The Graveyard Book Read-Along, Week One

On October 7, 2012October 6, 2012 By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews18 Comments

This month, I’m participating in a read-along of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, as part of R.I.P. We’re looking at a few chapters a week, with no specific questions for each post. This week, a discussion on the first three chapters.

I’ve read The Graveyard Book before, but it’s been a few years and some of the details have gone fuzzy. I do remember the shadowy feel of the book, and that I enjoyed it! So I’m looking forward to digging into in greater depth. (I suspect there’s a pun somewhere in that “digging in” phrase…but we’ll just move along…)

For those not familiar with the book, it tells the story of Bod, a living orphan who is being raised by a community of ghosts. The first chapter describes how this situation came about, and the next two share a couple of Bod’s childhood adventures.

The first thing that struck me on picking this up again was the pictures. The first few pages of each chapter are illustrated with wonderful black and white drawings that set the shadowy tone of the book so well.

Gaiman makes a very interesting choice by starting us out in the point of view of a murderer, the man Jack who killed Bod’s family. What’s particularly remarkable is that he manages such a deft balance of starting us in an unbelievably horrible situation–but I don’t feel inclined to slam the book and walk away. It is horrible, and it’s certainly dark and creepy (just the phrase “the man Jack” is so creepy), but it never quite becomes grotesque or too twisted. And if you’ve read the Sandman graphic novels, you know Gaiman is capable of going there! As it is, this sets up a wonderful darkness without scaring squeamish me off of the book.

I also love that it’s the living man who’s frightening–the ghosts are quite homey and pleasant. They have a close community in the graveyard, with each ghost living in his or her respective crypt, all going about much the same community relations that they had in life. And why not?

In Chapter Two, Bod makes a human friend, a little girl named Scarlett whose mother thought it made sense to bring her to play in a graveyard (a nature reserve, technically). The two of them venture into a dark depth of the graveyard and encounter very strange and sinister creatures. I enjoyed some of the contrast between Bod and Scarlett, but wish Gaiman had done more with that. Ultimately they both end up not being afraid of what appears to be a monster–and I totally get that Bod is used to the strange and the supernatural, but I don’t understand why Scarlett, as a normal little girl, calms down remarkably quickly. Perhaps I’m just meant to take her as being special too.

My favorite thing about Scarlett, though, is probably that she thinks Bod is an imaginary friend. What a wonderfully fuzzy margin between reality and imagination!

In Chapter Three, Bod gets a new tutor, Miss Lupescu (whose name makes her secret fairly obvious), and ends up captured by ghouls. The best thing about the ghouls is their names. They all receive new names when they become ghouls, names which properly reflect the high esteem ghouls hold themselves in: names like “the famous writer Victor Hugo” or “the Bishop of Bath and Wells” or “the 33rd President of the United States.” And they’re never shortened.

So far, the book is quite episodic, with each chapter almost a self-contained short story. I do seem to recall, however, that threads begun in one place will come back in another, and it’s going to be fun to watch that weaving. And the short story nature makes this good for a read-along!

Saturday Snapshot: Fish and Chips

On October 6, 2012October 6, 2012 By cherylmahoneyIn Saturday Snapshot28 Comments

This may sound strange, but I love British food. It gets a bad reputation–but what’s not to love about fish and chips, meat pies, yorkshire pudding and jammie dodgers? I made a particular effort (and it wasn’t that hard) to find British food while I was in London. After I got home, I started thinking about where I could find British food here–and what I could try making myself.

Meat pies seem complicated, but I thought I could handle fish and chips. On my trip, I had fish and chips for lunch one day at The Black Lion. First picture, here’s the pub:

It’s a great old place that dates back to the 1700s. It’s on Bayswater Road, across the street from the Black Lion Gate, which opens onto the Broad Walk in Kensington Gardens. I like to think J. M. Barrie may have eaten here, considering he lived just a few blocks away.

Here’s The Black Lion’s fish and chips:

The book, incidentally, is Temptation of the Night Jasmine by Lauren Willig, and very good. So was the food!

And here’s my version of fish and chips–which also turned out tasty. 🙂

Check out At Home with Books for more Saturday Snapshots!

Blog Hop: Banned Books

On October 5, 2012September 24, 2013 By cherylmahoneyIn Blog Hop, Ruminations20 Comments

As regular readers know, I tend to bounce between different features on Fridays. This week, I’m trying something new–the Book Blogger Hop, inviting book bloggers to answer a book-related question each week, and “hop” amongst the other blogs that are participating. Normally hosted at Crazy for Books, this week it’s traveling to Soon Remembered Tales. Today’s question is:

Banned Books Week ends on the 6th. How do you feel about books being challenged to be banned from libraries or schools? Have you read any banned books?

I have to admit I have never got all that worked up about banned books. Of course I’m against censorship, but banning a book just seems pointless–especially now when you can get anything you like on Amazon, and banning a book usually just gives it more publicity. I’ve never read a banned book because it was banned, although of course I’ve read books that have been banned at one time or another. The Giver and Huckleberry Finn both come to mind.

My favorite topic in relation to banned books is the silly reasons books get banned. If someone wanted to ban Huckleberry Finn for language, I wouldn’t approve but at least it would make some kind of sense. But I’ve actually heard of it being banned for nudity (because one line mentions Huck and Jim aren’t wearing clothes on the raft–because they’re on a raft). Or I’ve heard of it being banned because Huck rejects God. Which has to be a complete misread of the beautiful moment when Huck decides he’ll go to Hell if that’s the consequences of rescuing Jim from slavery.

My favorite banned book story…some librarian wanted to ban Tarzan because Tarzan and Jane are living together in the jungle without being married. And that isn’t even correct! I’ve no idea what the details are in various adaptations, but in the original Edgar Rice Burroughs book, there’s a wedding on the last two pages–to quote, Jane’s father “was an ordained minister in his younger days.” I find this all particularly funny because one of the hallmarks of Edgar Rice Burroughs books are completely chaste romances.

I know a lot of people have much stronger feelings about banned books than me. Thoughts? Stories? What’s the stupidest reason you’ve ever heard for a book being banned?

Austen and Bronte and Magicians

On October 3, 2012October 4, 2012 By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews11 Comments

My next book for the R. I. P. Challenge is The Magicians and Mrs. Quent by Galen Beckett, which mostly comes into the category in the book’s second part. I became interested because this was described as a blending of Austen and Bronte, in a fantasy world–and that’s exactly what it is!

The book is divided into three sections. Book One is told by three narrators in rotating chapters. We meet Ivy first, a young woman fascinated by magick [sic]. Her beloved father was a magician who has gone out of his mind; Ivy comes to realize that magick may relate to the cause, and also that he left her a riddle to solve, relating to vital work she must do. Rafferdy is another narrator, a bored and cynical nobleman interested only in amusement and determined to do no harm by having no meaningful effect on the world at all. Our third narrator is Eldyn, who is striving to create a better life for himself and his sister, but in the process falls into the power of a ruthless highwayman and revolutionary.

The personal stories of all three characters roll out against a backdrop of brewing revolution and a growing magical threat, which Ivy in particular must find a way to combat.

Book One has us very much in Austenland. Book Two takes a dramatic shift towards Bronte, when Ivy accepts a position as governess at Heathcrest Hall, a gloomy manor out on the moors. There’s a not too subtle resemblance in the premise to Jane Eyre, and Heathcrest Hall is presided over by Mr. Quent, who bears a not too subtle resemblance to Mr. Rochester. Book Two is strictly about Ivy, and told by her in first person. The book takes on a gothic feel, out on the misty moor where strange magick is afoot.

Book Three takes us back to the setting and narrative structure of Book One, as all the characters’ plotlines come to a head.

This book started slow for me, but I ended up really enjoying it. In the first section, I was mostly only drawn into Ivy’s chapters. Rafferdy and Eldyn are interesting, but they weren’t engaging me that much. The book picked up in the second section, when the plot gets more focused, and we get much more magick. (And I have no idea why it’s spelled with a K, but it is.)

The book is set in Invarel, which is a very obvious parallel to England. All the names are changed, but there are frequently details that are clear analogs; for instance, the brewing revolution centers around an obvious Bonny Prince Charlie equivalent. There is the difference, of course, of the presence of magical forces, which exist in a few different varieties. There are magicians who can work certain complex spells. There are illusionists, who mostly work their marvels in theatres. And there are witches, who have an affinity for the Wyrdwood, an ancient forest spread throughout the country and which, legends say, will fight back against its enemies.

All the magick is intriguing, although in a way what grabbed me the most was scientific (sort of). The other biggest difference between Invarel and England is that Invarel’s planet is in a solar system which operates very differently from ours. The crucial result is that they don’t have days and nights of set length. People have to constantly check their almanacs to see how long the day will be–maybe four hours of daylight, maybe twenty-eight. I was fascinated by the concept, and by all the details about how society can function under those circumstances. I kind of wish there had been more of that! I’ve seen at least one reviewer complain that it didn’t make sense and that’s probably true–but that didn’t worry me. It was just so interesting!

The world of The Magicians and Mrs. Quent is an intriguing one, and I was also drawn into the characters. As mentioned, it started slow for me, but Rafferdy eventually gains some depth and Eldyn’s plotline gets more intense. I enjoyed Ivy from the beginning; her family circumstances and her character are both reminiscent of Elizabeth Bennet. She’s a capable, intelligent, well-read young woman who is nevertheless constrained by her position in society.

I was essentially playing “spot the Austen character” all through Book One. Ivy’s parents and two younger sisters all seem drawn from the Bennet household, and you can also find Lady Catherine de Burgh, Mr. Collins, and even Mr. Palmer from Sense and Sensibility. There may be more–I’ve only read three Austen books.

I suspect this book is more fun if you’re familiar with both Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre, although I don’t think it’s essential. It draws from them for the characters, and the circumstances those characters find themselves in (Ivy especially), but the plot goes in a different direction from either book. If you don’t have the background knowledge, you could probably just take this as-is and be interested.

The style of the writing is also drawn from Austen and Bronte, although rarely in a heavy-handed way. You can see it right in the first sentence: “It was generally held knowledge among the people who lived on Whitward Street that the eldest of the three Miss Lockwells had a peculiar habit of reading while walking.” A few times I thought Beckett was trying too hard to make the dialogue sound Austenish and it came out stilted, but most of the time it’s a nice flavor in a very readable book. Except, that is, when Beckett picked up Austen’s teeth-gnashing habit of skipping lightly past romantic declarations without any dialogue! I always want to know what they said, not just the narrative fact that they said it! Sigh. On the plus side, near the very end of the book we get a little more Bronte-style adorable romantic teasing dialogue, so I was somewhat mollified.

All in all, I’d say, be warned that this may take some effort at the beginning, but it really is worth continuing. I recommend this if you like fantasy, and highly recommend it if you like Austen and Bronte. I know I’ll be going on to read the next two books! This one gives us resolution, but there are still mysteries to be explored. I may also be rereading Jane Eyre soon…

Author’s Site: http://wyrdwood.net

Other reviews:
Fyrefly’s Book Blog
Kid Lit Geek
Stewartry
Things Mean a Lot
Stella Matutina
Anyone else?