All You Want for Christmas: A Jo Walton Kind of Year

Toronto's official start to the Season is marked by the Santa Claus parade.  I happen to live at parade ground zero with hundreds gathered around my neighbourhood organizing, volunteering and observing this annual holiday parade. As a result. the Christmas fever starts as early as mid-November here. While I have tried to restrain myself these past weeks leading up to our little family tradition of tree dressing and house decorating this, the second week in December, I am relieved to finally get this Christmas started.  I take holiday baking a tad too seriously. Christmas is nothing without a cheese ball, some rum and 45 different types of home-made baked goods to nibble on.  As a token of the Christmas spirit let me share the magic that is my Mom's Cheese Ball.

Mom's Cheese Ball 

Using a food processor whip together ingredients into a gelatinous mass of cheesy goodness. Form into ball if desired, covering with shaved almonds or paprika. Food processor may overheat and die from the strain.

2 1/2 cups extra old cheese 

1 16oz cream cheese

1 cup parmesan cheese

1 tablespoon Cheese Whiz

1 tablespoon mayonaise

Dash of Worcestershire sauce

Dash of salt

1-2 tablespoons of lemon juice (2 is better)

1/2 cup white onion

And with the sharing of the cheese ball let us commence with the annual Thank the Maker's  recommendations for gift buying. In 2014, no author captured my attention more so than Jo Walton. From her hauntingly beautiful Amongst Others, to her dragon oddity, Tooth and Claw, Walton's catalog is the perfect example of SF for the non-SF reader. Walton has the ability to turn the perception of reality on it's head with a quiet assuredness marking her as a talented story-teller. Not every writer can tell a story, many are master weavers of dialogue, or the perfect plot twisters and some are pedantic science nerds who write abstracts in the guise of novels.  Walton is able to make speculative fiction, reality. Every single book I have read by her has lost me into it's world the first paragraph in, every single one. That, my friends is the markings of a master story-teller.

For the mystery lover:  Small Change Trilogy - I nursed myself back to sci-fi health on this series after ending my salacious affair with the mystery novel this past summer. A historically speculative series that places the reader into a world with Britain having signed a peace treaty with Nazi Germany. The key to its genius are the successful mash-up of old school "Agatha-esque" detective novel with tried and true SF.

For the person you love more than anyone:  Among Others - I died and went to fairy heaven reading Walton's awarding winning novel Among Others. Seemingly simple, a diary of a teenage girl at boarding school, the novel takes us on a journey of heart-ache, magic and above-all else, healing. Not the easiest book to read if you are not into SF because the protagonist is a SF geek referencing countless old school sci-fi but trust me, the fairies make it all worth-while. 

For the weeper:  My Real Children - Having just finished My Real Children I am still a little unclear on how to best proceed with my review.  A novel documenting the life/lives of one woman, showcasing possibly two realities in post-war Britain. It emphasizing providence or free-will depending solely on the reader's personal perspective of the universe and faith. This book has left many in the SF world pondering whether it is sci-fi enough. And while I too have some misgivings regarding that very question, the book captured me, breaking my heart numerous times, perplexing me on the dynamics of reality. The book opens to the protagonist, an elderly senile woman befuddled and vulnerable living in a senior's care centre, not quite able to determine which of her memories are real and who in fact are her real children.  

For the weirdo:  Tooth and Claw - Okay, maybe weirdo is strong but this particular book is straight up awesome odd. If you know hands-down that the person you are buying for is against dragons than you might want to forgo this little book because this book is about dragons; dragons who eat each other. Actually it is decidedly more, a Victorian romp mashing dragon lore with Trollope, putting both on it's head.

All of the things: A Review of Farthing, Jo Walton

My brain feels like the inside of the family junk drawer; thoughts tossed in amongst dried up pens, loose change, broken bits of crayons all hidden beneath unpaid bills and random keys to unknown doors. The month of May has been interesting and not in a "what a great reading month I had interesting" but a "I quit my job interesting".  I quit my job, I really, truly cross-my- heart did.  I just started giggling hysterically and drinking vodka all at the same time while resisting the urge to go out and find another job right now in my housecoat. This is who I am now, the girl with no job, and the ability to reboot myself into whatever the hell I want.  I could be a silly monkey (maybe not), or a tree pruner (why not, there are trees everywhere), a full-time writer (have NO idea what I would write on about) or maybe I could go with being me and see where that leads. I am Dune Girl, the jobless blogger who suddenly has a lot of time on her hands to read all of the things.

I am over there, under the willow reading all of the things.

While it is tempting to fuel the fires of speculation and expound on a life in which I will be found in a library equipped with a rolling ladder and patio doors leading out onto a rose garden with hedges and champagne chilling by the perfect bench under a canopy of maple leaves, in truth my near future will be closer to the mundane than the idyllic. Sometimes a Mom just wants to be a Mom and so the child has been withdrawn from preschool so the two of us can partake in a mommy/son summer love-fest. Hopefully the love-fest persists, I see an unraveling by mid-July into some type of cage match.

Wonderful just wonderful, but please let us not stray from what is of importance, all of the things that I will read for the rest of my life; the dear hubby thinks this is a short-term sabbatical, the poor dear, he really is no match for me. My adulterous affair with the mystery novel has run it's salacious course and I have returned to the Mothership. I picked up Jo Walton's Small Change series and am nursing myself slowly back to science fiction health. 

For those of you unbeknownst to the writings of Jo Walton I draw your attention to my post Sunny-Yellow Bookcase.  Her Small Change series is speculative fiction wrapped inside a murder mystery.  The series presents a Britain that has has signed a peace treaty with Hitler; this is a world at the dawn of truth to the atrocities being committed by the Nazi's with the dissemination of those truths slowly being leaked into the public scope. These are deceivingly simple books written in Jo's frank and personal style that as you progress reveal layers of complexity. They are the perfect example of how best to explore the possibilities that science fiction permits while peppering the plot with the tried and true rules of the detective plot. This is the series for all you science fiction naysayers who are not quite ready to sleep with the alien or befriended a sentient planetoid intent on destroying the known universe.