seasonal reading: Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett

source: my dad (I'm not sure if I have it forever or just on loan)

Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett
series: Tiffany Aching (3); Discworld (35)

With so many parts of the US having a particularly cold and/or snowy winter and Punxsutawney Phil predicting another 6 weeks of winter today on Groundhog Day¹, Terry Pratchett's Wintersmith seems like the most appropriate of reading choices.

Wintersmith is the third book in Pratchett's Tiffany Aching Adventures (after Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky), which follows the coming-of-age adventures of a young witch (and her bumbling, not-quite-accidental helpmeets, the Nac Mac Feegle²) who lives within his Discworld world.

In Wintersmith, Tiffany inadvertently draws the attention of the titular character, who is the personification of the winter. The Wintersmith's attempts to woo Tiffany yield a long and preposterously harsh winter (with Tiffany-shaped snowflakes no less). Tiffany must find a way to subdue with Wintersmith while, unbeknownst to Tiffany, the Nac Mac Feegle train up a hero (who will be familiar to readers of the series) to rescue Spring from the underworld (that hero himself draws the parallel to Orpheus). More importantly (from the bildungsroman³ perspective at least), Tiffany must take responsibility for her role in attracting the Wintersmith.

I've mentioned before that the Tiffany Aching books were my primary reading matter during the recent family flu epidemic.  While I enjoyed the books (which came highly recommended by my father), I feel like I would have liked them better if I hadn't read them one right after the other.⁴ It just seems to be that my reading of the series would have benefited from enough of a gap that absolutely everything from the previous installment(s) was not so fresh in my mind.

1. Groundhog Day (aka Candlemas): "On Candlemas the woodchuck is said to emerge from his hibernation in order to look for his shadow. If he sees it, he will return to his burrow for six more weeks. If he doesn't, he knows that spring will arrive soon. The belief is related to the association of Candlemas with the sowing of the crops, sunny weather foreboding harsh days and so poor planting" (The Folklore of American Holidays edited by Cohen and Coffin, 65).
2. The titular characters of Wee Free Men.  Loveable rogues, the Nac Mac Feegle are like tiny, very clannish Scotsmen, who happen to be fairies (or pixies, I guess) and have the social structure of bees.  Their primary interests are drinking, brawling, and stealing.
3. I suppose this should be bildungsbuchreihe (or something like that) since it's not a novel, but the overarching storyline of a series.
4. Some series beg for binge reading, others do not.

seasonal reading: Sleigh Bells in the Snow by Sarah Morgan

source: Netgalley (review copy)

Sleigh Bells in the Snow by Sarah Morgan
series: O'Neil Brothers (1)

I really enjoyed this romance novel set around the holidays.

Kayla Green is an extremely successful workaholic who hates nothing more than the Christmas season ("I'm Scrooge, but without the tasteless nightwear," 8). She's busy avoiding holiday celebrations at work when she learns of a lead that could lead to a huge account for her PR firm. When the potential client (the sexy, young Jackson O'Neil, CEO of Snowdrift Leisure) makes an unorthodox request (that Kayla agree to spend a week up his family's secluded Vermont resort in order to experience the resort firsthand and get the rest of the family on board with her developing an integrated marketing plan for the resort), Kayla surprises both her boss and Jackson O'Neil by agreeing to spend the holidays at the resort ("Kayla decided that given the choice between an encounter with Santa or a black bear, she'd take the bear," 42).

As would be expected with a romance novel, Kayla and Jackson have immediate chemistry. Chemistry he's willing to explore and she wants to do her best to ignore. And, of course, Kayla's time at Snow Crystal resort does not go to plan. She flubs her initial presentation to the resort's stakeholders, making her job of winning them over that much more difficult. In the course of showing her all the resort has to offer Jackson takes every opportunity to thaw Kayla's chilly exterior, much to her chagrin. On top of that Jackson's family is not the least bit businesslike and they aren't content to ignore her and let her do her work, insisting on pulling her into their holiday celebrations. In order to win the Snow Crystal account, Kayla is going to need to confront the issues that cause both her hatred of the holidays and fear of intimacy.

Even given the time constraints inherent in the Sleigh Bells in the Snow's plot, Kayla and Jackson's relationship proceeds at a reasonable pace (personally I dislike romance novels in which relationships progress too quickly). Both Kayla and Jackson have interesting and complex backstories and the issues they have to overcome in order to be together are realistic.  Morgan also populated the novel with a bevy of well-realized secondary characters (mostly in the form of other O'Neil family members), many of whom will no doubt appear in the other books in the series as each installment will revolve around one of the O'Neil brothers.

My one complaint about the novel is that it gives away too much about the other books in the series.   By the end of Sleigh Bells in the Snow readers know who both of the other brothers will likely end up with and have a general idea of the issues that the couples will have to overcome in the course of their own stories (more so for Tyler than for Sean).  This isn't really enough to ruin or spoil the upcoming books, it's just that I would have preferred less in the way of clues about later installments.

disclosure: I received a review copy of Sleigh Bells in the Snow from Harlequin via NetGalley.

seasonal reading: Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

source: gift

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

For a hundred and forty years Carmilla has given readers' bodies and souls a shake, because the vampire is beautiful, but repulsive, to be resisted at all costs, because the narrative alternates so imaginatively between twittering girlies and an urgent need to reach for sharpened wooden stakes. (Richler, xxxi)

One of my late-arriving birthday presents was a copy of the Pomegranate Vintage Vampire edition of Carmilla, a vampire story first published in 1872. I decided to read it right away because it seemed like an appropriate selection for the Halloween season.

This particular edition of Carmilla includes illustrations by Taeden Hall¹ (though the cover was illustrated by Gillian Holmes) and a preface by Daniel Richler. Richler's 23-page introduction to the story managed to be both academic and chatty. It places Carmilla in context (of its time, in the development of vampire literature, etc.) and discusses how Carmilla has been interpreted and adapted over time.

Hall's illustrations are sweet and very much in keeping with the novella's "twittering girlies" (above) and "girl school lesbianism" (publisher) while still being atmospheric. Plate 5, inspired by the line "The limbs were perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic; and the leaden coffin floated with blood, in which to a depth of seven inches, the body lay immersed" (117), packs a punch,² while the others are more subtle by degrees. I do wish though that the publisher had used a different process to print the plates. The dots created by pixelation bring to mind comics, (over)emphasizing the cartoony quality of the illustrations.

As to the story itself I have to admit that I did not find it to be nearly as creepy as I'd hoped I would.³ That's not a problem with the story per se, but rather with the fact that many modern readers (including myself) came of age reading authors like Stephen King and Anne Rice. It seems like that inoculation has made us immune to the true spookiness of gothic and proto-horror stories.

At 124 pages, however, the novella seems decidedly short.  The narrative includes so much build up before the realization that the vampire-character is a vampire that the vanquishment and conclusion felt rushed.  On a more positive note, Le Fanu's prose is very easy to read with little in the way of antiquated language to irritate (some) modern readers.  Additionally, his interpretation of the whys and wherefores of vampirism are surprisingly uncomplicated.

1. Hall's alternative clothing line, Gloomth, has a 3-piece collection inspired by the novella.
2. How could it not?
3. I have the same problem with Lovecraft, much to my chagrin.