Funny and thought provoking, something between campy and campfire...

My brother used to tell super creepy "campfire tales" crammed with suspense, icky details and ghosts.  Roosters is one such tale.   A haunted young man is saddled with a family legacy and secrets.  A pair of teen cousins visit dear old granny and embark on a country adventure with all its unsupervised charm, dogs and catfish. A sister falls for the haunted young man.  A secret club of powerful and merciless men celebrates untoward festivities on a summer new moon, apparently a tradition since the nation's founding.

According to Molly Hall, internet astrology expert, the new moon has astrological meaning as a charged time of magic and a "symbolic portal of new beginnings", ideal for rituals.
See  http://astrology.about.com/od/foundations/p/NewMoon.htm.

The daily rituals in Roosters--the young woman's pre-date oblations, the trespassing boys saying and doing the forbidden, state dinners, the opera--converge to upend the club's vile control.  Or was it all part of the ghastly Head Cock's plan, all along?

Happy Valentine's Day!  http://roostersbook.com/

The Magic of places in time, the good kind, and the dark

Neverland cake

Magic City, Miami Beach 1959, first episode season one. What I loved: the hotel has tiny vents which force in fragrance-- “of ocean breezes”; and the hotel is air conditioned to the nines, “like a meat locker”...."so the women can wear their furs...” The dark, modern bars, the tiki or deco references, recall my favorite time and place in books, the astronauts' Cocoa Beach, (as illustrated by Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, and James Michener's Space.) The star Jeffrey Dean Morgan looks like 1959 Florida to me, I guess because in his 1959 Florida glamor he reminds me a little of my handsome uncle during that era, whose family collected Disney art and who moved them from New Jersey to Florida to engineer air conditioning and the dream that's a wish your heart makes. In Magic City the owner's son looks like our commercial landlord's son, not in his features or coloring but in his grooming: the ironed tight polo shirt and khakis, sculpted muscles, good polished loafers, tan skin, brilliantine hair and teeth, and our landlord's son is not available on weekends because he's skiing in Utah...

Downtown Abbey's limited appeal for me is similarly a favorite detail: the way the ladies, Mary, her mother, stand there with their arms just hanging passively at their sides, languidly complementing their dresses. (I even practice this on my own time, I find the posture compelling. Just standing here, pretending I don't have arms. Don't have to do anything.)

We watched Magic City courtesy of Netflix, I gather it had been a Starz original series in about 2013 and according to Variety in October, soon to be a movie? http://variety.com/2014/film/news/magic-city-starz-show-movie-1201344337/

Other than the setting, the first episode of the TV series was boring though, the characters were boring, the graphic sex throughout was boring! or maybe that's just me. I might watch another episode someday, in the spirit in which I might watch Downton Abbey if there's nothing else to do, for the fashion, and for the china! (the reason I watch all the British murder mysteries, noting the tea, and the whiskey, and the fish and chips takeout).

We hugely enjoyed the series The Assets on Netflix, based on truth involving an American double agent selling to the KGB. It's DC Virginia in the 80s and I love the heroine's now-dowdy long plaid skirts, loafers and pumps, sweaters and blouses. Remember when women still dressed for work in daywear? Now that is the correct self-effacing appearance of a CIA mole hunter. The story in this one is actually exciting, but aside from that and Sandy's A-line skirts, I loved the painted yellow dacha in the Russian country and the old Russian hero victimized by the Soviet state and who looks like my greatgrandfather, and the Communist offices and apartments dividing up the lovely old buildings of a past aristocracy. The rooms are so familiar, haven't we seen photos of Eric Snowden there?

Now here's a contrast which occurred to me as I was thinking about that piped in environment of fragranced coolness in Magic City. Have you ever been inside a welfare office of any kind? That environment has got to be just as intentional. It's in an office building and must be the same age as all the other neutral, fungible offices in the building, but in this one, the walls are dirty and dingy and dinged, needing paint for years now, the furniture must have been picked off the junk truck, wobbly peeling tables, stained, burned, broken chairs, filthy floors, smeared window dividing the receptionist from the visitors, nothing appears ever to have been wiped down.

Surely this neglect is meant to be perceived as intentional, as a message to the guests. Just as the cool ocean-scented indoor breezes are not intended to be noticeable as a product of human invention, but merely invisibly enhance the mood, like magic.  

The Good Queen's Daughter

The Christmas read--were you like I was?  My favorite time began Christmas night, after all the
visiting and eating and gift exchange, when I retired to my room with the Christmas stocking candy cane and a wonderful childhood classic tale, Alice in Wonderland, Little Women, fairy tales of Grimm or Anderson, the escape into other worlds either imagined or of another time.  Then I would read it for two days straight, in bed, in the bathtub, under the tree.  When I didn't get the right new book for this particular Christmas break escape, I just re-read the old ones every Christmas, it was just as good.

So I was delighted with the gift of the Christmas Day publication of Sylvie Vadimsky's novel The Good Queen's Daughter.   It is just such a luxurious 2 day read!

The Good Queen's Daughter begins with a girl's daring escape from her home on her wedding night, and into the moonlight where she practically falls into the arms of a rough but charming lad.   The bride happens to be Queen Guinevere 's daughter Astrelle, though because of gossip concerning her mother and the knight Lancelot, Astrelle feels unresolved about whether she is truly King Arthur's child.  The need to know who she is drives her on this quest with the aid of this boy, and Merlin's magical daughter Neriki, befriended at the scene of the Lady of the Lake.  Enlisting the aid of  a female unicorn, the advice of a fairie Queen and a ghost knight, the girl ultimately achieves womanhood and queenship, (confidence and love?) and wins a war against dark sorcery to boot.

Speaking of boots, I love Neriki's, and every shimmering detail of the funny or grand characters. I love this book for the vividly painted fairy tale characters made sensible and textured.  Neriki is my favorite, a witchy, changeling sort of Pippi Longstocking-type of independent bossiness and sass. Plus she has terrific fashion and obviously enchants our wistfully admiring heroine.  As a daughter of Merlin she lives time backwards, hence has seen the future and introduces her friends to various modernisms. Interestingly, notwithstanding her leadership in the adventures, she herself is clearly compensating for some insecurity and wistfulness. I also find it interesting and commendable that Astrelle recognizes that killing, even when necessary, is a fearsome wrong which will permanently scar the killer, and not merely a handy action deus ex machina to resolve a plot problem.

I treasure my mental picture wrought of the magically and lovingly described Castle Parien and its fairy inhabitants.  Another delight is the Lady of the Lake, who it seems is a "nymph" in another sense, as she is accused of indiscriminate couplings!  Her twin watery progeny speak in rhyme and are also favorite characters of mine for their utterly alien quality.

This is the holiday gift for which I've longed, and it wasn't until I read it that I even remembered that treasured holiday time of my youth!  Thanks, for pure pleasure.

A novel by my young adult suitable for young teens and entertaining for all ages.  Note that in the original Arthurian legends, (just as in Greek tragedy), there is a hint of dark magic's malicious trickery into incest to accomplish the downfall of a kingdom, and there is one oblique, not graphic, reference to such an act which will not be obvious to the youngest readers.  The heroine and her young lover also engage in an illicit romance, but the details are merely suggested and not illustrated.  As a whole the book is far more wholesome and fun than the prevalence of young adult problem lit force fed to our kids.