![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Novel Tourism (Year 2)
Picking the novels to come along with me as international travelers this year was a challenge. I packed course books and extra resources and had to hem and haw over which novels I would take along for this project. I also have a tendency to buy books while I'm abroad, so along with the large number of books in my bag, I knew I'd come home with more. Such is the way of traveling readers!
Before we even got on the way, I was tempted by the bookstore displays in Boston's Logan Airport:
There's![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
blue_succubus and melissa_writing right on the shelf together. One stop shopping!
And there'smistborn's series, all in paperback. Tempting, tempting...
But despite those and other tempting titles, I made it through the Boston airport without any additional purchases. Whew!
Our first stop was London, of course. As I mentioned yesterday, months ago, Caitlin Kittredge (blackaire) sent me the e-ARC for Street Magic, the first of her Black London series. Taking a photo of my laptop in London seemed silly, but luckily, I had another of Caitlin's titles in hand:
Night Life is an excellent title for London, as well, since it's certainly the location we traveled to that had the most night activity of any of our stops. (Possibly, the only location with night life. I admit, I don't go clubbing much and would be oblivious to most of the nightlife around me, anyway, unless it involved star gazing.)
From London, we traveled to Salisbury, from where we made our journey to such locations as Stonehenge (where I failed to bring a book!), Avebury (a town that exists inside the largest stone circle in England--probably in the world), Old Sarum (an old hill fort, used by Celts, Romans, and eventually William the Conqueror), and Salisbury Cathedral.
For Avebury, the location of such notable landmarks as the Avenue of the Dead (or so I've come to call it -- its archaeological name is the West Kennett Avenue) and the Devil's Chair,devonmonk's Magic in the Blood seemed almost morbidly appropriate.
With circles inside of circles in Avebury (there are two smaller stone circles inside the larger one, which is inside a defensive ring of earth), the location has an otherworldly feel, like it's a place where time moves slightly out of joint. Devon's heroine suffers from amnesia, making it so that time moves oddly for her as well. The correlation between blood and magic also seems appropriate at a place like Avebury, that seems designed nearly as much for the dead as it is for the living.
Old Sarum is a fortress. There's no mistaking it for anything else. And Kate Daniels, the heroine ofilona_andrews's series, is a warrior above all else. Old Sarum seemed like her kind of place.
Also, she has a magic sword -- not much like Excalibur (which would have made me pick an Arthurian location for her), but one that drinks blood. I can imagine a story in which William the Conqueror had similar gear...
Salisbury Cathedral is both a church and a graveyard. There are tombs scattered throughout, some with effigies, some with monuments, others just tucked into the floor stones with names and dates and epitaphs. While I don't think that Carrie Vaughn's Kitty the Werewolf is really the type to stalk graveyards, the title of one of her recent adventures (two came out this year) seemed awfully appropriate:
See what I did there? The grave has the effigy on top and so she's next to a dead... Well, okay, you got it. Moving on.
From Salisbury we made a long and arduous drive (filled with many adventures) to Penzance in Cornwall. While in London, I made my first book purchases (some at the Rudolf Steiner bookstore, one at Atlantis, which I mentioned in another blog entry, and some at Waterstones). I'd brought along Susan Cooper's Greenwitch with me, but this seemed even better:
The whole "Dark Is Rising Sequence" in one book! Much of the action takes place in Cornwall, so photographing the novel collection at Boscawen stone circle (which is an amazing off the road place with one of the stones in the circle made of quartz, and a leaning center stone) seemed like bringing the novel home. One of my students protested that I should photograph it at Land's End instead (where we traveled later that day), but I was happy with thinking of the magic in stones (and comparing that, in my mind, to Will's Sign of Stone and other things).
The same day we found the stone circle and went to Land's End, we traveled to St. Michael's Mount, a castle on an island across a causeway. Talk about liminal space! An island that's only an island half of the day is pretty amazing of its own accord. Also, St. Michael's Mount was our big site for our stay in Penzance, and when I think Penzance, I think pirates. Only The Fox by Sherwood Smith (sartorias) worked on both the pirate level and the mythopoeic level.
We were very lucky, of all of our sunny days, that the day we were at Land's End and St. Michael's Mount was the day that everything was cloaked in mist, and you could hardly see the difference between the sea and the horizon. Liminal space indeed. (I imagine that such weather might be good for Inda's pirate hunting!)
We left Penzance for Tintagel, birthplace of King Arthur. Wouldn't you know it, like Stonehenge, I neglected to bring the book I'd intended for the site up to Tintagel Castle! Luckily, the town of Tintagel has a wonderful museum and meeting hall called King Arthur's Hall, where Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson might have felt at home. (Aslistgirl said in the comments awhile ago, King Arthur must have been a half-blood!)
(I wasn't about to leave The Last Olympian at home, since it came out right before I left! I can usually wait awhile to read series installments, but not the final installment!)
After Tintagel we made our final stop: Glastonbury, which is my favorite place in the world. There are several sites in Glasbonbury where I didn't take photos, but I did bring books along to visit the three that I find most important:
Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge's superhero/supervillian novel, Black and White made a trip to Glastonbury Abbey. I think it's in The Dark Is Rising that Susan Cooper does a riff on how churches don't block out evil, because churches are actually a place where evil is discussed, so they're places of balance -- maybe even places of neutrality. (Someone who's more up on their Cooper, feel free to correct me!) Glastonbury Abbey also has sort of a tumultuous history: it may have been a holy site before Christians arrived, and Glastonbury legend says they arrived early, on the boat of Joseph of Arimathea, a tin trader who settled there and started a church. When St. Patrick arrived, there was a healthy community of hermits on the site, and Christianity was already quite healthy in the area. The abbey thrived for centuries, and in the middle ages, monks found the grave of King Arthur and his second wife, Guinevere, in their graveyard. But things stopped running so smoothly for the church when King Henry dissolved the monasteries, and the last abbot was hung from Glastonbury Tor (see below). The last part of its history makes it seem a perfect place to discuss both darkness and light -- and what's left of the main cathedral, those two tall pillars, could represent two main characters, two authors, and all sorts of other duality. (You can tell this was the hardest correlation for me to make, but I hope I've convinced you!)
The Dimension Next Door, (an anthology that featuresantonstrout, was a perfect title to go see the Tor, the place in Glastonbury where "the veil is the thinnest." The Tor is reputed to be a fairy hill, a labyrinth, and the original Avalon (the tallest of the hills of Glastonbury, all of which were once surrounded by water). St. Michael's Tower is the cap on the energies of the Tor, keeping them from running rampant. Or so Glastonbury legend goes! If the bridge between this world and the Other are thinnest at the Tor, then the next dimension is certainly nearby! (Not that this has anything to do with Benjamin Franklin being a necromancer, as in Anton's story, but the title certainly worked.)
Last isjimhines's The Stepsister Scheme visiting Chalice Well, a place that's known for its association with the feminine (chalices and grails being female symbology, according to Jung, if I remember correctly). The well water runs red, due to iron content, which began the assocation between the Well and the Holy Grail (which Joseph of Arimathea was said to have buried under Chalice Hill). Not only is The Stepsister Scheme a quest book (not for a grail, mind you), but it's full of women taking charge of their destinies, something I think the folks at the Well would embrace.
So that's this year's tour. Now back to uploading more of my photos for the students!
Before we even got on the way, I was tempted by the bookstore displays in Boston's Logan Airport:
There's
blue_succubus and melissa_writing right on the shelf together. One stop shopping! And there's
mistborn's series, all in paperback. Tempting, tempting...But despite those and other tempting titles, I made it through the Boston airport without any additional purchases. Whew!
Our first stop was London, of course. As I mentioned yesterday, months ago, Caitlin Kittredge (
blackaire) sent me the e-ARC for Street Magic, the first of her Black London series. Taking a photo of my laptop in London seemed silly, but luckily, I had another of Caitlin's titles in hand:Night Life is an excellent title for London, as well, since it's certainly the location we traveled to that had the most night activity of any of our stops. (Possibly, the only location with night life. I admit, I don't go clubbing much and would be oblivious to most of the nightlife around me, anyway, unless it involved star gazing.)
From London, we traveled to Salisbury, from where we made our journey to such locations as Stonehenge (where I failed to bring a book!), Avebury (a town that exists inside the largest stone circle in England--probably in the world), Old Sarum (an old hill fort, used by Celts, Romans, and eventually William the Conqueror), and Salisbury Cathedral.
For Avebury, the location of such notable landmarks as the Avenue of the Dead (or so I've come to call it -- its archaeological name is the West Kennett Avenue) and the Devil's Chair,
devonmonk's Magic in the Blood seemed almost morbidly appropriate. With circles inside of circles in Avebury (there are two smaller stone circles inside the larger one, which is inside a defensive ring of earth), the location has an otherworldly feel, like it's a place where time moves slightly out of joint. Devon's heroine suffers from amnesia, making it so that time moves oddly for her as well. The correlation between blood and magic also seems appropriate at a place like Avebury, that seems designed nearly as much for the dead as it is for the living.
Old Sarum is a fortress. There's no mistaking it for anything else. And Kate Daniels, the heroine of
ilona_andrews's series, is a warrior above all else. Old Sarum seemed like her kind of place.Also, she has a magic sword -- not much like Excalibur (which would have made me pick an Arthurian location for her), but one that drinks blood. I can imagine a story in which William the Conqueror had similar gear...
Salisbury Cathedral is both a church and a graveyard. There are tombs scattered throughout, some with effigies, some with monuments, others just tucked into the floor stones with names and dates and epitaphs. While I don't think that Carrie Vaughn's Kitty the Werewolf is really the type to stalk graveyards, the title of one of her recent adventures (two came out this year) seemed awfully appropriate:
See what I did there? The grave has the effigy on top and so she's next to a dead... Well, okay, you got it. Moving on.
From Salisbury we made a long and arduous drive (filled with many adventures) to Penzance in Cornwall. While in London, I made my first book purchases (some at the Rudolf Steiner bookstore, one at Atlantis, which I mentioned in another blog entry, and some at Waterstones). I'd brought along Susan Cooper's Greenwitch with me, but this seemed even better:
The whole "Dark Is Rising Sequence" in one book! Much of the action takes place in Cornwall, so photographing the novel collection at Boscawen stone circle (which is an amazing off the road place with one of the stones in the circle made of quartz, and a leaning center stone) seemed like bringing the novel home. One of my students protested that I should photograph it at Land's End instead (where we traveled later that day), but I was happy with thinking of the magic in stones (and comparing that, in my mind, to Will's Sign of Stone and other things).
The same day we found the stone circle and went to Land's End, we traveled to St. Michael's Mount, a castle on an island across a causeway. Talk about liminal space! An island that's only an island half of the day is pretty amazing of its own accord. Also, St. Michael's Mount was our big site for our stay in Penzance, and when I think Penzance, I think pirates. Only The Fox by Sherwood Smith (
sartorias) worked on both the pirate level and the mythopoeic level.We were very lucky, of all of our sunny days, that the day we were at Land's End and St. Michael's Mount was the day that everything was cloaked in mist, and you could hardly see the difference between the sea and the horizon. Liminal space indeed. (I imagine that such weather might be good for Inda's pirate hunting!)
We left Penzance for Tintagel, birthplace of King Arthur. Wouldn't you know it, like Stonehenge, I neglected to bring the book I'd intended for the site up to Tintagel Castle! Luckily, the town of Tintagel has a wonderful museum and meeting hall called King Arthur's Hall, where Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson might have felt at home. (As
listgirl said in the comments awhile ago, King Arthur must have been a half-blood!)(I wasn't about to leave The Last Olympian at home, since it came out right before I left! I can usually wait awhile to read series installments, but not the final installment!)
After Tintagel we made our final stop: Glastonbury, which is my favorite place in the world. There are several sites in Glasbonbury where I didn't take photos, but I did bring books along to visit the three that I find most important:
Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge's superhero/supervillian novel, Black and White made a trip to Glastonbury Abbey. I think it's in The Dark Is Rising that Susan Cooper does a riff on how churches don't block out evil, because churches are actually a place where evil is discussed, so they're places of balance -- maybe even places of neutrality. (Someone who's more up on their Cooper, feel free to correct me!) Glastonbury Abbey also has sort of a tumultuous history: it may have been a holy site before Christians arrived, and Glastonbury legend says they arrived early, on the boat of Joseph of Arimathea, a tin trader who settled there and started a church. When St. Patrick arrived, there was a healthy community of hermits on the site, and Christianity was already quite healthy in the area. The abbey thrived for centuries, and in the middle ages, monks found the grave of King Arthur and his second wife, Guinevere, in their graveyard. But things stopped running so smoothly for the church when King Henry dissolved the monasteries, and the last abbot was hung from Glastonbury Tor (see below). The last part of its history makes it seem a perfect place to discuss both darkness and light -- and what's left of the main cathedral, those two tall pillars, could represent two main characters, two authors, and all sorts of other duality. (You can tell this was the hardest correlation for me to make, but I hope I've convinced you!)
The Dimension Next Door, (an anthology that features
antonstrout, was a perfect title to go see the Tor, the place in Glastonbury where "the veil is the thinnest." The Tor is reputed to be a fairy hill, a labyrinth, and the original Avalon (the tallest of the hills of Glastonbury, all of which were once surrounded by water). St. Michael's Tower is the cap on the energies of the Tor, keeping them from running rampant. Or so Glastonbury legend goes! If the bridge between this world and the Other are thinnest at the Tor, then the next dimension is certainly nearby! (Not that this has anything to do with Benjamin Franklin being a necromancer, as in Anton's story, but the title certainly worked.)Last is
jimhines's The Stepsister Scheme visiting Chalice Well, a place that's known for its association with the feminine (chalices and grails being female symbology, according to Jung, if I remember correctly). The well water runs red, due to iron content, which began the assocation between the Well and the Holy Grail (which Joseph of Arimathea was said to have buried under Chalice Hill). Not only is The Stepsister Scheme a quest book (not for a grail, mind you), but it's full of women taking charge of their destinies, something I think the folks at the Well would embrace.So that's this year's tour. Now back to uploading more of my photos for the students!