Just Finished: Dark Matter, by Michelle Paver

In Michelle Paver's Dark Matter, a man is alone in the deep night of the Arctic Circle in winter.  As he gains knowledge and understanding of his situation, he becomes more afraid.  What menaces him is very bad indeed, and as his understanding grows, so does his fear. 

Dark Matter is a ghost story.  I am inordinately fond of ghost stories, so that put it on my radar when I saw it reviewed a year ago by dovegreyreader.  I'm even fonder of ghost stories set in the Arctic (not nearly enough of those, to my mind), possibly because of the opening scene of Frankenstein.  Remember--the human-but-not human-creature, embodying tragedy, seen from a distance, driving the team of dogs into the frozen, empty, uninhabitable end of the earth?  It was a genius combination.

Dark Matter gave me what I hoped for:  a creeping sense of dread as the man loses his companions one by one and is finally left alone in the months-long darkness, the increasing evidence of something unnatural threatening him, and a ghost that is genuinely scary.  (Admittedly I am easily scared.)  This ghost was just right.  Its reason for being arose logically from the setting, and the scenes in which it appeared did not deteriorate into gore and perversity, for which I also have a low tolerance.

If I would quibble with anything about Dark Matter, it would be the writing style, which is to say, the narrator's speaking style, since the book is in the form of the main character's journal.  The period is 1937, and the speaker, Jack, is English.  This voice was a bit too modern-sounding and that jarred just a little. 

Still, a lovely, moody ghost story.

Know, Aware, Realize

I love Theme Thursdays at Reading Between Pages.  Today's theme is KNOW, AWARE, KNOWING, REALIZE.  From Dark Matter by Michelle Paver:

I know that Gruhuken is haunted.

I knew at once that it wasn't some trapper from a nearby camp, or a polar mirage, or that hoary excuse, 'a trick of the light.' The mind does not suggest explanations that don't fit the facts, only to reject them a moment later.  I knew what it was.  I knew, with some ancient part of me, that it wasn't alive.

I've just realized the significance of what I wrote about the doghouse.  Something opened the doghouse door.

  (Shiver... )

Wednesday Verse

This is Just to Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

What the Kids Are Reading

What are they reading and loving?  Not what have they been assigned, but what would they recommend, asks 5 Minutes For Books.  Well.  I have four of them (kids, that is).  Let's take a look, shall we?

Eldest daughter (17):  "Finally, a book I want to read!"  Said upon catching sight of The Woman in Black by Susan Hill on the counter at my elbow.  Her excitement stems, it must be confessed, from the fact that this book has been made into a soon-to-be released movie starring--wait for it--Daniel Radcliffe.  She hasn't actually started it yet, and she's not getting her mitts on it until I finish it.

Second daughter (14):  The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.  At least, this is what she brings to breakfast every morning, and it's only the tip of the iceberg.  On her nightstand at this writing are The Way We Live Now,  Vanity Fair, and  Les Miserables, as well as, I think, one or more of the Hunger Games and Percy Jackson series.  This one is a devourer like her mom.

Older son (11):  Percy Jackson all the way.  Is reading and rereading them in order.  Won't look at anything else right now.

Younger son (8):  To Space and Back by Sally Ride & Susan Okie.  This guy voluntarily reads only non-fiction, and that only if it relates to whatever his passion du jour is (currently space travel).  Previous passions include gladiators and aliens.

New, Fresh, Latest...

Reading Between Pages has a Thursday meme asking readers to post quotes from what they are reading that illustrate a theme.  Today's theme over there is NEW, FRESH, LATEST.  A biography of Einstein is, surely, an excellent source of sentences with this theme.  A sampling:

The general theory of relativity was not merely the interpretation of some experimental data or the discovery of a more accurate set of laws.  It was a whole new way of regarding reality.

Einstein, at age 36, had produced one of history's most imaginative and dramatic revisions of our concepts about the universe.

But physics was poised to be upended again, and Einstein was poised to be the one to do it.

(From Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson.)

Wednesday Verse

This tickled me, but then I lived in Minnesota for two years. 

After Forty Years of Marriage, She Tries 
a New Recipe for Hamburger Hot Dish
by Leo Dangel

"How did you like it?" she asked.

"It's all right," he said.

"This is the third time I cooked
it this way.  Why can't you
ever say if you like something?"

"Well, if I didn't like it, I
wouldn't eat it," he said.

"You can never say anything
I cook tastes good."

"I don't know why all the time
you think I have to say it's good.
I eat it, don't I?"

"I don't think you have to say
all the time it's good, but once
in awhile you could say
you like it."

"It's all right," he said.

Twelve by Shakespeare in 2012

Read and discuss one of Shakespeare's plays each month in 2012.  This is the plan of a virtual group I have joined, and it makes a nice impressive-sounding goal with which to start off the new year!  Still some gaps to be filled, but it's looking nice and enticing so far.  I'm hoping for some that I haven't read yet--will post with updates.  

Tentative lineup:  
January:  A Midsummer Night's Dream
February:  Much Ado About Nothing
March:  The Tempest
April:  Taming of the Shrew
May:  King Lear
June:  Julius Caesar
July:
August:  Coriolanus
September:  MacBeth
October:
November:
December: