ONCE UPON A DREAM; A Poetic Winter Begins

 

Today is cold and there is the bite of frost in the air.  Snow has been forecast for this week and it feels very much as if winter has finally arrived.  It's the time to enjoy the last few days with the Yuletide tree and the house all aglow with fairy-lights.  Very soon people will return to work and school, so this cosy time at home is to be treasured and enjoyed.  It's a time to listen to festive tunes and enjoy all the lovely gifts you recieved for Christmas, while eating treats and drinking with merriment as you Zoom call friends and family.  

I've been very grateful this year that I come from such a small family, because unlike lots of families, no-one has had to be left out!  There were no agonizing decisions as to which side of the family to bubble with, or who was going to be invited round.  The restrictions haven't really had a negative impact on me in any way and I feel very lucky to be in that position because I know that this Christmas will have been tough for a lot of people.  

Winter is such a festive time, even after the Christmas trimmings have been put away.  There are still winter markets, ice-skating and snow flurries to enjoy.  For me there is nothing more beautiful than driving by the local woods and seeing it all frosted over, white and silvery in the mornings.   

I got this new book, A Poem for Every Winter Day which epitomizes the season perfectly, with a poem for each day of winter, from the 1st of December until the 29th February.  Some of the poems are wintry themed, waxing lyrical on the beauty of frost and snow.  Here the classics are represented with Christina Rossetti's In the Bleak Mid-Winter,  Thomas Hardy's Snow in the Suburbs and Robert Louis Stevenson's Winter-Time.  Robert Frost's famous poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening is well known among literature students, but here too is his poem Dust of Snow which is beautiful in it's simplicity.Modern poets are also represented in this anthology too, from Maya Angelou to George the Poet, from Carol Ann Duffy to Spike Milligan.

As an art form poetry has the reputation for being a little intimidating, but this anthology is a fantastic primer for anyone who wants to read more poems without being bogged down in the academia of it all.  A Poem for Every Winter Day will give you a taste of winter at any time of year, which is another reason why I like  it so  much.  Some of the poems are short and simplistic, others are extracts from longer works of literature.  It's a great book to dip in and out of, and by reading just one poem each day of winter you will be well-versed by springtime.  And just look at that stunning cover art!  It's one of the prettiest winter books I've ever seen and I feel happy just looking at it underneath my Christmas tree where the metallic font glimmers in the fairy-lights!

As early winter darkness falls I'm enjoying some of my Christmas presents; I'm wearing Pandora's Cinderella jewelry and Vera Wang's Princess perfume which is just lovely, and I plan on curling up for a evening of reading.  I recieved Jason Fox's new book Life Under Fire which I like even more than his first book Battlescars.  This book is extremely helpful and I know I'll be referring back to it time and time again, so I want to finish reading that tonight.  Then I can start on this pretty book of winter poems.  But whichever book I'm reading from now on it will be propped up on the velvet book pillow I got for Christmas.  I've wanted a book pillow for years, so this silvery-grey velvet one is much appreciated and has been in use since Christmas day.  I squealed when I opened it, I was that excited to finally have one! 

So I'm going to light my new Frankincense and Myrrh candle, play Medwyn Goodall's A Christmas Tapestry CD, open my box of cherry liqueur chocolates, pour a glass of the matching cherry brandy and settle down with my book pillow and a new book, while the chestnuts roast in the oven.  I hope that you enjoy the rest of the festive season and that Father Christmas brought you some marvelous new books this year too! BB Marie x

MUSICAL DOLL; Cold December Night

 Definitely my favourite track on Buble's Christmas album...

Merry Christmas!

BOOK NOOK; Mr Dickens & His Carol by Samantha Silva

 

"...I deliver it to the printers tomorrow, first thing.  At last done with the tyranny of deadlines and pages and word counts, in short, the sufferings and torments of those who are bound to the life of the pen..."

Charles Dickens has writer's block, a state of being brought on by the fact that his last book, Martin Chuzzlewit was a complete flop.  His agent is on his back wanting to know where the magic's gone and his publishers have demanded that he write a new book by Christmas - indeed, to be published in time for the lucrative Christmas market, which is something that publishers still love to tap into today.  

But it's already November, his house is full of distractions with a new born baby, five other children, three dogs, a cat, a wife who likes to get 'spendy' and go on shopping sprees, not to mention his own blood relatives hanging off his coat tails.   It seems that everyone is depending on him for their bread and butter, yet his genius has left him and debt dogs at his heels.  

Such is the opening of Mr Dickens and his Carol, a fantastic novel based on the life of Charles Dickens during the time when he wrote his most famous tale of all, the novella A Christmas Carol.  With the creative wound of Chuzzlewit still bleeding and his rival William Thackery rubbing his nose in his failure, both in print reviews and in person at the gentlemen's club favoured by the Victorian Literati, Dickens is depressed, tired of the obligation to pen an income for others to feed off and convinced that he'll never write anything worth reading again.  And if he isn't the celebrated author, who is he?

This novel perfectly illustrates how writers' identify themselves with the their work, with the opportunity to publish their work, and with the success or failure of that work.  It makes a point of highlighting how difficult it is to live by one's pen, how precarious, how mercurial a writer's life is due to the constant highs and lows.  The buzz of publication day fades in light of the first envious review;  the elation of having finished a book and submitted it to the publisher is mitigated by the editor excitedly asking "What's next? Have you started it yet?When do you expect to finish it?" the gleam of money in their eyes.  They can afford to be excited, because they're the ones on a salary.  But for the writer in such a low paid, and sometimes unpaid profession, the only way to survive is to keep churning out the words as quickly as possible and just hope that they sell. Yet, to this day, being an author remains one of the most coveted jobs in the world, and I have to admit that nothing beats it when the writing is going well.  It's certainly the best job I've ever had and I love being a writer, above all other things. 

Dickens wrestles with all of this. Feeling that his public has turned against him, he has an identity crisis which impacts on his motivation to write.  He questions his own talent, his former plot lines and wonders if maybe he shouldn't have killed off  Dorritt after all, as perhaps his readers have refused to embrace Chuzzlewit by way of punishment?  All this and more swirls around in his head as he walks the streets of London, looking for inspiration, for a muse, for an opening line, for the Christmas book that will save him and his publishers from bankruptcy and debt. 

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel.  In some ways it reminded me of the film The Man Who Invented Christmas, but this is a different story altogether. It is thick with Victorian, Dickensian atmosphere and you do feel like you're right there in the wintry fog of a London street, wandering with Mr Dickens around the publishing district of Clarkenwell, which is where one of my own publishers hail from.  It is like taking a peep into the past and seeing the world through the eyes of one of England's most famous and prolific authors.  

Mr Dickens and his Carol is the perfect book to snuggle up with this Christmas Eve and it definitely needs to be read at Christmas-time, with a steaming cup of mulled wine and a few roasted chestnuts to nibble on. 

Have a blessed Yuletide

BB Marie x

BOOK NOOK; The Christmas Sisters by Sarah Morgan

 "It was a day for wearing thick socks and soft sweaters, for gathering around the Christmas tree and sipping hot drinks in front of a flickering fire."

Nothing beats curling up with a Christmassy romance at this time of year and The Christmas Sisters has no less than four romances going on, so you get a lot for your money.  It tells the story of the McBride sisters who were orphaned in a mountaineering accident over twenty years earlier.  The accident has left it's mark on all of them, but each has adapted and copes in a different way.

Hannah is the strong capable career woman, working in New York City.   Beth is the middle sister and the first one to marry and give up her career to be a full time mother, also in New York.  Then the youngest is Posy, an adventuress who is feeling trapped as she helps to run the family business in the Scottish Highlands.  In a way, these sisters reminded me of the three Halliwell sisters from the original Charmed TV show. (I haven't even watched the tragedy that is the reboot and I don't intend to!) They have similar characteristics to Prue, Piper and Pheobe. 

The three women have grown apart as life has taken them in different directions, but once a year at Christmas time they all gather together at the Highland lodge where they grew up.  It's usually a time fraught with tensions.  Jealousy is a running theme throughout the novel, as each sister assumes her siblings have a better and easier life, but over the course of the holidays they come to see that they have all been left traumatized by the accident and that it is time to start dealing with that trauma.

On the surface trauma is not a particularly festive theme, but as anyone who has ever experienced trauma will tell you, the pressure to be perfect is never more apparent than at Christmas, so if you are dealing with additional trauma too, it can make for a melting pot of emotional outbursts.  This novel deals with the long term effects of childhood trauma in a very sensitive way, using humour as a buffer so that the book doesn't become too heavy.

It is a festive mash-up of secrets, surprises, romance and snowy adventures.  The sisters must learn to overcome their past and move forward into a new understanding of themselves and each other.The Christmas Sisters is a lovely easy read to pick up and put down again as you work your way through your own festive to-do list and it is an entertaining chick-lit novel.  And as we can't get to enjoy Scotland in the snow for a festive break this year due to the Covid 19 pandemic, reading this book is the next best thing to a winter holiday in the Highlands. Happy reading!

Marie x

MUSICAL DOLL; Evermore

 I swear you were there...

MUSICAL DOLL; One More Sleep - Acoustic

Love this version...xxx

BOOK NOOK; Stealing Snow by Danielle Paige

"It is possible with enough time and imagination to break your own heart"

Stealing Snow is a retelling of the classic fairytale The Snow Queen.  It begins in an asylum in New York City where troubled teenagers are held for their own safety because they each hold a belief that they are somehow magical.  One girl believes that she can fly, a boy has an obsession with fire, while our main protagonist was confined because she walked through a mirror trying to get into Wonderland.  Her name is Snow and this is the tale of her dysfunctional family.

When Snow's best friend is kidnapped she escapes through a wall to rescue him and finds herself in one of the magical worlds her therapist has been telling her don't exist.  As you would expect from a Snow Queen retelling, this is a world of ice, snow and northern lights, but less predictably it is also a world of pink penguins and flying dresses; a world where the snow itself is magic, a commodity to be used by the heroes and abused by the power hungry. In this book even the golems and familiars are made of snow.

As Snow chases after her friend on a rescue mission, she meets many familiar characters such as Gerda and Kia, and the Little Robber Girl, but they are none of them what they seem and Snow has to try and identify who she can trust in this world that makes no sense to her and yet which feels like a part of her soul.  Here she meets a Snow King, a Fire Queen, a River Witch and a flirty lad name Jagger who promises to be her guide.  

Snow wrestles with her new feelings for Jagger which she thinks are a betrayal of her friend Bale and a distraction from her mission.  It is a lesson in seizing the romance that is before you, rather than holding onto dreams of a lost  love.  

As she learns more about her past she discovers that she has powers of her own that she must learn to control in preparation for the final snowy battle that will determine who the next monarch is to be.

Stealing Snow is a lovely little book that is full of wintry magic and while it can be a bit predictable at times, it is still a festive fireside read for December. 

Enjoy!