booktastic

I have never read a James Bond novel. I had this fact hammered home to me last night. I didn’t post yesterday because Mr. Hall and I went to the movies with a friend last night and saw the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace. I can’t tell you if it’s faithful to the books or not, because I’ve never read one.

(I can tell you that I wasn’t all that thrilled with the movie, despite having been very excited about Casino Royale. B- at best. But I’ll talk about that at Moviephile.)

Perhaps it’s about time I read one. I’ve had opportunities in the past (I found a complete set of Ian Fleming’s James Bond books at a thrift store in my home town and purchased them for Mr. Hall for 50 cents each) - but never so much as opened one up. I guess it’s because they have an air of being real “guy” books… You know, like Tom Clancy novels. Very factual and detail-oriented, going into a great lot of detail about the “stuff” involved and about the hard facts of work history of the people in it… all while somehow totally avoiding anything that might potentially interest me in the story. Dry, dry, dry! (And having a semi-nude girl on the cover doesn’t do anything for me, either.) “Guy” books appeal to me almost as little as straight “Girl” books do. (Oh, we’re strong, now we’re crying, now we’re buying clothes, now guys are all stupid, now somebody’s getting divorced or married or dying of cancer, now we’re strong again!) Give me a nice middle-ground, people!

However, since I watch and enjoy the James Bond movies (with the exception of Quantum of Solace… and The World is Not Enough) maybe I should give one a go. I’d have to track down a copy of Casino Royale, which shouldn’t be that hard - I’m sure it was reprinted when the last movie came out. In any case, I’ll stick it in my virtual TBR pile and let it wait its turn. — Mrs. Hall

It may be too early to talk about this…. but it occurred to me this morning that it’s been several years since I read the book that used to be my Christmas tradition — The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum.

I suppose this tradition ended with my marriage and leaving of the parental home, largely due to the fact that I never actually owned a copy of this book — the one I read as a child belonged to my parents’ library.

However, I always think about this book at Christmastime and rather wish I had a copy.

Yes, that’s the L. Frank Baum of Wizard of Oz fame; one of his less popular, non-Oz books was this completely fictionalized biography of Santa. When I say “completely fictionalized”, I’m implying a whole lot more than the semi-mythic stories about the actual Santa Claus, St. Nicholas. This book contains no mention of his bishopric (yes, that’s a real word, and it’s not at all dirty) or the story of him saving the girls who were going to be sold into slavery by throwing bags of money through their window. You see, in L. Frank’s version, infant Claus is abandoned in the woods, is raised by a tiger and a nymph, learns lessons about good and evil and is finally granted immortality by the elves. His being a bishop - or a catholic - or even religious at all - really doesn’t figure into the story.

As a general rule, I take issue with “Christmas stories” that remove all the religious aspect from Christmas. However, I believe L. Frank simply wanted to give Santa a suitably mystical and magical origin, and did it the best way he knew how; I doubt that this book was intended as a tract of paganism any more than The Marvelous Land of Oz was intended as an argument for the acceptability of gender reassignment. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about… Well, that’s a whole other post.)

In retrospect, the book may be a touch on the bizarre side… but I cannot describe how much I enjoyed reading it as a child. Even as a teen - when reading the book became the work of an afternoon, rather than days - it still held a certain glamour for me. The beautiful illustrations, the sweet text…

But, as I mentioned, I haven’t read it in years. It’s rather perplexing to me that I haven’t managed to pick up a copy for myself in spite of liking it so much… Maybe I’ve been waiting for somebody to give it to me as a Christmas present.

Incidentally, this book was made into a rather trippy Rankin Bass film, The Life & Adventures of Santa Claus. Oddly, where I found the book charming and magical, I found this clay representation rather disturbing and nightmarish. But maybe that’s just me… If you didn’t find this claymation epic scary, I’d be delighted to hear from you.

Anyways, if you’re looking for some Christmas Reading, you should probably try to find yourself a copy of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. It’s a really fast read, has L. Frank Baum’s characteristic wit and charm - and, though it may not have any connection whatsoever to the “factual” biography of Santa - who couldn’t stand a little more mythical, mystical magic this Christmas? — Mrs. Hall

I didn’t post yesterday because I felt the only thing I had to talk about bookwise would be repetitive of my post the day before - mainly because I’m still working on these audiobooks. (In all honesty, it wasn’t just that: I was also pretty busy last night and didn’t get to use the computer). My husband I had lots of Halloween-related activites to take care of, and I made a mushroom soup from scratch for dinner. We carved pumpkins, watched the scariest movie in the world (The Haunting), watched It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, completed work on my halloween costume, took pictures for our facebook pages… It was a busy evening. But I digress.

I’m having better luck with my reading on public transit. I remembered yesterday that I often had better luck avoiding motion-sickness when I read on my trip to work rather than my trip from work - possibly because I’m still half asleep at the time. So I gave it a try, and sure enough, I was able to read for the majority of my commute to work yesterday morning. (Today I was stressed because I’d missed my bus and was worried about making the transfer, so I didn’t even try). It’s worth mentioning that on my trip home yesterday I had very good luck avoiding the motion sickness (I was getting so much into my book that I almost missed my top) - which leads me further to believe that this situation is psychosomatic.

Today I am listening to an audiobook called Bell, Book and Scandal by Jill Churchhill. It’s a mystery novel and, to my surprise, takes place in Chicago. It’s okay for listening to, especially when the alternative is focusing on my data entry; however, it’s worth pointing out that I’m already at chapter four and I’m still waiting for a mystery to happen. The heroine is a mystery writer (shock! It seems like the heroine in these sort of books is always a mystery writer or mystery reader) who is going to a mystery writing conference with a friend. I’ve learned a lot about writing conferences (which is good, since I have aspirations of my own) and very little about solving mysteries.

(Time Passes…) Okay, now I’m at Chapter Nine. Still no mystery. I’m confused… Is this a mystery novel? It seems to be all about mystery writing (which is fine), yet has no mystery in it. I don’t think being about mystery writing qualifies it as a mystery; perhaps the library had it classified incorrectly….?

Oh well. Today is Halloween! Happy Halloween! I expect to be very busy tonight, because last year I had something about seventy trick-or-treaters (which, to me, is a lot!) Ah well, I’d better finish up here… I have candy to eat. – Mrs. Hall

I’ve just had one of those days where you have a couple things you want to do - but you can’t decide which one to work on, because working on one makes you feel guilty for ignoring the other - so you spend all day going from project to project, without completing any of the things you really wanted to work on.

For instance, I was supposed to write or read today, it being my second-to-last day off. I couldn’t decide which one to focus on. So instead, I went to Mass, did the dishes, tidied, prepared New Zealand Jaime’s Christmas package, messed about with facebook, watched Mystery Science Theatre 3000, read the news, and so on. Granted, I did need to do all of those things… except facebook and MST3K…

I’ve had Mystery Science Theater 3000 on the brain lately, so I think I’ll recommend you a book related to that: The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Episode Guide. Now, obviously, you’re not going to get a lot out of this book if you haven’t seen the show first, so you really need to go out and get a couple episodes of that. (For more on this show, check out my other blog Moviephile).

Once you’ve seen a couple episodes (Manos: The Hands of Fate and Space Mutiny are particularly good ones) - come back and pick up a copy of this book. It’s a good guide to the series. Also, the entries on the individual films were actually written by the cast and are, therefore, hilarious. The main thing wrong with this book is that it is incomplete; the series went on for another four or so seasons after this was published.

More on this later, no doubt. I’ve got to go and not read or write for a while until Mr. Hall gets home.  — Mrs. Hall

I started The Beekeeper’s Apprentice last night and so far I’m enjoying it. I was a little concerned at first about the heroine of the book… I was afraid things might go in that “men are stupid, women are smart!” area, but so far things are looking good. I’m intrigued enough to keep going.

This isn’t the first non-Conan-Doyle Sherlock book I’ve read. A few others have crossed my purview: the ones that spring to mind immediately are those by Nicholas Meyer, such as The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. (Nicholas Meyer, incidentally, was also the director and writer of the film Time After Time, which is about H.G. Wells traveling through time to the sleazy 1970’s.) I read those books years ago when I was a teen and very into Sherlockiana, and I was somewhat disgusted with them.

As I recall, things just got goofy. The book started out all right, but eventually Holmes and Watson were immortal and travelling through time and such - and I just didn’t buy it. (Not that I have a problem with Sci-Fi, obviously! But I didn’t read the book for Sci-Fi: I read because I wanted a Sherlock Holmes mystery.) Holmes was not acting like Holmes - by the end of the book (this one or one of Meyers’s others, I don’t remember) I was just like, “I don’t even care about these characters anymore. This is not Holmes and Watson.” I may be doing Nicholas Meyer a disservice; after all, as I said, I haven’t read the books since I was a teen, and perhaps I judged harshly. All I know is that at the time I was very displeased.

So far, I think I’m safe with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. We shall see.

All this talk of Victorian Era folks travelling through time reminded me of this new movement I heard about recently: Steampunk. Have you heard about this? It’s most bizarre, but I kind of like it. It’s a “subgenre of fantasy and speculative fiction” -  a mix of Victoriana and sci-fi, or slightly pre-Industrial era and fantasy - I’m having trouble defining it, but I really like its look. As a style, it’s very interesting: I really, really like this  computer redesigned in Steampunk fashion. It takes all the flair of the Victorian Era (you know, all the delicacy and crafstmanship in ordinary objects which we used to have before Frank Lloyd Wright killed beauty) and mixing it with the technology of today.

The only part I don’t like is that some people are starting to call Steampunk a “lifestyle”; that’s taking it just a bit too far. It gets kind of poseurish at that point. Let’s just call it a style, folks, and enjoy it for what it is. — Mrs. Hall

In my other blog, Moviephile, I’ve been talking about Halloween-related viewing (and the Halloween-related viewing we’ve been doing lately, such as Beetlejuice, The Evil of Frankenstein, The Night Stalker and so on). I thought it might be nice if I talked about Halloween-related reading today, what with Halloween less than two weeks away.

The problem is… I don’t really do Halloween-related reading. It wouldn’t be Halloween unless I watched a couple scary/Halloweeny movies, but I can completely do without scary reading for the holiday.

I find scary reading too… scary.

I’m a big sissy as far as “scary” things go. I really don’t like frightening movies (most memento mori, Tim-Burtonish stuff gives me nightmares) so I only watch them at Halloween-time. As for frightening books - they’re simply beyond the pale. I credit my reading of The Shining at age fourteen with literally making me afraid of the dark for a month and giving me fear-related stomach issues that persist to this day… No, I’m not exaggerating. It really did effect me that strongly. Yes, I am a wuss; thank you for noticing.

Well, I guess I should correct myself. It’s not really the “memento mori” aspect of scary stuff that bothers me - I mean, we’re all going to die. It’s just part of life. What bothers me are implications of horrible life-after-death. Hence, a distinct lack of enjoying horror movies and scary books. (And hence, another Stephen King novel, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, not being scary to me at all. I mean, seriously. I can’t tell you why it wasn’t scary without spoiling the ending - but, I mean, seriously. Not scary. If you know why the end of the movie It isn’t scary, then I can tell you this: it’s something similar. I may not enjoy scary reading, but if I read something expecting it to be scary - I expect to be scared!)

To get back to the point - how sensitive am I to frightening reading material? Trying to write a scary story the other day left me scared. So I don’t think I’m going to be reading any scary stories this Halloween. At least, not unless you recommend them. And Mr. Hall is at home. And all the lights are on. — Mrs. Hall