I found a really fun book tag created by the wonderfully witty Emily: The Spoopy Memes Book Tag (v.2). Thanks to Caffeine and Books and Kristin Kraves Books, who helped me discover my first Book Tag.
Top 5 Tuesday is a monthly-weekly meme hosted by MeeghanReads. This Tuesday’s topic is “Top 5 Books with Witches“. It’s October, after all!
Baba Yaga lived in a hut standing on chicken legs, in the middle of a dark forest. If you’ve read Russian folklore before, you know that Baba Yaga was often the stepmother’s wicked and wise relative, who would put the heroine to the test. If the heroine failed, she would be dinner. Baba Yaga remains the quintessential Witch for me.
Rachel Morgan in Kim Harrison’s The Hollows Series. Rachel Morgan is a witch who works as a runner (police officer) for Inderland Security (IS). The IS is the police for the paranormal species of society, like weres, vampires, banshees, pixies, witches, demons, etc. The IS was established some 40 years ago, when a virus outbreak caused mayhem (when doesn’t it?) and forced the paranormal community into light. If you’re interested in the darker UF genre, The Hollows is your next series.
Laura Chant, in Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover. I wonder why Changeover is not better known. It won the Carnegie Medal in 1984 and since then, has also been made into a fairly decent movie (trailer below). Laura Chant’s toddler brother is possessed by an unnervingly wicked goblin-esque creature. Laura has only one way out: to change over and claim her “witchy” powers.
Elizabeth Proctor, in The Crucible by Arthur Miller. There are few tales as horrifying and enduring as that of the Salem Witch trials in The Crucible – and that, a 1953 play, no less. Witch-hunting is a theme that has been portrayed in countless books and shows, including Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. But Crucible stands out, for exposing the hypocrisy and devastating power of socially-sanctioned violence. Here’s Miller on why he wrote The Crucible.
Good Witch of the North and Wicked Witch of the East, in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. These were probably the first witches I ever read about (outside of Disney, I mean). Without the Good Witch, there would be no Yellow Brick Road, and without the Bad Witch, there would be no Silver Shoes. I think I’m not making any sense… But really, there’s no tale like The Wizard of Oz.
wade
through black jade.
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash-heaps;
opening and shutting itself like
an
injured fan.
The barnacles which encrust the side
of the wave, cannot hide
there for the submerged shafts of the
sun,
split like spun
glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
into the crevices —
in and out, illuminating
the
turquoise sea
of bodies. The water drives a wedge
of iron through the iron edge
of the cliff; whereupon the stars,
pink
rice-grains, ink-
bespattered jelly fish, crabs like green
lilies, and submarine
toadstools, slide each on the other.
Margaret Coventry is having a small bout of rebellion against her match-making family, when she is kidnapped and taken by force into the alternate universe of Plenilune. You see, Rupert de la Mare, soon-to-be Plenilune’s overlord, has been challenged whether he can take a human wife, and the nefarious Rupert doesn’t let challenges slide.
This is only a small part of the plot (the blurb would make you think otherwise). Margaret is a fish out of water as she begins to learn – and love – the magical landscape and history of Plenilune and its people. Along the way, Margaret breaks a curse with the help of a dragon, hunts down a wild boar (not intentionally), and rescues a kingdom. Oh, and she meets Dammerung, the War-wolf.
Book Blurb:
The fate of Plenilune hangs on the election of the Overlord, for which Rupert de la Mare and his brother are the only contenders, but when Rupert’s unwilling bride-to-be uncovers his plot to murder his brother, the conflict explodes into civil war. To assure the minds of the lord-electors of Plenilune that he has some capacity for humanity, Rupert de la Mare has been asked to woo and win a lady before he can become the Overlord, and he will do it—even if he has to kidnap her.
(The blurb really doesn’t do the book any justice, but I suppose the book cover art more than makes up for it. Book cover art is by Carlos Quevedo, his amazing work HERE.)
It’s time for #6degrees. Start at the same place as other wonderful readers, add six books, and see where you end up. Inspired by the Six Degrees of Separation Meme hosted every month at Books are my Favorite and Best.
October 2020’s book is The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.
A very young woman’s first job: governess for two weirdly beautiful, strangely distant, oddly silent children, Miles and Flora, at a forlorn estate…An estate haunted by a beckoning evil. Half-seen figures who glare from dark towers and dusty windows- silent, foul phantoms who, day by day, night by night, come closer, ever closer. With growing horror, the helpless governess realizes the fiendish creatures want the children, seeking to corrupt their bodies, possess their minds, own their souls… But worse-much worse- the governess discovers that Miles and Flora have no terror of the lurking evil. For they want the walking dead as badly as the dead want them.
What better book than Turn of the Screw for this Halloween month? Incidentally, since I am also participating in the 2020 Readers Imbibing Peril (R.I.P.) XV challenge this month, here are six spooky reads, all following up from Turn of the Screw.
The Dirge by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
Why were you born when the snow was falling?
You should have come to the cuckoo’s calling,
Or when grapes are green in the cluster,
Or, at least, when lithe swallows muster
For their far off flying
From summer dying.
Why did you die when the lambs were cropping?
You should have died at the apples’ dropping,
When the grasshopper comes to trouble,
And the wheat-fields are sodden stubble,
And all winds go sighing
For sweet things dying.
Other “Poetry Friday” archives are available HERE.
The first time I heard of The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe was in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. (I think that’s the case for most people.) In Northanger, Catherine Morland’s fondness for Gothic novels and active imagination results in a disastrous misinterpretation, and Mysteries of Udolpho is one of those novels. Clearly, not very high praise when it comes to practical real life.
… This led to the question, whether the spirit, after it has quitted the body, is ever permitted to revisit the earth; and if it is, whether it was possible for spirits to become visible to the sense …
In Mysteries of Udolpho, Emily St. Aubere’s father similarly admonishes her to not give in to impractical sentimentality. But then he dies and leaves her orphaned in the hands of his rather shallow sister, Madame Cheron. Madame Cheron and Emily do not get along, to put it mildly.
That situation worsens when Madame Cheron ends up marrying Signor Montoni, a stylish Italian whom everyone seems to admire but no one seems to like. Montoni is the quintessential Gothic villain who, gambles, drinks, cheats, broods and schemes. (I expect he had a mustache too, which he twirled a lot as he brooded.)
Poor Emily has a terrible time of it all. She learns her father was hiding a terrible secret from his salad days. Her engagement with young Valancourt is broken off and her hand promised to another without her consent. Her home and father’s impoverished estates in France are rented away, and Montoni packs them off (eventually) to the desolate castle of Udolpho.
Nestled in the Apennine mountains of Italy, Udolpho’s grandeur has faded with time and neglect. It once belonged to Montoni’s relative, Signora Laurentini, who died in mysterious circumstances. There are rumors that Montoni killed her off out of jealousy and to grab her estates. Certainly, nothing can be put past Montoni, who it turns out is now leading a band of mercenaries, the Condottieri.
Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every Tuesday, you pick ten books on that week’s topic.
This week’s topic is “Favorite Book Quotes“. So, without further ado, here’s the list.
To fully appreciate the wisdom of Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher, we need to first begin with the history of The Thousand and One Nights.
We know that the stories of The Thousand and One Nights are set in the Middle Ages of the Persian Empire. But these were actually compiled over several centuries, in multiple countries and languages. When the Arab Traders of 8th Century travelled worldwide, they carried these tales with them – thus, also called The Arabian Nights.
Essentially, we are talking about stories that are more than 1300 old! And all of them told over a span of 1001 nights by the wily Shahrazad to pacify the Sultan. Here is a woman who with her spine of steel and love for the written word managed to change the course of (fictional) history.
But what was Shahrazad really like? How did she survive so long, married to a mad man, desperate and afraid every day whether she would live to see the next day, and the next, for almost 3 years? We get to know this side of Shahrazad, in Shadow Spinner.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
~ By Wallace Stevens
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.