Book Review - Winterhouse

 

Winterhouse was well-received in middle-school book circles, so when the current 9yo and 7yo suggested it as a read aloud, I said yes.  Here's what we thought!

The Good:

This is a very imaginative and interesting story with a lot of unique points to it.  You can tell that the author has researched his genre well, and is very familiar with other modern novels in the same age group - I'm thinking of Book Scavenger, Mr. Lemoncello's Library, etc.  The characters are fairly straightforward and don't necessarily grow during the story, but are good illustrations of their types.  I appreciated that between the two younger characters, the emotional roles were reversed from traditional tropes; the girl was bossy, difficult and authoritative while the boy was biddable, quiet and reserved.  The plot was intriguing and we honestly were not sure what would happen next, despite numerous clues and hints given, and there were lots of little rabbit trails that wound off into the distance, and that sort of thing appeals to us immensely.

The Bad:

I am usually pretty permissive about fantasy elements in fiction when it comes to children's books.  Magical creatures, witches and goblins and elves, make believe and pretend is all generally fine.  Which is good, especially if you're reading this level of book - because a lot of fiction for children involves elements of fantasy.

But where I start to feel uncomfortable is when the fantasy becomes dark, and it isn't always clear that it's still 'pretending '.  I felt this way, if you recall, reading The Boundless.  The line between fact and fiction was faintly drawn at points, and so when the story turned dark, it was harder to separate the truth easily in a child's mind.

And here we have the main issue with Winterhouse.  It wasn't dark in a deliciously creepy but child friendly way,  not was it 'traditional fairy tale dark', where evil is acknowledged to exist,  but is ultimately overcome by good.  This was just...weirdly dark for a kids' novel.  There's a coffin shaped box holding the half dead body of a dark arts practitioner that's carried around by her daughter in the hope of restoring the soul to the body.  The children are chased through the woods by that same disembodied soul, dark arts symbols are etched on a bridge, etc. etc.

Like so many modern books advertised for the 8-12yo set, the actual storyline is fine for the age group, while the content is probably too old.  

Book Review - The Thief Knot

This is the third book in the popular Greenglass House series.  In this one, we're following Marzana, who is introduced to us in book 2, The Ghost Of Greenglass House.   Marzana lives in a section of the city of Nagspeake called The Liberty of Gammerbund, which functions as a self-ruling sanctuary, and is populated by thieves and criminals of the more Robin Hood type.  Good thieves, you know.  Fighting against the tyranny of customs agents Deacon  and Morvengarde.  Smugglers,  dealers in information,  forgers, magicians,  sneaks.

Marzana, however, seems to think nothing interesting ever happens to HER in the Liberty, and so when a girl from Nagspeake is kidnapped and rumors start that she's been hidden in the Liberty,  Marzana disobeys her parents instructions to stay safe, and puts together a crack crew of friends to find her.  They call themselves The Thief Knot.

This was probably my favourite of the Greenglass House books so far.  The Liberty is wonderfully magical and bizarre and the storyline is fantastic.   There is more language in this one than the other two, and also a kiss on the cheek, but nothing that couldn't be edited if you needed it to be.

In the previous two books in this series we've read a lot about Milo's struggles with his adoption and his panic attacks.  In this book, we get the interior life of Marzana,  who feels left out from her parents' other lives as smugglers and underground agents, and who also has social anxiety and a fear of saying the wrong thing.   The author never gives us pat answers about these mental health issues or relationship complications,  but somehow still keeps the stories moving forward and the characters showing growth. 

My only real issue with this story focuses on a scene where Marzana expresses herself to the rest of the Thief Knot, in a totally justified way, and yet the other characters end up 'trumping' her painful outburst with issues of their own.  It struck me as a little thoughtless. 

In short, we loved it!

January 1, 2022 - The Great Reading List Re-Cap

 Happy New Year, y'all!

As a friend of mine mentioned on F-book, "If Betty White didn't want to live in 2022, this doesn't bode well for the rest of us."

My fingers are too worn out to be crossed, but please, Lord, let it be better.  It doesn't have to be perfect, but not 2021 level.

ON TO THE BOOKS!

According to Goodreads, I read 95 books this year.  My goal had been 100.  I'm pretty impressed with myself that I accomplished what I did, actually!  As always, my definition of a 'book' for the purposes of adding it to my list is fairly broad.  I don't count picture books or young children's books that I read aloud to the children.  I don't count collections of comics (unless I read the Complete Works of something), or anything that isn't a substantial example of its genre.  I do count graphic novels, YA books, stuff I read aloud, stuff I pre-read for the kids, stuff I read myself, e-books, print books, and I'd also count audio books if I ever listened to them, which I don't.

My shortest book was A Girl Called Echo - a graphic novel exploring Indigenous time travel.  It clocked in at 48 pages.

My Longest book was Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers - 501 pages!

32 of the books were classified as 'children's' or 'young adult' books and 63 were 'adult' books.  I never really understand those arbitrary designations but there you have it.

20 were nonfiction, and 75 were fiction.

My LEAST favourites of the year were these ones:

The Dan Harris book was a long, whiny ridiculous piece of garbage, and I wrote a fairly scathing review about it.  

Olive Kitteridge was very well written but just so harsh and dark and sad that it didn't appeal to me at all.  

The NYPL book was full of neither peculiar questions nor practical answers, thereby negating its whole point of being, and I just didn't like Tony Hawks.  No good reason, just thought it was a silly book is all.

My MOST favourite (new reads) were:

I hadn't picked up a Nancy Mitford before and I thought she was hilarious, witty and cutting in the best possible way.  The Pursuit of Love is the first in a trilogy (I only read the first two) and I thought it was the best.

Piranesi was absolutely outstanding.  I loved...I loved everything about it.  It was a little creepy, which usually doesn't appeal to me, but honestly if ever a storyline required an atmospheric eeriness, this was that story.

Gaudy Night is one of four Sayers that feature the Wimsey/Vane relationship prominently, and again I managed to read three of those books and thought this was the best of the ones I read.

Ella Minnow Pea had been on my to read list for years now, and I was so taken with it and how the author managed to not handle the topics he did with a heavy hand, which would have been all to easy.

Twice this past year I challenged myself to read a book 'blind'.  The first time, I went into a store and selected a novel based only on the cover illustration, with no other knowledge.  That gave me this one: 

 A very disturbed family consisting to two parents who put on performance art pieces and their two children, Child A and Child B, unwillingly roped into the pieces and eventually betrayed utterly by themselves, their relationships, their friends and finally, their family.  Imagine if The Royal Tenenbaums had all been deeply mentally ill and psychotic.  It was...it was a different book than I usually read, that's for sure.

For the second, I actually wrote an article about choosing a book totally without knowing what it was about.  Since The Family Fang was chosen for the cover, which gave me some control, I ended up picking this one by using Libby Overdrive and writing down the first five titles that came up under 'popular'.  Then I had my husband randomly pick a title.  Which is how I read this one:

I haven't read a Moriarty before.  I find it interesting that these sorts of plots are so popular amongst women - it's all spousal abuse and cheating husbands and disagreeable children.  Not really the sort of things I find myself drawn towards, frankly.  I mean, ANOTHER high society murder of rich white people?  It's all not really my cup of tea, I guess.  But I read it.  It wasn't a bad book.

And finally, only 8 of the books were read aloud to the children this year, which is my most disappointing statistic.  It was a rough year for read-alouds.  Let's hope that changes in 2022!

December 29th

Credit: Ivana Cajina via Unsplash

It occurred to me that this, this Right Here, is the first real time off I've had since I started working.  There were two days when I had to be absent while taking a child for a Covid test and awaiting the negative results, and there was one time I left a little early in order to sign our lease, and again a day I left a little early to arrange passport paperwork.  None of these really count as 'time off' in my books.  There were several days in a row I took off in order to be home with the children while David relaxed in the hospital pre-heart surgery.  Very relaxing, that.  But this time right now, this is my first real 'vacation'.

I'm spending it catching up on stuff.  

One of the first issues on the docket has been The Parking Problem.  It goes a little something like this.  We pay a lot of money for an apartment the size of a sneeze.  Said apartment does NOT come with parking.  Shocker.  You can, however, PAY more money on TOP of your rent for a parking space.  I believe it's something like $120 a month more for an outdoor space and $170 for an indoor space.  Something like that.  Whatever it is, it's  insane.  The outside spots won't actually FIT our minivan and I don't think it would be possible to back the sucker up.  The indoor spots are beside the dumpsters and are, if this is possible, even smaller than the outside ones. Smelly and Miniscule.

So...I went on a search for a Better Option, and I discovered the Baptist Church just down the road rented out their parking spots, which were the size of ACTUAL parking spots, for $90.  It means walking about 2 minutes down the road, but still...I'll do a lot of stuff to save $30.  The thing is that to get a parking spot we had to do a song and dance.  First, get them to respond to our enquiries, which finally happened.  They sent us the list of information they needed to create a parking pass, plus the email address to transfer the money to for the first month, plus the waiver owe had to sign and return electronically.

Issue the first!  No ink in the printer.  Off I go in my pajamas to the office supply store and back on the bus.  Why the bus, you ask?  BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE PARKING SO THE CAR IS AT MY MOTHER IN LAW'S SO WE DON'T GET TOWED.  Back home, install the ink, print the waiver, signy signy.

Issue the second!  The scanner driver has been deleted by...someone?  Something?  Who even knows.  Spend time trying to get scanner to work, can't figure it out, attempt to take a picture of the waiver instead.  Can only take a picture on my phone, so email to David, who then attaches to the email.

Issue the third!  What...is our license plate number again?  Dig out insurance paperwork, dig out everything, cannot find it!  Twenty minutes later...there it is at last.

Filled out, sent, deposit e-transferred.  Now we wait to hear back, I suppose.  In the meantime today was Do All The Laundry And Pay All The Bills Day.  It's my least favourite day.  One child complained that I was using their computer time to pay bills, and I gave them a nice, motherly lecture on how I was paying hydro...so the computer would work.  And paying internet...so the computer would work.  And paying renter's insurance...so the computer had somewhere to live.  Obviously they listened intently, understood intrinsically what I was getting at, and have changed their ways for the better.  They did NOT, clearly, roll their eyes at their mother and say "Yes, YES I GET IT".  Because that would be wrong.

December 26th

It's Dec. 26th, so I suppose it's acceptable at this point to reflect on the challenge I set myself to read 100 books this year. To cut right to the chase - I have not succeeded in doing this. I think I may be in the mid-90s, mind you, but I have not read 100 yet. WILL IT HAPPEN? Stay tuned.

Christmas this year is also strange. No tree (no room in our small apt.) no decorations (all still in storage) no family gatherings (Covid) and no 'usual things' like a Christmas eve service, an Advent wreath, or a walk to see the lights (mostly because I'm working so much that nothing else fits in our spare time) means that it felt just like every other day. I imagine it was an authentic 'non christian' Christmas, actually. All distilled to a dead bird and some wrapped sundries and the funny stories of our rude or elderly relatives.

We've added a hamster to the menangerie, which now consists of two adults, three children, an 18yo cat, a standard poodle, and a small, tyrannical rodent named Peaches. Peaches likes to poop on everything, and pee especially on me. Charming creature, really, and the absolute apple of his mistress' 7yo eye.

And finally, here are some pictures of the sky:

August 22

 Let's talk a bit about this garden I found.

1) I have no idea if I'm allowed to actually be in this garden.  I could ask, but where would the fun be in that?  Also I wouldn't really know who to ask, and also they might say no, which would be awful, and ALSO ALSO it SAYS 'Community Garden' RIGHT THERE on the sign.  I'm community, ain't I?

2) Whoever planted this garden subscribed to the 'scatter wide and deep' philosophy of plant management.  There are lovely, deep garden boxes filled with soil and....plants.  I'm not a horticulturist but my best guess is several packages of seeds marked 'salad mix' liberally spread amongst the tomatoes, beans, cucumbers and such, and a healthy dose of "Wait!  Doesn't Susan have a herb garden?  Ask her if she'd donate anything!"  Nothing has been watered much at all this summer, or possibly ever; you can tell from the lack of plant growth and the paltry returns.  The sage seems happy, mind you.  You know you're a negligent gardener when the sage is insane.

3) I'm not harvesting anything, because again...not my garden.  But I am making some executive decisions - y'all can't tell me you want to eat lettuce that flowered, went to seed, and then partially died.  I'm pullin' it.

4) I noticed tonight that some of the plants are trees with tags on them.  The tags read 'Serviceberry', and I happen to know those are edible.  The trees are too young to produce fruit, mind you, but they seem pretty healthy and are about 5' tall - so perhaps next year?

5) The children have taken to calling it 'The Secret Garden'.  It is, isn't it?  It will stay a secret, because we can only go in the evenings once the temperature has cooled enough to be outside, and by that point no one seems to be around.

Image by @leafoureaux via Unsplash

The Return

We moved, and we are here.  The move itself was long and hard and is blessedly already fading into memory and the edges of it are becoming fuzzy.  We arrived in the city, and stayed about 6 weeks with David's mother, which was also very challenging for everyone.  And then we signed a lease for a very tiny apartment, and we moved here.  Some of our stuff is here.  Much of it is not here and I still feel like we're camping out a bit with mattresses on the floor and such.  It's slow.

I've been at my job for about 2 months now.  It's fine - I don't love it but I don't hate it with a passion or anything.  I do my work, I come home, I get paid.  

***********************************************************************************

A few years ago I had a bout with agoraphobia.  For a few months it was almost impossible to leave my house, and even within my home I felt unsteady, unsafe and uncertain.  It was a deeply unhappy time for our whole family, and although I got better, it left its mark on me.

I feel that same unsteady, uncertain, unsafe feeling these days as well.  To some extent, this makes sense; after all everything in my life is completely different than it used to be a short time ago, and the pressures on me are fairly intense.  Especially intense for someone who lives with an anxiety disorder.  I have had brief, fleeting moments of wanting to hide, wanting to run away, wanting to curl up and not answer the phone or the door or the emails.  They have passed, but they might return.  I've also been very sad and depressed and overwhelmed these past two months - feelings that have been increasing as time goes on.  Some of this is likely my over-extending myself, some of it is my own perfectionism, some of it is probably forgetting to take medications on time, the extreme heat and humidity that make sleeping almost impossible, the lack of access to my counsellor, my current convenience-food-based diet, and any number of other factors.  

I've lived with my anxiety and depression for decades, and I know my brain and body very well by this point.  I don't **think** I'm heading for another downward spiral, but I know the signs to look for if I am.  Some days I feel like I have some space, some margin still there on the edges, and some days I feel like I'm moving around covered by a wet wool blanket.  It will pass, but it will pass like a glacier, leaving lots of potholes behind it.

What does a Christian do in this sort of situation, you wonder?  It's probably easier to say what a Christian SHOULDN'T do.  Or perhaps what I shouldn't do.  I shouldn't berate myself for a prayer life that has been stripped to the bare bones of "Lord, help, help, help".  I shouldn't refuse the small, insignificant step towards the light because it isn't the big, impressive one.  I shouldn't feel guilty for realizing that in every relationship, even one with the divine, a time comes when one party is completely coasting.  I am coasting.  God knows this, and I know this, and it is okay.  Eat the food, even if the food is a spoonful of cheez whiz.  Drink the liquid, even if the liquid is flat diet coke.  Sleep, even if you sleep in the clothes you wore all day.  Live the next day, the next step, the next breath - and do so, if necessary, cranky, unshowered, ignorant and tearful.  Coast, dear friend - it's okay.

All the same, I'm not quite so mired in shadow at the moment that I can't feel a desire for joy.  I've been trying to grasp tiny slivers of it as I see them.  I've been walking the dog, because exercise and sunshine are good for me, and walking down all the hidden slices of the city.  Today I found a secret garden, and this evening I went to it as well.  I have no idea if it's allowed, but I dug my hands in the dirt and weeded the beds and straightened the vines.  We'll go back tomorrow and do it again, breathing in the dirt smell, until someone tells us not to.  Considering the neglected state the vegetables were in, I think it's more likely they'll return to clear the beds in October and discover with amazement that 'fairies' were there before.  I might even hang up a bird feeder.

And I find joy in writing, so there may very well be more blogging around here for the next little while, as I process all the changes and come to a new equilibrium.