teaser tuesday (74)

It's Teaser Tuesday, a bookish blog meme hosted every week by MizB of Should Be Reading. Here's how it works:

Grab your current read and let it fall open to a random page (or if you're reading on an electronic device, pick a random number and scroll to that section). Post two or more sentences from that page, along with the book title and author. Share your find with others in the comments at Should Be Reading, and don't give anything vital away!

“On the third night after the day her father died, Liesl saw the ghost.

She was lying in bed in the uniform gray darkness of her small attic room when in one corner the shadows seemed to crimp, or flex, and suddenly standing next to her wobbly desk and three-legged chair was a person about her height.”

p. 5 of Lauren Oliver’s Liesl & Po

the bards of bone plain

There are a couple of authors on my "auto-buy" list. Patricia McKillip is one of them. She writes marvelous high fantasy that is so painstakingly created and populated that I equate it in my head with delicate embroidery on an enormous, exquisite tapestry.

While McKillip has written middle grade in the past, her recent books have been adult fantasy (with definite YA crossover appeal). Her latest publication is The Bards of Bone Plain, which I requested for Christmas in 2010, received, and read in early of 2011. In fact, I was quite sure I'd reviewed it here. Well, there's no time like the present!

With "her exquisite grasp of the fantasist's craft" (Publishers Weekly) Patricia A. McKillip now invites readers to discover a place that may only exist in the mystical wisdom of poetry and music.

Scholar Phelan Cle is researching Bone Plain – which has been studied for the last 500 years, though no one has been able to locate it as a real place. Archaeologist Jonah Cle, Phelan's father, is also hunting through time, piecing history together from forgotten trinkets. His most eager disciple is Princess Beatrice, the king's youngest daughter. When they unearth a disk marked with ancient runes, Beatrice pursues the secrets of a lost language that she suddenly notices all around her, hidden in plain sight.

McKillip's strength is in her prose. Her intricate descriptions of places, knowledge, and human relationships with story sweep you into the tale, and from there it’s mystery, romance, history and a dash of danger. Her genius creeps up on you as you become enmeshed in the story, and her words take on lives of them own, so that you can see, hear, and understand magic.

However, even the strongest world-building must have some plot, and the story must make you love/hate/feel for its protagonists. While McKillip’s latest offering leads you on a merry chase of history, the ‘plot,’ such as it is, seems rather thin on the ground. The big reveal has been guessed at long before the last page is turned. And the characters themselves are secondary to their discoveries and music. What it comes down to is that McKillip has written other books about the magic of music, and I like them better.

One of the most interesting thematic threads in The Bards of Bone Plain is that of archaeology and history. While Phelan is searching through music, he’s also sifting through written records and historical anecdotes. At the same time, his father is engaged in digging up bits of history, and has taken on Princess Beatrice as his assistant. These practical, physical actions balance the music and folklore fairly well. If you’re a history nerd, this might be the book for you.

Recommended for: Patricia McKillip, Robin McKinley and Sharon Shinn devotees, those who revel in high fantasy, and anyone who has had the thought that music and magic must be one and the same.

a monster calls

A couple of years ago, I went on a dystopian reading bender (snaps to Rhiannon for that craze), and I was most impressed by Patrick Ness’ The Knife of Never Letting Go. It was raw and amazing, and I resolved to keep an eye out for Ness’ books. Last summer I started hearing trickles of praise for his latest release, A Monster Calls. Then Kiersten White wrote about how much she loved and cried over it. I placed it on hold at my local library and that was that.

An unflinching, darkly funny, and deeply moving story of a boy, his seriously ill mother, and an unexpected monstrous visitor.

At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn't the monster Conor's been expecting – he's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he's had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It's ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth. From the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan Dowd – whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself – Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined.

Patrick Ness has a talent for pulling emotion out of the most reluctant reader. He writes stories that reach the hidden thoughts we all carry with us. It’s unsettling, it’s beautiful, and you end up wrecked and happy and feeling as though you SURVIVED. In A Monster Calls, Ness stays true to form (and delivers a masterpiece).

I’ve discovered that I enjoy Ness’ books when I go into them blind. You don’t need to know in advance what the main conflict is in order to enjoy it. So my usual summary is brief: Conor meets a monster, and it shows him true things. True, terrible, unthinkable things – about himself, and stories, and the sometimes unbearable road of life.

Of course, the beauty of the hardcover volume (delightful presentation might be my weakness) does not hurt. A Monster Calls is filled with fantastic illustrations by Jim Kay, all done in black and white and focused on texture and shadow. Add in the jacket and endpapers, along with the content, and it may be THE perfect gift book. I’d even put out on a coffee table for people to admire.

To recap, A Monster Calls is bitter, sweet, and lovely on the inside and out. It may (probably will) touch your soul.

Recommended for: anyone with a heartbeat. It is beyond excellent.

chicken soup for... you.

It has finally started to feel like winter here in Washington, DC (complete with a weather advisory tonight…what?), and this means it is soup season! Soups are perfect for warming you up from the inside out, curing what ails you, and making your house smell like home. I’ll admit that I usually buy canned soup for convenience, but over Christmas I helped my mother make this tasty version of traditional chicken noodle, and I give it my highest recommendation!

Chicken Soup (from a cooks.com recipe)

INGREDIENTS

1-2 lbs. chicken, chopped into bite-sized pieces

1 turnip, diced

2 carrots, peeled and sliced

3-4 parsnips, peeled and diced

1 large white or yellow onion

1 Tablespoon dill weed

1 lb. egg noodles

2-3 cartons chicken stock (64-96 ounces)

Salt and black pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

Place chicken in large pot. Sprinkle vegetables around chicken. Add chicken stock (make sure you have enough that it covers everything). Add salt and pepper to taste. Add dill. Bring to a boil over medium high heat, then reduce heat to simmer and cook for two hours. Do not cook for more than three hours.

In separate pot, boil egg noodles in salted water for 10-12 minutes, drain, and add to soup.

As you can probably tell, there’s some wiggle room with this recipe (or any soup recipe, really). Depending on how ‘soupy’ you want it, you can add more or less liquid, add more or less spice, and adjust the types and numbers of veggies. The way we made it, though? Pretty freaking good. We doubled the recipe and it was gone in two days. YUM.

Recommended for: a cold day, a delicious homemade soup staple, and anytime you feel under the weather (or as a preventative!).