I’ve decided I must never have read the Riddle-Master trilogy in its entirety at all. Maybe I only got as far as the story about Deth frightening the inhospitable man to death, and that’s why that bit stuck in my mind so vividly.
I most certainly did not remember, if I ever knew at all, that this is one of those “trilogies” that is really one long book split into three parts. I began to wonder, with some quiet anxiety, as I headed into the final ten pages and the story seemed clearly to be building to a grand final confrontation without space enough for grand or final, nor even much room for confrontation. And indeed, it ends on a cliffhanger. I’m dangling by my fingertips here.
McKillip’s worldbuilding is lush and layered, quite captivating. You can smell the rich soil of Hed, the sea tang of the Wind Plain, the crisp piney air of Isig. The characters are more distinct in their outer qualities—powers, homes, appearance—than in their voices, their personalities, but this is not a weakness; the outer details are sharp and vivid, and the prose is gorgeous. I like Morgan’s indecision and stubbornness; it’s funny how the Hed characters—even the ones who only appear in the opening of the book—have the most distinctive personalities. Mostly, though, this is a tumble-me-along story, plot-driven: I’m desperate to know what happens next.
Which is somewhat maddening, since today brought the magical surprise that A. S. Byatt has written a book called Ragnarok based on, yes, the gods of Asgard—but tied somehow to WWII Britain—and a review copy winged its way to my Kindle this afternoon, and my eagerness to dive into this book is roughly equivalent to the irresistible temptation experienced by the kids in the marshmallow experiment. It’ll take me the rest of the week, at least, to finish the other two Riddle-Master books. I’ve got to know what happens to Morgon and Raederle. But…Ragnarok! Byatt!
As usual, I couldn’t decide, so now I’m reading three books at once. Blackout, Brideshead Revisited, and The Riddle-Master of Hed. This is a ridiculous way to read a book, of course. I often have two or three going at once, more if you count read-alouds to the children, but most of the time only one of my two or three is a novel. The others will be nonfiction, which I like in bursts. Both Blackout and Riddle-Master are terribly gripping, the sort of book that makes me wish for a nice miserable virus that would land me in bed for a day or two with nothing to do but, say, cough and read. Alas, here I am in tiptop form. (And tempting fate, probably.)
Which book I pick up has mostly to do with what time of day it is. Riddle-Master is a library book, the whole trilogy in one fat tome with perilously small print, not at all convenient for reading in bed. So it’s my daytime read, and Blackout, which I have on Kindle and phone, is my nighttime choice. As for Brideshead, I haven’t got far yet; he’s just beginning to remember, is just setting out in the car with his devil-may-care friend, and it has exactly the English country manor vibe I was craving. Oh, for a good flu…
(Dear Fate: JUST KIDDING!)
I read The Riddle-Master of Hed in junior high, and strangely, all I remembered about it was one tiny sliver: the riddle about the High One’s harpist, Deth, visiting the inhospitable man who has been told he will die if his next visitor does not tell him his name. The terrified man opens the door to the harpist and begs him, repeatedly, desperately, to say what his name is, but all the visitor will say is (so he hears), “Death.” This frightens the man so much that his heart stops. I’ve thought of that bit often over the years, but I couldn’t have told you a single other thing about the story—and right now it’s as if I’m reading it for the first time. In fact, I began to wonder if the Deth-riddle wasn’t perhaps from one of the other books in the trilogy; had I missed the first? But then I came to that bit, a quiet paragraph in a tense moment, so I guess I did read the book and have well and truly forgotten the plot: a thing that almost never happens.
It’s funny; I’m always saying I wish I could read such-and-such a book for the first time all over again, and now I’m really getting to.
This may just be my favorite picture book ever. I discovered it during grad school when I worked at a children’s bookstore, and it was love at first read. I don’t think I have ever once read it without tearing up. When I read it to the littles yesterday, Scott had to step in near the end when I was too choked up to speak. It’s a beautiful book, and true in the way that sometimes only fiction is.
Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge is a little boy who lives next to an old-age home. He is friends with all the residents and loves to visit them. When he hears his parents say how sad it is that his favorite resident, 93-year-old Miss Nancy, is losing her memory, Wilfrid Gordon quizzes all the other old folks about what a memory is exactly. “It’s something warm,” one tells him. “Something from long ago.” “Something that makes you cry.” “Something that makes you laugh.” And so on.
And so Wilfrid goes off and collects a box of treasures for Miss Nancy—a warm hen egg, a funny puppet, an old medal…
It’s what happens when Miss Nancy handles the gifts that always makes me cry. Perfectly lovely, and Julie Vivas’s tender colored pencil drawings are as lovely and moving as the story.
At the restaurant, Scott asked what they had on tap. Dos Equis and Tecate, the server said.
“Hmm,” said Scott, looking at me. “Which should I go for?”
I laughed, shrugged. I don’t know one beer from another. He ordered a Tecate. As the server walked away, I said, teasingly, “Emily of New Moon? Or Emily of Deep Valley?”
“Deep Valley,” he said, not missing a beat.
I blinked at him.
“That’s the right answer.”
“I know.” He grinned. “Sweetheart. I read your blog.”
Yet another day of internet troubles (and phone, and TV), but hopefully now resolved. Mostly. The guy still has to come back and fix the phones.
And hot hot here, so the kids are indoors most of the day, playing Wii and DS. Or cheering me on as I play Kingdom Rush, which FORTUNATELY I happened to have loaded before the internet went down, so it was playable when nothing else could be done.
I think I finally finished all the SDCC posting. The con may only last 4 1/2 days, but it devours nearly three weeks of my life. Not that I’m complaining!
I spent the morning culling books—a painful but necessary endeavor. We are simply overflowing here. I’m donating most of last year’s CYBILs YA fiction nominees to a school library, if my children don’t tar and feather me for it. But here are a few of the books I am keeping, because they grabbed me:
A verse novel telling the hair-raising and tragic story of the flood that wiped out a town. I have to say I am very finicky when it comes to verse novels. They must not be simply prose with arty line-breaks; the verse must be actual poetry, and good poetry to boot. This book is. I loved the characters, the voices, the water imagery running throughout.
This is a very quirky book, and I will say candidly that it took me a good eighty pages to really fall in like with the voice. The teenaged narrator has a mannered way of speaking that grew on me slowly. But by the halfway point, I loved her, and I flat-out sobbed for the last fifty pages. It’s a sort of modern-day Pollyanna, if you will, and I mean that as a tremendous compliment. Obviously, since I’m keeping the book!
This thriller became one of our five YA fiction finalists, and I remember saying at the time that this was a book I could see myself rereading. (These days, when ‘so many books, so little time’ has become my woeful reality—I have realized with dismay that I will never, now, read ALL THE BOOKS—to say I will likely spend precious reading minutes on a second or third immersion in a novel is high praise indeed.) It’s a dark tale, about a girl who is abducted and held captive in a remote Australian cabin, utterly dependent on her kidnapper for survival. Harrowing. MInd-messing. Compelling. I’m keeping it.
I’m keeping many others besides those three. And some of my favorite Cybils nominees, alas, were library books, long since returned. Some of the novels I’m donating are very good books indeed, but if I don’t reduce numbers I just might lose my toddler in a maze of bookstacks.
Letter from New York, the Helene Hanff book I sighed happily over in this post. First time rereading it since, I’m guessing, 1994. It was rather goosebumpy to revisit: so much of my first year in New York was tied to that book. The neighborhoods I explored, the way I looked at the city, the way Miss Hanff taught me to seek out the small interesting details and big colorful people that give a place character. As I savored her letters, I kept thinking how much these spoken essays she wrote for BBC radio read like blog posts—and I could see her influence in my own blog style, over fifteen years later.
The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt. When I first read it last year, I wasn’t sure I’d ever want to be immersed that intense, disturbing world again: but I did. I found myself thinking about the novel quite often and wanting to return to the rich, tapestried world Byatt creates, suffused with art and lore. The puppets: I am really in awe at how vividly she is able to describe the marionette plays so that you see them, really see them. And the pottery, the Dungeness seaweeds, the strands of Olive’s various stories, the huge cast of distinct, painfully real characters, the currents of culture and history. It’s a hard book, a dark one, but ultimately hopeful, I think, and worth the effort.
Besides those two, there were the usual piles of picture books, and small increments of progress on Calpurnia Tate with Beanie and Rose. July, for us, is really only three weeks long, because a full week of it gets swallowed up by SDCC.
Nonetheless I did think I’d read more, myself, than simply the Hanff and the Byatt. I began a few things, review copies I’ve received, but since the Byatt I haven’t been able to settle into anything else. Just now, looking up the link for my 2010 post about The Children’s Book, I noticed on that year’s booklog that right after it, I reread a large chunk of To Serve Them All My Days—R.F. Delderfield’s sweeping tale about a shellshocked WWI soldier who becomes a teacher in an English boys’ school. That makes me smile because that is exactly the kind of book I’m craving right now, post-Byatt: big, sweeping, warm, moving, funny, and, if sad in places, not dark. Herriott might work. Or: I’ve never read Brideshead Revisited. Would that work? Or is it grim?
Actually, there’s Blackout, I’ve just remembered. I had to set it aside for one reason or another. Connie Willis sweeps me away in just the right way, I always think. Maybe that’s the ticket.
