The plane touched down at 3.55pm on Saturday, but I feel like I may only be finally getting home now. Jetlag has been wearing me down less and less each day, and the sore neck I picked up at Universal Studios is slowly, slowly taking care of itself.
And routine, welcome and sometimes not, is settling in. I find myself reading a chapter a night of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to Sophie (and occasionally Jessica), while pushing ineffectualy at the pile of work I’d hoped to get through this week. Focus has been in short supply, though I have managed to get copyedits out for one book and I am working slowly on another. The problem is I need to finish that book ASAP and get proposals out into the world. Why? Well, even allowing for the disjointed nature of World Fantasy this year, I feel weirdly optimistic about things. I think there are books to be made and sold, if I can just tweak things a little.
I have been reading and watching. I’ve gotten through the opening episodes of both “Once Upon a Time” and “Grimm”, and like them about equally, which is to say a bit, but not a lot. I’ve also been half-reading things. With 2012 well under way, I’ve now finished reading an anthology and an issue of a magazine, which does make it feel real. Last Short Story is firing up in the background, and I have other work to do! Recommended reading. Gah. Not going to think about that today.
This is becoming very rambly, but before I sign off I do have a recommendation. I picked up a copy of Patrick Ness’s widely-recommended and award-nominated A Monster Walks today. Taken by its brevity, I read it between lunchtime and now and can only say this it powerful, honest and beautiful, and that I recommend it without hesitation.
Busy days!
Ness’s book is quite wonderful, I think. I’ve cited it’s title incorrectly at least three times now, so it is with a sense of fellowship that I urge your readers to look for “A Monster Calls.” (The monster comes to call, and the monster does so by walking, and that pretty much covers all the verbs I’ve used mistakenly.) Apparently, the book started with an idea that Siobhan Dowd did not live long enough to write, so now I’m persuaded that I need to catch up with Dowd’s writing. I remember hearing good things about “Bog Child.” I fell into “A Monster Calls” in just the way you describe, intending to glance at it and then put it down and do other things. Other things waited, and I read the book through.
Exactly my experience, and pretty much my response. I too will be looking into Dowd’s other work, as well as keeping up with Ness, who really can write.
I was very taken by the Chaos Walking trilogy.
Siobhan Dowd sadly only lived to the age of forty-seven before dying of breast cancer, and she only published four novels, all of which are worth reading. A Swift Pure Cry and Solace of the Road are YA and The London Eye Mystery is MG, but none of them are SF or fantasy. Bog Child isn’t really either, though there are what could be defined as elements, a kind of Alan Garneresque meeting of minds across time. It won the Carnegie Medal posthumously and is, I think, Dowd’s best novel and I recommend it highly.
Like Susan, I liked the Chaos Walking trilogy quite a bit. I haven’t read A Monster Calls yet, but I do intend to as soon as possible.