“Wildwood” is a Decemberists album, but mostly songless (mostly). It is 541 pages long, including illustrations by Carson Ellis- both in ink and separate color plates. There are maps and coyote soldiers and woods magic and an owl king and choices. Lots of choices. If the book would have a different title, it would be “How to Make Good Choices In Times of Trouble”. I enjoyed it immensely and it did not talk down to children.
This is second book I finished at the beach! It is easily one of the best books I’ve read in a long while. It is also super nerdy in all best nerdy ways! There is history and science (science!) and culture and art and more! (the more is the best part, by which I mean there are pictures)
There is one chapter per color. The first one is ochre, dropping you into northern Australia and the culture and story of the Aboriginals. Finlay combines black and brown, and then continues with white, then red, through indigo, and finally violet. Each color/chapter has a primary focus. Red totally grossed me out (google: cochineal). I loved Orange and its story of Stradivarius’ lost varnish. Yellow was mad about saffron (two gold stars for you if you get that). Green went to China. Blue sent the author to the mines of northern Afghanistan for ultramarine and, naturally, then to a church in northern France*. Indigo was thankfully in here, giving story to woad and indigo. Mysterious and royal (and stinky) violet takes to Rome, Tyre, and the Mixtec coast with their mollusks of purple pigment.
*I’ll note this because where Finlay went, and how she starts the book, is Chartres Cathedral and, as a long-held non-believer and explorer of this physical phenomenal world, was one of the lone places where I have felt God. Its windows are bluer than the clearest sky, its labyrinth led both the furthest extremes of “to” and “away from” home, and there is what else is there, filling the air with something more than just incense.
This was the first book I finished (not started, mind you) at the Beach. It’s Baltimore by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden, of Hellboy/BPRD and Wildwood Road, respectively.
It read more like BPRD than Hellboy. Dark with humor at a minimum, though there. Of the four main characters, I felt for them all. All cursed, in one respect or another; all good men fighting against darkness because that is what good men (or women; there were only a few, and minimal, female characters) do.
It was a very fast read, which is a high water mark for horror. The story moved along, changing narratives and perspectives, with three men meeting at an inn in a dying city, to meet the fourth who joins them together, telling how they know Lord Henry Baltimore and how they came to know what really goes bump in the night.
It, because I am easily impressed, is filled with pen and ink drawing by Mignola of vampires, ghouls, ruins, cemeteries, and no-longer-living things. It is also a big book. It is not a long book, but a big book; Amazon says it is 7.7 inches by 9.5 inches.
I really enjoyed it. You would to, I guess, I hope!
(By Ben Loory)
There once was a girl who was lost in a storm. She wandered this way and that, this way and that, trying to find a way home. But the sky was too dark, and the rain too fierce; all the girl did was go in circles.
This is the next book I am going to read. I read four in the bookstore today. I believe three were for the nighttime, one for the day.
Today was a very long day.
On the brightside, Jack decided that he likes going outside.
I started my very first Meetup group, a brunch book club! We have set our first three meetings & books, but have a spot for people to recommend books for the future. If you’re interested, check it out here:
http://www.meetup.com/Smarty-Pants-Book-Club/
I have also been sad because there are…
Join our bookclub! We are modeling it after our old one in NY! This means that we’ll meet in a place that is similarly themed to the book!
First up is The Famished Road by Ben Okri, and we are meeting at Addis, which I keep hearing good things about.
From CNN:
As the title suggests, “Go the F*** to Sleep” mocks the parental frustrations of trying to lay a child down to bed. Crass in concept and execution, this is an expletive-filled bedtime story intended…
If this is the windmill people are tilting at, they need to sort their priorities. (FTR: I do not now, nor have I ever had children. However, I once was a child.)
Every parent has said it at least once. Why? Because EVERY CHILD ON THE PLANET has had at least ONE night where they will not or cannot go to sleep when they’re supposed to. Where everything is, “Why is the sky blue? Why? Why? Why? Why? Can I have a drink of water? I have to go to the bathroom. Read me a story. Can I have another story. I’m not sleepy. Will I look like you when I grow up? Why? Why? Why? Can I slide down the bannister? Why not? Why? Why?”
In short: babies and small children are adorable because if they weren’t, the adults of the species would eat them. The human animal has evolved. Yes, there are terrible parents who abuse and murder children. This book is not that.
My father used to make me stay up late to watch BBC programming on PBS. When my parents split up, mum and my grandparents had to deal with me as a nocturnal creature. I heard a weary, exhausted but affectionate, “Go the fuck to sleep,” more than once. When I DL’d the audio book, I played it for my mum. We both nearly fell on the floor laughing.
This is not the thing people need to get their knickers in a twist over. If they wanna worry about something, worry about how many times in the course of a week they’re in public and ignore a parent abusing their child because it’s, “None of my business.”
We’ve been taking our niece twice a week for the summer. It’s awesome, as is she. She makes songs about her balloons and the dogs and hugs the extremely patient cats until they legitimately need to run away. She’ll dance and giggle and laugh and be awesome.
But, she’s two. She is prone to be extreme pouting and giving dirty looks for the audacity of being told “No.” She models everything and seeks attention, so if you say a swear word and then she says a swear word, she’ll get in trouble which only means she’ll say it again and again and again. Her not-so-stable home life brings on bouts of extreme clinginess and tantrums, neither of which are ‘good’ or ‘cute’, though the last one can border into the realms of ridiculous and schadenfreude.
This looks like a book for good-humored, but tired, parents. Or loving teachers. Or babysitters. Because, seriously kiddo- you cannot mac & cheese for every meal ever, so stop it.
Thursday, we went to King’s Dominion. Audra & I took our niece to the waterpark and the kid’s area. At the lil’ car ride or the tiny planes, one mother threatened to punch her children if she did not shut up right then. The daughter froze and turned around. I froze and turned around. I did not say anything; I did not know - at all - what to say. Everything I have ever been taught, implicitly and explicitly, is that those things are none of your business, so stay out. Every time I hear that, it becomes more and more of a life. A lie too, but more, it becomes the life we lead, as it becomes fine and just okay.
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Wizard Island, in Crater Lake.
Where my favorite book growing up, The Ancient One by T.A. Barron, was set
