A Random Re-Read: Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows

If you've followed this blog for any length of time you'll know that I have this habit of picking up a book at random as I leave work for the day and reading it at home.

In this case, it was a re-read. This is the one I have read the fewest times and then only as part of a full re-read of the series. It has been some time since I last picked it up. It was a copy I bought recently, with the new cover, for the benefit of a student who was reading the series for the first time. Our old copy was missing and this poor girl has had other times when she got to the exciting bit of a series and the next book was missing. Oh, she loved it! She hadn't even seen the films, so the entire universe was new to her, or as new as it can be when people are always talking about it. Seeing her enjoy it was a pleasure for me. 

So, I took this one home, determined to finish it before the holidays. As it happened I didn't succeed. I finished last night, just before bedtime. 

It made me think about the series in general. What do I love about it? A lot of things. I love the references to folklore, the playing around with Latin for her spells, the humour, the mediaeval bestiary creatures(and those she has invented). J.K Rowling is a woman of some education and it shows, but never in an attempt to teach her readers. If they learn something and perhaps follow it up with a bit of research, that's great, but otherwise just enjoy, kids! 

And I love the way the characters develop. Who would have expected that Neville Longbottom, the comic relief of the first book, would be the one to lead the rebellion in the last book and stand up to the Dark Lord? Yet there were indications throughout the series that it was not for nothing he had gone into Gryffindor rather than the more obvious Hufflepuff. (By the way, I loved that Newt Scamander was a Hufflepuff). 

Harry is a decent young man, but not a saint. Yeesh, the author must have left his dialogue on caps lock in Order Of The Phoenix! And when he quarrels with his friends it's usually his fault. Hermione has to remind him, in Goblet Of Fire, that they are on his side. And he's a brilliant sportsman, but only average academically. However, things come back to him when he needs them. Interestingly, the most important ones are things he learned from Snape. In Half-Blood Prince he saves Ron's life with a bezoar, something Snape told his students in the first Potions lesson in the first novel. Harry's signature spell, "Expelliarmus" , was in that duelling scene in Chamber Of Secrets, when Snape used it to Disarm Lockhart. It saves Harry from Voldemort and enables him to defeat that Dark Lord in the last few scenes of Deathly Hallows. 

In this book, we really learn, as does Harry, that the Chosen One is not chosen to be a sort of rock star, but more like the sacrificial lamb, there to save his people but not himself. In a scene taken straight from C.S Lewis, he walks into the Death Eater camp, knowing he isn't going to walk out again. He does the task in front of him without complaint, just gets on with it. 

There are Tolkienesque elements in this book too. The locket Horcrux has definite elements of the Ring. It doesn't tempt you with power, but it does bring out all your negative thoughts and emotions in order to defend itself. And I think that, while Ron gets the worst of this particular version of the Ring, Harry is the Frodo of this novel. 

The Death Eaters in power are very much the Nazis. The whole "pure-blood" thing reeks of "blonde, blue-eyed Aryans" - even more so because, just as Hitler was hardly an example of the blonde, handsome Aryan, Voldemort is hardly a "pure-blood." And early in the series Ron says that if wizards hadn't married Muggles they would have died out long ago. Nobody is pure-blood! Well, maybe the Gaunts, but look at what inbreeding did to that family. Crazy, the lot of them. 

In this book, Dumbledore turns out to be a vulnerable human being like everyone else. There was certainly a build-up to this in the last novel, but here is where it's clearest. And the afterlife Dumbledore tells Harry that he is the better man, as is his brother Aberforth. He's not Gandalf after all, just a human being who got it terribly wrong once, in his teens, and has blamed himself ever since. 

It occurred to me while reading that epilogue that the Hermione in that scene is already Minister Of Magic, as is revealed in The Cursed Child. But then, you can change things. I don't think this was already in the author's mind; perhaps it was suggested by the author of the play script. And a black  Hermione is also new canon; in this novel she goes pink with embarrassment a few times. You might or might not see a blush on an African face - and I never have seen a blush on my African students - but they don't go pink. That's for us whities. 

Well, it's fine with me. I keep hearing JKR had planned this series out in elaborate detail from the start(though she did change her mind about a couple of characters who were originally going to die and didn't). It's nice to know even she can change her mind. 

Compulsory Pre-Christmas Post...Book Christmases!

Public domain image

Okay, after finding about a million Christmas-themed posts on blogs I follow, I thought it might be time to do one of my own, even though it's not my holiday.  I have, in the past written about how I adore being alone on Christmas Day, packing a picnic lunch, with fresh summer fruit, home-baked bread or rolls, the mince tart or fruit cake someone at work invariably gives me, and going to the beach to read. I remember being a bit disappointed when my sister and brother-in-law decided to have a barbecue on that day. I had to be sociable!

So I'll write instead about Christmas in books that I can recall, and if you have something to add, feel free to comment. 

There's the obvious one, A Christmas Carol by Dickens, that Victorian Christmas card of a novella. I think I read somewhere that the Christmas tree was brought to England from Germany by Prince Albert, and, I suppose, quite a lot of other things we associate with this time of year and era. Anyway, it does tend to be the way we imagine a Victorian Christmas, doesn't it? And there's no doubt that Dickens manages to slip his social justice ideas into this one, not just in the Bob Cratchit thing, but that scene where Scrooge is confronted with two shivering children under the robes of Christmas Present. The Ghost says they represent Ignorance and Want.

Which brings me to The Last of The Spirits by modern writer Chris Priestley. This is sort of A Christmas Carol fan fiction. In it, the two children are real people, the main characters of the book. They have taken refuge in Scrooge's living room after he was whisked off for his lesson in How To Be A Better Person, having encountered first Scrooge himself, on the street, then the ghost of Jacob Marley, on his way to save his friend's soul. They are not at all pleased to be used as a moral lesson by the Ghost of Christmas Present. But eventually the boy, whose bitterness about their troubles was sending him along the same route as Scrooge, has his own soul saved and the two of them encounter the new Scrooge, now willing to help them. 

Who can forget the classic Christmas scene at the beginning of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott? The girls are regretting their(genteel) poverty and then deciding that they will unselfishly spend their small amount of money on buying something for their mother, which she will receive, birthday-style, next morning. And next morning they wake up to newly-covered copies of The Pilgrim's Progress, a favourite of their childhoods. Actually, I'm not sure it isn't the Bible, but I think it was Pilgrim's Progress, because following chapters have titles based on that book, eg "Jo Meets Apollyon."

And then they give up their breakfasts to a poor German migrant family living nearby and go home to bread and milk. Even Amy, the most selfish of the sisters, is okay with this. That night, they perform a play written by Jo, who thoroughly enjoys playing the villain. It isn't a nativity play, but one of her blood-and-thunder stories. The novel was semi-autobiographical, with Louisa as Jo, but though she was already an adult by the Civil War, even worked as a nurse, she did write a lot of melodramatic stories; I have a collection of her short fiction. 

There is a short story in the Phryne Fisher universe, "Overheard On A Balcony", in which Phryne and her maid Dot go to the Queenscliff Hotel in the Victorian coastal town of the same name, for a Christmas in July celebration organised by a friend of hers, an Englishman who loves everything about Australia except the summer Christmas. Of course, this being a Phryne Fisher mystery, the party is spoiled by a murder. I couldn't help thinking that this story was a sort of experiment for Urn Burial, her Agatha Christie tribute. It does have some elements of that novel.

Let's conclude with the Harry Potter novels, each with a Christmas chapter. Christmas in the Potterverse, let's face it, is never a delight for the characters.

I'm currently rereading the Christmas chapter in The Deathly Hallows, in which Harry and Hermione, who have been wandering the country to avoid the Death Eaters and seek the Horcruxes, suddenly realise it's Christmas Eve in the village of Godric's Hollow, where Harry was born, as the church is all lit up and people are heading there. Of course, having read this book before, I know that two of our heroes are about to have a nasty experience. 

Harry receives his first Christmas gifts in Philosopher's Stone, including the Invisibility Cloak, but he also discovers the Mirror of Erised and becomes hooked on it. 

In Chamber Of Secrets, he and Ron take the Polyjuice Potion to make them look like Crabbe and Goyle, but don't learn much from Malfoy and meanwhile, Hermione gets a cat's head due to a mistake in the hairs she stole. 

In Prisoner Of Azkaban, Harry receives the Firebolt broom, but immediately loses it because Hermione suspects it has been sent by Sirius Black and warns Professor McGonagall. Well, it has, but it wasn't cursed. And Ron blows up when he thinks her cat, Crookshanks, ate his rat Scabbers, who is actually doing something that worked when, as Peter Pettigrew, he betrayed Sirius and the Potters. 

Christmas in a Goblet Of Fire has the Yule Ball. Ron is jealous of Viktor Krum and has a fight with Hermione. Some unpleasant things are also going on around Hogwarts that night.

Christmas in Order Of The Phoenix is spent with the Weasleys, but Mr Weasley is in hospital after being attacked by the serpent Nagini. Lockhart appears at the hospital, still out of his head, we find out that Neville's parents are alive but mentally ill after having been tortured by the Death Eaters and a character is murdered by a bewitched pot plant.

On Christmas Day in Half-Blood Prince, Ron is poisoned and nearly dies; he only survives because Harry remembers something Snape taught them in their very first Potions class. Oh, and this is after he has been affected  by chocolates laced with love potion. Poor Ron...

No, Christmas is not a happy holiday for Harry and his friends!

Beethoven - again!

Today is Beethoven's birthday, but I posted about this last year, so here are links to all my posts with Beethoven in them.

https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.au/2015/12/happy-birthday-beethoven.html in which I mention fiction that has included Beethoven and talk about the Peanuts comics and that Beethoven fan, Schroeder. Schroeder inspired me to celebrate Beethoven's Birthday.

https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/december-16-meme.html in which I mention all the famous other people born on this day - go read it, there are some amazing ones, including Iane Austen and some SF authors.

https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.au/2009/09/of-genius-and-unpleasantness.html in which I comment that being a genius doesn't mean you're a pleasant person. Quite often the opposite - and Beethoven is a great example of that! 

Go read them!

Moon Chosen by P.C Cast. Reviewed by Taylor Barker

  

Today on the Great Raven, I would like to welcome Taylor Barker, who has just finished Year 9 and is one of my lunchtime book club members. Taylor was kind enough to read and review this novel because I was simply flat out with other review/interview responsibilities. Thank you, Taylor!

Mari is an Earth Walker, heir to the unique healing powers of her Clan; but she has cast her duties aside, until she is chosen by a special animal ally, altering her destiny forever. When a deadly attack tears her world apart, Mari reveals the strength of her powers and the forbidden secret of her dual nature as she embarks on a mission to save her people. It is not until Nik, the son of the leader from a rival, dominating clan strays across her path, that Mari experiences something she has never felt before…

 I really enjoyed the book Moon Chosen. The book was very enjoyable and had a good storyline.

 I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys fantasy novels.

 The characters were all interesting, though my favourite was the main character Mari, because of her bravery and determination.

 This is the first book I have tried of this genre.

 In my opinion this book would be suited for young adults/ teenagers.  The best thing about the book was how intriguing it was; it was able to keep me interested.

 This was one of the first P.C Cast books that I have tried and out of ten I would rate it an eight. 

********

Gillian Polack Speaks About The Wizardry Of Jewish Women

Gillian at Loncon. Borrowed from the midamerican cons website, hoping they won't mind! 

Today I'd like to welcome Gillian Polack to The Great Raven. She has visited us before, in the "Writing Process  Blog Hop" a couple of years ago. This time she is here to discuss her fabulous new novel, The Wizardry Of Jewish Women, which is about three women in Australia in 2002-2003, their family and personal problems and their discovery of magic. Until Gillian's interview I hadn't realised it had any connection with a short story that Gillian had published in ASIM some years ago. Who would have thought a little story of a couple of thousand words would inspire a full scale novel? 

Gillian lives in Canberra, where she works in the world of academia and teaches writing. She is an historian with more than a single specialisation - in her case mediaeval history - as I discovered when I needed to consult someone about the little details of nineteenth century England that history books just don't tell you. I hadn't realised that ship travellers had to take their own food or that there were a couple of places where you could catch a ship to Jamaica, starting in London. (I also had help in this from the delightful Louise Berridge, History Girl extraordinaire, but that's for another post.)

Gillian is a keen cook, and that includes historical cooking. Among other things, she arranged some historical banquets for the Conflux conventions - I had the pleasure of attending the Regency one - and wrote a book about it, including recipes! 

Actually, I can't keep up with all of Gillian's talents let alone all her books, so let's just focus on this one!  Here are my questions and Gillian's answers - enjoy! 

SB: Okay, as a warm-up, I'll start with the obvious question: what gave you the idea for this novel?

GP: I didn’t start with just one idea. I wondered what it would be like to be a woman with a superpower in a realistic world. I thought it would be a very tough world and I wanted to explore what it would do to someone. I saw a tombstone to a Hamburger made by a Macdonald. And I have all this history of magic at my fingertips (as much as food history, but people don’t ask me about it so I’m not known for it) and I wanted to write the Jewish side. And it struck me that I knew so few novels about Judaism that were centred on adult secular female Jews and that none of these was  Australian. And that it was about time I explored the political side of things. And… this was the novel of too-many-ideas. Fortunately, they all fitted together.

SB: I'm assuming it's set in 2002-2003 so you could include the Canberra bushfires, but does this event have a special significance in the story?

I wanted the culture of 2003-3. I wanted to catch the particular feminist activity of that moment and the e-cultures of that time, accurately. The events helped (and the bushfire wasn’t the only actual event, I put quite a few real events in the story) but the culture was what I wanted.

SB: Your three main characters consist of two Jewish women, Judith and Belinda, and their non-Jewish cousin Rhonda. What did you have in mind when you decided to make Rhonda non-Jewish? 

GP: I wanted to explore some of the aspects of Judaism in Australia that have hardly been touched by fiction. One of them was secular Jews (Judith), another was Jews who are connected to community rather than the religious belief (Belinda) and another was what happens when a family goes in a non-Jewish direction (Rhonda). They have a shared family culture, but the three don’t actually share religious belief. The novel is about women’s lives and I wanted to show how culture and these differences help me show that.

SB: Is there meant to be something Jewish about Rhonda's magical ability of prophecy? 

GP: It fits within some of the older beliefs of Jewish magic, but otherwise, no. I was wondering what places a major magic talent could go if there was no training and no support and no help. A mild talent would not get very far at all, of course, which explains the other side of the family.

SB: Actually, the three characters all seem to have things in common with you, the author. Belinda teaches and loves cooking. Rhonda writes and is an historian. What characteristics would you say Judith shares with you?

GP: Judith is also both like me and unlike me. I’ve never worked in a gift shop, but I was in groups with women like Judith and some of her political experiences were things I myself saw happening. It’s a bit of a game, really. I’ve taken the exteriors of my life and made a game out of them. I’ve only ever taught in high school as a guest unlike Belinda’s professional high school teaching, and, as a historian, I’m a long way removed from Rhonda. This is intentional.

Whenever readers tell me a character must be me, I create another character who has certain apparent similarities to me, who’s not me at all but bears some superficial resemblance in lifestyle or taste or occupation. So it’s less that I am any of my characters and far more that I have a rather evil sense of humour.

SB: Belinda and Judith's family is, like yours, Anglo-Jewish, very different from my own Continental Ashkenazi background. Can you tell us a bit about it? 

GP: My family came out between the 1850s and 1918. Only one branch was from London, but all the families who arrived in Australia that early took on Anglo-Jewish traits, so the culture of my father’s mother’s mother’s mother became mine. I have a solid Ashkenazi background as well, except that I learned any Yiddish I have (which is not much) as an adult and my Hebrew (such as it is) has the wrong accent. I suspect this makes me a mongrel, and that the Anglo-Australian Jewishness unifies the various cultures of my ancestors.

There aren’t many Anglo-Australian Jewish families left, so I looked into that part of my background while I still could, because I was curious. I discovered that I have, personally, a strong cultural affiliation with it. I call it the Church of England branch of Judaism or the scones-and-committees branch. I was in Girl Guides and did debating and played the violin and planned for university and cannot imagine a life without books. I have some Continental cooking from  the rest of the family, but we ate chops or sausages and three veg most nights when I was growing up, and the only difference between these meals and Anglo-Australian meals was that our sausages were kosher and that our mashed potatoes contained no butter. 

SB: When we read about Jewish magic, it tends to be about rabbis studying Kabbalah for many years and making golems, but the magic in this novel is very much mother to daughter stuff. Great-grandmother Ada fell out with her daughter because the daughter was a woman of science instead of magic. Now Judith is doing magic with her own daughter. How much of a tradition of mother to daughter magic is there in Judaism?

GP: I’ve not been able to find out. The magic system in the book is real, albeit made from bits of information from here and bits from there, but how it was passed down is something we don’t know  a lot about. 

Given the way traditions are handed down in Judaism, however, and given some stray comments I came across in Medieval documents about Jewish women as magic practitioners, it’s not improbable that there was a female tradition passed from mother to daughter. All that anti-Semitism has lost us so very much cultural memory, however, that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to find out for sure.

SB: Rhonda and the sisters only communicate offstage, ie it's mentioned that she knows Belinda and does communicate, but it never happens as part of the story. Is there a reason for this? 

GP: I like writing railway line novels, firstly. It’s fun to have two trains chugging their way next door to each other, with the characters waving and maybe chatting but never actually being able to shake hands or hug. The Wizardry of Jewish Women is partly this, with the lives of the two branches of the family being the engines of those trains. 

It also has a much more normal narrative pattern, lurking underneath. If you look at the plotlines, you’ll see very similar arcs: this is where the families come together. Each branch of the family produces people who are so much like each other that their lives echo. 

Also, I wanted to keep open the possibility of a sequel where Judith and Rhonda do something together. I don’t know if I want a sequel at this point, but … one never knows. After all, there is already a short story that tells us a bit about what happens next (“Impractical Magic”, ASIM #17, 2005).

SB: Although the story is set only a few years before you wrote it, it almost feels like historical fiction, because it was a different world, technologically at least. Chat rooms have pretty much been replaced by Facebook. Floppy disks have been replaced by flash drives. Internet cafes still exist, but not as many. Any thoughts about this? 

GP: I did this on purpose. Since the 80s I’ve been monitoring the great change we’re living through and I’m determined to make my novels show facets of it. Technology is never a neutral player in our lives and so I want it to have a quiet voice, for those who know how to listen.

It’s more than that, though. Every single one of my novels is carefully dated, whether I set it in this world or another. 

We live in a time of such change that even two years count in terms of the world each character lives in and the options they have for their lives. Rhonda would run into some very real problems now, that she didn’t way back then in terms of the capacity of technology to spy and secrets to be told, but in other ways she’d have an easier time of it, because people don’t tend to be as focused on ferreting out strangeness. This is why I take advantage of the changes of knowledge and of tech competence in the plot – Rhonda’s prophet-self has to deal with them.

SB: And finally, tell us about that Shetland unicorn - you know you want to! 

GP: I found out that in a Jewish bestiary there was actually a small unicorn. And that it would indeed have been kosher. Once one knows a factoid like this, it’s inevitable that it be used…

Hmm, I don't think I can see myself eating a cute Shetland unicorn or an elegant heraldic one either, but I suppose they would have cloven hooves and a cud... 

Thanks for your visit, Gillian! It has been very enjoyable and eye-opening - it has been so long since I read that story in ASIM I had forgotten the details. Now I'll have to hunt it up and read it again.

You can buy The Wizardry Of Jewish Women both in print and ebook on the web site of Satalyte Publishing - http://satalyte.com.au/product/wizardry-jewish-women-gillian-polack/

Gillian tells me you can order it anywhere on line, along with the rest of her books, or even in bricks and mortar stores. 

Now Reading... Words In Deep Blue by Cath Crowley

And loving it so far! It's book to read if you love books. And young love. And family issues... And touches of humour. It's set largely in a second hand bookshop - what's not to like?

I'm trying to read as much new Australian YA as I can, because these are the ones from which the CBCA shortlist will be chosen.

And face it, I have yet to read a Cath Crowley book I didn't love. They're gentle and sweet and funny and she knows about teenagers - as a teacher/former teacher, she should!

My favourite so far has been Graffiti Moon, which I think should have won that year's CBCA Award, but didn't. Still - this may become my new favourite - stand by!

In Which I Time Travel...In More Ways Than One: The Early Arts GuildPerforms!

Today I was supposed to be attending a friend's Christmas party. Poor Gaye rang me last night to say she had a nasty cold which she didn't want to spread. I regret her cold, but not the party, which will be on next weekend, or I could catch up with friends to give them their gifts, if it wasn't.

Meanwhile, I had another option this afternoon: to attend the the annual Christmas concert of the Eaely Arts Guild. I receive their newsletter, because some years ago I was learning Renaissance Dance from Helga Hill. I was, let's face it, not very good and eventually dropped out to try belly dance. I was a little better at that, though not brilliant, but my first teacher stopped teaching to focus more on her nursing day job, the second one, who was very good indeed, moved to the other side of town, where I couldn't follow her, and that was that. I did try another couple of teachers, but neither was anywhere near as good as Samra. There was one who had taught herself dance through videos! 

Helga Hill is a huge expert in the era of the Renaissance and the Baroque. She is an historian, a dancer, a musician with several instruments under her belt, a translator and makes the costumes, which are utterly accurate, from her research. She used to travel to Europe every year to read manuscripts and learn even more. 

I was never really good enough to perform, but she was kind and let me have a go at some simpler dances and the rest of the time I acted. I was a Duchess watching the dancers perform in my honour, a Commedia Del'Arte-masked clown called Clod, a lady in waiting watching the dancing with the king and, once, a lady embroidering at the bedside of the dying Queen Elizabeth while her life was played out in acting and dance below. 

It had been years since I'd seen Helga or her husband Mark and it was such a pleasure to see them again. I ended up buying a copy of Mark's local history book about Gippsland and their CD, which is playing on my CD player as I write this post.

The performance was wonderful as always. There was dance and music and a narrator and a wonderful soprano who also had learned the art of gesture. That's a very precise art, which we learned a little about when I was there, Only one dancer of today's troupe had been around in my time, Jan. I didn't get a chance to talk to her, but at intermission I approached Helga, who was pleased to see me and gave me a hug. 

I really must make the time to go to other concerts next year. I kept having clashes thus year.

After interval there was some Baroque dance by two dancers, both women, though one dressed as a man, complete with Van Dyke beard! It's always the same in that case - not enough men. Only one this time. And Baroque is a much more difficult form of dance than Renaissance, trust me on this!  We learned one Baroque dance when I was there - and that was one of the simpler ones. So these two were clearly the most advanced members of the team. 

That's a Baroque costume on the right.

The man is a lady!

The concert finished with bell ringing. That's something Mark used to teach years ago, but he has not been well lately, he was just out of hospital and on a crutch. 

It was a lovely end to a delightful performance. 

Learning Renaisance Dance was not just because I was interested in it. It was all a part of research for my writing. Did you know that there are very few medieval dances we know? That's because they weren't written down, or at least we don't have any dance manuals that might have been written at the time. So Helga focused on the later eras, for which there were manuals. 

Mind you, there were some earlier dancing masters we know of, just before the Renaissance. One of them was a Jewish lad from Pesaro called Guglielmo, of whom it was said that he could have seduced the goddess Diana. That's how gorgeous he was. There's a painting of him dancing between two young ladies, his students. He was respected enough that he didn't have to wear Jewish identification(you think the Nazis did this first?). On the whole, though, Italy was not a bad place to live if you were a Jew in the arts - and most of them were. It was expected of the kids that they learned music, dance, acting, whatever. We don't know what happened to Guglielmo, though there's a theory he may have converted to get a job he wanted. Oh, well... I wrote him into a story once, a Mary Sue, of course, in which the teenage girl met him at the school dance and found herself back in his time briefly, dancing with him... No, I never even tried to sell that one!  

Guglielmo with his students.

Public domain

Anyway, I learned enough to help me with my historical fantasy; I've never regretted my time with the Ripponlea Renaissance Dancers. 

A Waffle About Tolkien's Horses

Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

Have you noticed how many of the horses in The Hobbit end up dead? And that's the children's book of that universe!

I don't know why I have suddenly been thinking about this subject, but it's one that enters my mind now and then. As a child, I had walls covered with posters of horses and horse figurines(mostly plastic) on every level surface. A normal little girl, of course. I lived in a flat, so no chance of owning one and anyway, they were expensive, so even finding an agistment paddock would have been out of the question. 

But I dreamed of horses like Shadowfax. Oh, yes!

If I've got any of the details below wrong, please forgive me, Tolkien experts, and don't write rude comments about it! It has been a while since I read these books, though it was multiple time, and I just wanted a pleasant Sunday morning wander through them.  

In The Hobbit, most of the horses are ponies. When Bilbo, Gandalf and the Dwarves leave Hobbiton, only Gandalf is tall enough to ride a full sized horse. And Tolkien gives his ponies personalities. And then he has the lot of them eaten by the goblins, when the company sleeps in that cave above the goblins' halls. 

As if that isn't enough, several of the ponies lent to them in Laketown are eaten by the dragon, 

The only ponies to survive to the end are Beorn's, lent to the Dwarves when he has hosted them and sent them on their way - and that's only because he insists on their return at the edge of the forest and lurks in bear shape to make sure it happens. He's not silly! And considering what happens to the company in the forest, it's even more sensible! Giant spiders, for starters. Beorn would know about them and other scary things in Mirkwood, even if it does also contain a colony of Elves. (But these are not aristocratic Elves like the ones in Galadriel's realm or Rivendell. They're the lower class of the Elven community.)

I suspect Tolkien got rid of the horses because he needed the Dwarves and Bilbo to be on foot when they encountered the various dangers along the way. If the goblins hadn't eaten the ponies in those dark caves, Gollum would have done so. And you can't lug them up the Lonely Mountain, can you? 

In Lord Of The Rings, he's not so awful to his equine characters - and they are characters and they mostly have names. Who can possibly forget Shadowfax, king of the Mearas? Or Bill the pony? When the hobbits' ponies are scattered at Bree, the only horse they can get is a skinny nag bought at an outrageous price from an awful man called Bill. Bill the pony has to be left behind eventually, but he is reunited with his adoring master Sam Gamgee and even gets revenge on his former owner with a kick in passing. The other ponies, following Fatty Lumpkin, Tom Bombadil's pony, are not eaten or burned by dragon fire, as they would have been in The Hobbit, when the author needed to lose them. They end up quite happily employed at the inn in Bree. 

In LOTR we meet an entire nation of horse lovers, the Riders of Rohan. Their horses are their life and soul. They are the best among ordinary horses, though there are also the Mearas, which are a truly special breed, stronger, faster, more intelligent than the regular variety. And the best of those is Shadowfax, who ends up carrying Gandalf. He is dazzlingly white and was performed by two Andalusian horses in the film version, as I was hoping and expecting. 

Horses from Rohan, black ones, are stolen from the herds for the use of the Black Riders. They are brought up in Sauron's realm, so become used to it, but I always felt sad for those animals born to the light and the plains, living in the darkness of Mordor and carrying the Black Riders - and then being swept away at the ford along with their masters. After all, they were just ordinary horses, if the best quality, not flaming-eyed demons. And I do wonder whether the nasty Black Riders were at least kind to their horses, which, after all, they had to rely on.  

The Ranger horses are special too. They aren't pretty, but they're tough. Rangers need that. And when they came to the terrifying Paths of the Dead, the Ranger horses were fine with it, while the Rohan horses had to be blindfolded, as I recall. 

Apart from those poor Black Rider horses, the only equine death was Snowmane, King Theoden's mount, who died in battle and fell, crushing his master under him. The horse got a grave and a memorial anyway. Not his fault! 

There were Tolkien elements in the SF TV series Babylon 5, in which the Black Riders were captured humans in black spaceships, unable to be separated from their "mounts". Even the villain, Bester, grieves over a beloved woman who had had that done to her. 

Interesting, isn't it, how even Tolkien's horses made their way into our culture?

Happy Dance Time Again! A Contributor's Success!

Courtesy of GIPHY

My contributors to ASIM 60 have been doing well, it seems. First it was the delightful Michelle Goldsmith, whose second ever published story, which appeared in ASIM 60, was reprinted in The Year's Best Australian Fantasy And Horror. 

Now I have learned, quite by chance, that the amazing C. Stuart Hardwick, whose first sale was "Callista's Delight", published in ASIM 60, has sold a story to the world's top SF magazine, Analog. If you get into Analog, your career is really on its way. And I see that it has had good feedback so far, even the word "Hugo" being muttered by some. 

Well  done, Stuart! 

It seems always the way, though, that when you get them early, that's the last you hear of them. I mean, who wants to submit to a semiprozine paying about a cent a word when they have sold to the likes of Analog and Fantasy And SF?

ASIM has published the early fiction of some Big Names. Jim Hines. Aliette De Bodard. Rachel Swirsky.  Ann Leckie. People who went on to win Nebulas and Hugos. 

Mind you, we have had some stories from already-well-known people. Felicity Pulman. Sean Williams, who sent us a short, short story set in his Twinmaker universe. Sean McMullen. John Birmingham, better known these days for his journalism. Graeme Garden of The Goodies fame sent us a poem. I even had a poem by Darrell Schweitzer in my issue. 

But mostly, they go on to fame and fortune(or at least the chance to write full time, not to be sniffed at) and that's that. 

Well, I published six first sales and some second sales. I wonder if I should invite them to visit The Great Raven and let us know how they're going? 

And congratulations, Stuart! I am so proud! 

On Businesses Trying To Get Into The Blog Market

I get some strange requests. There are the freelance journalists who have come up with a novel way of making a living: they email you to offer a post on the topic of your choice, absolutely free - provided you let them slip in links to their sponsors. I delete those unanswered nowadays after putting something into my guidelines saying so. When I was answering I told them I don't advertise on this site, unless you count the promotion of great new books which I have read and loved. And occasionally I give a guest post to a probably self-published author who has taken the trouble to read my guidelines, without requiring a copy of the book, which I would then have to review, and what if I hated it? Besides, they're usually in the U.S. or Britain(mostly the U.S.) and postage costs are wicked! Everyone deserves a break. If the book sounds interesting I think perhaps it will interest my readers.

But I don't advertise accessories or furniture companies or any of the other stuff these journalists want to slip into my blog. This is a book (and sometimes movie) blog!

And there is another kind of inquirer who wants advertising. It's the kind who emails asking if you'll do a post on a theme that might interest their customers.  It might be on an appropriate theme, but in the end, it's about promoting their business. And I don't do that. Ever. See above about the links to advertising sites. I even had to start moderating comments when I was getting a lot of  spam comments that led back to advertising sites.

The last time I got an inquiry of the "would you post about this?" variety it was from an adventure travel company wanting a post about adventure. I said yes, but only as long as they understood I would not be linking to their web site or even mentioning their company. I suspect they didn't like that and I bet they never put in a link to my post on their web site. ;-)

This morning I got an inquiry from a business that hires out cars, wanting me to post about the vehicles of Harry Potter. I said no. I don't drive, so I have never fantasised about the flying Ford Anglia, and I don't promote businesses. I suppose I could have given them the same answer as I did the adventure travel company, but I just wasn't interested. And these people never follow my blog and rarely read the guidelines. If they do, they kind of hope I'll make an exception(and yes, I got that once or twice in an email too). This one could have worked out I like Harry Potter by the post on the side of the page, without ever reading the post itself, let alone any of the rest of the blog.

I suppose I'll have to rewrite my guidelines yet again, to make it clear what I do and don't post about, but it probably won't help. Sigh!

Coming Soon To The Great Raven ... An Interview With Gillian Polack!

Gillian Polack, historian, History Girl, teacher, novelist and fabulous cook, has kindly agreed to pay a visit to The Great Raven to discuss her novel The Wizardry Of  Jewish Women, reviewed on this blog. We will be discussing in particular the Jewish elements, which are vital to the story, and not only because of the title. It is an amazing novel!

I'm about to start preparing questions, so if you've read the book and have questions of your own, get in touch either by email or in the comments section below. If you haven't read it, perhaps it's time to start! 

Holes By Louis Sachar...Rereading Just Because...

So, I was thinking about something else, as you do, when the novel Holes crept into my mind. I used to teach it to Year 8, before the decision was made to do Literature Circles at Year 7 and 8. Then I gathered a few copies as a potential Literature Circles text. It's a novel often studied at primary school, but really needs good readers to study it and understand it properly. We also had kids who requested it the year after it went off the booklist, so I checked it out to them. 

I simply love that story about a boy who is sent to a punishment camp for a crime he didn't commit, where the boys are required to dig holes in the desert, because the Warden is looking for something that is connected with the history of the place, which used to be a thriving town by a lake, instead of a desert. There's a wonderfully fantastical element  to it, as there tends to be in Louis Sachar's YA fiction.

It was also a good film, a classic in its own right. The young Shia LeBeouf played the role of the hero, Stanley Yelnats. In the novel, Stanley was overweight and took off weight during the story, but that was a bit hard to arrange in a film that is made out of order. They decided to go for a "young Tom Hanks" type instead. 

The delightful Eartha Kitt played the gypsy Madame Zeroni, who placed the curse on the Yelnats family in the first place, because their ancestor had failed to carry out his agreement with her.

 Stanley's gently nutty inventor dad was played by Henry Winkler, whom the older among us remember as "the Fonze" from Happy Days. 

The onion man from 19th century Green Lake was played by Dule Hill, who may be familiar to you as President Jed Bartlett's aide, Charlie(West Wing)and in one scene you see him selling an onion tonic to a townsman who was played by Louis Sachar himself. 

Sigourney Weaver, who has played many a heroine in her time, was the evil Warden, the villain of the film.

It's just such a wonderful novel that I had to read it again. So I downloaded it from iBooks and you know what? I'm finding myself slipping comfortably back into it. It will be a definite case of comfort reading. 

Not to mention a bad case of inability to defer gratification! Ah, well, them's the breaks. 

Anyone else have this problem with ebooks? 

Now Reading... The Golden Apples Of The Sun by Ray Bradbury

Can there be anyone who has read Ray Bradbury and doesn't love his stories? They are beautiful and poetic and speak to your soul all at once - and they're entertaining too! I remember reading Something Wicked This Way Comes in one sitting, and being swept into the world of the story, hearing the sounds of that night circus coming into town, feeling the fear of the characters...

The other day, we were talking about short stories at an English faculty meeting. The decision has been made to scrap Year 10's Romeo And Juliet unit yet again, and replace it with short stories. Easier to teach, more time to get through it. So yet again the kids miss out on Shakespeare and most of them will never have the chance again, and will go through life knowing - or believing, anyway - only that some girl called Juliet is asking where a boy called Romeo is, and that will be their only perception of the man who added so many words to the language and whose plays inspired so many of our modern stories and culture... And they were only doing the films anyway, not reading it. Oh, well. 

Anyway, there was some discussion of what the stories might be - still going on. And one of the suggested stories is the famous "Sound Of Thunder" - the one in which some man steps on a butterfly in prehistoric times during a carefully planned dinosaur hunting safari(they only kill dinosaurs that were about to get killed anyway)and completely changes the future. So as I sat around the table I opened my iPad at iBooks and bought The Golden Apples Of The Sun, the Bradbury anthology in which the story resides.  

And what a treasury of classic stories it is! I spotted a couple of his Family stories in there - the Family are a sort of extended Addams Family - and such classics as "The Fog Horn". His stories range from the regional America of his childhood to spaceships of the future, all wonderful stuff! 

And don't forget, he was friends with another amazing Ray, Ray Harryhausen, the wizard of movie special effects.

I was reading the anthology in bed this morning and had to share!

Just Finished Reading...Rivers Of London by Ben Aaronovitch

I bought this recently, after having heard the author talk about it on the ABC. Apparently, it's been around for some years, but hey, I'd never heard of it. Who would have thought someone I knew best from Dr Who would be writing urban fantasy? Though I can see the Doctor getting involved, with Peter Grant as a companion...

Peter Grant is a young policeman who has just finished his initial period of service and is about to be slotted into a section of the London Metropolitan Police. To his disgust, he has been put into the administration section, where he will be a glorified data entry clerk so that real coppers can get on with their business while someone else does the paperwork. 

Then he is spotted by the mysterious Inspector Nightingale, talking to a ghost, something most policemen can't do, and becomes a part of the smallest section of the London police force, one that includes only two people, himself and Inspector Nightingale. As an Apprentice wizard he learns spells, Latin, Greek and other wizardly things, and helps to solve a mystery that involves people's faces falling off after they have committed acts of violence. Supernatural forces are at play... and so are river gods and goddesses, most of the latter being stunning African women...

I couldn't get enough of this book. The characters were a delight - I can imagine Peter Grant played by a young Craig Charles - and the storyline over-the-top delicious. There are things I can't tell you because of spoilers, but read it, especially if you enjoy Neil Gaiman. It has the style of a Gaiman urban fantasy and the charm.

 

Oh, and if you want to know how the Thames river goddess is an African woman, you'll just have to read it and find out.