Happy Birthday, Harry and JKR!

Happy 22nd Birthday, Harry, dear, and happy birthday, too, to your creator Jo Rowling. Wishing you both all possible joy and happiness for the coming year (as well as all the chocolate frogs you can eat.)

I received a well-timed package today from kijjohnson, marked "express owl post." Inside was lovely glass snow owl ornament, wings and talons outstretched. The obvious thing to do would be to name her Hedwig, of course, but perhaps I will come up with something else. I thought it was eerily appropriate for her to arrive on Harry's birthday: I was rather forlorn when I talked to Kij last Sunday, and so she sent an owl to cheer me up–just as Ron, Hermione and Hagrid sent owls to cheer Harry up on his birthday in The Goblet of Fire. Anyway, the owl's hanging above my desk, right over the card that I got at the opening of the Minnesota Center for Book Arts with a quote from Helen Hayes that reads: "From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened, you discover that you have wings."

Seems appropriate.

Cheers,
Pe

Books for July, 2002

Hallowed Murder by Ellen Hart

Vital Lies by Ellen Hart

Stage Fright by Ellen Hart

A Killing Cure by Ellen Hart

A Small Sacrifice by Ellen Hart

This was my first exposure to Ellen's work, and all these books focus on her heroine Jane Lawless. I found the last one the most memorable, with a somewhat above-average twist at the end. I finally decided I had sated myself on her work for the time being and didn't pick up her other series, about the food critic Sophie Greenway.

Contact by Carl Sagan. Re-read. This held up pretty well my second time through

Love is Eternal by Irving Stone. This is a biographical novel from the point of view of Mary Todd Lincoln. Quite interesting, more sympathetic to Mary than other accounts of their marriage I've read. What struck me the most about this was the account of the twenty month period that Lincoln went through when he seemed to be operating in a stupor due to clinical depression. At forty-three, he felt as though he was all washed up–and yet look at what he went on to accomplish.

The Unstrung Harp or, Mr. Earbrass Writes a Novel by Edward Gorey. Re-read. Lois McMaster Bujold gave this book to me right after I finished writing The Wild Swans. It is really priceless, and the cartoons truly add to the deliciousness. If you have ever considered writing novel-length fiction, you really must read The Unstrung Harp. IT'S ALL TRUE!

Here are three little excerpts about the finishing process of writing a novel:

Even more harrowing than the first chapters of a novel are the last, for Mr. Earbrass anyway. The characters have one and all become thoroughly tiresome, as though he had been trapped at the same party with them since the day before; neglected sections of the plot loom on every hand, waiting to be disposed of; his verbs seem to have withered away and his adjectives are proliferating out of control. Even rereading The Truffle Plantation (his first novel) does not induce sleep. In the blue horror of dawn the vines in the carpet appear likely to begin twining up his ankles.

And this:

In that brief moment between day and night when everything seems to have stopped for good and all, Mr. Earbrass has written the last sentence of The Unstrung Harp. The room's appearance of tidiness and Mr. Earbrass's of calm are alike deceptive. The MS is stuffed all anyhow in the lower right-hand drawer of his desk, and Mr. Earbrass himself is wildly distrait. His feet went to sleep some time ago, there is a dull throbbing behind his left ear, and his moustache feels as uncomfortable as if it were false, or belonged to someone else.

And this:

The next day Mr. Earbrass is conscious but very little else. He wanders through the house, leaving doors open and empty tea-cups on the floor. From time to time the thought occurs to him that he really ought to go and dress, and he gets up several minutes later, only to sit down again in the first chair he comes to. The better part of a week will have elapsed before he has recovered enough to do anything more helpful.

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman. I have kijjohnson to thank for introducing me this series, because she wanted me to read it so badly that she sent me her paperback copies–she went out and bought hardback copies for herself. It's been several months since I read the first, The Golden Compass. This is equally as good, but I know, from remarks that people have told me, that All Will Not End Well. Today I picked up a copy of the third in the series, The Amber Spyglass but will hold off reading it until I first read that novel I've been asked to blurb.

I am also partway through What If Our World Is Their Heaven? The Final Conversations of Philip K. Dick, edited by Gwen Lee and Doris Elaine Sauter (with a foreword by one of my Clarion teachers, Tim Powers), which Bruce minnehaha kindly lent to me. I will undoubtedly have this finished for the next month's report.

I note with approval that only two of this month's books are re-reads. I find I'm enjoying this process of reporting in my LiveJournal what I read each month, an idea I picked up from kijjohnson. I've noticed an interesting side effect: I find that I am being a little more willing to try new directions, and to read books that I've always felt I should read but have been lazily putting off cracking open. There's definitely an observer effect at work here when I know that I'm reporting my choices for comment by others!

Cheer