Gone to 'Where The Wild Things Are'

I woke up this morning and habitually checked my Twitter feed, only to be told by a very busy trend that Maurice Sendak had passed today at the age of 83. I was saddened, but I instantly remembered his many achievements and smiled. Both within the literary sphere and for me personally... 

Maurice Sendak is arguably the most important children's book author/artist of our time, and his famous story 'Where the Wild Things Are' can be recognised by many. Yes, we all loved how Max got up to mischief in his wolf suit, and created a wonderful world within his imagination. But there was something much more deeper at play here. With this tiny self-written, self-illustrated book came a genre-breaking tale set to change the nature of children's stories forever. There were fairytales... and then there were Sendak's hauntingly beautiful tales, dancing in the darkness of the human psyche. He was a fearlessly honest writer, who didn't intend to write stories for children but spoke to them in a way not many others could. And although he was widely criticised for this, Sendak always faced his difficulties with the utmost courage. He taught children to face it through his books. 

For me personally, 'Where the Wild Things Are' was always a go-to book. It was a comforter. I could confide in Max when the world was against me (who knows, maybe I got in trouble for something stupid), run away, rumble with some monsters, let loose with my emotions and be prepared to come back and face those troubles level headed. Max was there, and he could assure me that everything would be better this time round. Hell, I should probably revert back to this way of dealing with things!!? 

As the library leader of my primary school, Sendak's works were always displayed in the priority spots... and when it came time for the annual school performance, I played that tiny yellow flower in our stage rendition of the story with so much pride (nerdy book girls have no dance skills). It's so hard to put into words what his work meant to me. This is a sad day for library leaders. For children. 

Ever since I heard his interview with Terry Gross last year I realised just how much this man was in tune with himself and everything around him. He spoke so eloquently on life and love lost. And when prompted to face his own mortality, said "I have nothing but praise now, for my life. I'm not unhappy. I cry a lot, because I miss people. I cry a lot because they die, and I can't stop them. They leave me. And I love them more...And it's what I dread, more than anything, is the isolation.... Oh God, there are such beautiful things in the world, which I will have to leave when I die. But I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready". It was poignant then, but even more so now. I know that when Maurice Sendak gets back home, his supper will still be waiting and it will be hot. Just the way he likes it. 

And he sailed off through night and day

and in and out of weeks

and almost over a year

to where the wild things are.

R.I.P Maurice Sendak, literary legend.

For those who'd like to hear the story again...

May's Best Bits

As the end of each month comes to its close, I try to think back to what I thought were the best parts to write this little monthly post. Well I started thinking yesterday, and again today, and I still have nothing great! I guess May was really a non-event type month for me. It seems as if majority of what I did was work, either at both of my regular jobs or at Uni! And if I sat down to crunch the numbers, I'm pretty sure they would support my proposition.

I did take two nights off the bar to celebrate the birthdays of two of my dearest friends. We ate dinner in cute backyard restaurants in the city and I drank a few too many Lychee Mojitos! Although I was a little late because I had to work, I always enjoy my time spent with these wonderful friends. The other two weekends were spent making new friends at my bar! I have some regular customers now and they truly make my night go much faster! They have been super flexible in their drink orders and place their trust in my drink mixing abilities each week. I'll have to step up my game and think of something great for this weekend's shift!

Whenever I had a small window of alone time in May I picked up my copy of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. Yes, I realise that I am several years behind on this read. But the truth is, I was never inclined to read it because I knew about the content. One day though, I saw it in a second hand store and thought about reading it again. It has taken me much longer to get through than most books. Not because I think it's bad or anything, I actually think it's written beautifully (especially from a young, first time author). Its just that the content is just a little unconventional to me... While the first chapters were incredibly hard to get through, I can see now that it offers much more than the idea of a brutally murdered teenage girl going to heaven. I only have a few chapters to go, so hopefully I can finish it before I have to put all non-law related reads aside in preparation for my final exams.

Hopefully June has much more to offer! What was your favorite part of May?

Oh Harry!

So as most of you are aware... I am a complete Harry Potter nut! I feel in love with this magical world at a young age, and the love affair has never been superseded. In my eyes, Harry is second to none! (LOL). The reason for this post however, is not to tell you things you already know about me, but to show you my collection!

It began with just the first four books... I received them at each at age 10, where I began reading them and growing up alongside Harry himself. From then onwards, I purchased the following books as they were released right up until I was 15. Amidst these teenage years however, I began to keep my love a secret. I was ridiculed in High School for rocking a Harry Potter pencil case and so I thought it best to blend in instead. As a result I never purchased or read Deathly Hallows until just this year!!! 

In addition to the novels, I have been lucky enough to find some other Harry Potter inspired treasures hidden amongst the shelves of second hand book stores. The first supplement I came across was The Tales of Beedle the Bard. This is the wizarding world's equivalent of our Brothers Grimm, and appears in Deathly Hallows as a gift bequeathed to Hermoine from Dumbledore himself. I found my copy to be incomplete, and so I added the deathly hallows symbol at the top for authenticity. 

I stumbled across the other two supplements while I was browsing another second hand store just the other day. The first, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, is a copy of a text book that belonged to Harry in the very first novel. The second, Quidditch Through the Ages, is another text book, this time belonging to Hogwarts Library. 

I think the best part about owning this entire collection is knowing that the original purchaser's of the novelty companions have contributed to donating over $30 million to Comic Relief and The Children's Voice charity campaigns! Three cheers for Rowling's philanthropic work! 

P.S. For those with brilliant eyes, no I am not missing The Chamber of Secrets. It was just on loan to someone when this photo was taken. 

Date A Girl Who Reads

This little piece of writing has been bouncing around the blogsphere for a while now, but it is just too lovely not to share it.  

"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent.  Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes."

The author is listed as Rosemarie Urquico, but I cannot find any link to her.  It is beautiful nonetheless, and definitely worth the re-blog.

Chapter One: The River Bank

This is just a small thank you to today's episode of The Book Show for rekindling my childhood love affair with Kenneth Grahame's classic The Wind in the Willows. Deserving of particular mention is the charming illustrations by Ernest S. Shepard in the earlier editions. Although as an adult I can readily understand the social underpinnings of the idealised age in which the book was written, I would much rather remember the characters of Mole, Ratty and even Mr. Badger for their depicted pastoral lives, living in a domestic tranquility unhampered from interference from the outside world. To me, there is nothing more whimsical than row boat rides down stream, new friends sharing sandwiches and a lovely new home for an old mole.

 

`This has been a wonderful day!' said Mole, as the Rat shoved off and took to the sculls again. `Do you know, I`ve never been in a boat before in all my life.'

`What?' cried the Rat, open-mouthed: `Never been in a--you never--well I--what have you been doing, then?'

`Is it so nice as all that?' asked the Mole shyly, though he was quite prepared to believe it as he leant back in his seat and surveyed the cushions, the oars, the rowlocks, and all the fascinating fittings, and felt the boat sway lightly under him.

`Nice? It's the ONLY thing,' said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke. `Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING--absolute nothing--half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing,' he went on dreamily: `messing--about--in--boats; messing----'

`Look ahead, Rat!' cried the Mole suddenly.

It was too late. The boat struck the bank full tilt. The dreamer, the joyous oarsman, lay on his back at the bottom of the boat, his heels in the air.

`--about in boats--or WITH boats,' the Rat went on composedly, picking himself up with a pleasant laugh. `In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not. Look here! If you've really nothing else on hand this morning, supposing we drop down the river together, and have a long day of it?'

Miss Jane Marple

Today marks the 120th birthday of one of Britain's most celebrated crime fiction writers, Agatha Christie.

Geraldine McEwan playing Christie's Miss Marple!

With classics starting in the 1920's such as The Murder of Rodger Ackroyd, And Then There Were None and The Body in the Library, Agatha Christie is the best selling writer of all time. She has become the world's most translated author, and has sold more than four billion copies of her novel's globally. Most of us will know Christie's work from many of the film and television adaptations, like Murder, She Wrote or Innocent Lies. But I highly recommend to anyone craving a little classic murder mystery to head to a second hand bookstore and dust off a copy of Christie's Murder on the Orient Express.

Happy 120th Birthday Agatha Christie. 

"Everything that has ever existed, lies in eternity."

Those Who Don't Believe In Magic Will Never Find It...

When I was a little girl at primary school, I spent every spare moment in the library. Mornings, afternoons, in between classes and lunch times. What started as reading quietly in the corner soon lead to bigger and better things. At the beginning, I would perform tasks like contacting new books, processing the returns, rearranging the shelves. After a while, I was given the privilege of selecting "Book of the Week", and writing a short review on it. Call me a nerd, I don't mind. Because in the end, not only did I win Library Leader of the Year three years running, I was lucky enough to attend several meet the author days. Here, I was able to put faces to so many of the names that feature down the spine of some of my favourite books. Duncan Ball, author of 'Emily Eyefinger' and the 'Shelby' series. Emily Rodda, the genius behind 'Ronald of Rin' and 'Deltora's Quest'. And Morris Gleitzman, the funny man behind comic novels such as 'Toad Rage' and 'Gift of the Gab'. It was a pleasure meeting these wonderful people, but for each that I met, there were others which I never would. Aside from my love affair with J.K. Rowling, there was only ever one other author who held such a special place in my bookshelf...

Roald Dahl, one of Britain's most famous novelist's for children. What I loved most about Dahl's stories were not only the marvelous, mischievous and magical settings of chocolate factories and giant peaches, but also the bunch of quirky characters that came with it. Looking back, I think what captivated me the most was the way in which Dahl used unsentimental black humour to cast vengeance upon the child-hating adult villains, most notorious being the fall of the evil headmistress Miss. Agatha Trunchbull in Matilda. That and, the list of quotes that have stayed with me for years, "two rights don't equal a left".

So, with today being the official 'Roald Dahl Day', I will dust off my copy of The BFG, and pay homage to a man who saw me though some of my best childhood years.

Imperial Bedrooms

Tonight, Sydney’s Oxford Art Factory was host to American cult novelist, Bret Easton Ellis.

Better known for his transgressive literary works such as Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction and American Psycho, Ellis is here in Sydney to present his latest novel, Imperial Bedrooms.

Anyone who is a fan of Ellis’ extreme expressions of opinion through self-destructive delusional youth made their way into town and made a night of it.

Unfortunately I was unable to attend. But from what I heard, there was live music, beer & book signings - a most unique music/literary occasion.