Wish You Were Here

As we trip through mid-January and the Winter doldrums begin to take their full effect, our minds inevitably turn to dreams of escape. Sunnier climes, where the temperatures soar during the day and dinner is always accompanied by frosty margaritas. Some are lucky enough to make the escape from the Great Canadian Igloo, but what are those of us who can’t afford to stamp our passports to do?

I’ve always wanted to travel the world and experience other cultures, but it just never quite seems to happen. Life inevitably gets in the way, whether it’s in the form of school or work. And the lack of funds doesn’t help matters either. Yet I don’t feel to hard done by because I figured out a long time ago that I can go anywhere in the world – with just the turn of a page.

I may not get to experience some of the sensations of real travel – the food, the souveniers, the adorable foreign accents – but thanks to my local library I can experience a sort of travelling-lite. In a single week I can visit the snow-covered steppes of the Ukraine to play with reindeer; walk the streets of Paris past the houses of the world’s greatest couturiers; or take the Greenroad deep into Elfland with its magical trolls, faeries, and talking trees. No amount of money can get to some of these places, as many are fictional by nature, but in a way that’s actually better than real travel because there are no limits.  

With just the flash of my library card – my passport to the realms of fiction, if you will – I can go anywhere and experience anything. All without having to skip work or drain my bank account.

The question then becomes: where shall I stamp on my literary passport today? I’m thinking New York and London! Maybe I'll see you there :)

image from Tumblr

A Literary Inspiration

I get my fashion inspiration from lots of places, and one of my favourite places to look for fresh ideas is from literature. Whether I channel a character, an author, a place, or the tone of a novel I've come up with some interesting combinations. The question is whether people get the allusions, or they just think I'm weird. So today I have a little challenge for you all: match up the titles of my five favourite books with the sets of clothing/accessories and challenge your literary wareness! If you think you know the answers comment below, or feel free to share which books have inspired your way of dressing!

Book Match by riella03 featuring kitchenaid small appliances

Here and Back Again

We've met some dragons, been enchanted by faeries, fallen in and out of love, and been scared away from some books we've not ready for, but we've come to the end of our trip through the alphabet. Some letters have been lingered on, and some were bypassed without so much as a cursory glance, but they were all there. Yet the journey doesn't really end here (because nothing ever really ends, and all roads just lead to others) and obviously I'll keep reading forever and ever. To keep you lot updated on my latest reads I've added an RSS feed panel of my Goodreads account, so you can read along with me. I'm not entirely sure how well it updates (some books stay on my reading shelf for quite some time, while others barely last a day), but we'll see. If you want to see the complete list, then go ahead and add me on Goodreads :) So with that, we'll be back in a week with regular fashion, shoes, nail polish, and the ever-popular rants that you all know and love, but never forget...

A bookstore holds a thousand books,

All colours, hues, and tinges,

And every cover is a door

That turns on magic hinges. 

image of Russell's Books from Virtual Tourist

Z is for Zoos, Zebras, & Zippers

... all of which can be found in The Norton Anthology of Children's Literature, edited by Jack Zipes. He's one of the foremost scholar's on children's literature (both content and historically), so for anyone with an interest in the genre this is not a book to be missed. Normally I don't bother keeping the Norton/Oxford/etc anthologies that I was forced to buy as part of my English degree, but this one I kept because it has a whole bunch of stories that aren't in publication anymore and aren't easy to find, even though they're important to the historical development of children's literature. It's a huge volume, even in paperback, hence why it comes with a carrying case, so that it won't get damaged, and every page is packed with useful information and wonderful tales.

image from Good Reads

Dragontamer, Historian, Magician, Storyweaver (Y is for Jane Yolen)

image from Jacket Flap

image from Steven Silver's Reviews

We're going back to my childhood again for this post, because Jane Yolen was a pretty important writer in my library stacks. I've read pretty much everything she's ever written, and a lot of her stories remain my favourites to this day. The series that always comes to mind when I hear her name is the Pit Dragon Trilogy, which I read over and over and over, and still have multiple copies of in my collection. It's typical fantasy, with a teenage protagonist, who befriends a fighting dragon and brings himself out of a life of indentured servitude. But it's still a good read, for all it's minor clichés. More recently I finally got around to reading Briar Rose, which is a re-telling of the story of Sleeping Beauty, but with themes involving the Holocaust, family history, and the lies parents tell their children. It's a kind of strange story, and I'm not sure if I entirely get it, so I'm going to have to go back and re-read it at some point.

XXX-Rated (?)

I've never really gotten why Clamp called their über-awesome manga series Xxxholic, because there's really very little about it that's x-rated. Sure there's death, dying, the occult, love triangles, and the occasional boob, but there are many more manga sesries that are closer to soft-core or blatant pornography than Xxxholic. I'm going to write the title slip as a "lost in translation" thing, and continue to adore the series, because Clamp can do no wrong! And really, who doesn't love a bumbling hero, who cleans up nicely when you get him into a tuxedo?

image from Manga-Reader

Storybook Love (W is for Willingham)

I've already said that I love re-told fairytales, so it's no wonder I fell head-over-heels into storybook love with Bill Willingham's graphic novel series Fables. Every creature from fairytales around the world are reworked into the series, but in the most modern sense. These characters are referred to as "Fables," and have been chased out of their homelands by the Adversary to reside in New York (and other locales around the world) among the "mundies." Political drama, relationships made and broken, magic, adventure, and a glass slipper or two all reside within the pages of these volumes, and in the spin-off series. It's no wonder that Fables started racking in the awards soon after their inception, since they're everything that a reader could want.

image from Scene 360

V is for Veritas (and Vivian Vande Velde)

image from Good Reads

Secrets, duality, and truth have always been some of the my favourite literary themes, and every single one of Vivian Vande Velde's novels deals with these themes in some form. Whether it's vampires who are capable of love, people who don't know their own power, or (my personal favourite) dragons who turn out to have hearts of gold as well as scales, none of her characters are quite who they seem at first. 

And How are You All Doing? (U is for You)

Apparently U is an extremely un-used letter to begin last-names with, so I have not a single author to suggest that you read. Instead I want to hear what you're all reading for the summer! Whether it's a 6 foot stack of Harlequin romances, Sherlock Holmes (Liz and I discovered we were reading it at exactly the same time without discussing doing so, and therefore you should follow along), pre-reading textbooks for next year (though hopefully not...), or catching up on your favourite authors I wanna hear about it! Though I can't promise not to laugh if you're actually reading a 6 foot stack of Harlequins...

The Russian (T is for Tolstoy)

I dare you to go pick up a novel by Tolstoy. Seriously. Go ahead and prove to me that you're not as literarily weak as I think you are ;)

image from Rob Around Books

S is for Spies, San Diego Comic-Con, & Art Spiegelman

Anyone who says graphic novels can't be literature obviously hasn't read Art Speigelman's classic comic book Maus. It doesn't get any more serious than the Holocaust, and that's exactly what the book tackles, alongside themes of family relationships, PTSD, history, memory, and the plight of the writer. It has it's moments of being clichéd, but no novel is perfect, and as a student of history, literature, and art this book is an extremely well-done blending of the three genres.

image from Can't Explain

On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God (R is for Louise Rennison)

It's summer, and we deserve a mental break from anything serious, so go ahead and get that venti mocha cookie crumble frappuccino from Starbucks and lay out on the beach with one of the hilarious Georgia Nicholson books from Louise Rennison. You'll be laughing away those calories in no time!

image from the Book Slooth

The Quest for Books

image from here

My Quest for Books - yes I meant to capitalize the "q" in Quest and the "b" in Books - is neverending. I've always kept lengthy (and sometimes slightly unachievable) lists of the books I want to read. Case and point: I actually think that somewhere down the road I'll finish the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list. I guarantee I've read more than 1001 books already, but that list is pretty intense. It has approximately a dozen Charles Dickens' and as many Margaret Atwood's (my two least favourite authors), Tolstoy's War and Peace, Joyce's Ulysses, and some truely tedious books by contemporary authors that I'm not sure how they made the list. Thankfully it also has The Lord of the Rings, Süskind's Perfume, and hidden gems that are oddly entrancing like A Confederacy of Dunces by Toole.

And then when I get tired of reading Literature-with-a-capital-L I've found Good Reads to be completely addicting. All my random and extravagant lists, plus recommendations to make the lists even more ridiculous. Though I think they're quite confused at the random selection of books that I've given five star ratings to... But I figure variety is the spice of life, and the same applies to books. Reading phases are great, but mixing it up ensures that I never ever get bored of my reading material. And I can't ever get tired of books because what kind of Librarian would I be then?

Literary Lioness (P is for Tamora Pierce)

When I was young and unsure of who I was I didn't turn to my mother, or to famous people, or to Oprah for guidance. I turned to literature. Specifically Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness quartet about Alanna, a girl who pretends to be a boy and becomes the first female knight of Tortall. She taught me that sometimes we have to hide who we are to succeed, but once we do succeed nothing can stop us. She taught me that women can be as fierce, or fiercer than men. She taught me that life gets tricky sometimes, but also that if you fight for it, you can achieve anything. Being a girl isn't a limitation, it's an inspiration.

image from Good Reads

Nine Bells of a Necromancer (N is for Garth Nix)

I read the Abhorsen Trilogy (also known as the Old Kingdom Chronicles) when I was in early highschool, but I had to re-read part of it for a class 2 years ago and found it just as charming the however-many-times-around it was. Not only does Garth Nix write about a believable and complex set of female characters, they're all inextricably tied to the history of their world, but not in the overwhelming way that some fantasy writers play it (sorry Tolkien fans). The first book is all about Sabriel, and she gets to play with the dead. Which I think is pretty bad-ass. I have this weird fixation with death-lore and underworld mythology apparently. The best part about the series is that Nix has woven a ridiculous amount of allusions to other stories and clever plays on language into his story. Most people aren't going to notice that some of the necromantic bells are named after angels, that Sabriel's name is a clever blending of name-ology, and that there's a reason the cat is the way he is, but to someone who's versed in a range of mythological traditions the books take on a whole new meaning. Someday I'll sit down and do a close reading of them and publish that shit and become famous. But that day is not today, because alas, I am tired. But eventually, it shall be done!

image from Amazon

M is for Ian McEwan

cover image from BookBath

Reading Rainbow (L is for Andrew Lang)

image from Great Books Education

Fairy tales and legends are some of the most influential stories since the beginning of human history. They define the social norms, values, morals, fears, and expectations of any given culture, and they contain themes that echo around the world and across a variety of nations. Themes, characters, and locales from these stories are still seen in literature today, and many writers model their own stories based on these classic tales (whether they realize it or not).

A good place to get a broad overview of fairy tales from around the world are in Andrew Lang's coloured fairy books. There are 12 volumes in total, and they cover stories ranging from the Brother's Grimm, to Madame D'Aulnoy, to stories from the Arabian Nights. The collection isn't meant to be comprehensive (it's not even possible to cover all the stories), but Lang's volumes give the reader a taste of the familiar and of the unknown, so they're a great starting place for anyone wishing to explore the realms of fairytales.

To Autumn (K is for Keats)

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 

    Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; 

Conspiring with him how to load and bless 

    With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; 

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, 

    And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; 

        To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 

    With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, 

And still more, later flowers for the bees, 

Until they think warm days will never cease, 

        For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? 

    Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find 

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, 

    Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; 

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, 

    Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook 

        Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: 

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 

    Steady thy laden head across a brook; 

    Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, 

        Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring?  Ay, where are they? 

    Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, - 

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 

    And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; 

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 

    Among the river sallows, borne aloft 

        Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; 

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 

    Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft 

    The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; 

        And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

~John Keats

image from The Hare Krishna Movement blog

Before there was Hogwarts... (J is for Diana Wynne Jones)

... there was Chrestomanci Castle. Welcome to the world of Christopher (Cat) Chant. A boy who discovers at the age of 11 that he is a powerful enchanter, after spending his whole life in the shadow of his domineering witch sister, Gwen, and is whisked away to be trained by the most powerful enchanter of all time, Chrestomanci. Sound familiar, Harry Potter fans? The Chrestomanci series was around years and years before the world of Harry Potter was even a figment of J.K. Rowling's imagination. As much as I'm a fan of the HP series, I read the Chrestomanci books when I was a kid, so HP just can't add up to the original magical boy. Plus Cat doesn't have a scar, there are other awesome worlds that he can travel to, and his friends are much more than mere sidekicks (sorry Hermione and Ron), since he's not the feature of every book.

image from Amazon

For more on Diana Wynne Jones, check out her website, or the official fansite! Trust me, all her books are amazing. 

I'm not Impressed (I is for Walter Isaacson)

image from CBC

Why is it that there are so few authors whose last names begin with "I?" I don't get it at all. I have a few books on my shelf written by "I" people, and I've read a few more, but none of them are worth posting about... So I spent a while browsing online for books to put on my "to read" list with an appropriate author. Luckily, the biography of Steve Jobs is written by Walter Isaacson, so my criteria has been met! Yay! Apple saves the day again! Apparently there are 101 people ahead of me in line for it from the library though, so chances are I won't be reading this book anytime soon...