"Trivium Imaginarium" for short

     After some scrutiny, “The Beginner’s Guide to Faery” post has been found wanting. Here are some questions I’ve been mulling over:

1.      If this is a guide on “how to read fiction,” specifically fantasy, then why did I write a book review? Shouldn’t one just, oh here’s an idea, recommend the book and then hope a few wise individuals go and read it?

2.      Why should one read fiction anyway?

3.      What’s all this talk about fairy tales, and why do I place them before novels? (I didn’t explicitly say that in the post, but that’s what I was thinking).

     Answer to the first: no idea. The best I can come up with is that I’ve treasured “Smith of Wooton Major” for many years and I think I was having too much fun writing about it…I lost my original focus. Questions 2 and 3 deserve their own posts.

Uncommon Sense

A meandering post that I somehow couldn't make shorter

     There are times when my generation scares me. Usually I put it down to having read the wrong books, like Eustace Scrub in The Silver Chair who was “educated” about drains and elevator lifts and whatnot, leaving him not only uneducated but stripping him of any common sense.

     I always think of The Jungle Book and the Mowgli stories when I think of common sense. It’s a strange association, I know, but nothing says “wisdom from experience” more to me than Mowgli pitting his survival prowess and cleverness against both men and animals. But perhaps the jungle law encapsulates it best:

A House For My Thoughts

   For a long while I’ve never considered myself a morning person, but with my new school schedule of mostly free mornings I’m beginning to change my mind.

     We all look for those little moments of solitude. There’s a delight in silent surroundings, void of everyone else, where you can’t tell if you’re speaking your thoughts or thinking them loudly. This is a sacred atmosphere that I almost shy to describe; its entire purpose is to be left undisclosed and unexplained, used only for the personal enjoyment of a person’s joys.

                                                                                                        Howl's Moving Castle

    But I will disclose that feeling of a renewed mind in the early morning, when everyone else is asleep, and I discover that I need the entire house for my thoughts. Silence and solitude are a fresh canvas of endless possibilities: I can clean, garden, make music, sit still with a cup of coffee, search for a book to read, write a blog post…and each of these activities need the space of a different place. I would never drink coffee in the music room; some things are simply not done.