erin

books in tower form

I am quite frequently asked about books. Usually about books I like or that I’d recommend and I’ve been meaning to do book posts for the blog for ages, so December is going to have lots of them and this is the first one, featuring a tower of books.

This is not an ideal bookshelf or an all time favorites or any sort of thoughtfully curated list. This is what happened when I wandered around my apartment searching my bookshelves for the books that seemed like they should be in this pile to be blog-shared.

Caveats: there is nothing in this pile that I read in 2012, that post is separate and forthcoming (a preview: I fell in really deep booklove with Kate Atkinson this year). There are a lot of old favorites here, one of them is so old it has my signature inked inside the cover to distinguish it from when I first read it in high school, several have been read many times over. I purposefully did not choose multiple titles by single authors (though Smoke & Mirrors, Fingersmith & all the other Amphigoreys tried really hard to get in on the book tower action).

Also, I’m not going to go on about why I love every book in this pile. For one thing, this post would get far too long, and for another, booklove is a personal sort of thing and it doesn’t always fall easily into short sentences or even words. I hugged my copy of Einstein’s Dreams when I pulled it off the shelf, that’s probably all you need to know.

So here is Erin’s Tower of Books She Loves & Hopes You Might, Too. Presented in easiest-to-stack order and followed by a list of titles & authors.

From top to bottom:

Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

The Litte Stranger by Sarah Waters

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Griffin & Sabine by Nick Bantock

Tales From Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan

Amphigorey by Edward Gorey

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: a small but helpful stray panda

a small but helpful stray panda

The panda followed me home. Probably because when I encountered it sitting on the side of the road I pet it gently on the head but I hadn’t ever pet a panda before and I wanted to see what it felt like. (Not as soft as I’d supposed, but he needed a bath.)

I didn’t realize he was following me until I got to my house and he headbutted my leg while I was unlocking the door. He’s kind of stealthy for a panda, but he’s small-ish, about the size of a medium-sized dog or an overweight cat, and he doesn’t make much noise.

I didn’t let him in, I’m not sure why. I guess pandas seem like wild animals regardless of size and whether or not they turn up unexpectedly on suburban sidewalks and enjoy pets on the head.

The panda whined and pawed at the door after I went in and that night he slept on the porch swing curled up like a black and white pillow.

The next day when I went outside he brought me a small branch and for a moment I thought he wanted to play fetch but then I realized he’d trimmed all the bushes, better than the gardener ever did.

After he helped me hang the holiday lights I decided I should let him come inside.

 

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

By erin, ago

on input mode, with music

I have been meaning to post this for ages, but here is a link to the beautiful music Aby Wolf did for my Talking Volumes event in Minnesota:

Isn’t it pretty? I am delighted beyond measure that the circus is inspiring such loveliness.

This post started as a random collection of things I’ve been listening to & watching lately but then it started wandering into thinky thoughts about input mode versus output mode which is something I think I’ve blogged about before, and I am still very much in input mode right now. So here’s a bit about the stuff I’ve been absorbing.

I have seen more movies this month than I did total in the previous year or so and I will tell you about them! Briefly.

First there was Cloud Atlas which I saw almost immediately after finishing the book so I was likely better prepared than most and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. (I enjoyed the book, too, though not quite as much as I’d wanted to. Partially because I liked the middle bits more than the outside bits.) It’s pretty and I liked the choices made with the story structuring. Also the china shop dream sequence bit was worth the price of admission it made me so happy. That said, I worry it would make absolutely no sense to anyone who didn’t read the book. And I’m looking forward to watching it again on dvd because I’m almost more interested in hearing people talk about it via commentary than the actual watching part.

This past weekend I saw Life of Pi which I read ages ago when the book first came out and I thought the film was lovely, the visuals were gorgeous and I was glad they stuck so closely to the narrative of the book, particularly at the end.

In non-book adaptation movies, Skyfall was awesome. I’m not a huge Bond girl but I loved Casino Royale and I really liked this one, too. Particularly the opening credits.

(Now I’m patiently and somewhat skeptically waiting for The Hobbit.)

In other media, I’ve been playing video games. I am not much of a gamer but in the last couple weeks I got vaguely obsessed with Portal & Portal 2 and they made me happy, because they are the thinky sort of puzzles that I love and also the writing is fantastic. Also they gave me an excuse to have cake.

I find sometimes more than movies certain games get my story-brain going more, maybe it’s the decision making part or the unexpected dragons. (I may have a mild Skyrim addiction.)

I’m finally getting better about acknowledging the fact that all this is productive, even though it doesn’t seem like work. I’ve spent a lot of the last year and a half in circus promo mode and it’s hard to crawl back into the writing cave. Well, no, crawling back in the cave is easy, the difficult part is writing and not just curling up with the bats and taking a cave nap. So I need to wander around outside the cave for a bit and see what there is to see, to get my brain re-acclimated to being creative.

And I like finding those things in non-book forms, I find sometimes stories in film or tv or game or theatre or painting or song form spark ideas just as much if not better than reading other books does. They stretch the imagination in different ways.

I think it’s a Julia Cameron Artist’s Way thing about “filling the well.” About taking time to see and enjoy and absorb new stuff to get your creative brain going. That’s mostly what I’m doing at the moment when I’m not stressing about moving and catching up on life and wondering how it is tipping into December already. Absorbing things and drinking tea and letting my brain soak up the good bits. Sooner or later it’ll bubble over and then we’ll tip back into output mode, I’m sure.

Since we started with music we shall close with music, too. Things I’ve been listening to beyond the mentioned-in-Toronto Andrew Bird include the new Bat for Lashes album and the constantly-in-my-head Adele Skyfall theme, but mostly I’m totally late to the party getting into Of Monsters and Men and I cannot stop listening to this album.

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: slow

slow

My therapist recommended the whole nature retreat thing. She pointed out how much vacation time I’d accumulated and pontificated about stress and also she threatened to call my boss if I didn’t go, which didn’t seem particularly ethical but I didn’t want to argue with her.

I had to lock my cell phone and my laptop in a box when I got here. The bearded guy in the office said he was going to bury them in the garden for the week but I think he was joking. He gave me a notebook and a fountain pen which is actually really nice to write with. I like the way the ink soaks into the paper.

Mostly the staff leaves the residents alone and everyone is friendly in a quiet sort of way, but if you need anything you can ask and they’ll help.

On my second day I asked for a new notebook since I’d filled the first one already, with thoughts and poems and little ink stars. The bearded guy gave me three more and suggested a good writing spot, showed me the right path and told me to keep an eye out for the sign, which was easy to spot because it’s painted in bright blue and happy yellow flowers.

He didn’t explain why the sign says “slow” but once I’d filled an entire notebook only to look up and see that the sun had only just barely moved from the same spot in the sky where it had been when I started writing, I figured it out.

 

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

By erin, ago

PSA regarding blog comments

Considering the fact that a comment I received on the blog yesterday reduced me to a sobbing mess for a good hour (it was not just the comment, the comment was the back-breaking straw on a terribly stressed camel of a day) I feel it would be wise to disable comments on the blog for a while. I have been historically lousy about replying to them anyway.

I am terribly fond of the internet but I am also a sensitive person which is not always the best combination for being a fairly public figure on said internet. And the most hurtful things seem to reach me via blog comments.

(I also tend to think of my website as my personal corner of the internet, like my own little virtual living room where I serve several varieties of tea in non-matching cups and tell small stories and try to keep the artwork dusted. I think I take things said here more personally than I might on Twitter, which always seems like Someone Else’s living room.)

This particular comment (which I did not approve for posting) derided me for sounding like an over-excited schoolgirl on NPR, going on at length about my repeated use of the word “like” and other such evidence and mainly, I think, implying that I should be able to speak as well as I write.

In thinking about it now that I am slightly more clear-headed, I am (and have always been) wary of expecting someone who can express themselves properly while typing to be able to accomplish the same feat with their tongue with similar ease, especially on the spot.

I am more skilled with my fingers, at least in that capacity. I wrote a flax-golden tale about it. I have social anxiety that ties my tongue more than might be considered normal.

Sometimes I am reduced to making wordless noises and I end up sounding something like a baby bird in order to express myself properly vocally though I try not to do that in interviews.

And the commenter did not mention this, but I giggle. Shamelessly. Whenever I can. Sorry.

Working with words in writing is a different animal than working with them in conversation. I also have a lot more practice with one rather than the other.

Yes, this is one comment in a sea of lovely comments (though there have been other upsetting ones in the past) but I think my initial stressed-out reaction is a good enough reason to suspend blog comments for a bit.

I am almost always reachable on Twitter for any blog comment-esque thoughts you might want to express and I might re-enable comments at some point in the future.

For the moment I’m going to stick to comments I find unexpectedly in my wallet.

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: paranormal postage thievery

paranormal postage thievery

The mailman noticed the vampire before I did. He mentioned it to me when he delivered a package that needed a signature. He said it was a small vampire, probably nothing to worry about but he thought I should be aware.

I thanked him but I didn’t really believe it until I saw the vampire myself, standing outside in a black and red cape.

He is a very small vampire, maybe about two feet tall. He lurks around the mailbox and occasionally tries to reach inside but he’s not tall enough.

The sunlight doesn’t seem to bother him, but if I open the door when he’s there he hisses like a cat and disappears into the shrubbery.

I decided to see if he was actually trying to steal the mail so I “accidentally” dropped an unimportant letter on the ground and went back inside to watch him through the window.

The vampire creeped out of his hiding place and very carefully peeled the stamp off of the letter.

He took the stamp and disappeared back into the shrubbery and I haven’t seen him since.

 

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

By erin, ago