Reading Notes, July 2020

I got onto a fantasy book kick this month, as you'll see.

Patricia McKillip's Riddle-Master trilogy.  I love how much Christian symbolism is in this series, and how many difficult questions can be approached using a fantastical worldview.  Arguably, fantasy is a prime opportunity for exploring topics and ideas that are difficult to place in our current reality.

Morgan is The Prince of Hed - a small, rural island of no particular importance.  He was born with three unexplained stars on his forehead, and a skill for answering riddles.  Who is he, really?  Is he just the ruler, or something more?  Why won't The High One, a semi-mythical being who controls the fates of the world, tell him why his parents died?  Or even talk to him?  What do the stars of his face mean and how had someone a thousand years ago known he would have them?  Morgan's quest for the truth has a lot of twists, but the overall themes of the fight for truth and whether our destiny is preordained for us are beautiful.

Another series!  C.J. Cherryh's Morgaine Cycle is another of those fantasy series just filled with Christian symbolism.  

I love the themes in these books - Can sin be 'worked off', the weight of sin on a soul, who, or what, is evil, and so forth.

Nhi Vanye i Chya is the bastard son of the ruler of the Nhi Clan, and he kills one half brother and disfigures another after years and years of torture at their hands, and in return he is outcast, ilin, forced to become the indentured servant to the first lord, liyo, who gives him food and a hearth.  Unfortunately for Vanye, this turns out to be Morgaine, an ancient witch doomed to travel between worlds via a series of 'gates', closing them as she goes, in order to prevent evil from seeping into the world.

Let's keep going with the symbolism, shall we?  This one is Margaret Mahy's Carnegie Medal winning YA novel.  I read this book decades ago, and could not remember the name of it.  Then a FB group of fellow bibliophiles came up with this title for me, and they were correct!  I read it in a night!  

Laura's younger brother is attacked by a demon and is slowly dying, and Laura must save him.  Wrapped up in this sacrifice are many, many little healings throughout the book.  The male protagonist, Sorensen, forgiving his birth mother for her abandonment.  Laura forgiving her father for his leaving the family and marrying again, and then forgiving her mother for seeking solace in a new romance.  Sometimes the greatest sacrifice is letting go of our right to be offended and hurt.

Diane Duane's first book in her Wizard series (I think she's up to #10 now!)  I cannot tell you how much I love this series for tweens/teens and up.  Duane's characters remind me very much of L'Engle's style of writing - in fact if the character of Meg was a wizard, she would be Nita.  Absolutely.  There's a sort of science/fantasy/growing up theme running through these deeply symbolic books.

In this much less well known book of L'engle's, we have two short fictional stories based on the author's imagining of what went on in Egypt when the Holy Family lived there waiting for Herod's death.  In one of the stories, the Christ Child befriends a camel and a thieving boy at the same time, and in the second he matches wits with the Sphinx herself, who is ancient and hungry for human flesh.  Both are wonderfully evocative of the gospels.

It's not a decent reading month without some non-fiction, and I read a few good ones this month!

Some very good points for writers in this book.  I think more established writers might already know a lot of what the authors mention, but that's to be expected since the book is subtitled "How to Build a Life as a Christian Writer".  It was a pretty quick read.

Another book by the same author, and this one is her most recent title.  Also a fairly quick read, and it resonated with me, of course, seeing as Stiller and I find ourselves in similar situations as the spouses of ministers.  Here's my Goodreads review.

Now, lest you think all I do is read books you can really sink your teeth into, let me help dispel that myth!  Kyra sent me the first three books in the Harry Dresden files, and it takes about a day to finish one of these!  

These are the first three in the Dresden Files series, which must be up to 16 at least.  Wizardly crime fighting in the gritty Chicago streets, written in that film noir detective style.  Entertaining, not thought-provoking at all, and if you are wondering if you'll be offended...you will be.  I mean, you'll laugh, but you will also probably be offended.  They aren't nearly so creepy as they look.  They're like...did you ever read the Callahan's books by Spider Robinson?

A pre-read for school, which I've decided is not what we need.  But Doyle writes so realistically about Ottawa that I feel I'm there, and this hard-working, mystery-solving, environmentalist Indigenous protagonist is busting open stereotypes left, right and centre.  I'm sure it would be perfect for someone, even it that isn't us.

Still continuing slowly and steadily in this one.  Written in email format, hilarious, nonfiction, a couple travelling to all of the national parks in the United States.  What's not to love?

My first Lord Peter Whimsy mystery, if you can believe it.  It is very much Wooster and Jeeves meets Agatha Christie.  So far, I like it!