When you read Every Dead Thing, you get two books for the price of one.  This haunting thriller is written in two acts, which could easily have been two separate books; however, they work well together.  The first introduces you to ex-Detective Charlie 'Bird' Parker, and the second, shows you the depths that he will go to.  As the book opens, Parker's wife and daughter are brutally murdered by a serial killer, known as the Traveling Man.  The descriptions of the violence are visceral and often repugnant.  This is not a story for the squeamish.  Connolly wants readers to understand why Parker believes that true Evil does exist.  At the beginning,  you can't help but empathize with Parker.  His tragedy transforms him though, and that's why he's such a fascinating character.  The first act is about Parker's search for a missing girl in New York.  In the second act, Parker chases the serial killer, who killed his white and daughter, to Louisiana, where the pace quickens and Parker confronts his worst nightmare.

In the end, the soulful way Connolly writes about morality and how Parker deals with the pain in his life are the main enticements of this first novel.  One may be put off by the level of violence or the vast number of names in the book, but Connolly can tell a story, and that's why I can't wait for the next Parker mystery.

“The nature of humanity, its essence, is to feel another’s pain as one’s own, and to act to take that pain away. There is a nobility in compassion, a beauty in empathy, a grace in forgiveness.” – John Connolly, The Killing Kind

“There is an interconnectedness to all things, a link between what lies buried and what lives above, a capacity for mutability that allows a good act committed in the present to rectify an imbalance in times gone by. that, in the end, is the nature of justice: not to undo the past but, by acting further down the line of time, to restore some measure of harmony, some possibility of equilibrium, so that lives may continue with their burden eased and the dead may find peace in the world beyond this one.” – John Connolly, The Killing Kind

“There is a dark resource within all of us, a reservoir of hurt and pain and anger upon which we can draw when the need arises. Most of us rarely, if ever, have to delve too deeply into it. That is as it should be because dipping into it costs, and you lose a little of yourself each time, a small part of all that is good and honorable and decent about you, each time you use it you have to go a little deeper, a little further down into the blackness. Strange creatures move through its depth, illuminated by a burning light from within and fueled only by the desire to survive and to kill. The danger in diving into that pool, in drinking from the dark water, is that one day you may submerge yourself so deeply that you can never find the surface again. Give in to it and you’re lost forever.” – John Connolly, The Killing Kind

“This is a honeycomb world. It hides a hollow heart.

The truth of nature, wrote the philosopher Democritus, lies in deep mines and caves. The stability of what is seen and felt beneath our feet is an illusion, for his life is not as it seems. Below the surface, there are cracks and fissures and pockets of stale, trapped air; stalagmites and helactites and unmapped dark rivers that flow ever downward. It is a place of caverns and stone waterfalls, a labyrinth of crystal tumors and frozen columns where history becomes future, then becomes now.

For in total blackness, time has no meaning.

The present is imperfectly layered on the past; it does not conform flawlessly at every point. things fall and die and their decay creates new layers, thickening the surface crust and adding another thin membrane to cover what lies beneath, new worlds resting on the remains of the old. Day upon day, year upon year, century upon century, layers are added and the imperfections multiply. The past never truly does. It is there, waiting, just below the surface of the now. We stumble into it occasionally, all of us, through remembrance and recall. We summon to mind former lovers, lost children, departed parents, the wonder of a single day when we captured, however briefly, the ineffable, fleeting beauty of the world. These are our memories. We hold them close and call them ours, and we can find them when we need them.

But sometimes that choice is made for us: a piece of the present simply falls away, and the past is exposed like old bone. Afterward, nothing can ever be the same again, and we are forced to reassess the form of what we believed to be true in the light of new revelations about its substance. The truth is revealed by a misstep and the sudden sense that something beneath our feet rings false. The past bubbles out like molten lava, and lives turn to ash in its path.” – John Connolly, The Killing Kind

“This world is full of broken things: broken hearts, broken promises, broken people. This world, too, is a fragile construct, a honeycomb place where the past leaches into the present, where the weight of blood guilt and old sins causes lives to collapse and forces children to lie with the remains of their fathers in the tangled ruins of the aftermath.” – John Connolly, The Unquiet

" To those who have been forsaken, hell has no geography. The Black Angel begins with the disappearance of a young prostitute from one of New York City's seamiest neighborhoods. Like so many tormented souls before her, the girl's mother is inevitably drawn to Charlie Parker's doorstep desperate for redemption and revenge. Despite the danger that his chosen profession imposes on his wife and newborn daughter, Parker knows that the woman and her troubles cannot be ignored. As always, he is driven as much by the evil that simmers in the hidden honeycomb world as he is by the ties of friendship and blood. As Parker gets closer to the girl's captors, he discovers that her disappearance is linked to a church of bones in Eastern Europe, to the slaughter at a French monastery in 1944, and to the myth of an object known as the Black Angel -- an object considered by evil men to be beyond priceless. But the Black Angel is not a legend. It is real. It lives. It dreams. And the mystery of its existence may contain the secret of Parker's own origins. "

" To those who have been forsaken, hell has no geography. The Black Angel begins with the disappearance of a young prostitute from one of New York City's seamiest neighborhoods. Like so many tormented souls before her, the girl's mother is inevitably drawn to Charlie Parker's doorstep desperate for redemption and revenge. Despite the danger that his chosen profession imposes on his wife and newborn daughter, Parker knows that the woman and her troubles cannot be ignored. As always, he is driven as much by the evil that simmers in the hidden honeycomb world as he is by the ties of friendship and blood. As Parker gets closer to the girl's captors, he discovers that her disappearance is linked to a church of bones in Eastern Europe, to the slaughter at a French monastery in 1944, and to the myth of an object known as the Black Angel -- an object considered by evil men to be beyond priceless. But the Black Angel is not a legend. It is real. It lives. It dreams. And the mystery of its existence may contain the secret of Parker's own origins. "

Order The Black Angel from Amazon for $6.39

Other Kindle Books of Interest
The Killing Kind
The White Road
Every Dead Thing
The Unquiet: A Thriller
The Book of Lost Things

After a long illness, David's mother has passed away, leaving him only with a few hazy memories and a love of books. He is thrown into further turmoil when his father, who is a loving but not exactly comforting presence, remarries Rose and produces David's half-brother, Georgie. Suddenly, David has to deal not only with the loss of his mother but with the unfamiliar, volatile emotions stirred up by the new additions to his family.

The new family moves into Rose's family estate. David, determined to maintain his distance from Rose's irritating but well-intentioned overtures, spends most of his time exploring his new home or perusing the old books in his new bedroom. Curiously, Rose tells him that the bedroom once belonged to a boy who loved books as well, but this boy - Rose's uncle, Jonathan - disappeared along with his sister and were never found. This declaration becomes all the more ominous when David starts seeing the Crooked Man. As we wise grown-ups all know, anyone who calls himself the Crooked Man is probably up to no good. But a boy of twelve who is lonely and confused, and who hears his books' and his recently deceased mother's voices, likely does not give such obvious signs any consideration.

After a particularly nasty fight with Rose, David, feeling abandoned and rejected, follows his mother's voice down to the garden. Crawling through a crack in the garden wall, David is thrust into a world that feels familiar but off-kilter. In this world, wolves follow their hybrid masters, the Loups; the seven dwarves are long-suffering laborers who failed to poison a fat, lazy, and demanding Snow White; Red Riding Hood is a seductress, bringing the Big Bad Wolf yet more victims; a knight bravely faces death for the man he loves; and the Crooked Man lives up to his name. There is also a king who is uninterested in ruling his kingdom, and it is he who is the owner of The Book of Lost Things, which supposedly holds the key for David to come home. Before he can go back to his own world, however, David must traverse the kingdom and confront his own fears, all the while not knowing who to trust or even if all his efforts will amount to anything. In the end, he learns what it means to let go, to sacrifice, and to love wholly and selflessly.

John Connolly uses an inspired premise to articulate a boy's grief and anger, infusing a familiar situation with elements of the fantastic. The premise, however, was more interesting than the execution (wow, how diplomatic am I?). There were times when the writing fell flat; as I mentioned previously, I nearly gave up on the book as it was pretty slow-going. The wildly creative reimaginings of the fairy tales we all have grown up with kept my interest, however, as did the macabre tales that I must assume sprang solely from the author's mind; I can't recall ever having read anything about the huntress in the woods, who fuses game with humans because she is bored of hunting woodland creatures, and it does sound like it could be a news headline, doesn't it?

Most affecting and surprising, though, is the emotional generosity Mr. Connolly gives all the characters. I thought it remarkable that the example of true love used in The Book of Lost Things was between two knights. How awesome is that? I take that as an affirmation that love, in any form, can exist if one has the faith to commit to it. This is the central theme of the story, and although the novel is not entirely consistent, there's something universally resonant about David's journey that makes me feel justified in saying that this is a piece of literature that should not be missed.

A Different Perspective:

• Everyday Reads

I'm gleefully looking forward to reading 36 more books this year. With roughly eight months to go, that's what? Four and a halfish books a month. HA. PIECE OF CAKE. I can do that with my eyes closed!

You should consider putting the following books in front of your open eyeballs:

Fat Girl's Guide to Life by Wendy Shanker
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
No Country For Old Men by that crazy motherfarker, Cormac McCarthy

I invite you to browse my to-read shelf on Goodreads.com and make suggestions and recommendations. I am not opposed to adding more titles to that list. Let's go crazy, let's get nuts. Let's make that list impossible to complete!

Blogs
I've been mulling over what I should do with this site. Nothing? Something? Everything? I haven't been spending much time online lately and I like it. But I do wonder if I should do something about this space.

I went through my neglected feed reader today and cut it in half. I waffled about making cuts and decided that I can always add back. What does it matter if someone's on my list if I'm never reading?

Babies
I've had a touch of baby fever lately. If someone has an infant they would like to loan to me occasionally, I would be grateful. I think having a baby around would be the shot in the arm I need to get over this already.

I really do want a puppy. You can offer to loan me yours, but I will keep it. You've been warned.

I've just finished Joe Hill's "20th Century Ghosts", a compilation of short stories.  It really only had the one ghost story, which had me a little disappointed.  I managed to get over it, though (I'm tough like that) and enjoyed all the stories in this hidden gem of a book.  You may recognize the name Joe Hill by his hit novel "Heart Shaped Box".  If you don't know of it, but enjoy horror/ghost stories, this is definitely a must-have!

I've now started on Dean Koontz's "The Darkest Evening of the Year" which has a funny (ha ha) start to it.  But knowing the avenues Mr. Koontz likes to ride, I'm bracing myself for the creepy.  My tastes seem to be going for the scary and supernatural for the past year at least now.  Usually one will spot me on the subway or train with either a John Connolly or a Neil Gaiman book, biding my time until the next Christopher Moore novel comes out (I have it on authority it's due out later this year, but I will not reveal my source) and then I'll be flush in another few hundred pages.

There's something wonderful about these books...rather, there are a lot of things wonderful about these books.  Not just an escape from the cold cruelty of the real world by envisioning their well-written cruel worlds, but also because they let you believe that the absurd is possible, that other worlds can intertwine with ours without doubt or question, and that the underdog could very well be the bad guy you were rooting for through most of the story.

These guys are a perfect example of what it is to create a whole new world where the rules are yours to make up as you go along.  It's heartening for me as a writer to be able to read these books.  For so long, I was holding myself back from writing what I wanted to because I had put these inane, insane rules on myself of the characters I could write, trying my hardest to make sure they were all likable, unflawed characters (highly unrealistic) for fear if I created a really heartless bastard, I'd get in trouble with someone and my work would never get published.  So many times as a kid, I would hear people on the news talking about burning books (a crime) because of the content.  People burned Harry Potter books because it talked about witchcraft (and the most recent discovery that Albus Dumbledore was gay - I knew it! - had more in an uproar), others wanted to burn classics such as E. B. White's "Charlotte's Web" and George Orwell's "Animal Farm" because the animals talked.  

These books were classics...CLASSICS!!!!  And the reason they were classics was because their lessons stood the test of time.  A child's love for her pig, how animals interact with each other and the telepathy or language of some sort they use to communicate.  This was communication from the writers to us, this was them telling us what was on their mind without actually talking to us face to face.  This was education; books teachers were using to utilize better comprehension skills in their charges.  Children got to use their biggest talents, their imaginations, to play with these stories and learn the morals ingrained in the pages.  And people wanted to burn that!

Sorry for the tangent there...went off course a little bit towards the end.  Okay, where was I before the soapbox creeped under me?  Yes, the guys I listed at the top give me hope and a path to follow while laying down a few of my own bricks while going about my way.  if I'm lucky enough to get published this year, I hope I'll have come up with something you'll like.

What are you reading these days?  How do you like it so far?  Who's next after that?

Word broke early this week that Governor Deval Patrick’s casino bill was dead. House Dean David Flynn told the Taunton Gazette, “The casino bill isn’t going anywhere. I find very little support for it from members of the house,” adding that he expects a roll call vote on his racino bill, while “the casinos won’t,” because Dan Bosley’s committee “will issue an adverse report, preventing the house from voting on the casino bill.”

It’s not how things work – the Speaker’s office has repeatedly said that Patrick’s bill will receive a vote on the House floor before it wraps its budget bill in April, regardless of whether or not it gets a favorable committee report. (PS - it won't.) But that doesn’t mean that casinos still aren’t headed for a messy demise.

Last week was not kind to Patrick’s bizarre pet cause, and this week, the bill abandoned its slow grave-ward lurch in favor of a full-on sprint. The Globe finally buried the Chamber of Commerce’s well-intentioned but ham-handed casino report, while Bosley issued a position paper that blasts yawning holes in Patrick’s economic projections. And then things got messy.

Bosley has repeatedly said that the fate of casinos, long sold as an economic development package and not a revenue-generation scheme, will rest on two questions: Where does casino revenue come from, and how much does it cost to get at it? Reps appear to be responding to those questions by rapidly coming to the conclusion that the money behind Patrick’s plan isn’t really there. Either that, or budget season's around the corner. Whichever it is, the casino hearing the administration has demanded won’t even happen until next week, but already, the bill’s most ardent backers are declaring it all but dead.

We've seen a major - and stunningly quick - reversal of fortunes for a plan that, a few months ago, was building plenty of momentum, and threatening the Speaker's hold on his own chamber. It may be that last bit - DiMasi, not Patrick, controlling the House's fortunes - that accounts for the astounding display of rancor erupting over the past few days.

After those persistent, widespread rumors, it turns out that Senator Marian Walsh won’t be taking a job on the bench after all. All those would-be successors are, as they say, SOL.

It’s not as devastating to the collective ambitions of the state’s political establishment as John Kerry’s inexcusable failure to move his ass out of his Senate seat in 2004 was, but it’s still not good news for any pol who might think of himself as being destined for bigger and better things. (That’s no short list, either.)

Best legislative literary allusion of the week: At a Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, Senator Robert O’Leary took the microphone to testify. But first, he apologized if he looked or sounded weary. “I spent last night tilting at windmills,” he joked. Senator Robert Creedon consoled O’Leary, saying that, if he didn’t succeed in halting Cape Wind, then at least he landed himself “a nice picture in the Globe.” “Very Kennedy-esque,” Creedon nodded, admiringly.

Rookie councilor John Connolly livened up an otherwise sleepy City Council meeting on Wednesday by peppering his speech with ten-cent words like “quibble” and “quagmire.” If we didn’t know better, we’d think Connolly had already tired of the whole “public servant” gig, and was now honing his vocabulary in the hopes of becoming a sesquipedalian New York Times obit writer. Hope our normally-razor-sharp instincts are wrong on that one.

It’s time for the Hill and the Hall Rumor Control!

Item: Is the Council in for a major post-St. Paddy’s bender?

Turns out, no. Council President Maureen Feeney seemed to leave the door open to government-sanctioned revelry and debauchery when she closed this week’s meeting with a vague promise to keep the celebration rolling the next time the Council meets, “At which time I will bring you some refreshments to keep you going.” And at least one councilor was overheard asking Feeney if she was planning on distributing pints of Guinness on the Council floor. Unfortunately, Feeney was just alluding to a batch of Irish scones she’d forgotten to bring to work this week.

Wire services contributed to this report.

Grieving for his mother, David is unable to love or even accept being thrust into the new family his father is creating. In his attic room, once belonging to a long lost relation of his step-mother, he finds the long forgotten books of a boy who disappeared mysteriously many years ago. The books start to whisper to him, and the Crooked Man starts to move into David's consciousness, while David is drawn to the strange and violent world beyond the sunken garden.

In order to get back to his own world, David must face the quest of a lifetime and come face to face with some of the myths and legends in the stories his mother has left him with.

Every time I visited my book shop, this book would jump out at me from the "3 for 2" table, or in the "Staff recommends" book section, but it wasn't until my book group leader chose it, that I actually got round to reading it. As I already read quite a lot of children's books, I wasn't put off by the fantastical, fairy tale elements of the plot, and had high hopes for an engaging story that would keep me occupied for a few hours on a cold Sunday in January. Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed. I'm not sure how long the author had been planning and writing this book, but I found that as I got further into the book, I felt that I'd read or seen it all before, and all slightly better. I was reminded a lot of the film "Pan's Labyrinth" from a couple of years ago, with a very similar story, except it's a young Spanish girl with a step-father who is a sadistic captain in the Army fighting a small band of anti-fascist rebels in the Spanish countryside, who escapes into a world of fables to forget reality.

As a huge fan of Jasper Fforde, I'm happy with the use of our well known nursery rhymes and fairy tales being used to tell a new story, but in this book I'm not sure that it really worked. There was a lot of inspiration drawn from the old tales and reworked into the plot, and it was essential to the narrative to keep David's journey moving forward, but it all felt too familiar and derivative of other books I've read or films I've seen before, and it just wasn't original. The author is obviously compelled by fairy tales and myths, as at the back of my copy of the book was a 150 pages of supplementary notes about the genuine origins of some of the stories he refers to in the book, but I'm afraid I just couldn't be bothered to read it.

In the author interview at the end of the book, he does allude to the fact that he has delved deep into his subconscious and I wonder if it was written as a kind of therapy to help him deal with and understand his own experiences. We see glimpses of a boy suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and are unsure whether the entire story is one of the inner thoughts of a grief stricken young boy with mental health problems, or whether the author intended us to believe this supposed to be a genuine fantastical adventure.

I think this probably comes across as me saying this is a bad book, but it isn't. It was enjoyable, it was well written, it was entertaining, and if you haven't had the same exposure to the other things I've mentioned, then you may find it original and fascinating. If it's not the type of book you would normally read, then maybe you'll find it interesting and unusual, and I would recommend you try it.

Track listing:

Track listing:

I started reading this book a few days ago and it's fantastic!

Blurb from the back of the book
High in his attic bedroom, twelve year old David mourns the loss of his mother. He is angry and he is alone, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness, and as he takes refuge in the myths and fairytales so beloved of his dead mother he finds that the real world and the fantasy world have started to meld. The Crooked Man has come, with his mocking smile and hisenigmatic words: 'Welcome, your majesty. All hail the new king.'And as war rages across Europe, David is violently propelled into a land that is both a construct of his imagination yet frighteningly real, a strange reflection of his own world composed of myths and stories, populated by wolves and worse-than-wolves, and ruled over by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious legendary book...

DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE BOOK

The dwarfs in particular have to be my favourite characters so far, they have made me laugh out loud! I love the way the endings of well known fairytales have been changed in this book. It's a good lighthearted read with plenty of smiles.

NOCTURNES

There are dark things creeping in the shadows of John Connolly's NOCTURNES. There are monsters in the woods, demons beneath churches, and vampires in the suburbs. There are old gods on the beach, witches in forgotten towns, ghosts in dark houses, and those blasted creepy clowns at the family circus. Connolly's stories are fairy tales for our modern times. And if there's a lesson to be gained from any of these stories it's that those dark, unknown places in or around your home are best avoided even if you are an able-bodied man and especially if you're a child. Connolly's prose is lyrical and haunting, and I would have enjoyed everything about this collection if it weren't for the last three stories which seemed to play upon a particularly male fear: uncontrolled, "untapped female power."

I didn't care for these stories which seemed paint the carnal woman as a threat that either needed to be heroically wiped-out, or avoided. In "Mr. Gray's Folly" an older couple moves onto a small estate whose grounds is the resting place for the bones of Lilith, Adam's (as in Adam and Eve) first wife, a demon and the original witch. Her power is her sexuality.

Gray sensed its desire, its base sexual need. It would consume him, and he would be grateful for its appetites, even as its talons ripped into him, and its beak blinded him and its limbs enfolded him in a final embrace.

At the end of the story, after the protagonist defeats Lilith, someone remarks,

"Women .... If they had their way, they'd rule the world" .... But they won't, I thought. At least not if I have anything to do with it.

And in "The Cycle" (a not-so-subtle allusion to the menstrual cycle), just before the female werewolf eats the teenage boy (an unfunny, unflattering take on PMS), Connolly writes:

In his final moments, he was struck, oddly, by the realization that he had always been afraid of women. Now, at last, he thought he understood why.

This admittedly very mild strain of misogynism was a sour note on which to end, especially since I'd already been wondering, Where are the women? Not the witches and the vampires, but the women? But, I don't want to discourage you - NOCTURNES is an engrossing collection which magnificently showcases John Connolly's writing. My personal favorites were:

"The Other Daughter" - A disquieting story of a man's family under attack by evil fairies.

"The Ritual of the Bones" - A young working class boy learns just how much he's expected to support his upperclass peers at an elite private school.

"The Erlking" - A short but effective story reminiscent of THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS in that there are evil things waiting in the woods preying upon innocent children.

"The Shifting of the Sands" - An excellent tale which reminded me of the horror movie "The Children of the Corn" with its sacrifices to a menacing, unseen, and ancient god.

"The Reflecting Eye: A Charlie Parker Novella" - A refreshing twist on the old haunted house story with a truly evil villain and an intriguing hero.

So far, John Connolly is batting two for two in my book. I'm tempted to read one of the Charlie Parker novels, but I'm less interested in reading his thrillers than I am in reading his take on fantasy and horror. He is the near-perfect joining of imagination and style. NOCTURNES was a pleasure to read, and I can only hope that whatever he writes next is like this or THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS in both style and content. I'd buy that in a minute.

---4---

John Connelly's The Book of Lost Things is the story of a young English boy who becomes trapped in a world of all too real fairy tales and folk stories.  When his mother dies and his country enters WWII, David's books begin to speak to him.  As new family threatens life with his father, a new world opens up for David, one in which wolves become men, dangers lurk in tall towers, and knights are brave -- but have their own demons to slay.  And David is at all times stalked by a man who can help him escape this land, for a steep price.

Many of the tales are recognizable, and the twists that Connolley puts on them are the true fun of the story.  These stories are more graphic and disturbing than the Disney versions, but through them David can still learn the morals that the folk tales were created for.  This story is exciting and full of heart.  Fans of Grimm's fairy tales will be entranced by The Book of Lost Things.

4/5

I got nothing.

To tell you the truth there is no good excuse. I suppose I could tell you that well I was burnt out with reading - remember that? - but well, that wouldn't be true. I re-bought and finished WORLD WAR Z by Max Brooks more than a few days ago. That absolutely amazing book was enough to jump-start my biblio-mania and I've been reading like an addict ever since.

I've been reading more of the SCRIBNER ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY SHORT FICTION (still amazing and surprising), and much of John Connolly's NOCTURNES, which is also just...wow. Connolly knows how to spin a darn good yarn, and many of his stories definitely creeped me out. "Some Children Wander By Mistake" reaffirmed my belief that clowns are bad, very bad:

Their irises were entirely black, and their eye sockets were rimmed with bright red flesh. One of them, now with an orange wig upon his head, placed his face very close to William's and sniffed at the boy's skin. Then he opened his mouth, revealing very white, very thin, and very sharp teeth. They curved inward at the bottom, like hooks ... A tongue emerged, long and purple and covered with tiny barbs. It unfolded like a fly's or the end of a paper whistle, slowly uncurling from deep in the clown's mouth. The tongue licked at William, tasting his tears, and it felt to William like having a thistle or a cactus rubbed against his face.

*Shudders*

I've also started HAPPINESS: A HISTORY by Darrin M. McMahon. I haven't gotten very far, so I got nothing to quote for you, but I will soon enough. Trust me.

And surprises of all surprises, I've been reading the The New Yorker. Okay, well that's not a surprise, but what is is that I've been reading The New Yorker fiction, which I almost never do. But then I suppose even that isn't much of feat considering the issue I started this new habit (maybe) with was the Dec. 24 & 31 Winter Fiction issue. I don't know if it's the contributors included in this issue - Junot Diaz, Anne Enright, and Jhumpa Lahiri, etc. - or my newfound appreciation for short fiction (probably a little bit of both), but I didn't skip it or quickly scan it as I usually do. We'll see how long this lasts.

In other news, just about everyone has their best of/worst of lists up by now. Everyone, that is, except for me. I've realized that I like reading "best of" lists a whole lot more than I like making them. Maybe I'll relent, stop being lazy, and type one up, but I make no promises. Besides, if you're like me, you're probably suffering from "best of" list overload. I love reading them, but after a while - for this gal at least - all those great books just start to run together and I just can't keep up.

Well that's it ladies and gents. In a few days, I'm going home to St. Louis for the holidays, so my posting might be sporadic at best. If I don't post before then have a happy holiday season, and a wonderfully bookish New Year.

Once upon a time - for that is how all stories should begin- there was a boy who lost his mother. She died of cancer, despite the boy's every attempt to prevent her demise. The boy - his name was David - was very sad, but he was even more sad when his dad brought Rose, his father's new love interest, to live with them. Soon, he was even more sad when his father and Rose had a child together. They called him George.

David took refuge in the one thing that he'd shared with his mother before she died: books. Battling his anger and resentment, David shut himself inside of his attic bedroom and buried himself in the old books which lined his walls. He had a special relationship with those books: they talked to David and told him their secrets. No, really. They talked.

After a particularly bad day, David discovered the gateway to another world. Following the voice of his mother, David traveled through the doorway into a world inhabited by werewolves, giant worms, noble knights, and evil witches. Will David find his mother? Will he make it back to his own world alive? Or will he fall victim to the most sinister creature of them all: The Crooked Man? Does the King's Book of Lost Things hold the answers?

John Connolly's THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS is a fairytale of the highest order. It is not only about our relationships with the stories we read, and how those stories inhabit our imaginations and our lives, but it is also at its heart, a coming of age novel. It is about the loss of innocence, and here, as in other traditional fairy tales, that loss is a good thing.

This is one of the most perfectly put-together novels I've read in a while. Every single piece of this novel just works. There isn't one misplaced cog in this smoothly running engine. Much of the novel is an amalgam of fairy tales: Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast, and Snow White, among many others. The beauty of it, however, is that Connolly gives all of these stories his own little twist. Reading his interpretation of these stories - by way of David's imagination - makes reading these familiar stories exciting once again.

This is an definitely an adult novel but, as the interviewer says in the matter at the back of this book, it is certainly a book which older children might enjoy. Connolly's response:

...it's a book about childhood, or more specifically that period or moment when a child becomes very aware of the reality of the world in which he lives: that it is difficult, that it owes no debt to the souls who inhabit it, that it is likely to be filled with a certain amount of pain and loss, and that ultimately human beings are powerless against the force of morality. Something is loss at that moment...

So you're right: an older child could certainly read the book, but I think a child will read it differently from an adult...

Fantasy isn't generally my type of thing, but THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS may have just made a convert out of me. Reading this novel was a beautiful journey, and one I will gladly take again some time soon, if only to see what I may have missed the first time along the way. If you do pick up this novel, don't neglect to read the back matter. I almost did, but thank god I changed my mind. I didn't regret it, and I predict neither will you.

P.S. I bought NOCTURNES today. Depending on how much I like this one, I might just become a new John Connolly fan.

P.P.S. To read the first chapter of THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS, visit Connolly's website here. Thanks Jessebird.

I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don't read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all, reading is such a solitary, internalizing act that it appears to represent a disengagement from day-to-day life. But reading, and particularly the reading of fiction, encourages us to view the world in new and challenging ways. I have always believed that fiction acts as a prism, taking the reality of our existence and breaking it down into its constituent parts, allowing us to see it in a completely different form. It allows us to inhabit the consciousness of another, which is a precursor to empathy, and empathy is, for me, one of the marks of a decent human being.

I've just finished THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS, and I thought it was absolutely wonderful. This novel is about the beauty of stories, how they have the power to change us, grow with us, and become a part of our world so much so that they seem (and in some ways, are) just as real as the world in which we inhabit.

I'll be posting my full review of this novel in a few days. Likely, this won't be before I take myself to the nearest bookstore to buy Connelly's short story collection NOCTURNES. This could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

There are several stories built within this novel which is, in itself, a kind of fairytale, but the one retelling that I thought particularly interesting so far was this: a retelling (and reworking) of "Little Red Riding Hood":

One day, as she walked in a dark grove, a wolf came. It was wary of her and tried to pass without being seen, but the girl's senses were too acute. She saw the wolf, and she looked into its eyes and fell in love with the strangeness of it... "Lovely wolf," she whispered. "You have noting to fear from me."...And the wolf saw what beautiful eyes she had (all the better to see him with), and what gentle hands (all the better to stroke him with), and what soft, red lips (all the better to taste him with). The girl leaned forward, and she kissed the wolf...Other women came came, lured by the girl in the red cloak. She would wander the forest paths, enticing those who passed her way with promises of ripe, juicy berries and spring water sopure that it could make skin look young again. Sometimes she traveled to the edge of a town or village, and there she would wait until a girl walked by and she would draw her into the woods with false cries for help...None were ever seen again....

FYI: By the time the events in this story take place, Little Red Riding Hood i s already a young woman. That makes the story a little less weird, I think. I'm also pretty sure that it is not the way I remember the story told to me when I was a little kid. I love it.

Stories were different, though: they came alive in the telling. Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, they had no real existence in our world. They were like seeds in the beak of a bird, waiting to fall to earth, or the notes of a song laid out on a sheet, yearning for an instrument to bring their music to life...Once someone started to read them, they could begin to change. They could take root in the imagination, and transform the reader. Stories wanted to be read, David's mother would whisper. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life.

-- from John Connolly's THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS.