2012

june is audiobook month

I don’t listen to as many audiobooks as I’d like to but I still flipped when I found out that Jim Dale was going to narrate the audio version of The Night Circus. For a few reasons, including the fact that he narrated the short-lived but beloved-by-me Pushing Daisies and also he was Barnum in Barnum and I was a clown (seriously) in a production of Barnum when I was in high school. (Seriously, it involved pink and yellow polkadots and I had pigtails, and is likely one of many reasons there are no clowns in my circus.)

He has the most fantastic storyteller voice. If you haven’t heard it, have a listen:

 

I love the audio of The Night Circus so much I sometimes want to rig my iPod at readings so Jim Dale can read instead of me. He does all the accents, while I avoid reading the sections with lots of dialogue.

(Jim also narrates all the Harry Potter audiobooks. You know, if you haven’t read Harry Potter or want to have someone re-read them to you. That’d be a fun June is Audiobook Month activity, I’m just sayin’.)

So, in summary: I can’t believe it’s June already and listening to books is like childhood bedtime stories all over again and if you haven’t listened to an audiobook in a while, it is a perfect summery month to do so.

 

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: keeping time

keeping time

I put time away.

I locked it in a cabinet. An old cabinet, painted to look older than it is, with a lock and a key. I put the key on a chain around my neck.

The cabinet has a glass door so I can see inside to check that time is still there.

I want to be sure it doesn’t get away from me again.

I put time away so it would stop.

So everything will remain just as it is.

As it was.

So you can stay.

 

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

By erin, ago

post-holiday

So the post-holiday post has been delayed until now because, as I mentioned on Twitter, my grandmother passed away last week.

She was 95 years old and until recently was still going up & down her stairs in South Boston. It was not terribly unexpected but that does not make it any less sad and I will think of her when I have cups of tea, which is frequently.

I looked through my computer for photographs and while I don’t have any recent ones, I did find this, which I love (I never knew my grandfather but apparently he had fabulous hats):

Thank you to everyone who sent kind words and condolences via Twitter, they are much appreciated.

 

So, probably obvious but I lost most of my post-holiday, pre-Book Expo week to catch up on things. I will likely not catch up on emails or Twitter replies or things like that any time soon, my apologies. I have to do things like pack. And unpack, I’m not even properly unpacked yet.

Regarding Book Expo America next week: yes, I will be there. Last I checked I wasn’t on the list of authors on the website but I really do have a signing on Wednesday at 11:30am in the Random House booth. Haven’t signed things in a while, maybe more letters will be legible in my signature. Probably not, though.

 

If you hadn’t figured it out from the periodic palm trees popping up on Twitter, I spent the last few weeks in Florida. Mostly around Fort Lauderdale with a few excursions to Miami for art deco architecture research. I will try to post more photos at some point soon(ish).

I read and I wrote and I flounced around on beaches and I actually got to relax for a change which was splendid. Proper book-centric post forthcoming but the book I enjoyed the most was Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer. It’s fascinating and also has a very pretty cover.

Speaking of books, while I was away the circus was chosen for the Huffington Post Book Club. I am delighted, of course, though I feel slightly bad as it was the only one of the nominated books not yet out in paperback but I hope all the book club readers enjoy it. Also in UK book club news, the circus was chosen for the Richard & Judy Summer Book Club which is also delightful and flattering and I hope everyone reading it in the summer finds it an autumnal sort of escape.

I will likely not manage a proper Florida recap, but I did have one of the loveliest meals I’ve ever at Market 17 (the dessert involved this, it was magic!) and I would totally go back to dine in the dark. Also I saw more butterflies than I’ve ever seen before in my life and I narrowly escaped an attack by a small pink lizard and I watched ducklings learn to swim. Not all at the same time.

And I watched the sunrise from the seashore while wearing a matching dress. I miss the sound of the waves already.

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: wish dish

wish dish

I blame Dr. Seuss.

It’s a belief that solidified in my head after all the rhyming, the fish wish dish stuff.

I was easily influenced by rhyming things. My mother says I used to try to put a hat on the cat and cry when he wouldn’t wear it.

(My mother can’t stand Dr. Seuss. Or Curious George, but I never cared much for him either, with that weird yellow hat guy.)

I don’t try to force fedoras on kittens anymore but that dish wish thing stuck in my mind.

It stuck without the fish, and with a technicality: you have to break a dish to make your wish properly.

I know it sounds silly, but broken dish wishing works.

Though it means I constantly have to stock up on dishes.

 

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: a saturday afternoon quest for power

a saturday afternoon quest for power

It’s a stupid thing to search for, she tells me, for about the hundredth time since we started walking.

I ask her if it would be better to search for Knowledge and she says that it would.

Well, Knowledge is Power, isn’t it? I ask, and that shuts her up for a good half an hour but after we find the next marker (a rock this time, engraved instead of painted and half-hidden in the grass) she starts up again.

How do you know you’ll get to keep it if you find it? she asks.

I’m not sure but I don’t tell her that.

We’ll figure that out when we reach it, I say.

Then she asks if we have a big enough bag if we need to bring it home and I worry that I haven’t thought this through properly.

I suggest that she look for shapes in the clouds, distracting her while I search for the next sign with another arrow to point the way.

She finds a pirate ship and a dancing bear.

I start to wonder what it is I’m looking for.

 

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

By erin, ago