Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every Tuesday, you pick ten books on that week’s topic. This week’s topic was books with Nature on the cover. On those lines, I tried to think of books that may also deal with environment themes / motifs, or even wild magic and herblore!
Which books did this environmental TTT theme make you think of? Let’s discuss!
I read a lot of SFF. But thanks to prompt(s) at the Wyrd & Wonder reading challenge, I realized that very few of my SFF reads were published outside of US or UK (and sometimes, Australia, New Zealand). So this week, let’s focus on the more translated SFF works: SFF works that weren’t originally written in English.
This week I have decided to combine the April wrap-up and the Top 10 Tuesday topic of books I recently read. It was a busy month, unlike March, with many hits and misses.
It’s time for #6degrees. Start with the monthly read, add six books, and see where you end up. The 6 Degrees of Separation Meme is hosted every month at Books are my Favorite and Best.
Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary is the book for May 2021. As the blurb says, “Newbery Award winner Beverly Cleary delivers a humorous portrayal of the ups and downs of sisterhood. Both the younger and older siblings of the family will enjoy this book.“
Wyrd & Wonder is a super cool reading challenge for May 2021, hosted at There’s Always Room for One More.
I had vague memories of the first 3 books of The Queen’s Thief series, which I read way back in 2006. I think I’d listened to the audiobooks, which I hadn’t liked very much, because the narrator made the characters sound too old.
When Mythothon #4 came up, I realized that this 6-book series would manage to chop off several prompts from that challenge. And that’s how I started off on this clever and wonderful adventure. A strange, miraculous thing about this series is that each book can be read as a standalone, but when the books are read together, the sum becomes greater than the whole.
“Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange.
Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could.”
Ironically, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke is the exact reverse of this contemplation. It is the downhill path that a magician’s ambition must inevitably take him. If you are looking for a finger-biting adventure into the hearts of men, look no further.
The book is based on an alternative history of England, when magicians once used to rule the land. The most illustrious of these was John Uskglass, or the Raven King. For some unknown reason, Raven King wrapped up his Faerie courts one day and vanished. With him, magic disappeared from England for centuries.
Chalice… is an unusual book. I can’t recall any other book about a cup-bearer to the gods, or in this book’s case, to a circle of land-magic wielders.
Mirasol, the local beekeeper and caretaker of the woods, has been chosen as the next Chalice for Willowlands’ land magic. She hasn’t been trained, so she hopes that Liapnir — i.e. the next Land Master (or just, “Master”) — will ease her way as Chalice.
But Liapnir is returning to Willolands after 7 years of seclusion as a Fire Priest. He has forgotten what it is to be a land-tied human. The ruling circle at Willowlands is not pleased either; they want the land to settle down with greenery, not seethe with earthquakes due to an incompetent Master.
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain,
When you awaken in the morning’s hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush,
Of quiet birds in circled flight,
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
So do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
~ Mary Elizabeth Frye (1905-2004)
This little gem of a passage, from The Blue Cross, in The Complete Father Brown Stories by G.K. Chesterton:
"The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen. A few clouds in heaven do come together into the staring shape of one human eye. A tree does stand up in the landscape of a doubtful journey in the exact and elaborate shape of a note of interrogation. I have seen both these things myself within the last few days. Nelson does die in the instant of victory; and a man named Williams does quite accidentally murder a man named Williamson; it sounds like a sort of infanticide. In short, there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reckon on the unforeseen."