the university – which was, at that time, the place in which I wanted to spend the rest of my career. I dreamed about a life in academia while answering phones and preparing mail-outs, and even though I’ve long since abandoned that dream, for very good reasons, this book gave me a taste of what I yearned for. It also made me feel glad that I was a literary nerd, which was a huge comfort.

7. J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

So, this book isn’t my favourite of the Harry Potter series (that would be The Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone, fact fans), but it’s on the pivotal reads list because it’s the one where… it’s the book in which… Oh, goodness. I just can’t say it.

Image: vadamagazine.com

I adored Dumbledore. I can’t even explain why. I prefer him even to Gandalf, which is saying something. When I read that scene, the one where he… anyway, I remember screaming ‘No!’ and weeping, uncontrollably, as though I’d just been punched in the solar plexus. I had to close the book, allow myself time for a good cry, and then attempt to finish it through a veil of tears despite the fact that all the sunshine had just been removed from my life.

Yes. This is how emotionally invested I can allow myself to become in fictional characters.

So. This is the book that taught me how to keep going with a book series even when the heart has been ripped out of it. Pivotal, I’m sure you’ll agree.

8. Neil Gaiman’s Sandman

I wish I knew more about graphic novels. It’s a genre into which I’ve always intended to immerse myself, but I’ve never quite managed to get around to it. The only graphic novel series I’ve ever read in its entirety is Sandman, but – to be fair – if you’re only going to read one, then Sandman is a good one to pick. Based around a family of siblings known as the Endless, consisting of Death, Delirium, Desire, Destiny, Destruction, Despair and Dream, the latter being the central character in the series, it follows their interactions with the fate of the universe and the lives of humans both individually and generally. The Endless are not gods – they are older even than that – but they are more like personifications of their names, and each of them has a vital role in the correct running of our universe and all universes. They are definitely a dysfunctional family unit, but their adventures make for compelling and awe-inspiring reading. Also, the art is incredible. Several artists illustrated the series, but I couldn’t possibly pick a favourite.

9. The SF Masterworks Series

All right, so these aren’t a book, singular, but they were definitely a pivotal literary event in my life. I discovered the SF Masterworks series while I worked as a bookseller, and it was almost more than I could do to avoid ordering them all in for myself. I have managed to collect several of them, however, and I’ve yet to be disappointed. Look out for their distinctive yellowish covers, and collect away. They are fantastic. They taught me how big a nerd I am, and how comfortable I am with that knowledge.

10. The Dream of the Rood

I couldn’t leave a list like this without mentioning a medieval text. The Dream of the Rood is an anonymous Old English poem about Christ’s crucifixion written from the point of view of the cross, which is exactly as nuts as it sounds. It’s a psychedelic piece of literature, and it transfixed me when I first read it. In my final year at university we were asked to write a paper on it, and even though there were plenty of widely available translations (or modernisations, really) of the text, I wrote my own, painstakingly working through the poem word for word. I’ve never been so absorbed by anything in my life, before or since.

I wrote the paper. I got a First. It was awesome.

Also, as a direct result of this text I did an MA and then a Ph.D. in medieval literature, which led – indirectly, but clearly – to the rest of my life’s happiness. So, pretty pivotal.

So, there you have it. My life’s defining moments, as expressed in books. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, and if you have, please consider writing one of your own and linking back here. I’d love to read what your top ten (or five, or twenty) literary turning points are.

My Neil Gaiman collection, aka my pride and joy.

 

 

 

 

Top Ten Tuesday REWIND – Klaatu Barada Nikto*

There’s this really cool meme I’ve been seeing on all the best blogs (dahling) over the past few weeks, and it’s called Top Ten Tuesday. It’s hosted by the lovely people over at The Broke and the Bookish, and – I’ve got to say – I’ve been wondering about taking part for a while now.

So, in honour of the fact that I took the plunge back into submitting work for publication yesterday (because it’s the ‘being brave enough to submit’, not ‘actually getting the nod’ that counts), I thought perhaps I’d try this other new thing today.

Because, you know me. I love new things.

Image: marottaonmoney.com

Anyway.

Today is a ‘Top Ten Tuesday Rewind’, which means you have the pick of a long list of Top Ten lists to choose from (the full list is on the Broke and the Bookish website); my choice is number 86 on that list.

Top Ten Books I Would Quickly Save If My House Was Going to Be Abducted by Aliens (or any other natural disaster)

Because aliens are so a natural disaster.

1. Elidor (but only if I can bring all my editions, currently three)

This one should come as zero surprise to anyone who has read this blog, ever.

Image: lwcurrey.com

The book which fed my childhood imagination? The book which gave me my love for medieval stuff? The book which frightened my shivering soul itself almost to the point of insanity – but which had me coming back for more? Yes. A thousand times, yes. I love this book, and so should you.

2. The Earthsea Quartet

Oh, wizard Ged and your wonderful ways! I couldn’t possibly leave you behind. Not even if giant silver humanoid killing machines were smashing through my window. What would I do without the magnificence of Orm-Embar, the calm dignity of Tenar, the terror of the Dry Land? No. I would bring my Earthsea Quartet, and I would try to smuggle in ‘Tales from Earthsea’ and ‘The Other Wind’, too.

Dash it all. I’d just clear off my entire Ursula Le Guin shelf, and have done with it.

image: aadenianink.com

3. Six Middle English Romances, ed. Maldwyn Mills

Image: bookdepository.co.uk

I don’t have a reason for this beyond the following: I am a huge giant nerd; I love Middle English, particularly these six texts, and I can’t imagine not having them to hand; I would want to save them from the huge squid-like aliens with their giant fangs and scant regard for human culture; most importantly, they rock. Seriously.

4. Lords and Ladies

Terry Pratchett has written a lot of books. I would, of course, want to save them all if something with far too many legs was attempting to rip off my head, but I think I would save this one as a representative volume. Mainly, it’s because ‘Lords and Ladies’ is my favourite of the Discworld books, but it’s also because my current edition was a gift from my husband. So, you know. Kudos.

5. The Dark is Rising Sequence

Aha. I see you are on to me. ‘What’s all this, then? Saving trilogies and quadrilogies and that? You’re cheating!‘ Well, yes. Yes, I am. But the ‘Dark is Rising’ books are all in one volume, so therefore it counts as one book. Stuff it, aliens.

image: yp.smp.com

This book is far too excellent. I couldn’t allow it to fall into the hands of an alien civilisation, possibly because they’d eat it and spit it out and that would be that. So, it’s coming.

6. The Little Prince

I have four editions of this. Two in English, one in French and one in Irish. I’m bringing ’em all.

Image: en.wikipedia.org

What would be the point of surviving an alien attack, I ask you, if I leave behind a book which teaches me about the love of a little boy and his flower, or the loneliness of a fox, or the fact that every desert has an oasis at its heart, or how laughter amid the stars sounds like little bells, or what a boa constrictor who has swallowed an elephant looks like? Non. This book is precious. It’s coming.

7. Perrault’s Complete Fairy Tales, ed. Christopher Betts/Angela Carter’s Book of Fairy Tales/Alan Garner’s Collected Folk Tales/Grimm Tales, ed. Philip Pullman

This speaks for itself, I feel. Yes, they are four separate books but come on. How can you save Perrault without Grimm? How can you leave behind Garner’s British folktale treasury? How can you expect me to walk out the door Angela Carter-less? It’s not happening.

image: goodreads.com

This isn’t just about saving my favourite books (even though these are all my favourite books); it’s about saving human culture from the ravening maw of destruction. These books are, collectively, a brilliant gem of human culture. Truth. (Also, they’re pretty.)

8. Neverwhere and/or American Gods

I’m beginning to get the feeling that I’ll be eaten like an oversized, screaming hors d’oeuvre by these alien overlords. I’ll be too busy dithering at my bookshelves to bother about running away. Perhaps I should prepare a grab-bag of necessities, just in case?

Image: list.co.uk

I cannot choose between ‘American Gods’ and ‘Neverwhere.’ I can’t! Could you?

Then, of course, there’s the graphic novel adaptation of ‘Neverwhere’ (as illustrated handsomely above), which I also love, and then – horrors! – there’s my ‘Sandman’ collection, which I could hardly bear to leave behind… curse you, Neil Gaiman, for being so talented. You, and you alone, will be responsible for my being chewed up by aliens.

9. What Katy Did/What Katy Did Next

Susan Coolidge’s masterpieces kept me company all through my childhood. I owned a beautiful hardback edition of these two books, all in one volume, which – now that I think about it – I haven’t seen for a while.

I was fascinated by Katy and ‘all the little Carrs’, and the lemonade they used to make and the swing outside their house and the descriptions of their area and Katy’s utter gawkiness and… all of it. Just all of it. I loved these stories as a little girl, and so they’re coming.

I just hope I find my copy of the book before the aliens get here.

10. Whatever Jeanette Winterson I can get my hands on before the killer death-rays start blowing the roof off my house

Yeah. So, I have a problem with Jeanette Winterson, too. Do I save ‘Oranges are Not the Only Fruit’? How can I save that and not save ‘Why Be Normal When You Could Be Happy’? And then, how can I ask myself to live the rest of my (probably, rather short) life without ever casting my eyes upon ‘Sexing the Cherry’ again? I don’t feel life would be worth living without ‘The Passion.’

And that’s before we get anywhere near her children’s books.

Image: harlequinteaset.wordpress.com

I think what we can all take from this exercise is that if aliens do arrive on my fair isle, I shall not survive. However, at least I shall die happy, in the company of my books, and that is more than I deserve.

Happy Tuesday to you.

*Psst! Did you see what I did there?

Meeting your Heroes

The husband and I had an interesting chat over the weekend. During this particular conversation we were talking about the wonder that is book signings, where an utterly calm and controlled reader (ahem) gets the chance to meet, shake hands (possibly) and say ‘hello’ to an author whose work they adore. I haven’t had a chance to do this for many a long year, but I do appreciate book signings as one of the high points of modern culture.

‘I met Neil Gaiman at a book signing once,’ mused The Husband, in the course of our discussion. ‘I thought he was creepy.’

Image: twitter.com

‘Creepy?’ I responded, barely keeping the aghast in. ‘How on earth could you think he was creepy?’

‘Well, you know,’ responded my beloved. ‘He wears all that black. And he got up and read out stuff about death, and weirdness like that.’

(I suppose I should say at this point that my husband is more of a book collector than a book reader; he owns a lot of Neil Gaiman books, but I’m not sure he’s read very many. So, perhaps we can forgive him for not really knowing that death and weirdness and dark stuff are, quite possibly, the main building blocks of nearly all Neil Gaiman books.)

‘But,’ I spluttered in reply. ‘Didn’t you perhaps think that all that was an act, you know, like he was performing, in order to get the audience interested in the book?’

‘Maybe,’ sniffed my love. ‘But even so. Creepy.’

And he wouldn’t be convinced otherwise.

I, too, have had the pleasure of meeting Neil Gaiman at a book signing, many years ago. He was promoting the then newly-published ‘Graveyard Book’ at the time, and I – along with several hundred other fans – were crowded into the basement of a large Dublin bookshop, waiting impatiently for our hero to appear. When he did, a massive wave of excited applause greeted him, which he almost seemed embarrassed by.

Image: blogs.slj.com

He stood before us and read, at length, from his work. I had bought the book a few hours before, in preparation for having it signed, and already had it half-digested, so I was already familiar with the section its author chose to read, but that didn’t matter. It was like having an award-winning actor take to the stage – the huge room, filled to the brim with people, was silent as a tomb as Neil Gaiman read, and the book came to life before our eyes. Anyone who has ever been to a public event in Ireland will know how impressive it is to keep a huge crowd of Irish people quiet, by the way: we are the worst audiences in the world, in my humble opinion. I’ve been to hundreds of gigs and other events where the act performing can’t be heard over the clamour of conversation from the gathered crowd. I’ve lost count of the amount of musicians whose live act has been spoiled because some buffoon beside me can’t shut up talking about his weekend out on the tiles or his granny’s infected toe or the ‘eejit’ he has to sit beside at work – and yelling ‘Shut Up!’ just makes it worse. Believe me, I’ve tried it.

So, Mr Gaiman held the audience spellbound on this occasion. When the reading was complete he took questions – some inane, some rather good – and answered them with charm and wit, and not a little self-deprecation. He spoke for hours without any appearance of fatigue. Then, the signing began.

It was a bit like this.
Image: blog.gnip.com

Time was taken with every attendee; everyone was asked to write their name on a piece of paper to aid proceedings (always a necessity in Ireland, where people can have names that go on for a week or two, and are full of unlikely-seeming letters), and as I queued I saw people walking away from Neil Gaiman’s desk like they’d just been at a religious service, clutching their freshly signed copies of ‘The Graveyard Book’ to their chests with fervent glee. Gradually, slowly but inexorably, my place in the queue grew closer and closer to the Great Signing Table.

And then – like a dream – it was my turn.

I’m not saying I was *exactly* like this, but I wasn’t far off.
Image: kurotorro.tumblr.com

‘Omigod Mr Gaiman I’ve been a fan for so long, like years and I’ve read everything you’ve ever written and you’re omigod amazing and I love you so much you’re just an absolute and utter genius,’ I may have said, in a voice like a hamster on helium.

‘My dear,’ purred Neil Gaiman, with a smile. ‘You’re too kind.’

And so, my book was signed. I was told what a lovely name I had. I was thanked for coming. I was thanked for being a fan, and for buying the books, and – in short – rewarded for my devotion. And all of that was fantastic.

But then, Neil Gaiman did an even more awesome thing.

I attended this particular book signing with a good friend of mine, a woman who has impaired vision, speech and mobility, and who is also hard of hearing. She is one of the cleverest and best-read people I know, and she is also a huge fan of Neil Gaiman. I introduced her to Neil, telling him her first name, and then I stepped back so as not to interfere with her moment with her hero – and he could not have been more kind. My friend’s difficulties were unmistakeable, and because of that he spoke to her slowly and clearly, looking her right in the eye, and he spent longer with her than he did with anyone else. He asked her about her favourite of his books, and which characters she liked and disliked, and then he did a special, unique doodle in her book along with his signature and a message designed just for her.

My friend – and me, I have to admit – came away from that experience walking on air.

So – sure. Neil Gaiman dresses in black. He talks about death a lot – but then, she’s one of his best-loved characters, right?

Image: comicsalliance.com

His books tend to be a little odd – but brilliant with it. I can sort of see what my husband meant by saying he came across as ‘creepy’ – but I think that’s a stage presence, something he does for effect.

All I know is, my experience of meeting Neil Gaiman showed me a kind, patient, caring person who took the time to talk to a devoted fan, a fan who came away from his signing table with a grin that didn’t fade for weeks. That’s the mark of a good human being, in my book.

Have you ever met any of your heroes? Did you have a good or bad experience? I’d love to hear all about it.

 

Book Review Saturday – ‘Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron’

I’ve written a lot of book reviews at this stage. I’ve read SF, fantasy, children’s and YA books, general literature, classical literature, high-concept literary fiction, lots of stuff. I’ve reviewed loads of different types of book, some good and some bad, but all interesting.

One thing I’ve never done is written a review of a collection of short stories – to my knowledge, at least. So, today’s book review will be just that. Today, I’m looking at ‘Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron,’ which was published in 2012 by Hot Key Books, and edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Image: andysmithillustrator.blogspot.com

This fantastic collection of witchy tales was a Christmas gift from my husband (who is, clearly, a very clever man). It includes offerings from luminaries such as Holly Black, Frances Hardinge, Neil Gaiman (who, sadly, wrote the shortest entry), Garth Nix, Jim Butcher, Margo Lanagan and many others. There were a few names I’d never heard of among the contributors, and a fair few more whose names I’d heard, but whose work I’d never read. So, needless to say, I dived in with gusto.

All the tales have a common thread, which is witches – of course.

All this, and more!
Image: enchantmentschool.blogspot.com

We meet people who are just beginning their magical journey, and those who are so steeped in the Craft that is as natural to them as breathing. We meet male and female witches, old and young witches, good and bad witches. We meet familiars of all sorts, and people with the power to swap their bodies with animals, and shapeshifters. We meet love and passion and sensuality as well as cruel savagery and selfishness. There are different cultures, languages and traditions here. In short, it’s far more than it appears.

Some of the most gripping and memorable tales, for me, came from Delia Sherman (‘The Witch in the Wood’), Frances Hardinge (‘Payment Due’), Jim Butcher (‘B is for Bigfoot’), Peter S. Beagle (‘Great-Grandmother in the Cellar’) and Holly Black (‘Little Gods’). Only one story – Tanith Lee’s ‘Felidis’ – was left unfinished; I just couldn’t get into it at all. In every other story, I found something to like and admire, even if I wouldn’t have finished things quite like that, or I would have changed this detail… but then, that’s the beauty of a collection of short stories. One has barely faded before you’re on to the next, and – as a cohesive collection – this book is wonderful (with the exception of the Tanith Lee story, but who knows. I may come back to it in the future and wonder why on earth I couldn’t finish it the first time).

I’ll take a closer look at some of my favourite tales, which will hopefully give a flavour of the book overall. Firstly, then, let’s talk about Delia Sherman’s ‘The Witch in the Wood’, which is a wonderfully written story. It has lyrical, poetic language and a marvellous protagonist, Mildryth – a woman who lives alone in the forest and doesn’t even realise she is a witch until she is told so by a shapeshifting man she mistakenly shoots with an arrow on a hunting trip. She falls in love with this wounded deer-man, and nurses him back to health, only to discover there is a deep and powerful reason why he is a shapeshifter, and that there are dangerous forces on his tail. One of the reasons I loved this story so much is that, unlike a lot of the others in this collection, it has a fantastic ending. It concludes perfectly, with punch and style and suspense, leaving the reader knowing that the characters’ story doesn’t end where the text does, but giving us enough confidence in Mildryth to know that whatever happens, she will handle it.

Frances Hardinge – who, let’s face it, I love anyway – has written a most amazing story for this collection. ‘Payment Due’ is a tale of a fifteen-year-old girl whose grandmother’s house is targeted by bailiffs, who turn up one day to demand payment of a debt. They settle it by reclaiming most of the old lady’s belongings, much to her distress and that of her granddaughter. As I read the beginning of the story, I thought perhaps the older woman would turn out to be the witch – she is portrayed as being gentle, inoffensive, completely innocent of the world, and so I thought she would exhibit a turnaround in character and reveal herself to be a powerful figure instead of a powerless one – but Hardinge took those expectations and turned them inside-out. This story also features a magnificent central character, one completely at home with her magical power and utterly in control of it, and her use of her abilities is masterful – much like Hardinge herself.

Image: franceshardinge.com

‘B is for Bigfoot’ is classic Jim Butcher. Wonderfully, the story is told in the voice of Butcher’s famous character Harry Dresden, the protagonist of his ‘Dresden Files’ series, which I love. Harry Dresden is Chicago’s only practising wizard, which means he gets called upon to take care of all manner of weird and wonderful things, risking his life in the process a lot of the time. This story sees him summoned by a creature named Strength of a River in His Shoulders, who is – you’ve guessed it – a Bigfoot. River Shoulders, as Dresden instantly renames him, has a half-human son in a local high school who needs help; the boy is being victimised by bullies, and for obvious reasons his father can’t come to his aid. So, Dresden is seconded in his place. As we’re dealing with Dresden, though, things are never as straightforward as they seem. This story is full of typical Harry Dresden humour, and Jim Butcher’s witty and naturalistic style, with great snappy dialogue and wonderful characterisation.

Though the collection does have its ups and downs – namely, several stories seemed unfinished, or badly concluded, and Neil Gaiman’s contribution is a poem instead of a story, which irritated me a little – this is a book I will treasure and come back to time and time again. It holds many gems, not necessarily limited to the stories I’ve mentioned above, and – like all good collections – every reader will take something unique away from it. I enjoyed the different viewpoints, writing styles, cultural ideas about ‘the witch’ – not all the witches are the typical ‘warts on the nose, pointy hat’ type that a European reader might be most familiar with – and, most particularly, the flights of imagination contained within this book. It’s a definite recommendation.

Here’s to loads more reading in 2014! Did you get any books for Christmas? Do tell…

Book Review Saturday – ‘Interworld’

I’m in two minds regarding this week’s book review post. I want to love the book – and, on some levels, I do – but on so many other levels, it left me shrugging my shoulders in a serious case of the ‘So Whats?’

Image: booktopia.com.au

Yes, astute reader – that is the name Neil Gaiman adorning the cover. Can you imagine the horror of a Neil Gaiman book which I am in two minds about loving? It’s almost like being ripped in half by wild horses.

By ‘almost’, of course I mean ‘not at all.’ It’s not at all like being ripped in half by wild horses. But it’s painful enough, let me tell you.

My pain is assuaged a little, however, by the fact that this book isn’t really a Neil Gaiman book. The story came from an idea that he helped to cook up, but the book itself was mostly written by Michael Reaves, a man with an extraordinary list of writing achievements to his name. Perhaps this book suffered a little from weight of expectation, then; from two people as insanely talented as this, perhaps I expected more.

This isn’t to say there’s nothing to enjoy about the book. For a start, I loved the premise of the story. We’re introduced to a teenage boy named Joseph Harker who is a little like me in terms of his sense of direction; in other words, he doesn’t have one. He begins his story by telling us that once, he managed to get lost inside his own house. I warmed to him straight away, and in fact the voice throughout this book (that of Joey himself) is a lovely, easygoing, fun and engaging one. On a class activity with two of his fellow students – one a bullish boy who has a grudge against Joey, and the other a beautiful girl named Rowena on whom Joey has a crush – he manages to get lost again, but this time it has serious consequences. He walks into a cloud of mist and becomes disoriented, and when he manages to find his way back he realises he is in a world which looks, on the surface, a lot like his own Earth – but it’s not. He has the jarring and horrible experience of returning to his ‘home’, which looks similar to his own house from the outside, but instead of his own family he meets a woman who resembles his mother but who doesn’t know who he is, and a girl who looks a lot like him.

He realises, eventually, that he is in an alternate reality; this is a world like his own, but not exactly.

Desperate to escape the frightening creatures which are now pursuing him, Joey runs from world to world, trying to find out how to get home. He encounters another world in which everything is the same as his own, except in it he is supposed to be dead, and in the course of recovering from this shock he is intercepted by a strangely bewitching woman and her two grotesque sidekicks. They bring him on board a ship, beautifully named the Lacrimae Mundi (Tears of the World), and whisk him off to realms unknown. However, Joey is being followed – but is it by friend or foe?

The single greatest strength in this book is its use of multiple worlds, each of which have a version of Joey living in them. The story is essentially the adventures of all the Joeys. We meet Jay, Jai, J/O, Jakon, Jerzy, Josef, and Jo, of all genders and races, all of whom are their own world’s incarnation of ‘Joseph Harker.’ All of them are Walkers, or people with the ability to travel between worlds, and all of them are highly prized by Interworld, the organisation dedicated to protecting the Altiverse (all possible versions of Earth) from being taken over by either the Binary or HEX. The Binary is a completely technological version of earth, and HEX is a completely magical one, but both of them are totalitarian in their outlook. They would overthrow the harmony of the Altiverse if allowed to take control of all the worlds, most of which function using a mix of technology and magic. With the help of the ‘other’ Joeys, all of whom have their own individual talents and strengths, and a wonderful character named Hue about which I’ll say no more, the Walkers attempt to save the universe. All of this is great, and I loved it.

Where the book is weaker is in terms of plot. There are several teeth-grindingly irritating coincidences in the book, especially at the end when Joey faces down Lady Indigo, the great villain, and the whole book is a little quick and simplistic. Some other reviewers have said they really admired a scene in the middle of the book when Joey and his mother have a heart-to-heart about him going away and straight into danger, but it annoyed me. It’s wonderfully written, and very heartfelt, but I just didn’t think it was believable. We have a mother whose fifteen year old son is telling her he will never see her again, giving away his possessions to his sister, and preparing to leave forever – but she says she can’t stand in his way because she trusts him to do what’s right?

Well. Maybe. I just know what my mother would’ve done if I’d tried pulling that at fifteen, and it wouldn’t be to wave me off in the middle of the night (without even waking my father up to say goodbye to me, incidentally), shedding a few tears and giving me a going-away present. Something about the scene just didn’t seem real to me, and I have to admit it did affect my enjoyment of the rest of the book.

The book is a quick read, and it is enjoyable. However, I did not love it. I will probably check out the sequel, ‘Silver Dreams’, which has just been published, though, so, I guess that’s an endorsement of sorts. That said, I feel that ‘Interworld’ could have been more. It seemed underdeveloped and sketchy – but then I guess that’s what sequels are for. Right?

Uh-huh. Whatever you say, hombre.
Image: angelfire.com

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone.

Bookies!

I have held many nicknames during the course of my (relatively) short life so far. My family rarely refer to me by my real name, and my friends only do so if they want to grab my attention, or if I’ve misbehaved in some way. Going through school, I had a collection of nicknames which I could pick and choose to suit my mood; one of these was Xena the Warrior Princess. I can’t imagine why.

I am a being of sweetness and LIGHT, dammit!
Image: libertytech.com

I have just decided – as of this morning – that I now have a new nickname. I shall henceforth refer to myself, the second I cross the threshold of a bookshop, as ‘The Bookie Monster.’

My slight addiction to books is, of course, news to none of you. However, a new and worrying aspect of my life as the Bookie Monster has recently raised its ugly head. I’m talking about the complete absence of rationality, intelligence and reasoned decision-making that seems to sweep over me the second books are anywhere in view.

An example? Oh, all right then.

The other day, I was in a bookshop. This hasn’t happened in a while, so I guess I was full of pent-up book anxiety, trying to keep myself under control so that I didn’t empty entire shelves and slam them down in front of the bemused cashier.

Image: sweetmarie-83.blogspot.com

I think, on the whole, I managed to control myself. I purchased the grand total of three books – one for me, one as a gift for a friend, and another as a replacement copy of a book which I have unaccountably lost, or which I’ve given to someone and forgotten about. The book I bought for myself is one I’ve been waiting to read for months (of which more in tomorrow’s Book Review blog), and the gift book doesn’t count as a book purchase, as it was a token of affection. (I’m sure this is a law, somewhere.)

But then we come to the replacement copy of the book which was lost.

I bought the wrong one.

I bought the wrong one! Can you imagine? I suffered some sort of brain fizz/meltdown/short-out as I gazed at the shelf, and I picked up a copy of ‘Coraline’ instead of ‘Stardust.’

Any excuse.
Image: myhappybitsandpieces.blogspot.com

My copy of ‘Stardust’ has been AWOL for a while now. I could have loaned it to someone, or perhaps it has been lost in one of the many house moves I’ve taken part in over the years. Perhaps some nefarious creature has stolen it from me. In any case, I noticed it was missing a few months ago when I was in the middle of admiring my Gaiman collection, and the wound its absence caused me was a grievous one. I can’t be without it, because when it comes to authors like Neil Gaiman and Jeanette Winterson and John Connolly and Angela Carter and others I love without question, I am a bit of a completist. (If anyone out there has my copy of ‘Stardust’ and wishes to return it, by the way, I am hereby calling an amnesty. Return it now, and no questions will be asked. Or, at least, remind me that I gave it to you, so that my anxiety can come to an end.)

I can’t explain why my brain shorted out when I saw the Gaiman shelf in this particular bookshop (it was the Gutter Bookshop, one of my favourite places in the world – if ever you’re in Dublin, check it out); perhaps ‘Stardust’ was sitting on it, looking at me, willing me to buy it, but my eye fell on ‘Coraline’ and my fate was sealed. I genuinely believed it was ‘Coraline’ I needed, and I was thrilled to have found a copy which was exactly the same as the edition I had ‘lost.’ I gladly took it to the till. I gleefully handed over my money, delighted that my Gaiman collection was now, once more, complete.

And then I brought the book home and realised its twin was sitting on the shelf. The loss of ‘Stardust’ hit me once again, with twice as much force as before. I also realised I was a proper idiot for mixing up the two books in the first place, and I questioned my right to call myself a Neil Gaiman fan. That was a bit of an existentialist crisis, and no mistake.

Anyway, I have found a home for my second copy of ‘Coraline’, and so a modicum of balance has been restored to the world. My search for ‘Stardust’, however, continues. And, the next time I set foot inside a bookshop, I will make an even greater effort to keep my brain from jumping at the first pretty book it sees…

This is the Bookie Monster, signing off at the end of another busy week. Happy Friday, everyone!

Image: shelversanon.blogspot.com