…that Seraphina was reviewed in the Washington Post! I guess I can’t not link to that.

Rachel Hartman’s ‘Seraphina’: Rich tale about dragons.

Came across this nice review today at The Bookbag. I am so tickled that the book is “classy”, especially after all my filking has other people calling me “the Weird Al of YA”. But y’know what? I’m comfortable with my contradictions. I can be both.

I’m afraid I have a bad mood to sort out. But all is not lost! Here’s Firth of Fifth, by Genesis, and that improves the world on several fronts at once. Isn’t that piano solo at the beginning the most gorgeous thing ever? And that line (or possibly pair of lines) — “He rides majestic, de blah de blah”. Almost doesn’t matter what comes next, “he rides majestic” is perfectly sufficient.

Back later. Sometime. In all likelihood.

I’m on a plane today, darlings – and really, the rest of the week will be kind of a wash – but here’s something to tide you over until I’m back next week (maybe with more YES! How can I say no?).

A review of Seraphina at Operation Awesome. Thank you, Amparo!

This reminds me of something my sister used to say: “I don’t just use my powers for good. I use them for awesome.” Let us all strive to do the same.

Until Monday, friends!

I saw this video quite some time ago, forgot all about it, and then was just reminded of it recently. It’s Japanese martial artist (and all-around Renaissance man, apparently) Genki Sudo dancing to his own music. It is just ridiculously happy-making.

Ah, I love dance! This is dance doing the very best thing dance can do: giving us new insight into a piece of music, into the human body’s context within the world, and into the capabilities and meanings of the human body itself.

This has so many contrasting layers, man and machine, uniqueness and universality, emotion and impassivity.  Even just fast and slow. I come away with new understandings and new respect every time I watch this.

 

My friend Els (who I’ve mentioned twice now this week! Hi, Els!) sent me the link to Joshilyn Jackson’s blog post, “Launch Day“. I have a feeling I’m going to want to read that again on July 10th.

The money quote, to me:

I love this book. I am proud of this book. I think it is funny and hopeful and I bravely went down deep into the salty black mines of my own mental illness and tried to make it also truthful as I used the tale to wrestle with the questions that drive my life. And today, I have to stop all that, and set it down, and walk away, and see who picks it up.

The process of setting it down begins earlier than that – at least, it is for me – but yeah, I haven’t set it down completely yet. I still find myself gazing longingly into it, reliving bits, patting phrases on their little poetic heads.

But. The day is coming.

A great piece of advice from The System.

I know that looks like a cartoon about bicycles, but it’s not exclusively about bicycles. It’s about any situation where someone is mad or defensive.

It’s like Yoda, man. On a bicycle.

Well, friends, the holiday season is upon us. I shall be taking a break from this space for the next couple weeks, that I may celebrate Saturnalia with my family. It’s a full-contact holiday, and will take up all my time for a while.

I tried to find a good Saturnalia song to share with you, but this silly thing is really all there is:

Whatever you celebrate, have a good one. See you in 2012, if not a bit before.

 

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

(I look at these five stars and think, no way. This book cannot be measured with stupid little stars.)

(I will just mention, too, that there are spoilers ahead. This is a book worth not being spoiled, so please do read it first before reading my review. You’ll need a box of tissues, and your blankie.)

As always, I start from my own eccentricity: I am interested in the Monsters of the Mind. We all have them, the Grendels, the Keepers of the Eternal Shame, the beasts blocking the exits in the dark rooms of our neuroses. Their identification and eradication is a particular hobby of mine; you may picture me as a grizzled old gunslinger, hunting them down and shooting them daid.

That was my preconceived notion, going into this book. Having heard merely that it was about a boy with a dying mother who is visited by a monster, I thought, “Here be Grendels, sure enough! I’ll get my gun!”

And indeed, there IS a Grendel in the book, but it’s not the eponymous monster. It’s the nightmare monster in the bottomless pit, the shame so terrible it will surely kill Connor if anyone ever finds out about it (or so he believes – shame monsters cannot really kill us, and that is a secret worth knowing).

No, the main monster in this book was entirely surprising to me, something I don’t usually think of as monstrous, but of course it is. Of course. He’s The Way the World Is, personified (monstrosified?). The Truth, who is the opposite of Shame (who is always, ALWAYS a liar).

As I was working on this review last night, I got really stuck trying to talk about the monster, because of two things. One, part of the beauty of a story like this is that the reader gets to decide what the monster really is, and so all my attempts to say, “The monster means THIS!” are necessarily going to fall flat and miss the mark. And two, the thing that the monster is TO ME, is hard to talk about in any kind of straight line.

(Everything I say from here on out is predicated on a big “TO ME”, ok?)

The monster is the truth, but the truth often encompasses a paradox. The yew is poisonous, and it can heal. The boy can’t let go unless he holds on. Bad men can be good kings or healers; good people come to bad ends that they deserve (and not getting what you deserve can be a miscarriage of justice or a mercy). Being visible can be lonelier than being invisible, but being seen is crucial (that was where I cried hardest, that note from Lily). There can be redemption (and connection!) in destruction. The world is unfair, but there is a fairness to the unfairness and a comfort in the impersonal nature of it all.

This was a very deep and spiritual book with no mention whatsoever of a deity, a book that speaks to the true heart of the experience without telling you what conclusion you’re supposed to draw.

(And there’s parts of it I’m still mulling over. What we think doesn’t matter? Really? I can bend my mind around to kind of getting that – with a great deal of sleight-of-mind THINKING – and I’m still not sure I agree. I suspect it’s a terminology issue, and that I DO agree if he phrased it differently.)(Sorry, getting hung up on nothing, as usual)

Anyway, the book is beautiful and absolutely gutting. I cried, though maybe at weird places. That note from Lily, as I mentioned, but also the moment where his grandma gets angry because she couldn’t find him — because she was WORRIED about him — and it’s finally clear she cares.

Reading reviews of this, there are a lot of people’s stories about loved ones who’ve died, how this book brings it back, how this book would have helped. And I won’t pretend I haven’t thought about various deaths (not just of people, either) during and after. And I have to wonder, because I’m always wondering stuff: how much sense would this book make to a kid who hasn’t been through the fire? Some, certainly. Note that I’m NOT planning to read this to my eight-year-old, because I think he’d be absolutely wrecked. He’s a sensitive kid. The sadness would come through, no question, but would the wisdom? I don’t know; I kind of suspect not, that you can’t really grasp these lessons until you have been a veteran of this particular war, but it might vary with the individual. I’m not going to run the experiment, so we’ll just have to content ourselves with speculating.

My own novel’s dedication page is in memoriam to a friend who died two years ago. He was part of my inspiration for dragons taking human form; he was our Irish teacher, cantankerous and scary smart, and he looked like a dragon to me. I am still sad that he never got to read my book.

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[The following public service announcement is part of my sentencing, along with folding several loads of laundry, making lunch, and buying an external hard drive. And believe me, it’s ALL better than having two months’ work flushed down the toilet.]

Hey, kids! Back up your work!

I just about had a heart attack yesterday. Our main computer – the one I’m writing the sequel on – would not boot up again after being turned off.

For one horrible moment I feared I’d lost everything.

Once I calmed down a little, I realized I had e-mailed myself the file – 10 days ago. A lot  has happened in the last 10 days, but it was better than losing everything. Then I remembered that I’d e-mailed the most recent chapters to a critique-buddy just two days ago. I could surely piece everything back together; I wasn’t completely screwed, but it was a close thing.

Then Scott came home and fixed the computer, because he is the God of Physics and all must obey his Righteous Laws. Or some crap. That’s not quite how he told me to phrase it, but you get the idea.

Anyway. Now we have an external hard drive. And I will back up my files whenever I remember to every single day. And I will be grateful for my husband until he stops bugging me about it just like I always am, every day, anyway.