Saturday Snapshot: A Small Foray into Gardening

The weather is warming up, and I am attempting to grow things.  Tomatoes, in fact, because I eat a lot of tomatoes…and they seemed do-able.  I live in an apartment and the absolute only place to put plants is on the landing outside my second-story door.  So I went to the farmer’s market two weeks ago (this would have been last week’s post, but Mr. Crawford pre-empted it), and…here we are.

I didn’t have the slightest idea what kind of tomato plant to buy.  But the guy at the farmer’s market told me Sungolds are sweet, and I bought a Violet Jasper because, um, I liked the name…  So it’s all rather an experiment.  We’ll see how it goes!

If it goes well, you’ll be seeing more pictures.  And, of course, if it goes badly, we will never speak of this again…  But so far, I’m enjoying my (very) small foray into gardening!

Visit At Home with Books for more Saturday Snapshots.

Blog Hop: The Pleasures of Rereading

This week’s Book Blogger Hop question is particularly relevant to my recent reading…

What was the last book you reread?  Or name a book you would like to reread.

Since one of my reading goals for the year is to revisit old favorites, there’s been quite a lot of this going on…especially as it’s Once Upon a Time season, and a lot of my old favorites are fantasies!  Recent rereads include:

The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley

The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George

Chalice by Robin McKinley

Links all go to reviews.  The next book I reread will probably be Heart’s Blood by Juliet Marillier, which I have conveniently sitting on my shelf…

In the meantime, a thought on rereading: “There’s nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over.  When you do, the words get inside you, become part of you, in a way that words in a book you’ve only read once can’t.” – Gail Carson Levine

Heir to Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier

One of my goals for Once Upon a Time was to continue my way through the Sevenwaters series by Juliet Marillier.  It’s a wonderful series that has been taking me far too long to read!  I just finished Heir to Sevenwaters, and can happily report that it’s my favorite of the series so far.

This could possibly be read independently of the first three, but there would be spoilers for the earlier books, and sorting out the family members and their various backgrounds and context could be confusing without knowing the first three books.

The heroine of this story is Clodagh, one of the daughters of the Chieftain of Sevenwaters (and if you lose track of the family tree by this point in the series–I did–there are helpful guides at the beginning of the book).  Clodagh considers herself a rather dull, domestic type, unlikely to do anything of any great excitement or depth.  When her newborn baby brother is kidnapped, however, she must set off on a quest to rescue him from magical forces.  And meanwhile there’s the question of Cathal, a young man who plainly has some connection to the recent turmoil, but whether for good or ill is much harder to say.

This is Book Four, placing us beyond the original Sevenwaters Trilogy which all tied more closely together.  It felt slightly removed from the first three, in tone and focus.  Certainly it’s still part of the series, still in the same world, but it feels a little bit lighter and a little bit more focused.  Of course, when I say “lighter,” that doesn’t mean there isn’t still dark magic and grim adventures!  But it deals less with sweeping forces that will decide the fate of entire countries, and the magic has taken a less mysterious turn.

The magic in the previous books was certainly present, but there was a strong Otherworldly mystique to it.  We saw the magic folk mostly as very cerebral, very distant figures who drift on the edges of human affairs.  This book had more of  a straight fairy tale or folklore feel to it, with some elements reminscent of the ballad of Tam Lynn, and the magical creatures more resembling fairies or leprechauns of folklore.  I love fairy tales, so I enjoyed this brand of magic.

I liked Clodagh quite a bit, as I always have a soft spot for heroines who don’t realize their own strength.  I really liked Cathal as the book developed and we learned more about him.  Slight spoiler (though not much) to say that I inevitably loved him because I have an equally strong soft spot for grim, forbidding heroes who are hiding hearts of gold.  The romance fell together a little easily, but for the most part it was an absolute delight.

There are some clever plot twists in here that I don’t want to give away, and some very clever use of stories-within-a-story.  I love books that feature the power of stories, and of folk lore as the key to a riddle or the answer to a quest.  The novel is immensely engaging throughout, and I found it very difficult to put down during the last 150 pages or so (a common feature of Marillier’s writing, by the way).

So: unknowingly strong heroine, gruff but good hero, fairy tale elements and the power of stories.  Yeah, this is definitely my favorite so far…

Author’s Site: http://www.julietmarillier.com/

Other reviews:
Gilded Page Reviews
Zeitgeist Reviews
Caressing the Muse
Me and My Books
Anyone else?

Buy it here: Heir to Sevenwaters

The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley

Continuing recent trends, I reread The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley for Once Upon a Time, and for my goal to reread old favorites.  I’ve no idea when I last read this, but it may have been middle school.  By now, it’s like an entirely new book–not a bad thing, when it’s by one of my favorite (but not prolific enough!) authors.

The heroine of the story is Harry, who travels from what seems to be loosely Victorian England, out to the edge of the empire.  The Homeland has never quite conquered the desert and hills of Damar, where the natives still follow the old ways–and are rumored to have magical power.  When Harry is abducted by the Damarian king, she begins to forge a new identity among a foreign people she’s strangely drawn to–and finds a role in their coming war with the North.

I feel like this plot summary makes the book sound like Indian Captive, which it isn’t at all…but telling more would give too much away.

I like Harry as a protagonist–she’s intelligent and capable, and always puts on a strong appearance even when she’s secretly unsure.  She makes some leaps in learning and skills that are, um, improbable to say the least, but there’s a magical explanation so I’ll give that a pass…  McKinley also succeeds in making the Damarian king, Corlath, into a sympathetic character, when he very easily might not have been at all.

The romance comes slightly out of left field, but…it feels like it makes sense when it arrives, so I’ll accept that too.  Slightly sudden romances are a recurring feature of McKinley’s writing…

Besides lots of magic and swordfighting and epic legends, possibly the coolest part of the story is Harry’s animal companions.  She has the world’s most amazing horse, and if that’s not enough, there’s a wildcat too!

It was funny reading this right after Fellowship of the Ring, because in some ways the writing style seemed even more Tolkien than Tolkien himself–more what I expected Tolkien to be.  And by that I mean that there is considerable detail given to what the landscape looks like, the clothing styles, the exact details of saddles…  Most of the time that was all right and even interesting, and mostly the book still moved at a reasonable pace.

The only real trouble I had was at the beginning, and “trouble” might be putting it strongly.  It’s just that there’s a fair bit of set-up explaining the political situation and Harry’s personal past, and it all comes out rather dry.  This is particularly funny because McKinley is known for throwing readers in without much backstory or explanation…but this was an early book.  Evidently her writing evolved.  So if you pick this one up and find it slow, at least go on until Harry’s abducted–I found it picked up considerably then.

This book has made me very much want to reread The Hero and the Crown, which I only remember marginally better.  That one is a prequel, focusing on legendary characters who are frequently referenced here, and I look forward to reading their story.

This book also made me want a really amazing wildcat companion, but that want could be a bit more difficult to satisfy…

Author’s Site: http://www.robinmckinley.com/

Other reviews:
Lisa Godfrees
Bookshop Talk
Tor.com
Anyone else?

Buy it here: The Blue Sword

Saturday Snapshot: With Love, Michael Crawford

I had very exciting mail this week…

But before I get to that, let me tell you a story, if I may.  I’ll give you the short version.  About eight years ago, a friend loaned me a copy of Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera, and a CD of Webber’s musical.  I wasn’t all that into the book, but I liked the soundtrack.  And so an obsession was born.

A couple years after that, after a lot of delving into Phantom versions and who-knows-how-many times through the soundtrack, another friend suggested I find Michael Crawford’s other CDs.  Crawford was the original Phantom in London and Broadway, and his is the voice on the soundtrack.  As my friend suggested, listening to his other CDs would be like listening to the Phantom sing other songs–and it was!  And so a new obsession was born.

I now have all of Crawford’s CDs because, well, he’s amazing.  Somewhere along the way I stopped hearing the Phantom when Crawford sang and started hearing Crawford when the Phantom sang…if that makes any sense!

Recently I had an opportunity to mail an item in for a personalized autograph.  And so, exciting mail arrived this week…

I could have had my Phantom soundtrack signed…but I suspect Crawford signs a lot of Phantom CDs!  And I wanted this one anyway, because it’s my favorite.  Or to be more precise, the last song on the CD, “A Piece of Sky,” is mind-blowing, life-altering, unbelievably amazing.

So I’d say that’s the most exciting mail I’ve had in, hmm, a long time.  Couldn’t resist sharing!

Have a wonderful weekend, and visit At Home with Books for more Saturday Snapshots!