Author: Ruth Arnell

Usually I come up with my own topics for this column, but I had a question posed to me by our reviewer Justin that actually made me snort I laughed so hard.  Those are experiences that should be shared, and so I’m turning his question to you:

You’re dead. Your deity of choice has granted you a new life in any of the fantasy realms published to date. Which do you choose, and in what ways will it horribly disappoint you once you actually arrive there?

example: You arrive cold and naked in Narnia,

Dear readers,

I’ve thought and thought and my thinker’s thunked out.

A reader sent us a question asking for our help in identifying a book she read when she was younger and none of the reviewers have had any luck identifying it. Can you please help?

Lizza writes:

Twenty years ago(!) I read a book which scared me so much I left it behind on holiday and have been searching ever since for it. I cannot remember the title (though it might have been something like ‘the Keepers’) or the author(!),

When in the Course of reading too many crappy fantasy novels it becomes necessary for one reader to dissolve the glue which has connected the pages of the latest disaster with each other and to assume among the buyers at the bookstore, the separate and equal position on queue to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the careers of fantasy authors requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all books have not been created equal,

Dear readers, please excuse the dust.  We’ve been doing some renovations to our house over the last week, and between the saw dust and the paint fumes, it’s been a bit dirty and smelly around here.  But I have a lovely bathroom and a beautiful kitchen now, so it’s been worth it. I’d like to tell you about something amazing I discovered when we were working on our kitchen.  The space between two walls is just the width of a standard paperback book.  Ponder the possibilities that unlocks for a moment.

We ripped out some cabinets in our kitchen which left a huge hole where they had been recessed into the wall. 

Dear readers, I’ve missed you!  I’ve been gone for the last several weeks working on my dissertation, on a topic I’m sure you don’t care about, and frankly, I’m not sure I care about anymore either.  There is a light at the end of the tunnel, though, and so I’m back to bring a bit of magic into what might otherwise be a prosaic Thursday.

Fall is just around the corner.  There is a crispness to the air that prophesies of shorter days, longer nights, and all the free time that comes from having your yard and garden under a foot of snow.