Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Welcome to the garden!

Welcome to the inaugural post of Pocket Garden.


First of all, the name: It comes from the Chinese proverb A book is like a garden carried in the pocket. Need I say more?


This blog is for readers who like to share opinions about what they’re reading (or not reading, and why not), get reading suggestions, talk about the art of writing, and wax poetic about reading in general. My thinking at this point is to highlight a different book in each post. I haven’t chosen a first book yet, though, so to get this off the ground, I’d like to start by throwing out a GIANT idea.


I am a little embarrassed to say that this topic was inspired by the book...er...Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. In general, I am not a fan of fantasy. I don’t have a lot of patience with magic in books, which always seems haphazard in its effectiveness. However, I do like the references to myths and legends in Rowling’s series, and the audio versions make for good listening on long car trips. I was listening to Order of the Phoenix on one recent interminable drive, and there is a segment in which Hagrid and Madame Maxime, two half-giant/half-humans, venture into the land of giants to try to persuade them to join in the fight against the Dark Lord. It put me in mind of the D’Aulaire’s beautiful Book of Norse Myths, which I didn’t discover until I was an adult. That, in turn, led to the memory of the first time Thor made an impression on me, thanks to Douglas Adams’ The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. Inserting a Norse god into modern life was a captivating idea. There’s something about those big buffoons I can relate to, somehow. Maybe it has to do with being tall and clumsy and occasionally cranky.


So when did the giants die out? There are giants in the Bible, in mythology originating in many cultures (Greek, Roman, Norse, Jewish), and, of course, in fairy tales. Has anyone in recent centuries besides Douglas Adams (and fantasy writers) been brave enough to play with the idea that giants are still among us? A book called The Giant’s House: A Romance by Elizabeth McCracken came out in 1996. I recall that it had a librarian as a main character, so it seems like required reading for me, but I never did read it. How about you? It’s now high on my to-read list, and I think it’s time I re-read The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.


Have you found that anything from the myths and legends you are familiar with to have stuck with you through the years?
















Books mentioned in this post:
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling  more info
  • The Giant's House:  A Romance by Elizabeth McCracken  more info
  • The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams  more info
  • D'Aulaire's Book of Norse Myths by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire  more info




4 comments:

  1. My brain is too focused on topics related to infant mental health currently to have much to say about myths, legends, or giants, but I have to say that I didn't think I liked fantasy until I started reading the books my boys enjoy/ed. Now, having to read so much serious, brain-intensive grad school material, I find that fantasy is just the right escape. I can't say that all fantasy is good--some of it is really drivel--but the good stuff can carry me out of my head and into another world for a little while. Currently, I'm listening to The Name of the Wind, by Wisconsin writer, Patrick Rothfuss. He was featured on WPR one day last week, and rec'd high praise from callers. The reader isn't my favorite, but I can picture the world that Rothfuss has created in this book (his first). Haven't come across any giants...yet.

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  2. Oh...and congratulations on launching your blog! :)

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  3. Yvonne, maybe you don't know it, but you were the one who made me pay attention to "The Mists of Avalon." To be honest, I don't think I ever finished it, but the feminist perspective of the Arthurian legend turned on a light bulb in my consciousness. It was astonishing and maybe even life-changing for a starry-eyed young adult. I don't think I ever thanked you for that!

    It will be interesting to see what kind of following Rothfuss' series gets.

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  4. At the risk of being slightly off-topic, I'd like to take the opportunity to champion once again Neal Stephenson's Baroque trilogy (Quicksilver/The Confusion/The System of the World). While it does not contain giants (unless you count Peter the Great), it is interwoven with legends of the Solomonic gold -- the key to alchemy.
    Initially, I didn't expect to derive much pleasure from this aspect of the 3000-page narrative. This despite the fact that the work's other major plot lines involve Newton and Leibniz's quarreling over the priority dispute regarding just who developed the calculus and the rise of commerce in the late 17th/early 18th centuries. But Stephenson's ability to weave these elements together results in a swashbuckling, hilarious, (re-)readable tale.
    While I'm a huge fan of Douglas Adams' work, I can't discuss him without mentioning the fact that his later novels were cannibalized from his own earlier scripts for television's Doctor Who. Plenty of giants in that series, but this isn't a TV-oriented blog, after all...

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