“I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future—the timelessness of the rocks and the hills—all the people who have existed there. I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape—the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.” ~Andrew Wyeth
Here are some shiny things that caught my eye recently:
♦ ‘Tis the Season.
I love Dan Wilbur’s Better Book Titles tumblr, and I particularly love the better book title for A Charlie Brown Christmas—it’s so cynical I couldn’t help but laugh:
More than you ever needed to know about mistletoe. And are poinsettias as dangerous as everyone says? (Spoiler alert: no.)
Enjoy 12 fascinating moments in winter-clothing history. Also, beautiful buildings made from ice and snow.
5 things you didn’t know about “The 12 Days of Christmas.” I knew #1 and #2 for sure, and #5 was a fun fact!
No room for a Christmas tree, not even one as puny as Charlie Brown’s? Why not make a treeless Christmas tree? Via.
If you’re interested in some mythic decorating for the holidays, check out this Domythic Bliss’s post.
♦ The Reading Spot.
I love how Erin Morgenstern recommends books: she photographs a stack of books she read in a certain year. What a visual charm! She also shared her pontifications on her to-read pile.
Illustration by Scott Bakal for “Am I Free to Go?” by Kathryn Cramer
Look at these fictions with your ocular-jellies:
Am I Free to Go? by Kathryn Cramer at Tor.com (the illustration at left was done by Scott Bakal for the story; he writes about the process of creating the piece here)
The Refugee by Meg Everingham at Daily Science Fiction
Invisible Men by Christopher Barzak at Eclipse Online
The Merger by Michael Adam Robson at Daily Science Fiction
Twelve Days of Fast Fiction, Day 1: Why Can’t Reindeer Fly by Lee Barnett (via).
The Little Helper by Kat Otis at Daily Science Fiction
Flax-golden tales: Grab the Holiday Cheer by Erin Morgenstern
Seashells by Lavie Tidhar at Daily Science Fiction
Headstone in Your Pocket by Paul Tremblay at Weird Fiction Review, which also ran an interview with Tremblay
A Natural History of Dragons (excerpt) by Marie Brennan at Tor.com
This video of Neil Gaiman telling a story for the PEN World Voices Festival came out in 2007, but I listened to it again the other day and was charmed all over. Via.
♦ Someone’s in the Kitchen with Dinah.
Ever wonder what killed the dinner party? (Every time I read that title, my first thought is, “Don’t we know what killed the Donner party?”)
I’m a teetotaler myself, but perhaps you would like to booze your way through the holidays, Hemingway style. (Oh dear, I almost typed “Gangnam Style” just then. It’s getting bad, folks.)
This week I have even more gingerbread houses for you. So. Much. Gingerbread. Goodness. First up, a half-dozen literary gingerbread houses at BookRiot features Hogwarts (below), Minas Tirith, A Christmas Carol, The House of the Seven Gables, and more.
Buzzfeed offered 25 amazing gingerbread houses, which were, I concur, pretty amazing (via). Below is a gingerbread St. Basil’s Cathedral:
Also, here’s the Disneyland Haunted Mansion in gingerbread, via Boing Boing:
Want to make some Jack Skellington’s Sandy Claws cookies? Of course you do! And Cindy Littlefield’s recipe looks pretty easy, too. Via.
I know someone who will enjoy this article on Peppermint Pigs (a smashing tradition in NY) (via). For those of you unfamiliar with this tradition, peppermint pigs are “pig-shaped hard candies … sold with little metal hammers to smash them at Christmas.” At left is an image of the candy (clicking on the image will take you to another article about the Peppermint Pig).
Articles on cheese seemed to be all over the interwebs last week. mental floss asked why humans started eating cheese in the first place. io9 shared that new evidence that people have been making cheese for 7500 years, as did BoingBoing.
Also, this sculpture by Brad Hill of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is too cute (via):
Stay Puft Man S’More by Brad Hill
♦ She Blinded Me … with Science!
Psychology: The lasting mystery of the Hawthorne Effect.
Medicine: Diphallia: when men are born with two penises.
Genetics: Scientists claim that homosexuality is not genetic—but it arises in the womb.
Food science: Why you should probably stop eating wheat.
Astrophysics: Apparently, everyone’s making “Gangnam Style” parody videos these days, but I think you’ll really enjoy the one made by NASA’s Johnson Space Center (via):
Arachnology: Watch a timelapse video of a spider spinning a web (via).
Anatomy: How genitals got their names, or why a penis is called a pizzle; The science of human tails.
♦ Viewers’ Paradise.
10 things you probably didn’t know about A Charlie Brown Christmas. I think I knew number ten, but everything else was new. Via.
Here’s a terrific holiday video for you, though I’m a little late in sharing, since Hanukkah is now over. Still, I’m sure you’ll appreciate as I did Samurai Jew: The Eighth Night by Nadav Nachmany. Via.
io9 made a list of the best science fiction and fantasy holiday specials ever. It’s a good list. My favorites on the list are the Futurama episodes, “Christmas with the Joker” from Batman: The Animated Series, “The Most Horrible Xmas Ever” from Invader Zim, and the two Doctor Who specials: “Voyage of the Damned” with David Tennant and “A Christmas Carol” with Matt Smith (the latter made me cry really hard; plus, I love “Abigail’s Song (Silence Is All You Know),” sung by the incomparable Katherine Jenkins, which you can listen to below).
Everyone’s all a-glow about the new Man of Steel trailer that was released last week. I like the look of it, too. If you’re interested in a shot-by-shot breakdown of the trailer, io9 can help you out! I think Henry Cavill will make a fine Superman, but I’m most curious to see Michael Shannon as Zod. Is this good casting, Cameron?
♦ The Gift that Keeps on Giving.
Mary Robinette Kowal had an interesting post about what a request for no gifts means. Go read it, and then come back. All done? Good. I’m really of two, very conflicting minds about this post. On the one hand, I am someone who doesn’t require gifts—after all, as friends will tell you, I will buy what I want, so I’m actually the worst person ever to shop for. However, I love to give gifts, and I like to give several at a time. Part of the reason is that I want friends to be happy or charmed or surprised or delighted with my gifts; part of the reason has only to do with me and my obsession with kinds of perfection: the perfect combination of gifts reveals something about me (sometimes the revelation is just for me, which makes me sound quite the narcissist, or even solipsist). It’s a weird contradiction. The older I get, the more I prefer getting handmade gifts—something edible, perhaps, or something someone has written or drawn or painted or collaged or somehow constructed. But, in the end, it really is the thought that counts, if thinking has gone into the gift…. Oh, such a ramble I’ve gotten off on!
1907 The Mint Museum (image via Gail Carriger’s site)
Speaking of gifts, Gail Carriger had several posts titled Holiday Fun: Books as Gifts which were about creating reader baskets designed around one book (she recommends a copy signed by the author, which would be wonderful). Since this kind of gift-giving is what I like to do, I’m quite taken with the notion. Carriger used her own novels as examples, but the suggestions are intended to inspire based on her ideas (good suggestions are also found in the comments): Soulless Tea Party themed basket, Changeless Madame Lefoux Cross-Dressing and/or Scotland themed basket, Blameless Parasol themed basket, Heartless Octopus themed basket, and Timeless Egypt themed basket.
Also, here are five cheap DIY gifts for book lovers. Even if you’re not planning to make any DIY gifts, do check it out; Kimberly Turner cracked me up!
And Chuck Wendig made a list of 25 gifts for writers (many tongue in cheek, but oh so cheeky).
mental floss shared the accidental birth of wrapping paper. A most interesting tidbit!
♦ The Book Nook.
Check out this photo of a second-hand bookshop from Theodore Dalrymple’s article about same in The Telegraph (via). I love the light coming through the Gothic window.
The Beginner’s Guide to Cleaning Your Books (these tips are really great).
I love the Share Your Shelf tumblr so much. One of these days I’m going to take some pictures of my shelves to share. In the meanwhile, I enjoyed these shares tremendously last week (click the images to see larger versions at the tumblr):
Will’s shelves: “7 feet tall, 12 feet wide, here is my shelf with over 800 books and then some non reading material as well.”
Chris Cobb – There is Nothing Wrong in this Whole World (2004), 20,000-book color spectrum (click through to see a slide show of more of the spectrum)
Luis: “A nice, well-ordered room.”
Bookshelf Porn is another favorite tumblr of mine—such a great and random assortment of bookshelves. Below are two great images from last week:
♦ The Ninth Art.
Randall Munroe’s xkcd comic titled “Honest” struck me (click through to read the tooltip):
Tim Callahan continued his Great Alan Moore Reread with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Part Three: Black Dossier.
Kate Beaton put up a new comic about Cinderella that I just adored. Please go and read it because it is made of all that is good. Here’s a little teaser from early on in the comic (the panel I wanted to show you is totally spoilerific!)
Tansy Rayner Roberts added two more entries to her Where the Wonder Woman Are series, both from the Runaways: Nico Minoru and Karolina Dean (should be at least two more Runaways characters coming).
Super-Team Family had some great covers this past week; here’s one of my favorites (I also enjoyed his commentary on the impracticality of their costumes):
♦ Here We Come A-Caroling.
My dear friend Molly sent me the link to this lovely, lovely version of “In the Bleak Midwinter” (one of my favorite carols) by Corinne May:
Here are my favorite versions of two more carols, “Gabriel’s Message” and “Coventry Carol”:
As you know, I’m a big fan of Amy Winfrey’s Making Fiends. Here are two holiday songs Winfrey made, and they are sweet:
Not Christmas- or even holiday-related, but a short instrumental that I love love love:
♦ The Writing Desk.
Really think about your author photo, or you’ll end up on a list like LitReactor’s 12 terrible photos of bestselling authors. Yeah, they’re pretty bad.
Want to publish a novella? (Cameron, you know I’m talking to you.) Then check out Bree Odgen’s thoughtful and informative response to this question: “What types of options are there for novellas within the traditional publishing industry? Would I be better off going with self-publishing or should I send out some feelers first—and to whom? Agents within my genre, or are there novella-specific agents I should research?” I was just telling Laura last week that I think novellas are going to make a big comeback, especially for e-readers.
Rachelle Gardner answers the question, “Should you re-query an agency?”
Some ideas on writing happy, not sappy, fiction.
Mary Robinette Kowal, as a supplement to the recent Writing Excuses podcasts, offers some a great example of her process from brainstorming to outlining to the final story.
I enjoyed my friend Will Ludwigsen’s Foul-Mouthed Writer’s Checklist.
12 enjoyable names for relatively common things.
Cathy Day on what matters more: story or sentence? (Scroll down a bit for the lecture from her novel-writing class, though the first part is interesting, too.) Her thoughts were really interesting.
♦ The Rain Is Full of Ghosts Tonight.
The subject heading is a line from my favorite Edna St. Vincent Millay poem, “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why,” which has absolutely nothing to do with Victorian ghost stories. Or monsters. But that’s what this section is about. Have a gander at LitReactor’s fine article on Spine-Tingling Victorian Ghost Stories (telling ghost stories in winter was a longtime tradition and very popular with the Victorians—hence A Christmas Carol. So sad that now we don’t take advantage of the long nights to scare the bejesus out of each other). In that vein, you might enjoy this blog post about 19th-century headless portraits (via), like the one at the left. Of course you would.
Kirsty Stonell Walker, in her Blogvent, discussed Daniel Maclise’s 1867 painting, A Winter Night’s Tale, which depicts a scene of an old woman telling her family a ghost story, and Walker’s discussion is a treat.
A Winter Night’s Tale (1867) by Daniel Maclise
John Kenn Mortensen has had some mighty fine post-it monsters lately, like these three lovelies:
And I love the detail in this last one (click to see it larger):
And then there’s this lovely image from Sutured Infection:
“The medium Stanislawa P emission and resorption of an ectoplasmic substance through the mouth, 23 June 1913.”
♦ And To All A Good Night.
I think I’ll be taking a brief vacation from the blog starting next week (or not, depending on how strongly my obsessive nature feels), but I wish everyone the happiest holiday season imaginable, whatever you may or may not celebrate this time of year.
