REVIEW: The Wild Girl by Kate Forsyth

I am a huge fan of Kate Forsyth's...huge, huge fan. I have all of her novels and when I met her in person I nearly died from excitement. Yes, authors are my rock stars. I met quite a few celebrities when I worked in hospitality and no one made me go as weak at the knees as meeting some of my favourite authors has...well maybe Jimmy Barnes came close. (He is a very nice man by the way and his wife is totally gorgeous)

Anyway back to The Wild Girl. I LOVED THIS BOOK! Below is the tweet I wrote right after finishing it.

Cassandra Page‏@bibliosapien

Elation, despair, disgust, wonderment @KateForsyth is a master who rends your emotions raw then puts them back together again. #TheWildGirl

I love books that make you feel a wide range of emotions. I want to go on a roller coaster ride from start to finish and most of all I want the characters to be human. Kate is a natural born storyteller and never fails to deliver on this front. Her characters always have substance and are flawed in such a way that it makes them fundamentally human. I have seen writers try to give characters flaws to achieve this humanity before but it often comes off as forced and the reader can see right through it.

The book tells the story of Dortchen Wild who told Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm many of the folktales that went into their collection. It is a story about love; true love that can overcome the harsh realities of life and blossom even in adversity. At times the material is quite dark and Kate herself has said that there were moments when she was writing the book that she would have nightmares and just have to get the dark scenes written so that they would get out of her head so she could move past them. However even in those dark moments, when Dortchen is faced with hurdles that seem insurmountable and it appears all hope is lost; like a fairytale the light shines through the dark and she she claws her way back to the surface. 

I cannot recommend this book enough. If you like historical novels, have a fascination for fairy tales and the people who told them, or enjoy tales that lay the darker aspects of what it means to be human bare then read this book.

Rating: *****

Zombies!

Zombies freak me the hell out.

Ghosts? Meh. Vampires? Pfft whatever. Werewolves? Bring it! But zombies? Nightmare inducing.

So anyway, The Boy, has been watching The Walking Dead from season one through to three or is it four? anyway he has watched every single episode to date over the course of like a week and a bit. And he has questions, so many questions, about physics and biology and lawn maintenance....and because I am a writer of speculative sort of things he brings these question to me. I have no idea, I don't like zombies, they give me the heebee-geebees big time. Funny though I will happily blow their heads off with a sniper rifle or shotgun on a video game but they still freak me out and I get twitchy.

Anyhoo getting side tracked. He makes a very valid point about getting bitten by zombies and getting infected and ingesting zombie blood having the same effect. Then straight out of left field he is like: "But how the fuck can they slice through a room of zombies getting blood on their faces, in open wounds, in eyes and possibly open mouths and not get infected?" my response: o.O'

This was the first of many such conversations about zombie physics and apocalypse themes and really I am well and truly unequipped for these conversations hell I would rather be talking to a teenage version of Seth about sex, drugs and rock and roll than having to consider the internal workings of a zombie or the larger dynamics of a whole zombie apocalypse.

Mind you one very good thing has come out of all these awkward, mostly one sided conversations, the muse has bitten big time. I am not sure about writing about zombies but I have had a couple of characters present themselves and say: "Hey, I am over here with a story for you. You know when you finish the one you are working on. I'm patient I can wait." and one who is like: "Oh hell no bitch! I ain't waiting for you to finish. Put a cap in that manuscripts ass and come write me."

I have been good though and just written down the snippets of information that have drifted in and filed them away for later...perhaps much later when I can stand the thought of maybe writing about zombies and not having them freak me out. I find it fascinating though that something that I tend to avoid and ignore could bring some many ideas to the fore front of my mind. It is definitely something to ponder: the effect of being out of your comfort zone on your muse.

REVIEW: Uno's Garden

Seth has already developed a great love of books and being read to. I am over the moon about it as his father is not an avid reader now but was when he was younger and more often than not you will find me with my nose in a book. So I have been gathering a collection of childrens' books and one of the  most recent is a book called Uno's Garden by Graeme Base.

Base is a wonderful author (one of my favourites) and if you have children but they don't have any of his books I think that is a sacrilege. Uno's Garden is a bit "old" for Seth at the moment, it is more aimed at early primary/young readers I believe, but that didn't stop me reading it to him. It is involves a wonderful counting game and ecological problem that should be at the forefront of more peoples minds than it currently is. In fact, even if you don't have children you should read this book. it throws human expansion and its effects on the environment into a stark light that will leave a bitter taste in your mouth. But rather than stopping at the bleakest moment, when all the trees and animals are gone, the book reverses the counting game and draws you on a journey as the world comes back to life under the careful  and sustainable nurturing of Uno's descendants.

It is a delightful tale for children of all ages, the gorgeous artwork teamed with the counting game will keep the reader enthralled for hours. As with all of Graeme Base's books, Uno's Garden, deserves lots of re-readings and is sure to be a childhood favourite for the new generation.

Rating: ***** 

Restart #45

So I have recently been more active on this new fangled thing called Twitter. Yeah, I know: Wow you are only just discovering Twitter now you must be the epitome of lame...or some such.

Any way, as a last ditch effort to come out of my terribly thick introverted shell and make some contacts in the writing industry I have had to go above and beyond my comfort zone and attend actual social events with real life people. I don't really do people (wait that sounds wrong). I am not a people person (better). I never really have been a people person, in fact I can count my close, couldn't live without, friends on half of one hand and one of those I have known since kindergarten. It is not that I am anti-social, completely the opposite, once I am comfortable in a group of people you would never guess the nervous wreck I can be at the thought of big social occasions and *gasp* meeting new people. It is very easy to sit behind a computer screen and bare all to the world, those that have followed my past blogging escapades (over too many years to count) would know that I can be quite open about certain aspects of my life and not at all the meek wall flower I so often claim to be. But being a somewhat anonymous face behind a screen possibly on the other side of the world gives you power and autonomy. There are people who use this to their advantage for power games, bullying, and being, well really not nice; but there are others who, like me, are prone to shyness and retreating from social situations that can use this to raise the bar and put them on level ground with people who they would normally not get to know.

So why is this relevant? Well at writing conventions and courses you meet like minded people and a lot of those like minded people have Twitter accounts, hell half their grandmothers probably have twitter accounts. I have had one for ages but I rarely used it because well I simply didn't know how to. See there are so many articles floating around with how to not to act on social media sites and that can be crippling: just be yourself, wait don't be yourself censor the crap out of yourself so that people don't really know the real you but the face you choose to depict to the world. But I want to be the real me. I like who I am, even when I am not being professional and I want to know that I am talking to a real person. The writer in me thrives on the raw unedited qualities of social situations with genuine people (once it gets over the initial nerves of course). Sorry, tangent again (get used to it) So I had avoided using Twitter until the new people I was meeting started asking if they could follow me and through them I have found other people to follow (it is just a big amalgamation of people following and following back and having random conversations about what their children (or cats) are doing or what they had for lunch...much like Facebook but in only 140 characters). And then those followers see I have a blog linked on profile and they come over here to get to know me better and OOPS! No up dates since February and only two posts. And then I am reminded that I keep trying to restart this blog and it just doesn't happen. So I am trying again, inspired by some of the new blogs I have discovered through Twitter.

I have no focus, I hate being restricted to talking about one niche so I am not going to try and do that anymore:

It is just me, raw and uncensored, the way it always was before; the way it should be.

What are you doing with your life?

I get asked quite frequently if I am still at university. I used to answer with something along the lines of: "Yes, I only have (x amount of time) left", and then justify it with all manner of excuses as to why I am not some crazy efficient woman who knows exactly what she wants and grabs it by the proverbial balls. Girl Power, WHOO!  Now however I simply answer: "Yes", no excuses no pandering to people's desires and giving them a running commentary about my reasons for taking so long.

Most people who know me know the reasons anyway:

Changed degrees halfway through
Took ages to work out that I should be doing what I enjoy not what I think will give me the best employment prospects
Anxiety / Panic Disorder that makes functioning like a "normal" person difficult at times
Chronic procrastinator that gets distracted very easily by "shiny" things

Yeah the list goes on.

This is my final year of undergrad study however and I am now facing the frightening prospect of deciding what I am going to do with myself. I want to do further study; if get a high enough GPA I will be doing Honours. But I haven't really told my parents that. They would like me to get my almost thirty year old butt back out into the workforce not chasing some academic pipe dream.

I told mum last night that I am considering doing a Masters in Library Science / Information Technology. She huffed and rolled her eyes and said, "And where will that get you? Don't you think it is time you grew up and started thinking about leaving the study behind." I couldn't answer her even though it is a degree that will help me get a job in the future. It seems somewhere along the track I have derailed and drifted further and further away from what I originally wanted, what I originally considered to be the right thing. Now I have to ask myself what am I doing with my life and it is a little scary. It is time to take stock and make unwavering decisions about my future; to grow up and get on with it. That is not me though, I have always been an optimistic dreamer, thinking things will sort themselves and crossing bridges as I get to them. This is one bridge I have to plan for in advance and I more frightened of it then I was when I had to man up and accept that I was going to be a mother. Somehow accepting responsibility for the physical and emotional well being of my child was a hundred times easier then tying up the laces on my "adult" shoes.

ON THE NEEDLES: The Welsh Green

 

Knitting is kind of like meditation for me, or as close to a meditative state as my mind can ever get. I have issues with that slowing down and emptying your mind thing. Anyway, because of this, I love a nice basic pattern that requires very little thought and keeping count of rows and doesn't have a huge list of different stitch types. Simple patterns can look just as lovely as overly complicated patterns and they are not nearly as easy to fuck up. Mind you right after I took this photo I did skip the next row of the pattern and didn't realise for about three rows; whoops.

 

I am not really working off a pattern per say but rather a heavily modified version of a pattern that I stumbled across the other day (and now can't seem to find). As you can see the pattern resembles scales, at least I think it does, so I have nicknamed this scarf "The Welsh Green". (Harry Potter fans should get the reference) So far, even with having to unpick it once, this pattern has been a pleasure to knit.

 

The wool is a hand-dyed colourway called "Undergrowth" by the very lovely Rachel at Featherbrush Yarns. I have quite a few of her other colourways, including some customs. (I might do a show and tell post later) Her dye work is simply gorgeous.