Heidi Anne Heiner's Blog, page 120

Castle for Sale in New York

Armory for sale. Built in 1894 by the state of New York for the National Guard Amsterdam, NY $895,000
Not, it's not a post about a new book. It's a real castle for sale, In the U.S. How often does that happen? So this has been sitting open in my tabs for a few weeks now and I have to share it. While I wouldn't want to own a castle, this is tempting at such a bargain price. There are more images of round turret rooms and such on the listing site.

The decorator in me would have a ball. The definite maintenance headaches make me happy I'm not rich enough to own it. Not that it isn't in great shape. I am not saying that. But my 10 year old house has enough maintenance issues, let alone the ones that must exist in this behemoth.

In Fairy Land Exhibit and Why Print Fairy Tales Matter by Dr Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozario

Dr Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozario has a blog at Doc-in-Boots where she recently shared her speech, WHY PRINT FAIRY TALES MATTER, which she presented for the opening of the In Fairy Land exhibit at Monash University. Monash is in Australia, so I know it's not convenient for many readers here to visit, but thankfully there is also a virtual exhibition with many, many images to view online. Edited to add link to the exhibition catalog PDF which contains all of the images and more explanations.

From the exhibition's site:

This exhibition is a wonderful opportunity to see the fairy tale marvels that lie within the Monash Rare Books Collection and is a tribute to the efforts of its caretakers.

The exhibition can be seen from 6 March - 7 June 2013 at the Rare Books Exhibition space, Level 1, ISB wing, Sir Louis Matheson Library, Clayton campus, Monash University.

And from WHY PRINT FAIRY TALES MATTER:

However, collections like this shouldn’t simply be a preservation of the past. I don’t want to see these tales confined to the Rare Books reading rooms, though I’m incredibly grateful they’re safe here! The tales you see today, kept whole through ink, paper, thread and leather, should continue to be read, to be told, to influence. My hope is that exhibitions such as this will encourage people to learn more about Cinderellas and Jacks and Snow Whites, about talking birds and wise fish, and all sorts of marvels, some sublime and some downright bizarre. My hope is that you will discover tales you never knew and read them and tell them and retell them and pass them on. My hope is that you’ll take the time to become acquainted with the times and places that reshaped tales, providing them with oddities and idiosyncrasies that may have lasted for just one telling but remain to be discovered in the pages of a book.

I think, too, that exhibitions like this allow us all to see the place that fairy tale holds in literature. Fairy tales aren’t simple. They aren’t simply for kids – and in many cases, you’d probably rather the kids weren’t reading them. While they did pass along morals and advice, more often than not, they also cheated the status quo, cheekily overturning the limitations imposed by society upon its subjects. I’ve always loved reminding students that the princess didn’t always obediently, passively kiss the frog when he puckered up– she used to slam him up against the wall, fed up with his impositions and determined not to share her bed with a slimy amphibian. It’s only then he turned into a prince, proving that getting mad can win a girl her prince charming.

It matters that we understand who told fairy tales, how they came to be written and illustrated, how they were adapted by their authors. While we have lost the multitude of voices who shared and invented the heroes, the villains, the transformations, magical spells and enchanted objects, left with only random impressions of the words recorded, edited, re-arranged, we do have a vast catalogue of printed words and marvellous illustration. Some are well read, some are scribbled over, some were treasured, some were studied, but the tales in print are just as inventive, diverse and creative as those tales from their cousin, the oral tradition.

A long excerpt, but do click through and read it all, too.

Article: The Plutonium 'Gate To Hell' Found

From Pluto's Gate Discovered: The Plutonium 'Gate To Hell' Found In Ancient City Of Hierapolis:

According to the Italian news agency ANSA, a team of archeologists working in the ancient Phrygian city of Hierapolis in southwestern Turkey claims to have located the Plutonium, or Pluto's Gate -- an ancient pilgrim site considered the entryway to the underworld. A small cave near the temple of Apollo, the Plutonium grew in association with death from deadly gases it emitted.

Francesco D'Andria of the University of Salento announced the discovery during a press conference in Turkey in mid-March, according to La Gazzetta Del Mezzogiorno.

D'Andria told Discovery News he also found remains of the temple, a pool used by pilgrims and a series of steps.

“We could see the cave's lethal properties during the excavation. Several birds died as they tried to get close to the warm opening, instantly killed by the carbon dioxide fumes,” D'Andria added, according to Discovery News.

I love this stuff. Reading the article evoked many thoughts of Persephone and the rest. How terrifying the place must be when you see living creatures dying instantly by approaching it.

Bargain Ebook: Forgive My Fins by Tera Lynn Childs

Forgive My Fins by Tera Lynn Childs is discounted to $1.99 in ebook format as part of Amazon's April 100 Books for $3.99 or Less . It usually hovers in the $7+ range. For me, it is one of the cleverest mermaid book titles ever. Kudos to whoever thought that one up.

Book description:

Lily Sanderson has a secret, and it's not that she has a huge crush on gorgeous swimming god Brody Bennett, who makes her heart beat flipper-fast. Unrequited love is hard enough when you're a normal teenage girl, but when you're half human, half mermaid, like Lily, there's no such thing as a simple crush.

Lily's mermaid identity is a secret that can't get out, since she's not just any mermaid—she's a Thalassinian princess. When Lily found out three years ago that her mother was actually a human, she finally realized why she didn't feel quite at home in Thalassinia, and she's been living on land and going to Seaview High School ever since, hoping to find where she truly belongs. Sure, land has its problems—like her obnoxious biker-boy neighbor, Quince Fletcher—but it has that one major perk: Brody. The problem is, mermaids aren't really the casual dating type—the instant they "bond," it's for life.

When Lily's attempt to win Brody's love leads to a tsunami-sized case of mistaken identity, she is in for a tidal wave of relationship drama, and she finds out, quick as a tailfin flick, that happily ever after never sails quite as smoothly as you planned.

Bargain Ebooks: Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold and Other C. S. Lewis Titles

Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C. S. Lewis is temporarily discounted from $10 to $2.99 in ebook format. Several of Lewis's other titles are similarly discounted, including On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature and Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories.

Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold uses the Cupid and Pysche myth for its inspiration and so if quite fitting for SurLaLune.

Book description:

“I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer . . . Why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”

Haunted by the myth of Cupid and Psyche throughout his life, C.S. Lewis wrote this, his last, extraordinary novel, to retell their story through the gaze of Psyche’s sister, Orual. Disfigured and embittered, Orual loves her younger sister to a fault and suffers deeply when she is sent away to Cupid, the God of the Mountain. Psyche is forbidden to look upon the god’s face, but is persuaded by her sister to do so; she is banished for her betrayal. Orual is left alone to grow in power but never in love, to wonder at the silence of the gods. Only at the end of her life, in visions of her lost beloved sister, will she hear an answer.

"Till We Have Faces succeeds in presenting with imaginative directness what its author has described elsewhere as ‘the divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live’ . . . [It] deepens for adults that sense of wonder and strange truth which delights children in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, and other legends of Narnia." —New York Times

"The most significant and triumphant work that Lewis has . . . produced." —New York Herald Tribune

Assume More Stories to Tell

Princess with a Spindle by Hanna Hirsch-Pauli 
A recent post at Belle Jar, Fifteen Assumptions That Might Be Useful To Make, has been making rounds on the web and for some reason, I clicked through and read it. And I was glad I did for the list is lovely and holds many truisms about life but what made it stand out to me, was the unexpected #13:

13. Assume that there will always be more stories to tell, or at the very least new ways of reinterpreting old fables.

Of course, I would say "fairy tales" instead of "fables" or more appropriately "folk tales" but that sounds less romantic for a list like this.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who creates and reads and shares the tales.

Bargain Picture Book: Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Gennady Spirin

Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Gennady Spirin is a bargain priced hardcover picture book. Usually $17.99, it is currently $5.00 on Amazon. I didn't have this one myself, only Spirin's The Tale of The Firebird, which is gorgeous.


Book description:

Gennady Spirin has taken a favorite childhood tale and imbued it with charm, dressing his bears in Renaissance costumes and providing whimsical and charming furniture designed for their country dwelling. Each spread—painted in watercolor, pen, and ink—brings renewed life to this endearing children’s classic in a way that only a master illustrator can. No wonder Goldilocks want to sample the bears’ porridge, sit on their chairs, and rest on their beds!

Women, Folklore, and History

March and thus Women's History Month is almost over and I failed to highlight the many older posts I have to celebrate Women, Folklore, and History. One of the draws of folklore for me has been its appeal to both genders. These days fairy tales are often stereotyped into either facile children's literature or escapist women's romance (or in March, underdog basketball teams).

We here know that those may be facets to some interpretations of the lore, but they only scratch the surface. And over the years as I have delved more into the history of the tales from their creation to their collecting, I appreciate how much folklore has provided a voice and outlet for women, especially when they had less of one, in centuries past. After all, one of the major and most influential periods of fairy tale history comes from the French salons where so many women wrote fairy tales of their own, coining the term "Contes de fées" or "fairy tales" for us.

But even more recently, while collectors and writers like the Grimms, Jacobs and Lang dominated the field's headlines, many women are responsible for the lesser known collections, the books where I find many of the more obscure versions of tales. They were scholars and devoted to the field, building it up with more offerings and comparisons.

The above book is the highly recommended Women and Tradition: A Neglected Group of Folklorists edited by Carmen Blacker and Hilda Ellis Davidson. It discusses some of those women and their contributions to the field.

The traffic and readership on this blog has increased quite a bit since March 2010 so I wanted to point new readers to my Women in Folklore month of posts from that time when I shared daily posts on the subject for Women's History Month. You'll have to page through the month backward though that link but since the posts were not very chronological, but mostly freestanding, it doesn't matter much.

Bargain Ebook: Magic Under Glass by Jaclyn Dolamore

Magic Under Glass by Jaclyn Dolamore is bargain priced at $1.59 in ebook format ($8.54 in paperback). It is not a fairy tale retelling, but has been recommended by several fairy tale fans, so I thought I would share here. Not much of a risk at $1.59 and the reader reviews are strong, too. Dolamore also wrote a novel about sirens, Between the Sea and Sky, which is perhaps what got her on many fairy tale readers' radar.

Book description:

Nimira is a foreign music-hall girl forced to dance for pennies. When wealthy sorcerer Hollin Parry hires her to sing with a piano-playing automaton, Nimira believes it is the start of a new and better life. In Parry's world, however, buried secrets are beginning to stir. Unsettling below-stairs rumors swirl about ghosts, a madwoman roaming the halls, and Parry's involvement with a league of sorcerers who torture fairies for sport. Then Nimira discovers the spirit of a fairy gentleman named Erris is trapped inside the clockwork automaton, waiting for someone to break his curse. The two fall into a love that seems hopeless, and breaking the curse becomes a race against time, as not just their love, but the fate of the entire magical world may be in peril.Look out for the follow-up to this book, Magic Under Stone, out next year!

The sequel, Magic Under Stone (Magic Under Glass), was released last year and remains $9.99 for ebook and $11.55 for hardcover.

Book description:

For star-crossed lovers Nimira and Erris, there can be no happily ever after until Erris is freed from the clockwork form that entraps him. And so they go in search of the sorcerer Ordoria Valdana, hoping he will know how to grant Erris real life again. But Valdana has mysteriously vanished, and it's not long before Nimira decides to take matters into her own hands-and begins to study the sorcerer's spell books in secret. Yet even as she begins to understand the power and limitations of sorcery, it becomes clear that freeing Erris will mean returning him to the fairy capital. But with a new ruling family in power, Erris's return will bring danger, if not out-and-out war as factions within the faerie world are prepared to stop at nothing to prevent Erris from regaining the throne. Only Nimira, with her fledgling grasp of sorcery can help, but saving the man she loves could prove doom for the fairie world and beyond.

New Book: The Witch's Curse by Keith McGowan

 
The Witch's Curse (Christy Ottaviano Books) by Keith McGowan is the sequel to The Witch's Guide to Cooking with Children. It was released last week. The reviews for this one appear to be stronger than those for the first one, too.

I admit, this one didn't interest me as much--I am rather ruined on Hansel and Gretel's witch after Donna Jo Napoli's brilliant The Magic Circle. Really, if you haven't read that one, sit down for a few hours and do so. It's short, dark, and super brilliant. I'm shocked at how much I adore that book. I eschew dark fiction beyond my fairy tale life but sometimes fairy tales deliver horror so well that my preferences are forgotten and I am engrossed. And it's published for kids although I have always been a little squeamish at its recommended age level actually depending on a child's sophistication.

But then I saw this line in the Booklist review for The Witch's Curse: "McGowan here creatively interweaves aspects of Grimms’ Brother and Sister, blending classic fairy-tale and contemporary elements, magic, suspense, and vibrant, diversely drawn kid protagonists into another edgy, absorbing read."

Brother and Sister! Or Little Brother and Little Sister! I don't discuss it much here, but I adore Brother and Sister. I even annotated it on SurLaLune where it is one of the least visited tales. I had to present it in my Bettelheim course in college and it was serendipitous to say the least. I wasn't as familiar with it then--although I am now--and it's been entertaining over the years to see where the tale has been blended with Hansel and Gretel so I find McGowan's concept of his sequel using the tale just brilliant. I haven't read either of his books, but this choice gets them higher on my TBR radar.

A shadowy witch and a cursed hunter--it's tricky business for Sol and Connie as they face this awful pair. The brother and sister have a long, dangerous hike through the accursed valley, they're running out of food and water, and the old stone lodge they discover with a collection of animals inside means big trouble. Can anyone save them? A heroic woodthrush? The All Creatures Manager? The Camper Lady? The Know-It-All Cube? Or will they have to save themselves? Sol and Connie--the brother and sister who were almost EATEN in The Witch's Guide to Cooking with Children--are back, and this time things are looking even worse, because a centuries-old hunter is waking up . . . thanks to the witch's curse.