I was very disappointed to hear that the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror collection has been discontinued. This has been a staple for me and the current edition (#21) already bears my notes through the opening "year in review" sections where the editors and guests tackle everything from fantasy and horror publications through the year to music, movies and television. I can't begin to tell you how many authors I've discovered through YBFH; it will be missed. (Horror editor Ellen Datlow did announce today though that the horror portion will continue in a different collection with similar goal through Night Shade.)

Speaking of horror, The Guardian reprints Maggie O'Farrell's new intro to Virago's reprint of the Charlotte Perkins Gilman's classic, The Yellow Wallpaper. This book (novella) completely freaked me out the first time I read it and O'Farrell's background on it - that Gilman actually used her own experiences to craft the plot, is truly upsetting. If you haven't read this one I can't recommend it enough. Here is a bit of O'Farrell's revelations about Gilman:

Motherhood did not sit easily with Gilman. Her autobiography reveals that she felt no happiness holding her baby, only pain. In 1887, after what Gilman herself describes as "a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia and beyond", she consulted the expert Dr Silas Weir Mitchell. He diagnosed nervous exhaustion or neurasthenia (a catch-all diagnosis popular at the time) and prescribed the rest cure. This was a controversial treatment that Weir Mitchell pioneered and favoured above all others. Its tenets were complete bed rest, total isolation from family and friends, and overfeeding on a diet rich in dairy produce to increase fat on the body. The patient was forbidden to leave her bed, read, write, sew, talk or feed herself.

Just typing that list makes me shudder in horror. And worse is to come, because Gilman survived a month under Weir Mitchell and was sent home with the following instructions: "Live as domestic a life as possible. Have your child with you all the time ... Lie down an hour after each meal. Have but two hours intellectual life a day. And never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live."

Sweet Jesus. Can you imagine?

Along the same lines, Persephone Books reissued The Victorian Chaise-Lounge by Marghanita Laski a few years back. A bit of the description of this time travel story in which the heroine goes back ninety years: 'This is time travel fiction, but with a difference... instead of making it into a form of adventure, what Marghanita Laski has done is to propose that such an experience would be the ultimate terror... so Melanie/Milly clings to the belief that she is dreaming for as long as she possibly can; the point at which she is forced to abandon this comfort and search for other explanations is her plunge into nightmare."

Sometimes it is just good to be living in the time you were born in.

In other news my ankle continues to be sore and makes everything just...hard. It's particularly hard to get excited about any kind of working out which I was ridiculously excited about three weeks ago as I had just gotten a new workout journal with places to keep track of all sorts of exercise related information (which would bore most people but is just an extension of my much beloved list-making habit) and now...well getting downstairs is hard enough and by the time I get there doing anything else seems impossible. (Which isn't true and I just need to accept that I'm going to be "off" for awhile, but I'm so frustrated by how hard it is to carry a pitcher of water upstairs that the idea of doing anything else seems impossible.)

So - ankle is frustrating and I need to work on bucking up and powering through it while simultaneously taking it easy. There's a lot of juggling involved.

In other news, two books I'm reading and enjoying: More From Our Own Correspondent, a collection of dispatches from BBC radio from all over the world and I Wouldn't Start From Here, a collection of essays from journalist Andrew Mueller also from all over the world. Mueller's work is more warzone related and spectacularly funny in a very satirical "war is hell/MASH" sort of way. I'll be quoting it here over the next month or so before my review runs in the March column. The BBC collection covers many more subjects than war (from personal to general interest) and I keep thinking how perfect it is for bedside reading or for teens with an interest in learning more about that world, etc. Both are so good and a perfect example of how fabulous the small presses are...and how much I love reviewing books so I can spread the word on titles like these.

And completely unrelated to all of this, I am using some of my "elevate ankle time" to fill the IPOD shuffle from my birthday with music for running and lifting...so when I'm doing those activities, I will have good stuff to listen to. I was listening to Lisa Marie Presley of all people ("Lights Out in Memphis") when I had a sudden epiphany about my YA urban fantasy which included the first thing that should be in the book - the actual first words. So there you go, just when you least expect it, inspiration can strike. Of course all I can do is jot down a note or two on this and then get back to the AK flying book but who cares. It's an important redirection for the book and I'll take what I can get. (And the song is fab and is on the shuffle.) (And the book is completely unrelated to Elvis and Memphis but still...the logic leap was there and that's all that matters.)