6th Annual Canadian Book Challenge

John Mutford over at the Book Mine Set has been running an awesome challenge that I had to join: read 13 Canadian books in one year, from July 1 (Canada Day, for all my overseas readers) to July 1.

I've been trying to review a Canadian book every month, but I've been pretty spotty about it, so this external motivation will be good for me. Plus, his website is an inexhaustible source of Canadian book suggestions, so I no longer have any excuse not to find a Canadian book I want to read.

My first entry is going to be a three-for-one deal: it's a Victorian adventure series called The Agency, by Y. S. Lee. (I suppose technically I didn't read it within the July 1 to July 1 time frame, but I think what counts is when the review goes up. In any case I intend to read more than 13 books, so this shouldn't skew my results unfairly!) Stay tuned!

Genius is the new sexy: Lord Peter Wimsey, Doctor Who, and Benedict Cumberbatch

I haven't been blogging about YA or middle-grade books lately, because I've spent the past month working my way through Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. I can't believe I hadn't encountered this character before. Lord Peter Wimsey is the Scarlet Pimpernel meets Sherlock Holmes, a foppish, fool-about-town who notices everything and sees the patterns everyone misses, and to whom everyone talks freely because he seems so harmless. And he has the brilliant Bunter as his manservent. Sayers writes long, complicated mystery plots--each of them very different--each plot uniquely suited to the specific setting, whether a Scottish fishing village or a London advertising agency or a woman's college at Oxford. She can be gently humorous or scathingly satirical about the society her mystery plot exposes; as with all good mysteries, her stories are really about the failings and foibles of humanity.

But Lord Peter, oh, Lord Peter! He drives too fast and talks too much and is scarred by his time in the War. With his compassion and arrogance, his precision and recklessness, his deep melancholy and his passion for life--I'm convinced that he is the inspiration for Doctor Who. Is there a Doctor Who fan out there who's read Sayers? What do you think?

What got me thinking in that direction is that the crush I have on Wimsey is the same kind of crush I have on Doctor Who. It's not so much that they're good looking (I mean, yes, David Tennant is good-looking, and Matt Smith is pretty cute, I'm not trying to say they're not), but what I love them for is what they say and do: their brilliant flashes of inspiration, their ruthless investigational styles, their determination--and ability--to save the world. (A couple of actors have played Wimsey--I haven't seen any of the adaptations yet, but here's a blog with photos. I have to agree with the blogger that Peter O'Toole would have made an excellent Wimsey.)

It's the same reason I'm in love with Benedict Cumberbatch--just looking at a picture of him I wouldn't say he's the sexiest man out there, but watching him play Sherlock--the expressiveness of his face as he ponders and discovers and is delighted at being proved right--not to mention his eyes, he has gorgeous eyes--I would not kick that man out of bed.

Wimsey also reminds me of another favourite fictional genius, Miles Vorkosigan (also a Lord--and hey, so is Doctor Who*! Something about having power and using it for good is also pretty darn attractive in a man, wouldn't you say?)

And, by the way, Cumberbatch is a simply brilliant actor. I saw him play Frankenstein, and he was frighteningly convincing. Not that it was a scary play--it was a wonderful adaptation that explored all the themes of power and knowledge and what makes us human. Johnny Lee Miller was superb as the monster (I'm running out of superlatives!). I'm sad that I missed the showing of the alternate production (Cumberbatch as monster, Miller as Frankenstein).

*I was trying to find this clip from The Girl in the Fireplace: "This is my lover, the King of France." "Yeah? Well I'm the Lord of Time."

Benedict Cumberbatch in Frankenstein

Does anyone else think that sounds totally cool? Who is Benedict Cumberbatch, you ask? Oh, you poor soul. Go now and watch BBC's Sherlock (first series is on Netflix).

Now, can you imagine him playing Dr. Frankenstein? Oh, yes! But it gets better: can you imagine him playing Frankenstein's monster? You see, last year, the National Theatre in London put on a production of Frankenstein starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller, but the cool thing was that on alternate nights the actors took turns playing Frankenstein and the Monster. What an interesting approach to the play. What an acting challenge!

Now, this might be just another story of why I wish I lived in London*, but it turns out there is a chance for those of us on the other side of the world: they filmed both productions, and now they're showing the movies. And I found out about it just in time! They're showing the Cumberbatch-as-Monster version next week, and the Cumberbatch-as-Frankenstein one the week after.

Frankenstein is not my favourite story (probably because my grade four teacher showed the Boris Karloff movie to us at Halloween and I had nightmares for weeks!). But I think this is a play that must be seen. I'll let you know how it goes!

*I missed David Tennant and Catherine Tate in Much Ado About Nothing. :(

Danika Dinsmore and the Ruins of Noe Blog Tour

First off, doesn't Danika Dinsmore have an awesome name? She could totally be a character in her own novels. And you'll soon see she's every bit as beautiful and interesting as her name sounds, because she's my very first ever Blog Tour Author!

Danika is blog touring to promote the second book of her Fairies of the White Forest series. I reviewed Brigitta of the White Forest on Monday, and now it's time to look at Ruins of Noe.

Faweh is an imaginary world (on a completely different planet: I know 'cause there are two moons!) populated by fairies and tree people and earth people and sprites and giant carnivourous caterpillars and horned Huggabeasts and . . . there's a Lexicon to help you keep them all straight.

The White Forest is a protected realm on Faweh where fairies live out their destinies guided by the Ancients. It's peaceful, idyllic--and threatened. Brigitta has already had to leave the Forest once to undo a terrible curse; now her experience makes her the best fairy to travel even further away from her comfortable home, to seek an ancient artifact in the Ruins of Noe.

The Ruins of Noe is deeper and more satisfying than Brigitta of the White Forest. Brigitta loses her innocence in the first book; in this book she loses much more. Everything she believes is called into question. But Brigitta is resourceful and determined, and she gains interesting new allies. I liked the society of warring fairies she encounters, with all its opportunities for complications and complexities. I liked Queen Maab: very evil! Loved the Nhords (otherwise known as Huggabeasts, for good reason). I liked that the ending isn't all neatly wrapped up: there's definitely room for a sequel. (Don't worry, it's not a cliffhanger!)

But you don't really want to hear what I have to say. I asked Danika to do a quickie interview, and she responded with way more than I was expecting! Turns out she's intelligent and well-read and watches movies I've never heard of! (But she's a Dr. Who fan, so we must be soul-mates anyway.) (Sorry about the funny fonts: it's what happens when you cut and paste from Microsoft Word into Blogger.)

Is there a book you read as a child that made such an impact on you that you remember the circumstances of reading it?

This is an odd memory, actually. I had found a lost dog. A little old chihuahua. His side teeth were missing, so his tongue stuck out on one side, and he was always shaking. He wouldn’t leave my side. I called him Mr. Dingleberry. And NO, I didn’t know what dingleberry meant.

It was the summer after 6^th grade. My brother’s 8^th grade social studies teacher had given him the book Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody to read over the summer. He gave the book to me. I sat in a chair outside in front of the garage in the sun with Mr. Dingleberry and read the book from cover-to-cover. I loved the book, but it disturbed me at the same time. It made me think about the cruelty of humans and also the courage. I remember feeling grown-up for reading such a serious and important book.

Oh, yes, then Mr. Dingleberry’s owners came and got him.

What's a recent book you read that made you go "Hmmm" (in a good way!)?

semi-recent:  Libba Bray’s Going Bovine

most-recent: Spiritwalk by Charles de Lint

Favourite recent-ish movie? (Or favourite all-time movie)

How about I just show you my tastes by listing 10 of my favourite films as fast as I can think of them. Ready, set . . .

What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (one of the few films I like better than the book its based on) 
The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8^th Dimension

Donnie Darko
Heathers
Wings of Desire
The Ice Storm
Lost in Translation
Schizopolis
The Sweet Hereafter (loved both book and movie)
Dead Poet’s Society
Trust (Hal Hartley’s)

Oh, wait, I think that’s 11.

Strangely my favourite movies are not generally speculative fiction. I mostly like character-driven and quirky dark dramedy.

[I'm guessing Danika would like Meg Rosoff's books]

Literary crush (Mr. Darcy? Aragon? Chrestomanci?)(Those may or may not be some of my literary crushes!)

I’m such a geek. I have both an author crush on John Green and a literary crush on Colin Singleton. It’s the anagram thing. Yeah, I know, not even on the map. Smart and funny do it for me every time, though.

If I had to pick someone in the fantasy realm it would be, hands down, Brashen Trell from Robin Hobb’s Liveship Trader’s series.

Favourite heroine (could be book, movie, comic book . . .)

Right now it’s Amelia Pond from the Dr. Who TV series. She’s awesome. Matt Smith as Dr. Who is awesome. Together they are the inside of an awesome pie and Rory is the flakey crust (in a good way).

[Yes! Go Rory and Amy! Woot!]

Would you rather go to the moon or travel up the Amazon?

To the mooooon!!!

Do you like to cook or bake? If so, what's a favourite go-to comfort food you like to make? 

For an I-need-dessert-right-now thing, the 5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake is perfect. I use ½ the sugar, btw, and it tastes just fine. And rice flour. And sometimes soy or almond milk. Just google 5 Minute Chocolate Mug cake and you’ll find fifty recipes for it.

I’m warning you, though. Chocolate cake in 5 minutes is a dangerous thing.

(I bet you thought that was going to be a one word answer, huh?)

You say you're currently working on a pop space opera (which sounds fabulous, by the way!). It's pretty much at the opposite end of the speculative fiction spectrum from the White Forest: would you say you read more sci fi than fantasy, or vice versa, or is it about the same?

I’d say it’s about the same, but it depends upon a person’s definition of sci-fi. I’m not a purist and I don’t read a lot of hard sci-fi. I like everything from steam-punk to dystopian and most of the sub-genres in between. The only things I don’t generally pick up are splatterpunk or urban/gothic fantasy involving vampires or warewolves. I just haven’t found that many that I can get excited about (except the original Interview with a Vampire and I’m actually reading Dracula right now). Zombies don’t do it for me either. [Ah, but what about zombie unicorns by John Green?] Here's a great sub-genre list.

***

Thank you Danika! I've gotta go get me a John Green novel, and 5 Minute Chocolate Cake? Why did I not know about this!

Get to know Danika even better on her blog, The Accidental Novelist.

Belated Battle of the Books, and Requiem Maurice Sendak

Were you following School Library Journal's Battle of the Books this year? I checked in at the beginning but then sort of forgot about it, even though two of my favourite books were in the running. It's great fun, and a great way to get introduced to great books. (When you repeat great a lot do you find yourself wanting to pronounce it "gree-at"? It should actually be pronounced "greet." Silly English. Now I'm thinking of groats and I don't actually know what they are.)

Neither Chime nor Daughter of Smoke and Bone won, but they faced off against each other and the judge did an excellent job of comparing them. Check it out here. I haven't read the winner (nor any of the books in the final round), and it doesn't sound like my sort of thing, but I'm putting it on my TBR list, because realistic fiction about depressing topics can be worth reading if it's well-written!

In other news, Maurice Sendak has died. Book Aunt did a post this morning that says everything I would like to say. He made the world a better place.

Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday AND Canadian Book Week

I'm back! (I knew I couldn't keep up that blistering once-a-week post schedule.) It's two-for-one day here at Dead Houseplants,* because I've got a great middle-grade read that's written by a local Vancouver writer.** Not only that, but she's a regular MMGM-er, so you all probably know about her. Danika Dinsmore just launched the sequel to Brigitta of the White Forest, and I'm going to be a stop on her Ruins of Noe blog tour next week (my first ever blog tour--yay!) But for anyone out there who isn't familiar with the White Forest tales, here's the first book.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I have to say that I've met Danika, and she's a wonderful person, so that may have influenced my opinion of the book. But I'm really not a big fan of fairies, so that probably cancels out the first influence.)

Brigitta of the White Forest is about fairies with wings who live in trees and have magical seeds and make potions from flowers, and when I was twelve and in my rainbows and unicorns phase this would have been right up my alley. Now that I'm old and cynical I prefer my adventures to have less sparkle and more substance--and Brigitta delivers.

Dinsmore creates a rich and complex world (so complex it requires a glossary!) that takes the sparkly appeal of wings and flowers, and grounds it in a convincing society. Brigitta's father is an Inventor, her mother is a Feast Master, and her aunt is a Chronicler. Brigitta is waiting for her own destiny markings to appear on her wings, and she is nervous as she contemplates the possible roles she might play in White Forest society. But destiny sometimes has strange twists, and when a curse strikes the fairies of the Forest, Brigitta and her annoying little sister have to journey outside the Forest to save them.

There are monsters aplenty, and good that looks evil and evil that looks good, and magic of all sorts, big and small. Dinsmore is endlessly imaginative, and the White Forest and the world beyond it are full of original creatures and creations. Dinsmore's world has a strange, mythical history that is only hinted at in this first book, but it gives Brigitta's adventures a sense of mystery and significance.

This is a fun read that will definitely appeal to girls in their fairy/unicorn/magic phase*** but also has enough epic excitement to interest fans of series like Warriors and Gregor the Overlander. (I can't promise that a boy will read it, though!) I suspect that pipberry pies and tigermint teacakes are the right analogy for this book: you'll have to visit the White Forest to try them and find out!

Don't forget to go to Shannon Messenger's blog, where she links to all the other Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday-ers.

###

* Where we try to make up for all our deficiencies in the most efficient way possible.

** If I wanted to extend my 100-mile diet to books, (which we might have to do after the coming apocalypse (see my previous post on toilets)) she would count!

*** Tell me girls still have this phase, (closely followed by all things horses): tell me it hasn't been completely eclipsed by vampires and fallen angels.

Poetry, toilets, and other fun stuff (with footnotes)

I think in some past life our family must have done something to offend the god of plumbing*. Did we tip over too many outhouses? Blow up a Roman bath? Six weeks ago the upstairs bathroom toilet overflowed its tank and water leaked into an adjacent bedroom and through the ceiling into the living room below. We rented a blower to dry the carpet and tore out some drywall to let the ceiling dry. We redrywalled and were just about to repaint the ceiling when . . . the same toilet overflowed its bowl and water leaked into the adjacent bedroom and through the ceiling to drip through the brand new drywall. I mean, seriously?**

I was on a roll there with blog posts, but we all knew it wouldn't last. I don't have a book review for you*** so I thought I'd share a few cool things I've encountered.

April is Poetry Month, and there are lots of fun poetry challenges going on around the blogosphere. I particularly like the Progressive Poem started by Irene Latham at Live Your Poem. What a fun idea, and what a cool poem is being created.

Sarah Lewis Holmes at Read Write Believe is doing one haiku a day for the whole month. What better way to start the day than with 17 syllables of wonderful imagery. And I really liked the longer poem she wrote on Poetry Friday: Poetry Forgives. Lovely imagery, and a lovely concept. I decided it was fair to extend the idea to writing in general, and hope it's true that my writing forgives me for my faithlessness and neglect (and my "insecure, pretentious stabs" when I do get around to it).

Not related to poetry, but it brought a bit of a tear to my eye and it's worth watching the 9-minute video: Kiersten White points out that Some People Are Gay.

And to return to the original topic (sort of), there is a very cool thing called an anaerobic digester (the link has a cute little video showing how it works) that turns poop and other organic garbage into methane gas for cooking stoves and lighting. (Word for the day: putrescibility. If something can rot, it can go in the digester. The more rotten it can get, the better!) You can install one of these digesters your backyard, connect your toilet to it, throw in all your kitchen waste, and presto changeo, you've got both fuel for your stove and fertilizer for your garden. It's brilliant ideas like this that give me hope for the human race.**** They didn't say anything about powering time machines with it, though.  :-( *****

* Didn't know there was a god of plumbing, did you? Called Hudor by the Greeks, Hugh by the Norse (who didn't have plumbing as far as I know, so they worshipped him as the god of cesspits)(did the Greeks have plumbing? Hmm. I'm going to have to do more research and get back to you before further explicating this little-known deity.)

** Humans have a hard time believing that coincidences like this are actually random, hence the invention of plumbing deities. A more likely but less amusing explanation is that God noticed how well things were going in our lives and decided we needed to learn some patience and humility. Plumbing incidents are good vehicles for those kinds of lessons. Just saying.

*** I have been doing brief book reviews on Goodreads. Recent reading includes a couple of Eva Ibbotson's romance novels, which I enjoyed highly, and which led me to the idea of a blog post on how authors convey their characters' emotions. I'm still working on that post, but it requires me to reread all my favourite books looking for useful quotations to use, so it may take me a while! Other recent reading is more non-fiction about various potential disasters our shaky, non-sustainable civilization is headed towards (doing research for a post-apocalyptic novel. There are just so many apocalypses to choose from!). Apparently we're going to run out of oil, food, and water within our lifetimes, so you might want to get started on that year's supply of food! And maybe learn a useful skill, like blacksmithing.

****You may want to consider installing one as part of your preparations for the apocalypse. Just saying.

***** If you're too young to get the reference, it's from Back To The Future II, where Doc fuels his time-travelling Delorean by throwing garbage into it. Unfortunately for verisimilitude purposes, the amount of biogas generated from a banana peel and a soda can (which isn't terribly putrescent) would not be equivalent to a lightning strike, and thus would probably not be sufficient for time travel. But it's an idea worth working on!