Margo Lanagan

It is always exciting to discover a writer who has been active for a while and who has a voice that resonates with the way you like to read. I recently picked up a collection of short stories by Margo Lanagan titled Red Spikes. This is a wonderfully haunting and fantastic collection by an erudite author with topics ranging from fairies to monkeys to spiritual revelation and more.
Lanagan has the gift of holding your hand through the beginnings of a deceptively simple narrative that quickly opens up to a broad vista filled with possibilities. I found her dialogue to be a little opaque at first, for she is wonderful at building narrative tension through discourse; however, I easily warmed up to her style and find it amazing how much she can convey in few words.
Check her out. Margo Lanagan.

Holiday Reading – Firmin

Now is one of those brief moments in the year when we avid readers can catch up on some long overdue literary indulgences. On my list now is a gem of a book that I thoroughly missed when it was released in 2008. It is titled “Firmin” and is written by Sam Savage. It is a slender yet delightful book about a rat that grows up in a bookshop and is influenced by the great literature around him. He struggles to understand himself and the world around him through the wisdom and insights of the books that have influenced him.
Like Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s work, this is a book for book lovers. It will help deepen your appreciation for the power of literature and the struggles we all share in life. Give it a try.

Ode (of sorts) to Halloween

Here it is November first.  It is hard to believe Halloween 2011 has come and gone — even more so since a snow storm blanketed the Shenandoah Valley with several inches of wet snow that practically vanished before the trick-or-treaters hit the neighborhoods.  Therefore, let’s reflect and give thanks and respect to the holiday of imagination.

For the children who donned costumes only to realize that they could never be removed and would determine their personalities for the rest of their lives — we salute you.

For the young girls or boys who spent a night in a vacant house on a dare only to go missing, leaving behind just  torn sleeping bags and fingernail scratches on the floorboards — we honor you.

For the young couple that parked  in a secluded area of a forest to escape the prying eyes of parents, only to be mauled by  famished lycanthropes — we bow to you.

For the children who could not rest a minute longer until they found out what was making the noise in the attic, then, unfortunately, found out — we praise you.

For real estate agents who visited far away lands to deliver leases to blood-thirsty clients — we kneel to you.

And on a serious note:

For all our friends and loved ones who are no longer with us — we remember and love you.

Keep a balance of love, humor, and respect in all you do.

Happy post-Halloween!!!

The Search for WondLa

This is a bit late, but for those of you who enjoy a good read coupled with beautiful illustrations, you would be hard pressed to do better than Tony Diterlizzi’s  “The Search for WondLa”.  This is a fast-paced and lighthearted sci-fi adventure novel of a girl named Eva, who has been raised in a controlled environment since an apocalypse.  Her primary caregiver is a robot named Muthr.  Eventually, Eva’s burning curiosity to know what lies beyond her Sanctuary and the marauders who come to destroy it lead her to escape to the outside world, where she hopes she will find other “real” people.   The outside world poses challenges, but with the help of her animalian friends Rovender and others, Eva is able to find freedom and the true meaning behind the mysterious word WondLa.

This book is the first I’ve seen to use Augmented Reality.  Throughout the book there are images that the reader can scan using a smart phone or computer camera to unlock WondLa-Vision, which are 3-D landscapes of areas in the novel.  This feature is as enthralling as the Alice in Wonderland iPad app created byChris Stevens and Ben Roberts.  Check out the WondLa website and the WondLa-Vision site.  You won’t be let down.

Next Installment of The Hidden World

Follow the continuing adventure of the Elizabeth Mine Crew–Lara,Simon, and Kevin–as they venture farther into the abandoned mine and meet a strange figure.

The Hidden World

The Washington Post, yet again!

I enjoy reading the Washington Post and have been a subscriber for over ten years. Therefore, I can’t help ask the question, “Who spiked the water cooler in the editing room?” or, “Have our journalists become oracles?” Over a week ago a bi-line article on the front page misused the verb “to lay”. On Friday, September 16, 2011 in the front page article “Boehner digs in on tax hikes” by Paul Kane and Rosalind S. Helderman, there is a deliciously ironic error in the second paragraph: “Boehner said that the special committee seeking long-term debt reduction should acheive its mandated $1.5 trillion in savings …” Did you see that?
It was like a gremlin on the wing of a plane. Acheive!!! Even as I write this, I have to force the spell checker to let me write “achieve” incorrectly. I hope this is not some form of grammatical prescience on the part of the journalists related to Obama’s jobs proposal. When you have to “work” at failing, that might signal the end of life as we know it.

The Lie/Lay Problem, Again!!!

Well, even the venerable symbol of print journalism isn’t above the curse of lie/lay. In the Thursday, September 1, 2011 edition of the Washington Post, the writers Simon Denyer and Leila Fadel were clearly not up to the editing challenge when writing “Rapid fall of Tripoli revealed regime’s hollow core”. We see in the second paragraph a manifestation of this dreaded curse:
“But when unarmed protesters took to the streets, the feared guards, members of the brigades known as Katibas, simply took off their uniforms, lay down their weapons and ran.”
Lay down their weapons!!! Here again we see the lie/lay problem in modern English grammar. It seems to be a task that even professional journalists are not up to handling. What we are seeing of course is the confusion with the transitive and intransitive uses of lay and lie, respectively. The writers meant to write: “laid down their weapons.” This is the same usage as writing: “I laid my books on the table when I came home.” This is very different than the intransitive verb [to lie], which could yield, “I lay in bed all day yesterday.”
It is no wonder that students at all levels of education are confusing these two completely different verbs, since the poor verbs are misused daily by those who are supposed to be masters of written English.