A Few Books (And one short story) That, Years Later, Still Evoke Strong Memories
1. (george) by E.L. Konigsburg.
Konigsburg is much more famous for Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth (lonely girls try to be witches), From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler (brother and sister run away from home and live in the Met), and The View From Saturday (kids bond through some kind of knowledge bowl and also tea drinking), all of which are brilliant - TVFS has sea turtles and Alice in Wonderland and calligraphy and is so much love! but this is a very strange, very interesting book about a boy genius, his little brother, and his concentric twin who talks to him and/or through him. Also they break up an LSD lab. Yeah, don't ask. But it's fun!
2. Afternoon of the Elves, by Janet Taylor Lisle
The protagonist in this story lives next door to Sara-Kate, the town odd girl - everyone knows she's a bad seed because the house is in disrepair, the yard is a tangled mess, and she goes everywhere in a dirty overcoat and combat boots. But Kate manages to convince her neighbor that there are elves living in her yard, and the two slowly become friends while building a village for the elves to live in. This book is lovely - it's apparent right from the beginning that Kate has created this elf fantasy because things are very much Not Right in her home...and yet, there's still this part of you that wants to believe, maybe, it isn't a fantasy.
3. The Amber Cat by Hilary McKay
The second book in a series about Robin, whose father is dead and whose mother runs a Bed and Breakfast out of half an English coast house. The other half is a rather unusual family - well, the mother and father are ordinary enough, but the children are Perry (Peregrine) and Ant (Antoinette), the twins, Beany (Elizabeth, who once said she wanted to be a broadbean), and Sundance, who is Sundance. Also the dog, Old Blanket. I don't remember the first or the third books so well, but this is a peculiar little (ghost) story, told half in flashbacks as Robin's mother tells a chicken-poxed Robin and his friend Dan about the summer she, her two cousins, one of whom was Robin's father, and the enigmatic Harriet built a raft to sail out to sea.
4. The Snow Spider by...Jenny Nimmo
This story was...well, very, very Welsh, and beautiful, and mesmerizing, and heart-breaking, and many other adjectives that I won't use. But basically, on his birthday, Gwyn's grandmother gives him some rather strange presents, including a brooch, a whistle, a piece of seaweed, and a broken toy horse, because she thinks he might be a wizard like his ancestors, and Gwyn decides to use these gifts to try to bring back his sister, who disappeared up in the mountains during a storm one night. Readers of fantasy may not be surprised to know that this does not go as well as Gwyn might have hoped. And apparently this is part of a trilogy, which I never knew.
5. Drawing the Moon featured in Bruce Coville's Book of Nightmares, by Janni Lee Simner
Okay, if you're a kid of a certain age range, and into science fiction and fantasy, (as I was, and am, and probably will be for the foreseeable future) there's just certain authors you will end up reading, and Bruce Coville's pretty much at the top of that list. And among all his solo novels, like Aliens Ate My Homework, Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher, My Teacher Is An Alien, and Into The Land of The Unicorns, to name a few, he also had a number of anthologies of children's/YA fantasy/scifi/horror. Probably Jane Yolen was involved. Anyway, one of those anthologies was BC's Book of Nightmares, and one of the short stories was Drawing the Moon. I read this once - could never find the book again - when I was 10 or 11, and damn, but it still gives me shivers down my spine. This isn't a scary story, really, so much as a terribly disquieting one, about a boy who can't stop drawing the moon after he and his sister see their parents murdered by a mugger - except he thinks this is a lie, that the moon took them instead. Dark, dark, dark, but very good. Looking this up, I found that Simner has also written several other short stories I remember fondly, especially Windwood Rose, about a girl named Miranda Woodwind Rose, who wants to be normal but hears music in her head.
Three Songs About Superheroes, And One Arbitrary Folk Song
1. The Stars Shine In The Sky Tonight by The Eels
I can't live in a world that
you have left behind
seems I've been through too much
but this is where I draw the line
it's not where you're coming from, it's where you're going to
and I just want to go with you
I saw this in a Tim/Kon video, and it works well for that pairing. But this is also a song about Booster, after Ted dies, and about Tony, after Steve dies, and about Jack, in the distant future when Ianto has died, and well, any other character in my fandoms who has relied on someone to be their strength and now finds themselves having the face the world alone. Mostly it's just really pretty, and really sad.
2. I'm Going To Stop Pretending That I Didn't Break Your Heart by The Eels
You see I never thought enough of myself to realize
that losing me could mean something like the tears in your eyes
and I wanna tell you I'm sorry and it's too late to start
but I'm going to stop pretending that I didn't break your heart
So one of my recently acquired fandoms (I've been expanding) is Blue Beetle/Booster Gold, aka Ted/Booster, from the DC comics verse, which is a surprisingly upbeat and fluffy, crack-inclined fandom considering it didn't really get off the ground as a fandom until after Ted died in canon. However, as much as I love the crack, this is a rather sad song - Ted, post-death, realizing how much losing him actually hurt Booster, and what that means about how Booster must have felt about him that he'd never seen when he was alive.
not that he won't be coming back for real, right DC?
3. Left and Leaving by The Weakerthans
Memory will rust and erode into lists
of all that you gave me
with blankets and matches, this pain in my chest
the best parts of lonely
duct tape and soldered wires
new words for old desires
and birthday card I threw away
Aside from being generally gorgeous, this song is utterly Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, in every way and then some. It has lines that evoke his heart condition, his drinking problem, his serious self-esteem issues, his regrettable and irritating actions in Civil War (and how conflicted he was, at least from my reading of CW canon), his armor and his issues with that, and of course, his intense, massive love for Steve, aka Captain America. *hearts*
4. Ned of the Hill by Kate Rusby and Kathryn Roberts
Dark is the evening and silent the hour
who is the minstrel by yon lonely tower
whose harp is so tenderly touching with skill
oh who can it be but Ned on the Hill
And he sings, "Lady love, will you come with me now
Come and live merrily under the bough
I'll pillow your head where the light fairies tread
If you will but wed with young Ned of the Hill
Toss-up between this and Andrew Lammie as the folk song of the week (well, and John Barbury, but that inexplicably has a happy ending, with the girl getting knocked up and then the guy neither dying or running off but coming back to marry her), but GAH. KATHRYN ROBERTS' VOICE, IT IS SO GORGEOUS. ALWAYS.
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