Once Upon a Bookshelf

It’s been 5 years since Tencendor was destroyed; 8 since Maximillian was released from The Veins; some two thousand years since Boaz and Tirzah distroyed Threshold. There is a new (and yet really old) danger dwelling in what was once Threshold; the pyramid has managed to rebuild itself, and carry Kanubai - Chaos - away from his imprisonment.

When Ishbel, archpriestess of the Great Serpent, is told that she must marry Maximillian, King of Escator, she goes very unwillingly. When Maximillian receivers her offer of marriage, he is wary to be marrying anyone who is involved with a group of priests and priestesses who see visions of the future by disemboweling men, but their lives seem to be intertwined from the beginning.

Maximillian, not only the King of Escator, is also the Lord of Elcho following, the man who will be called on when the world needs him most - and with Kanubai rising, now seems to be the time.

This is the first book in the Darkglass Mountain series, and is set in the same universe as Threshold, Beyond the Hanging Wall, The Axis Trilogy and The Wayfarer Redemption Trilogy. Many of the characters from Beyond the Hanging Wall are back, as are a few from The Axis Trilogy/The Wayfarer Redemption Trilogy. I haven’t read any of those books in a number of years, so I was a little bit rusty in my remembrance of what had been going on, but the book explained everything I didn’t remember. It was good to see familiar characters back again, and I have to admit that I actually liked Axis this time around (really did not like him in the previous books he was in).

This was by no means a piece of challenging literature.* But really, that’s part of its charm. I find Douglass’s books to be very comforting because for the most part they are very formulaic. The characters are very similar from series to series and the story line is very similar for a good portion of the books. The only book I had really found different thus far had been Beyond the Hanging Wall, and now The Serpent Bride I find slightly varying from the others as well - mainly because Maximillian is not a similar character to Axis, Boaz or Brutus.

It was an enjoyable read; kept me up late at night a couple of nights this week (I’m tired now!), and cannot wait to see how the story continues in the next book of the series.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream concluded the Once Upon a Time Challenge for me - with two days to spare. I didn’t completely stick to my plan, but I did read most of what I wanted to (and then some). The only one that I didn’t get around to finishing was Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, which I got half way through before getting distracted by other books. *cough*

I ended up reading the following books:

• Robert Holdstock’s The Iron Grail
• Jonathan Stroud’s The Bartimaeus Trilogy : The Amulet of Samarkand
• Orson Scott Card’s Enchantment
• Scott Lynch’s The Gentlemen Batard Sequence : The Lies of Locke Lamora
• Holly Black’s Valiant
• Neil Gaiman’s Coraline
• Ruth Manning-Sanders’ Scottish Folk Tales
• Francesca Lia Block’s Psyche in a Dress
• Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

I had so much fun with this challenge; I want to thank Carl for organizing and running the challenge. Not only did I get introduced to new authors that I now will need to read more of (Gaimon and Block), I revisited authors I had previously enjoyed (Shakespeare, Black, Card). I’ve now got a bunch of other books I need to add to my TBR list; most importantly I’ve also discovered a handfull of other blogs that I’ve added to my Bloglines feeds.

I was first introduced to A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the summer between grades six and seven. Unsurprisingly, I saw the play at Stratford (twice that year), and had one of those Shakespeare for kids type of books with this play in it. It was my second exposure to Shakespeare, and after this I was completely enamoured.

I discovered something interesting while reading the introduction of the play this time around. This play was first published in 1600; when it was republished about 20 years ago, there had been a few changes made to the play - mostly stage directions and punctuation. The copy I have is an amalgamation of these two versions (the first one has the better text, apparantely, while the second has better punctuation), which “may in some ways appear unfamiliar to those used to the ‘accepted’ text, but it reproduces as closely as possible the text used in Shakespeare’s own playhouse.” (I have the Penguin Popular Classics edition of the book, if anyone was interested. I’m thinking I might want to pick up another copy of the play now to figure out the differences.)

While not one of my favourite Shakespearian plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Puck is not only one of my favourite Shakespearian characters, but he's also one of my all-time favourite fairy characters. He just completely epitomizes everything I believe a fairy should be. He's magical and oh, he is so mischievious. Plus, he has all of the best lines in the play, my favourites being Lord, what fools these mortals be! (which I just noticed Chris quoted this evening in his post about this play as well), And those things do best please me // That befal preposterously and parts of his last soliloquy:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this (and all is mended)
That you have but slumber’d here,
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream.

Psyche in a Dress is a modern retelling of some of the familiar stories from Greek Mythology. It begins very similar to the story of Cupid (Eros) and Psyche - Eros spends every night with Psyche, but never lets her see him. One night, after being urged on by her sisters, Psyche lights a candle to see what Eros looks like, and wakes him by dripping wax on him. Eros flees, and Psyche undertakes a journey to get him back. Block’s story deviates for a while, but eventually returns back to the myth when Psyche is working for Athena, trying to win Athena’s son back. Athena isn’t the nicest of people to work for, and gives Psyche all kinds of tasks to do before she is finally reunited with Eros. (I was impressed that Block even included ants helping Psyche with her work!)

As mentioned above, this retelling does deviate from the real myth, in that on Psyche’s journey in Block’s story, Psyche becomes different mythological characters, and has relationships with other characters from mythology (she is Narcissus’ Echo for a while, Orpheus’ Eurydice and Hades’ Persephone) before being reunited with Eros. It was fun to see how Block worked in all those myths into one story.

My friend Sabrina is a big Francesca Lia Block fan, and has mentioned to me a couple of times that I should read something she’s written. Like the majority of recs that I get, it took me a while to actually get one of her books… and I have to say, now, that I really thoroughly regret that it took me this long.

This book was so different than any YA and most mythology that I’ve read, and it was quite refreshing to read something different. While I found the feminism aspect of the writing to be a little bit preachy, I enjoyed the book thoroughly. I loved how the main character started out as Psyche, and by the end of the book she’s refering to herself as Demeter.

I’m not normally one for poetry or free verse or whatever form this book was written in, but it flowed really well; I found that I followed it easily, and my mind didn’t wander off (which is, sadly, often the case when I read stuff similar to this). Maybe part of the reason is that two of my favourite greek myths were worked into this book - the story of Psyche and Eros, and the story of Persephone and Hades. (I’m now wanting to go and reread one of my Greek mythology books.)

I’ve been quite busy lately so haven’t posted much non-book stuff recently. Been up to some freelance stuff, which has been eating up some of my time, and I’ve been emersed in the world of reading (just finished up Francesca Lia Block’s Psyche and have been delving into A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but will post more about those later). In a little bit I’m going out to play euchre with the euchre group I joined at meetup.com, and am quite looking forward to that.

My brother graduated (with honours) from college on Thursday, so I went down to Toronto to see that. I’m so proud of my little brother! He’s become quite the gentleman these days, and his girlfriend is very sweet. So yes, Thursday was a lot of fun.

I realized this week that I had no summer work clothes, so spent too much money shopping this morning. But, I also bought some very fun fabric to make a bathrobe (again, from Amy Butler’s In Stitches book). I’m hoping to get a good start on that tomorrow, but we’ll see with everything else I want/have to do whether I actually get around to it.

I’ll be heading to Montreal over the Canada Day weekend to visit Paul. I’m both excited and a little anxious about it - flying out from an airport I’ve never been to before isn’t the most comforting of experiences for myself. I fear it will end up like the last time (and first time) I went flying on my own - I went out west (British Columbia) to visit my aunt, and the flight was delayed a long long time, and I missed my transfer, and the people in the first airport didn’t give me a boarding pass for the second plane, and then they lost all my luggage. Ugh. At least this time, it’s only one plane I have to take.

I’ve also been looking for some book plates to purchase, to use on the reference books I keep at work, but don’t like anything that I have seen. So, I’ve decided that if I have time tomorrow (tomorrow is getting busier and busier as every second passese by) I’m going to open up Illustrator and make my own. I mean, what’s the point of being a Graphic Designer if you don’t get to make pretty things for yourself?

And the most exciting thing of all? CBC is going to be showing the new series of Doctor Who starting on Monday. Huzzah for being able to finally watch the Doctor on television again, instead of via YouTube and the like.