Halloween Reads

I love a good ghost story. I even have a few stories of my own. So, while other bloggers will be showing you their Halloween costumes today, I'm going to be a nerd (nothing new there) and share some Halloween themed reading. And don't worry, that sound you heard was probably just the wind... Probably.

Starting at the top of the pile:

The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Keatly Snyder: Scared the crap out of me-- in the best way-- when I was a kid.
The Shining by Stephen King: Come on, it's a classic.
Turn of the Screw by Henry James: Ghosts and child abuse, both very scary.
The Haunted Looking Glass stories collected by Edward Gorey: Includes short stories by authors you never knew liked ghosts stories.
The Ghost Stories of Edith Warton: A good ghost story is scary when it's ambiguous. Over explain the plot points and all the mystery is gone. Warton's ghost stories don't have that problem.
The Tell Tale Heart and Other Writings by Edgar Allen Poe: Do I even need to explain this one?
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: Shirley Jackson is a genius in my opinion. What makes her stories and novels scary is the implication that it is not the ghosts that are evil, but our own broken psyches.
Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link: Please, please read Kelly Link. She is amazing.
The Dark Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural by Patricia McKissack: Another one that scared me as a kid.
Tales of Terror collected by Alfred Hitchcock: Some (ok, most) of the stories in this collection are pretty cheesy, but it's still a ton of fun to read.

Curious about Corvids

When I was little, my mother always warned me to never chase or tease crows because crows remember you. I think my mom's superstition came more from folklore and general proximity to crows and their behavior than from anything else. As it turns out though, crows do remember you, and apparently they have a pretty long memory. Right now I'm reading Gifts of the Crow, a fascinating look at the behavior and brain function of corvids (crows, ravens, magpies, and jays). It talks about how the corvid brain can to do many of the things ape (including human) brains can do, but arrived there by a different evolutionary track. Corvids use tools, solve problems and, yes, form memories.

Maybe it was my mom telling me to watch out for those crows when I was young, but I developed a preoccupation with crows and their behavior and my library grew to reflect that. Here are a few of my favorites.

Gifts of the Crow, by John Marzluff and Tony Angell: Has a lot of very informative and entertaining anecdotes about corvid behavior. Parts of it explain the evolution and functions of the brain, which can be little hard to get through if you don't know much about neurobiology, but I don't think anything is lost if you skim through those parts.
Crow Planet, by Lyanda Lynn Haupt : More crow behavior and observational stories
Mind of the Raven, by Bernd Heinrich: Observations of raven behavior in the wild and in captivity
Arabel's Raven series, by Joan Aiken: A very cute and funny series of children's books about a girl named Arabel and her mischievous pet raven, Mortimer. Not a lot of science in these, but lots of funny raven behavior.

Hey nerd

My computer crapping out on me this summer was a bummer and a big inconvenience, but it gave me the free time to plow 

through a pile of summer reading like I haven't since I was in high school. Here are a few highlights.

Happy 4th of July!

Happy fourth of July everyone! I hope it's full of fireworks and pride! While you're eating hotdogs and getting sunburned here's something to be proud of if you're American. It's a list the Library of Congress posted of the 88 books that shaped the USA. It's easy now a days to be a little bit disillusioned with the state of our country, but today let's remember our great thinkers and leaders and be proud of them!

Click here to see the full list. What's your opinion of the list? Did they leave out any you would include? One on there you don't agree with?

Mid-week Masters: Jody Alexander

I recently checked this book out from the library and within it's pages I found a new artist to both admire fervently and envy injudiciously. Installation and book art combined? Long, strange titles? Art that fits in compartments you can explore? Part Joseph Cornell, part storytelling by the fire, Jody Alexander's work has stolen my heart.

All images via artist's website

Maurice Sendak

When I was 6 years old every little girl in Seattle had a poster for the Pacific Northwest Ballet's production of the Nutcracker. Most of those little girls were terrified of that poster. There was a girl who lived across the street from me who had one hanging on her wall and she told me the wide-eyed grinning face of the nutcracker himself would move at night! Her father never figured out why she almost never made it through the night sleeping in her own bed. He invented "monster spray" and helped her memorize a chant to keep the monsters away, he checked under the bed every night before putting her to bed, but he never knew the monster wasn't under the bed or in the closet it was out in the open hanging on the wall.

The reason I'm sharing this story is because I think the artist responsible for that poster would have gotten a kick out of it. Maurice Sendak helped design the costumes and sets for the PBN's annual performance of the Nutcracker in the 80s and they're still using his designs today.

As a kid I appreciated Sendak's honesty. He wrote and drew about the things that most grown ups wanted to deny existed. My mom is a huge fan of his work (that's her shelf in the photo) so Sendak stories were a big part of story time growing up. Her favorite was In the Night Kitchen, which was actually widely banned because Sendak drew in what my mom always referred to as the character's "little winkey". It's pretty absurd to censor an author/illustrator for drawing what children already know exists. Sendak knew that childhood is made of monsters and fears and cruelty, but also an intense curiosity. When children want to know something they will find it out any way possible. We so often expect children to be bubbly and giggly and (ugh) innocent that we forget that our own childhoods were filled with fears that ran so deep they could make us terrified of a piece of paper hanging on the wall.

My childhood was certainly not filled with happy, glittery happenings all the time, so it was frustrating when grown-ups tried to make me into a happy, glittery girl. Sendak didn't expect children to be innocent little pixies, that is why his books were so popular with children when he was alive and I'm sure it's why they will continue to resonate with children after his death.

A trailer for PBN's performance of the Nutcracker. Sets and costumes by Sendak.

When I was little I remember dressing up and going out into the freezing cold to go see this. I was so excited I only complained about my mom making me where tights a little bit. I had seen friends perform the Nutcracker so I already knew and loved the story, but watching this was an experience I can only describe in cliches. It was amazing, like being transported to another world, I sat enthralled with the sets and the costumes, as well as the dancers and wished with all my heart that I was Clara.

The face that terrified a thousand little girls.

Pierre was my favorite. He taught me you should care, or a lion will eat you.

My favorite Sendak quote (and possibly favorite quote of all time):

"Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it."

Don't Look Now

If you're familiar with Daphne Du Maurier's writing, you'll know a few of her works were the inspiration for Hitchcock films, including Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, and the short story The Birds. However in Du Maurier's version of The Birds there is no sleepy New England town, there is no terrified class of school kids, there are no telephone booths at all, and of course there is no overly stylish Tippi Hedren running around. All there is a man and his family, a freezing wind, and the birds. Du Maurier creates a stark landscape and a terrifyingly simple premise: something is wrong with the birds. Supposedly Du Maurier was not very happy with Hitchcock's take on her story. I can't blame her, while Hitchcock's version is undeniably a classic, the original is taut and sparse and timelessly terrifying.

The Birds is included in this collection of Du Maurier's shorter fiction along with some other tense and mysterious stories. In her time, and even sometimes still, Du Maurier was relegated to bestseller status and her writing wasn't really taken seriously or considered "literature" by her peers. More recently her status has been raised by newer readers who are recognizing her as an incredible suspense writer. If you're interested in reading some of her work, I highly recommend the classic Rebecca and the above collection of short stories Don't Look now.

Swamplandia!

I finished this book a few weeks ago and I wanted to write something about it here, but I'm finding it strangely difficult to write anything coherent expressing how I feel about it. I had a very emotional response to it, to put it in the simplest terms. There is a whimsy in Karen Russell's writing that is deceptive. There is a darkness in her writing that is surprising. Both of which make her the perfect voice for a 13 year old girl. I started to write a long post about the emotional respose I had to it and it turned into a rambling post about how weird and difficult it was for me to grow up in a small town in Florida (where the book takes place). I figured people probably don't want to read my memiors in blog form so I ended up deleting the whole thing. Every page of Swamplandia! brought up memories, and not just "remember when..." memories, the kind of visceral memories you form without knowing when you're a kid, the kind of memories you feel. It was a good read, but a difficult good.

I am an unashamed reader of fairy tales and an unashamed book collector. My mom gave me my first  Coloured Fairy Books for my tenth birthday and she also gave me my most recent edition to the collection this Christmas. I have almost all of them after 16 years. They are a little easier to find lately as they seem to be in an upswing of popularity. I just can't resist a pretty book.

 via Folio Society

Things

I wanted to share a few of the beautiful and thoughtful gifts I received for Christmas. I know it might be a little out of season now, but it's been snowing for a week and I needed something to focus my energy on (seriously, with this much time off you would think I would be getting all kinds of stuff done, but mostly I'm just worrying about how I'm not getting anything done).

Clockwise from the bottom: 

Gorgeous handmade paper from my mom. Deckled edges make me swoon

Absolutely beautiful 150 year old edition of the complete works of Robert Burns from my grandparents.

Ceramic leaf plate, a lovely edition to my plates shaped like leaves collection (yes really) courtesy of mom again. 

A pair of pretty vintage pearl earrings from my sister. 

Handmade glass(!) knitting needles from mom.

A newer edition of Robert Burns from my grandparents (they remembered all the way back to this post and thought since we're part Scottish I would enjoy reading the work of one of Scotland's most famous countrymen). 

And a hundred year old edition of Oliver Twist from mom. She bought this one because it has an inscription in the front and she and I share a love of old books with handwritten inscriptions.

Sharing my Christmas gifts was also a great excuse to practice some still life photography and experiment a little with lighting. I'm trying to be more conscious of lighting in my photographs. Not that I wasn't before (every time you take a photo you have to think about light) but now I'm trying to control it a little more. I've been reading some about lighting techniques and the amount of information out there is overwhelming! It's easy to get sucked into the gadget vortex, but I borrowed this idea and made a couple of homemade soft boxes and they're serving my purposes really well for now.

PS: I started an Intrepid Hermit tumblr. It's mostly things I run across that catch my eye. If you're a fellow tumblr-er check it out and follow if you like what you see.

Escaping

When January creeps in and the stress and joy of the holidays and the excitement of the new year is settling into endless cold, dreary days of mid-winter, the need to escape becomes overwhelming. Unfortunately my bank account never agrees with my drop everything and run away attitude, so I settle for escaping into my library. This time of year my escapes are set in England, heavy on poetic language and beautiful landscapes, and involve sweeping, tragic romances (it's a curious preference as I usually prefer my own real life romances to be simple and straight forward).

Spring is for laying in the grass, flipping through Coleridge and Keats. Summer is for all the YA lit I'm not embarrassed to admit I love. Fall is for the non-fiction that brings back academic memories. But winter is for gorgeous long winded books that fill the long, dark nights.

Some of my favorites: Possession by AS Byatt, Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, Lorna Doone by RD Blackmore, Rebecca by Daphne DeMaurier, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte (But honestly, pretty much anything from the Bronte sister's oeuvre fits in this category)

Where do you let your mind wander when you need to escape?

Pages of Eden

While my bibliophile soul mourns the loss of any bookstore, I was thrilled to get this book for only $6 due to the demise of Borders.

Garden of Eden is filled with the gorgeous botanical illustrations of several artists/scientists. I wish botanical illustrator was still a viable career choice. I can imagine myself trekking through jungles and plains with my sketchbook and watercolors, scouring the area for all kinds of interesting flora. Don't tell anyone this, but for a while in high school I dreamed of becoming a botanist. I was inspired by the work of Margaret Lowman, an amazing rainforest canopy biologist. Tragically, now I barely have enough time to devote to keeping my potted houseplants alive.

A hangar full of stories

Last weekend I went to the library's twice yearly gigantic book sale. An old naval hanger is set up with rows and rows of books that go for $2 for hardbacks and $1 for paperbacks. It's a bibliophile's giddy day dream. I picked up a couple of books I've been meaning to read and found a couple of vintage treasures, including a fictionalized account of the Bronte's childhood and a story of the attempted rescue of Marie Antoinette.

Added to my Christmas list

Yesterday, Design Sponge brought these gorgeous editions of the works of the Romantic poets to my attention. I'm a sucker for the Romantics, particularly Keats and Coleridge. Their lives were as beautiful and as crazy as their words. They were lovers and cheaters and criminals and addicts and philosophers and revolutionaries. Think free love was invented by the hippies in the 60s? Think again. Although, their revolutionary ideas about life and love always seemed to me to benefit the men more than the women. Free love is a great idea until it results in another tiny mouth that needs feeding. That's probably why monogamy is still the traditional way to go.

These editions are published by Faber

One of the best and possibly the only reliable and constant companion for an intrepid hermit is the written word. All you other nerds out there know what I'm talking about. I would say at least half the furniture in my house functions to hold books up. In other words, I have a lot of books. Believe it or not, when I moved across the country I got rid of about seven boxes of books and I still have so many left that I'm always tripping over them. Lately I've noticed I have this bad habit of buying a book, reading it once, and then never touching it again. It sits on my shelf, collecting dust and taking up space until I send it off to a used book store. It's kind of a wasteful habit. So, in addition to my six month ban on new clothes, I'm also going to limit my book purchases. My first step in going through with this plan was to get a library card again. I've been going without one for three years now. I honestly don't know how I let that happen. I should be ashamed of myself.

My neighborhood library has a great graphic novel section and one of the books I checked out was "a novel in pictures" called The Three Incestuous Sisters by Audrey Niffenegger (you might know her better as the author of The Time Travelers Wife). It's a wonderfully weird and sad book. A story about a tragic jealousy between sisters. It's illustrated with beautiful, dark aquatints. Apparently Niffenegger spent 14 years working on the book and letting it evolve into different forms. I'm inspired by this fact because it often takes me long periods of time to get some of my work done. I always wondered why my other artist friends could focus on one thing and get it done in a relatively short period of time, but I always work on about ten things at once and then they don't get done for ages.

Summer Reading

The Eyre Affair. I love the Bronte sisters, so it would follow that I will love a book with Jane Eyre, a mystery, and time travel, right?

Life in the Treetops. This book was written by Meg Lowman, who is a pioneer in rainforest canopy research. She is one of the most inspirational people I've ever met. I can't believe it's taken me this long to read her book.


A Million Little Pieces. I'm curious about the controversy. That's all.

The Feejee Mermaid and Other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History. With a title like that how could I resist? From what I can tell it's about weird phenomena in the animal kingdom. Cool.

The Satanic Verses. One I've been meaning to get to for a while.

The Children's Book. I know I'm being a little ambitious thinking I can finish this in one summer, it's a pretty hefty tome. But, I love love love A.S. Byatt so I can't go long without reading something by her.