We meet again for our discussion of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book readalong hosted by Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings. Are we having fun? I am! Today we’re checking out chapters 4-6. Of these, “The Witch’s Headstone” is my unequivocal favorite. It is here, against all manner of warnings from his elders about the evils of the dead in Potter’s Field, that Bod meets a wistful witch. Of course, we all want our children to obey us without question, but…
Today we begin our three part discussion of The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman as part of Carl’s group read over at Stainless Steel Droppings. The book opens with a visit from a knife-wielding Jack who kills a family minus one toddler. Said toddler wanders into a cemetery where he is quickly adopted by kind-hearted nonliving beings (aka ghosts) and one crusty undead curmudgeon with a soft center. In an effort to keep the child safe from knife-wielding Jack, the…
The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian I LOVED this book. That is, I loved half of this book. Here are some of my notes to self–“right from the start I adore the style,” “this is refreshing after the last lackluster book,” and “Thank you, Crown Publishers for not italicizing the prologue!” (For more on the great prologue controversy, read my post on prologues here.) It begins so well. A goose-downed (as in a-gaggle-of-geese-downed-the) plane ends in a failed landing (notwithstanding…
The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse In The Winter Ghosts, a despondent Freddie Watson mourns the loss of his favored brother who perished in WWI. Even ten years after the war, Freddie cannot rid himself of a paralyzing case of survivor’s guilt. After crashing his car in a snowstorm in the French Pyrenees, he hikes to the nearest village where some of the local denizens give him a cold reception. However, he soon finds himself invited to a fête, treated…
Water Ghosts by Shawna Yang Ryan With Ghost Month starting this week, this is the perfect time to review Water Ghosts. This book was originally published under the title Locke 1928, and until I neared the end of the book, I would have said Locke 1928 was a better title than Water Ghosts. This is one of those novels in which the town becomes a kind of character, similar to Empire Falls by Richard Russo. And indeed, author Ryan paints…
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman Harper Collins, 386 pages This isn’t a traditional ghost story such as I usually review. This is more of a ghost-as-metaphor-for-the-forgotten-ones story. But that’s actually a quest I seek in the ghost stories I read, the yearning that drives one to cross barriers and struggle to connect. You’ve wondered, I know you have, what would happen if one day you went left instead of right, if one day you stopped because a street person asked for…
The Séance by John Harwood I decided to participate in a reading challenge run by Laura at Laura’s Reviews—my second ever! (The first was R.I.P. at Stainless Steel Droppings.) I recommend reading challenges to all you avid readers and writers out there. Anyhow, Laura’s challenge is Victorian related novels and movies, as in the setting takes place or the author lived between 1837 and 1901. Check it out here. Of course, me being me (or is it…
Ghost Island by Bonnie Hearn Hill Kindle e-book So, you’ve been hearing a lot about ebooks and are wondering if you should try one. But wait, you’ve also heard ebooks are sophomoric, self-indulgent, self-promoting drivel by authors who couldn’t get a traditional publisher’s attention if they handed out manuscripts clad in red spike-heeled pumps and see-through raincoats. Let’s talk about it. Normally, today’s post would be Writer Unleashed, but in honor of Read an E-book Week (March 4-10), I’m shuffling…
The Ghost Orchid by Carol Goodman Ballantine Books, 336 pages Source: Pleasanton Library I read a favorable review of this book on the Haunted Travels website and decided to check it out. After I was thirty pages in, I realized I had read this novel before. Here’s the interesting part: I enjoyed it more the second time. I think it’s because I wasn’t trying to figure out what would happen, and I could just relax and enjoy the flow. The…
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill I do a writing assignment with my students called “Which is Better—the Book or the Movie?” Doesn’t matter if it’s a black-and-white classic or a Technicolor blockbuster, my students invariably plant themselves on the side of the book. (I don’t know if the knowledge that I’m a writer enters into their logic, so we should probably factor in the suck-up component.) Ironically, I don’t always agree with my students. For instance, I’m…