Once Upon a Bookshelf

When sneaking around her house one evening, Wendy Darling sees her father kissing another woman. This event, along with the fact that Wendy’s father has gone bankrupt and lost this job, starts off the breakdown of the Darling family. Her father takes to drinking a lot, her mother is a frivolous thing who doesn’t realize they are in financial problems (or that her husband is having an affair), and Wendy’s younger brothers are too young to comprehend what’s going on.

I really wish the cover of this book hadn’t said that it was “inspired by Peter Pan,” because I spent most of the book trying to discover how exactly Peter Pan inspired this book, and for the life of me I can’t figure it out.

You see, I pick up these books that are based on other literary universes because every once in a while you find something so imaginative and original that only makes what it is based on more endearing. It’s just getting through everything else to get to that one shiny book that’s always hard.

Not that this was a bad book; if I pretended that the children weren’t named Wendy, John and Michael (because as far as I can see it, those names are the only similarities to Peter Pan - the characterizations were so… off) then I enjoyed what I was reading.

Since I moved a couple of weeks ago, I’ve had a very hard time getting into a book. I have at least a half dozen books on my night table that I’m about 3 chapters into, and haven’t been able to go any further. It’s frustrating because I know I will enjoy these books once I get past the third or fourth chapter, but just to push myself past that point… ah, it’s hard.

So, I went on an adventure to get myself a brand new library card in a brand new city, and oh what a wonderful thing that resulted in! Because I picked up The Stolen Child, and it was one of those books where I was hooked from the first few sentences:

Don’t call me a fairy. We don’t like to be called fairies anymore. Once upon a time, fairy was a perfectly acceptable catchall for a variety of creatures, but now it has taken on too many associations.

The Stolen Child is about changelings. Hobgoblins.

Little Henry Day runs away when he’s seven years old, and is snatched up by hobgoblins; one of the troupe of hobgoblins becomes Henry, with none of his family the wiser about it. This book tells the stories of both Henry’s. The original Henry becomes Anyday, and his story is about remembering who he was before he became a hobgoblin. The other Henry’s story is about trying to forget about being a hobgoblin, but trying to discover who he was before he became a hobgoblin. Hum. Any similarities here?

This was one of the better contemporary “grown-up” books I’ve read in a while. The narration was really good, and it was a little surprising to me that this is Donohue’s first novel. I’m interested to see what else he comes up with in the future.

It’s delightful how two books that show almost the exact opposite opinions on a subject, two books that evoke completely opposite emotions and reactions, can both be so wonderful. The whole time I was reading this book, I was thinking about Peter Pan. In Peter Pan, the thought of eternal childhood seems like an adventure, something we all (okay, maybe just me) wish we could have, and I always am left with a feeling of pure joy when reading about their happenings. In this book, the hobgoblins are stuck in almost permanent childhood until they become a changeling and switch with another young child. (I say almost, because while their bodies stay the same age, their spirits and souls still tend to age.) And yet, I felt no joy, but just strong pity throughout the whole thing. These hobgoblins WANT to be grown up, but can’t do anything to change the long wait they have to face.

It’s unusual for me to love reading a book so much that just made me want to cry out of sympathy for the characters a good portion of the time, but love it I did.

C.S. Lewis is one of the very few non-fiction Christian writers that I can stomach. Rachel has written a wonderful (if short) article about him for her local paper.

If I wasn’t so busy with real life right now, I would have totally signed up for Carl V.’s R.I.P. Challenge. Unfortunately, I had to refrain for the time being. Alas. But as a lot of bloggers seemed to be reading about vampires lately, I decided I wanted another vampire book (because I haven’t read enough of those lately anyway, pfft).

Van Helsing is one of the characters in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This journal starts a couple of months before the story of Dracula, and ends a couple of months afterwards. At first, Van Helsing really doesn’t believe in vampires, but when he’s visiting a friend and watches him be attacked and killed by a vampire, he has no choice to believe in them. At this point, Van Helsing takes on the mission to prevent the spread of vampirism. (Erm, perhaps “mission” wasn’t the correct word to use as I now have the Mission Impossible theme stuck in my head.)

I thought some of the best parts of this book were the foreword, footnotes and afterward. It amused me to no end that the author was trying to convince me that Van Helsing wasn’t a fictional character, but was a real person. Kupfer makes it sound like his contemporaries have been mocking and ridiculing him because of the fact that a journal he found in an attic belonged to a real Van Helsing that really hunted vampires.

Overall, the book was alright. Nothing super special, but a good light read. The vampires here were much eviler than most of the other vampires I’ve been reading about lately, which was such a nice change. Lisa mentioned in her blog not too long ago about how vampires are usually no longer considered to be the monsters they really are, but things in modern culture focus more on how they are romantic and sexy… Well, I had high hopes that this book wouldn’t focus on the sensual aspect of the vampire, but more on the scary parts, and for the most part I wasn’t disappointed.

Or rather, on organizing bookshelves according to Pantone Colours.