The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury

I decided to close the RIP II challenge with The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury after having it recommended to me by so many people. Like Debi, I can definitely see this one becoming a Halloween tradition. This is my third Bradbury for the RIP challenge and if there was more than just 6 hours left to the challenge I'd read more! There's a certain honesty to Bradbury's writing. The Halloween Tree exudes memories of Halloween as a child. I fell back into my childhood when reading this one and that chill in the air on Halloween night came alive. He did the same thing with Something Wicked This Way Comes. He truly has a gift for capturing the spirit of the fantastic.

The Halloween Tree is the tale of 9 boys and their adventure through the history of Halloween throughout the world. A group of friends gather on Halloween night, dressed in their costumes, to meet their friend Pipkin for trick-or-treating. Pipkin isn't looking right but sends his friends on their way and tells them to meet him at a house at the end of town...he'll be there soon dressed in his costume. They arrive at a house that's shroud in mystery and after knocking on the door things get strange. They discover a tree...a Halloween Tree that is lit up with hundreds of jackolanterns. A man rises from the leaves surrounding the tree...he's the owner of the house, named Mr. Moundshroud.

Pipkin finally comes running to catch up with his friends when he's swept up by a dark cloud and disappears. Mr. Moundshroud leads the remaining 8 friends on a chase through Halloween traditions celebrated the world over. There journey starts in Ancient Egypt where they witness the traditions associated with Osiris and continues all the way through Mexico's Day of the Dead. In between they visit the gargoyles of Notre Dame and the Druid god, Samhain to name a couple. They travel through all these places to find their friend, Pip, while learning about the traditions associated with their costumes along the way.

There's also a wonderful theme of friendship throughout this book and that's a theme that is seen in everything I've read of Bradbury's. He writes such heartwarming stories in the midst of such creepy stories. The ending to this book is quite endearing and well worth the read just for that.

A favorite line: "When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die." I thought that was just beautiful. A bit morbid that it should be my favorite line, but the words are just perfect.

Last but not least, the cover of this book is fantastic! May be my favorite cover of the year. If you enbiggen (stole that word from bookfool ;) the picture, the skull is actually made up of the halloween tree and the 8 boys in the book in their costumes! Genius!

I also finished Wizards, which I'm not going to do a full review on because I'm lazy :p I wasn't overly impressed with it. I loved Neil Gaiman's story, The Witch's Headstone and Orson Scott Card's story, Stonefather, was amazing, but aside from that there were 2 or 3 others that I really enjoyed but nothing else really stood out. My problem with reading anthologies is that I'm thrown off by all of the different styles of writing. If I'm reading one author's anthology, that's fine because I can grow accustomed to their style. But with these anthologies, the style changes from story to story and I lose interest and the stories aren't long enough for me to really gain interest. Unless they're really good, which a few were. With Gaiman and Card, I was familiar with their styles, so those I enjoyed.

Anyway, The Halloween Tree...Read it!

A Winner, Short Story Sunday, And Purple Poppets!

Let's take care of business first! It's time to pick a winner for the book giveaway for The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo. So without further ado, the winner is BECKY of Becky's Book Reviews (one of her many blogs ;). Becky's very cool and I'm happy to send this book her way. She's an Orson Scott Card fan, which automatically makes her one hip chick in my book! Send me the address you want the book sent to, Becky and I'll ship it out to you. My email is chrisa511 at gmail dot com.

I guess today officially kicked off the RIP Challenge for me with Short Story Sunday. I read the first two stories in the Wizards anthology which were Neil Gaiman's The Witch's Headstone and Garth Nix's Holly and Iron. Nix's story was a bit disappointing. It was a high fantasy story told in a short story format which was it's main problem. Pretty cool concept...2 kingdoms battling for a crown, one uses "holly" magic, the other uses "iron" magic, main character can use a bit of both, but the problem was that I really just didn't care about the characters. I think the story was just too big to fit into 30 pages. This story may have worked better as a novel. Two major characters died in the story, and you can tell that it was supposed to be an emotional scene, but it wasn't, because I as a reader wasn't attached...I may have been though if he would've introduced us to the characters a bit more. And I know that Nix is capable of doing this as I LOVED his Abhorsen trilogy. I'd like to see this story told in a longer format, I really think it has potential.

Gaiman's story on the hand was excellent! It's the story of a boy named Bod (short for Nobody) who lives in a graveyard and is raised by the spirits of those who have passed on. He meets the ghost of a witch who was buried in a potter's field with no headstone. Bod feels bad for the witch for not having a headstone and decides to leave the graveyard after finding an item that may be worth some money in the hopes of buying her one. This story is actually the first chapter of Gaiman's future book, The Graveyard Book, and I am super excited about this one now! The latest news from his blog was that he had begun typing it from the written draft...so progress is being made!

And finally, I predicted in a previous post that it was going to happen! If you let the red and blue poppets hang out together, well....purple poppets will eventually come along, and it seems that they have. Lisa Snellings-Clark has some very cool items up on eBay right now including Little Purple Poppets! I've already bought one for myself of course ;) There are 6 left as of this post, but I'm sure she'll post more if those sell out, so keep checking if you want one. They're quite cool!

Stardust, Short Story Sunday, And A Sad Article

I finally made it out to see Stardust tonight and I was so pleased with it! I can't wait for the DVD release of this movie now and I came home wanting to dive right back into the novel for the second time this year. The movie started out a bit rocky for me. It took me a little while to get out of critic mode. My main complaints were with the beginning of the movie in that it was too rushed, the every 9 years fair didn't exist (it was instead just a part of "Stormhold"), and all of Faerie became known as simply Stormhold...but I can overlook that with how wonderful the rest of the movie was done. Sure there were some other parts that weren't exactly like the book, but what movie is?

The casting was absolutely wonderful! Claire Daines as Yvaine was a perfect fit. She played the part wonderfully and I think they did a terrific job with translating her character onto the screen. Michelle Pfeifer deserves a nomination for her portrayal as Lamia. She did such an amazing job and I so looked forward to her screen time. Her final battle was superb. Charlie Cox as Trist(r)an was another great casting decision. This guy did such a great job with the part. Perfectly done. And Deniro...I was so leary about what they were doing with Captain Shakespeare, but it was....well, fabulous.

The ending, which I won't talk about, was totally different from the book...well not totally, but yes totally, you'll just have to see for yourself. But it worked for the movie version. I wish that they would have filmed the book ending as well to put on the DVD, but Neil has already said on his blog that they did not :(

All in all, I was very pleased with the movie, the special effects were amazing, the acting was top notch, and the story...well it's Gaiman! Entertainment at it's best. I loved it. For fans of the book, as hard as it is, go into it realizing that no book is going to translate perfectly to the screen...some changes are going to have to be made for the wider audience and for times sake. Just pretend that Peter Jackson didn't do such a good job with Lord of the Rings :p

Next topic: I've decided that I'm still adding stuff to the RIP Challenge! I'm also going to take up the additional peril of Short Story Sunday. For this peril, I'm going to be imbibing in the Wizards collection, which contains 18 stories by some amazing authors. This will work out nicely with 2 stories per Sunday, so I think I'm going to start that this Sunday! And it begins with the first chapter of Neil Gaiman's forthcoming The Graveyard Book!

And finally, I wanted to point everyone to this very disappointing article on CNN's website that you may have seen floating around on other people's blogs. It's an article about the reading habits of Americans. According to the article, "One in four Americans read no books last year". I couldn't believe that! That's so sad. The whole article is sad really. I sort of surround myself in this little book blogging bubble where everyone reads and forget how small of a chunk of the population we really are. It's unfortunate that more of us don't read. The "typical reader" of America....the person who actually does read, still only reads 4 books a year. Which I'm not complaining about, that's still wonderful! But it's so sad how unpopular reading has become. So I really, honestly want to extend my heartfelt thanks to everyone out there who does sponsor these reading challenges, or works as a librarian, or works in a bookstore, or writes, or reads, or recommends a book to a friend. It's important to keep books out there and to keep those minds working!

OK, I'm off my high horse :p

A Night of Moving and Web Wanderings

I'd like to make this short and sweet since I should be sleeping, but I know it's not going to be.

I have to wake up once again at 6:30 tomorrow morning for a 14 hour shift...so chances are there won't be any blogging tomorrow night.

After a long but rewarding work day, we decided to go to my Gram's house to take more stuff out of storage since Katrina. Lord knows when we'll be in a real house again, but this rental is at least a little bit bigger, so I can fit some of my prized possessions. Tonight I got the rest of my books :D, my entire comic book collection :D, the rest of my Buddhas :D, and some other little knick knacks that I was missing. So I'm feeling pretty good about having all of my old friends back. I also stumbled across an old school bag that was packed with all of my old poetry and journals. Kind of scared to read those, but looking forward to it at the same time.

On to web wanderings....Quite a few cool things that I found today.

Needless to say, number one on the agenda is the Stardust trailer. It's wonderful! I'm a little less nervous about the movie now. I can see that a few things have been spritzed up from the novel, but I'll have to let little things slide I guess. The one that bugged me for some reason (I really have no clue why) is the little special effect they put in when Tristran crossed through the wall. That little wavy thing. The actors look great...they seemed to have picked the perfect cast. Can't wait to see it...looks much better than what I imagined.

The next thing I found is a new anthology coming out on May 1st that looks incredible. It's a collection of short stories entitled Wizards: Magical Tales From the Masters of Modern Fantasy. The table of contents is as follows (and what an incredible one it is):

The Witch's Headstone, by Neil Gaiman
Holly and Iron, by Garth Nix
Color Vision, by Mary Rosenblum
The Ruby Incomparable, by Kage Baker
A Fowl Tale, by Eoin Colfer
Slipping Sideways Through Eternity, by Jane Yolen
The Stranger's Hands, by Tad Williams
Naming Day, by Patricia A. McKillip
Winter's Wife, by Elizabeth Hand
A Diorama of the Infernal Regions, or The Devil's Ninth Question, by Andy Duncan
Barrens Dancing, by Peter S. Beagle
Stone Man, by Nancy Kress
The Manticore Spell, by Jeffrey Ford
Zinder, by Tanith Lee
Billy and the Wizard, by Terry Bisson
The Magikkers, by Terry Dowling
The Magic Animal, by Gene Wolfe
Stonefather, by Orson Scott Card

Carl V. at Stainless Steel Droppings is beginning an incredible challenge on Monday that I think everyone should participate in. It's the Fantasy and Fairytale challenge. He's releasing all of the details on Monday. It's not just a normal challenge though. While the challenge is going on he's offered us Friday Favorites (his weekly art post) that include plenty of fantasy artists, essays on music, film, and books that relate to fantasy, and wonderful discussion on the topic. Can't wait for this one! I think I'll do Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn as one of my books since I always wanted to read that. Feel free to make some suggestions to me if you're a fantasy reader. Always looking for new stuff.

And last but not least, Tori Amos has released the details on her new album American Doll Posse over at her website and it looks to be another great one. A world tour is following the release.