Oh my.

I have a love of books about writers - I like to read about how they write or why they write on the subjects they choose. (Justine Larbalesteir has an interest in these sorts of books also and has been collecting suggestions over at her blog.) When I saw The Wand in the Word: Conversations With Writers of Fantasy in the Spring catalog for Candlewick Press (home of the wonderful Cecil Castellucci among other grand writers), I was immediately intrigued. Of course it could have been dreck - these sorts of collections can always be dreck - but interviewer/editer Leonard Marcus has done a fabulous job (I want to call it a "dandy job" for some reason) with this collection. I have spent the last day or so consuming it - even took it to my son's swimming lesson for 30 minutes of reading time today! The balance is perfect, with everyone from Lloyd Alexander to Madeleine L'Engle (my fav) to Garth Nix, Philip Pullman and Jane Yolen included. My only quibble - minor at that - is that it is heavy on the "grand old names" of fantasy fiction and not so good at the more recent contributors to the genre. But hopefully Marcus will do another volume and correct that. He was probably held to a page count here, and certainly these are the interviews that all fans would love to read (Susan Cooper! Tamora Pierce!) I'd like to see much more of this sort of book from him in the future though.

And yes - look for it in my column in the March issue of Bookslut.

After taking a thoughtful look at my January reading list I think that I am a bit light on adult fiction and also probably need to tackle my shelf sitters a bit more aggressively. Three of the books I read were all Christmas gifts - but I'm sure that is to be expected as they were eagerly awaited. I did tackle one dicey shelf sitter, The History of WWI, Vol. 4 by Frederic March. I found this at one of those hodge podge-type bookstores in my hometown and bought it even though it was the lost volume of a set because it was copywrited in 1918 and printed in 1919. I could only imagine what the viewpoint was of a historian that close to the war. I was not disappointed - all sorts of heady comments about the bravery of men in battle and the certainty with which good men will always defeat bad - no matter how overwhelming the force. He even somehow manages to make the Battle of Ypres sound like a good thing - it's wild.

This is the sort of book that I put back on the shelf confident that one day I will need it - no modern writer is ever going to put a history together in those words, so I'm glad I picked it up.

The relatively new Exploring Other Worlds was a fascinating look at the Elisha Kent Kane expedition to the Arctic, and his love affair with the spiritualist Margaret Fox. I'll be writing about it along with a couple of other polar type books for Eclectica this Spring. I love reading about arctic exploration - there is something there that has appealed to me since I studied it in grad school. Maybe....but those are writing thoughts for another day.