Solstice Wood-- Patricia McKillip-- Commentary, Morning Thoughts

Tom Thumb hitches a ride on a butterfly.

Solstice Wood by Patricia McKillip is a fantasy novel. I am not sure that I can review it properly because there were pieces that I did not quite comprehend, but I will try anyways. It is a myth set in modern times.

Sylvia Lynn is asked to return to Lynn Hall by her grandmother for her grandfather's funeral. There is an immediate sense of foreboding because her grandmother does not follow her grandfather's wish to be cremated and spread among the roses. I think this is an allusion to Scottish or English mysticism where a kind of quiet enlightenment occurs where a person grows roses and handles the flowers of the fields.

Sylvia is the prodigal daughter. Her grandfather left Lynn Hall to her in his last will and testament. She is supposed to take care of the old ramshackle house. You can imagine the house as a kind of big old Victorian ramshackle affair with big trees in the yard and meadows surrounding it. There are the remnants of a gun room and a library.

Sylvia comes home to a place that can best be called a threshold between the worlds, Lynn Hall. She is the heir to keep the others out. Lynn Hall leads into the world of fairy. Sylvia does not want to acknowledge her own half fae heritage. Her grandmother introduces her to the local ladies knitting circle. The knitting circles ties and sews up the barriers between the worlds. They weave, they sew, they quilt they crochet, they knit and they make home cooked meals.

To walk in the woods and meadows behind Lynn Hall is to take a chance of stepping into the other lands. One could fall down the hollow stump of a tree, walk along the river to enter the other world, or walk into a clearing and be someplace else.

The setting is kind of odd. Somehow, the author has transplanted the Scottish, Irish, or English fairyland into what appears to be the Appalachian mountains or some similar place. The Rowan family lives near the woods for example and many are half-fae. They may have taken a woman who was a doe as a wife in local legends. This can be a bit disconcerting.

Owen, Sylvia's cousin falls in love with a fairy. He goes off into the woods to other lands and is replaced by a changeling. Because of her half fae blood, Sylvia can see this and tricks the changeling into following her into the knitting circle where they bind it with thread.

The description of Owen in fairyland is very strange. It is almost like a fever dream or a hallucination. At times it is not very comprehensible. It is beautifully written, but quite hard to follow. When Sylvia goes into fairyland to rescue Owen for example, she sees Owen as a small frog.

There is a message about love and wonder in the tale. After Owen returns his fairy lover comes back to live with him in the human world.

I am not sure I can recommend this book. It is beautifully written, but at times incomprehensible to me. I found the setting to be a little confusing at times as well. If you really like fairytales and tales of mythical places, you might like this book. This book won the Mythopoeic award.

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I borrowed On Writing Well, The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction, Sixth Edition-- Revised and Updated by William Zinsser. So far, Zinsser has said one interesting thing on P.36. According to Zinsser you should read The Elements of Style by E.B. White at least once a year.

I have a day off today. It is Lincoln's birthday. I already read the morning paper had breakfast and did a little shopping. At one o'clock, I will be going down to my local library to drop off some books. They seem to open late most of the time.

I made the short trip to my local library. It was pretty quiet when I got there. I returned several books. A few were overdue and I had to pay a small fine. I usually pay a portion of my fines. Libraries when you reach a certain level of fines report you to credit bureaus.

Where I work, if you have more than fifty dollars in fines, your fines go to a collection agency and they report you to a credit agency. This is enough of a reason for most people to return their books. I really don't mind paying a small fine, it is still cheaper than buying the books. The librarian renewed the one book which I still had out.

I wandered around the library then signed on the computer for a brief stay of half an hour. I did a bit of blog stuff mainly. There was a big sign on top of the computer that said no chat rooms and no games on the computer. The librarian never checked to see what I was doing. Most of the time we don't check on this unless someone is bothering another patron with it.

There was an old lady sitting next to me looking up Cuban immigration to the United States. I tried to shuffle my chair away so I would have enough space to use the keyboard without bumping into her.

I left when a teenager wanted to sign on to do her homework. I have a computer at home. It was just a chance to work on a computer in an anonymous setting. I often think that the people who are using the computers at the library often have a computer at home.

When I came back home, it was snowing outside, and it was very cold. I wonder if we will get called to let us know we have a snow day tomorrow. Sometimes, we do.

Robin McKinley-- Sunshine-- Review

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Sunshine by Robin McKinley is an interesting novel. You might call it a lady vampire slayer story for adults. This book is a Mythopoeic award winner. Sunshine is a bakery worker, she bakes muffins, cakes, and wonderful cinnamon buns that to the people who come to her bakery are very magical. She lives a quiet life and the most excitement she has is a boyfriend who rides a motorcycle.

Then one day, she goes to be alone for a little while and makes a mistake. At this point in the novel, she is captured by vampires. We do not know that this world has the supernatural until she is caught. Then darkness is slowly brought into play. I really like how this is done by the author.

Sunshine uses her magical heritage to free a captured vampire who is supposed to dine on her and they escape together. I like that she tells the beauty and the beast story to Constantine, the vampire she is supposed to be a snack for.

Sunshine goes back to her muffin making world. At this point we learn, that the people who are inhabiting her cafe are rather odd. Her boyfriend Mel is covered with rune tattoos and many of the customers are SOF-- Special Other Forces whose job it is is to fight dark forces.

The setting is rather interesting. There has been a war between humanity and the others, vampires, werewolves, and demons. The werewolves and demons partially sided with humanity and the vampires are humanities mortal enemies. Constantine is different than most vampires, he is the vampire archtype you might see in the television show Angel, or the manga, Vampire Hunter D. In mystical terms he would be the hunter or woodsman who survives by drinking the blood of beasts.

I would call this novel a more mature version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Sunshine we learn is the embodiment of light, her heritage comes from a wizard father who she knows very little about. She seeks help and gets it from her old landlady a wardskeeper who helps her come into her power. The evil vampire Bo does not leave her alone, he sends a vampire after her but she kills it with a kitchen knife something which is not supposed to happen.

She with the help of Constantine go to battle the Bo who is the embodiment of corruption. Sunshine takes out Bos heart and destroys it in a burst of pure light while Constantine fends off Bo's minions.

The story is very well written. It is not as dark as most vampire novels because the main characters personality and abilities are the embodiment sunlight and positive energy in many ways. Constantine serves to balance out her life with the darker aspect of heroism. He is not evil, because he has chosen to be alone in the darkness and hunt animals.

I also like that not all of the SOF-- Special Other Forces are good guys, some of them want to keep her locked up to study for their own needs. Also, some of the characters are half-other. One of the SOF officers turns blue in private.

There is a librarian character Aimil who helps Sunshine learn a bit about vampires. She is also a half- breed passing as human. When she was little she had an extra set of teeth that were removed. The details in the writing are very well done.

This is a quick, enchanting light read. It is a better more adult version of the lady vampire slayer story. If you like fantasy books this is a good choice to read.

Briar Rose by Jane Yolen-- Review

Briar Rose by Jane Yolen is a retelling of the story of Sleeping Beauty. It is a story of survival set in World War II poland. Becca has collected mementos from her jewish grandmothers death. There is very little known about her grandmother other than she came into the United States as a refugee. Her family even assumes that she came before World War II.

Becca receives a wooden chest as part of her inheritance. In it are some papers and a gold ring with a black stone. She goes to investigate her past. She finds that her grandmother came in with very little information other than that she came from Kulmhof.

Throughout the book at the beginning of each chapter there is a bit of the sleeping beauty tale. However, there are some slight changes. the wicked fairy wears black boots and two silver eagles on her hat, and the thorns around the castle are sharp as iron. It is an interesting effect.

Eventually, Becca makes it to Poland where she travels to different places and eventually meets up with a different kind of prince, a prince who escaped Sachhausen and joined the partisans. He tells a tale of how her grandmother was saved by him during World War II and eventually escaped using his identity papers to get to America.

This is a different kind of novel. It mixes history with a fairytale to speak about and uncover thoughts that are hard to express in any medium. The story is quite interesting. We keep this book in the young adult section in our library. There is some fairly dark material in this book which is tastefully written about. This book is a Mythopoeic award winner. It is the third book which I have read from the Mythopoeic award winners list. It is very high quality myth fantasy.

The end of the book includes a list of recommended for lovers of high quality fairytales.

Mythopoeic Books, Debt Is Slavery by Michael Mihalik-- Review

I checked today to see which books came in for me from the Mythopoeic awards. The Djinn In The Nightingale's Eye by A.S. Byatt, The Wood Wife by Terri Windling, Briar Rose by Jane Yolen, and Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner have come in. I started reading Thomas the Rhymer today at lunch time. So far, I am enjoying it. I think Thomas the Rhymer will fall into a special category of fantasy novels, those without violence that are based on wits and trickery like Mary Brown's The Unlikely Ones.

Also, three of the books which I was going to read from Book Lust by Nancy Pearl are here as well, Freedom In Meditation by Patricia Carrington, Ph.D., Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonders by Lawrence Weschler, and The Professor And The Madman by Simon Winchester.

This gives me an awful lot of books to read.

On the train to work, during my commute, I read a thin book called Debt Is Slavery and 9 Other Things I Wish My Dad Had Taught Me About Money by Michael Mihalik. I really like this book because it is not a book by a financial analyst, but a set of offbeat personal philosophical experiences described by an Aerospace Engineer.

This book even contains a disclaimer in the front that says he is not a financial analyst. At the same time, it talks about a number of philosophical ideas about money. The first is that debt and especially credit card debt makes you into a slave.

The start of the book is Michael Mihalik's personal experience with going into deep credit card debt, then pulling himself out of it through hard work, overtime and thrift. He also describes how thrift saved him twice while he was out of work for extended periods. The time gave him to write a novel and go back to school.

It further expounds on ideas like possessions are a prison, and that money is not about happiness but about being free to do what you want with your life. There are descriptions about how it is better to invest in your skills than buy new possessions. There are statements like in 1950 the average size of a family home in the United States was 983 square feet, in 2004 it is 2, 266 square feet, there is an effective increase of size of 131%. This leads to more maintenance, paint, and hassle than in bygone years.

The author, Mihalik calls advertising a "Giant Marketing Machine" whose objective is to get you to buy things which you don't need to keep up with everyone else. There is the classic example of how it is best to buy a new car and keep it until the wheels fall off. This was my grandfathers philosophy, I find it vastly entertaining.

He also talks about how time is more important than money ultimately, you can't buy more time in the world. One of the best ways to control expenses is to equate how much time you have spent acquiring something before you buy it.

The book is quite small and densely written. There are not a lot of extra words. It is 123 pages long but every page tells you something about the authors philosophy.

I really enjoyed this book. It is the kind of book which will not sell a whole lot of copies in a bookstore. However, it is a choice item for a tightwad who will go to the library to check out items that tell them how to preserve their finances. There are a number of books like this. The Tightwad Gazette: Promoting Thrift As A Viable Alternative Lifestyle by Amy Dacycyzn which extremely thrifty people go to the library to check out is another example.

This book will never make the bestseller lists, in fact, it is different enough in its philosophy that it will probably only sell a couple thousand copies. But, some people may find it quite useful.

We get part of our funding from circulation figures. Some of the books which circulate or get used in libraries are different from what is being sold in bookstores.