This post is brought to you by the Junk Lady from Labyrinth ("don't you like your little horsey? And your pander slippers, you wouldn't want to forget your pander slippers!) and Mommy Fortuna as illustrated by Rankin and Bass, partly because they seem related, but mostly because they're both collectors of the odd and the fantastic - which is exactly what can be found in the following titles!
I was a reader of fantasy before I was a reader of anything
else; The Hobbit was my first full
length novel and for years I rarely strayed outside of that genre. Even today
my life is more peopled with magical beings than most (I imagine) because you cannot
write the same fantasy novel for your entire life (unsuccessfully…) without its
denizens moving into your house, eating your food, and moving just beyond the
limits of your sight. They are with me even now as I sit on the
lichen-appropriated swing, watching the sunlight make glowing glass out of the
undersides of the leaves, tasting the air for the rain that’s been with us so
frequently as of late. I need to turn my attention back to them, my
long-suffering characters, but I hope they’ll settle for enjoying the sunshine
for a time!
Like the Twilight-reading
generation (poor things) I, too, had my
season of vampire literature, first with Christopher Pike’s Last Vampire series (very risqué for a
young reader at the time!) and later with Interview
with a Vampire (meant to be risqué, I suppose, but only The Vampire Armand ever moved me). Twelve caught my eye because it suggests
a reason aside from winter and manpower for Russian success in war: vampires.
Seems a good strategy, right? They’re strong, they sneak around in the dark,
you don’t mind if they get killed, and, hopefully the supply line they’re using
is made of the necks of the enemy!
I
loved and hated this book, breaking my heart against Thomas’s return to the
court of the fairy queen… and when I went to re-read it, my copy had scarpered.
I probably lent it to someone along the way, so I hope they enjoy it as much as
I do!
Russian history has always appealed to me. When I tried to
trace my family history my pap’s people seemed to have come from Russia via
Germany before ending up in Dillie’s Bottom around 1660 (where they’ve been
ever since), so maybe I have a trace of old-country yearning. Whatever the
reason, I enjoy Russian history, but I haven’t had much exposure to folklore. I
decided to read The Bloody Chamber
(it seems like an odd omission in my reading life) and when this title popped
up, I thought they’d make a fine pair! I can’t say I ended up really enjoying There once was, however. Maybe something
was lost in translation?
The purchase of this title was inspired by teaching
Shakespeare in the spring. Caliban surely deserves a drop of redemption, and I
hope this title can paint him in a slightly better light!
This could scarcely be said to be a proper fantasy list
without the inclusion of dragons, but it wasn’t the dragons that drew me to
this title. Rather, it was the idea of firefighters paired with dragons, which reminded me of the backwards nature of
firefighters in Fahrenheit 451. A
good Bradbury association gets me every time!
The
second novel I ever read was The Last
Unicorn, so when I heard Beagle had returned to unicorns as subject matter,
I knew I couldn’t miss this book (I just had to wait for the price to go down…)
My favorite character in He-Man
and the Masters of the Universe is Skeletor and my favorite Terry Pratchett
character is Death. Apparently I have a thing for boneheads? When I saw this
zazzy looking mystery series with another bone-brain, I decided to add it to my
TBR pile!
