Whew! Made it through Mom’s internment and Celebration of Life last weekend on a wave of strong emotions, extreme gratitude for family who made it all happen, and friends who were there to both show their love for Mom and support us. So many in attendance, so many wonderful stories shared! Memory and grief will claim much of my attention for a very long time, but, coming down from the rituals and the ceremonies, I am well and truly ready for a book break!
I love books! What are you reading?
Book Break: Escaping through “The Ten Thousand Doors of January”. . .
Hoosegow and I just finished The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow © 2019.
It’s one thing to be in conversation with your inner nine-year-old and your inner fourteen-year-old, but, much as I love cats, it’s a stretch even for you to say Hoosegow can read.
Point well taken, Lily. And you’re right: Hoosegow doesn’t know how to read. At least, I don’t think he does. . .What I mean is I finished reading the book to Hoosegow last night. It’s our standard practice in this household. I assumed the role of Nearly Nightly Out Loud for Pets Reader when Bruce died.
Who?
You didn’t know him, 9. He was my husband.
Another one?
Moving right along, after dinner most evenings Bruce and I would settle in with the (then) dog and four cats, and he would read to us for half-an-hour or more. The ritual had a soothing effect on our 4-legged kids, so I became the reader for them. I started this office Christmas Eve, 2018, the first night Bruce was gone. I read them a holiday-themed chapter from The Wind in the Willows, “Dolce Domum.”
Book Break: My first experience as official Read Out Loud Human for the dog and cats!
A good memory, but let me extract myself from this detour so I can tell you about The Ten Thousand Doors of January. It’s a fantasy book- –
Like Oz?
Or Narnia?
Elements of both, I would say. And a touch of Alice in Wonderland. That’s how I learned about this book, through the Washington Ballet Academy production I was in this May. The sister of one of the dance students really liked my Narrator character. It reminded her of a character in the book. I’m a lifelong fan of Alice, so of course I pursued her book recommendation, passed on to me by her mother who I happened to sit next to in a business meeting the following week.
Curiouser and curiouser!
Hoosegow and I have had it on loan since June 13. It’s a moderately long book so it took a while to read it out loud. The time is the early Twentieth Century. The narrator, a girl named January Scaller, is fostered by a very wealthy collector of antiquities. Her father works for this man and travels all over the world (and, as we learn, in other worlds) collecting valuable artifacts. The other worlds are accessed through doors at thin membranes where two worlds brush together, as January discovers through a strange book that carries the scent of an unknown yet familiar place. She learns she can open doors between points in this world, and between worlds, by writing it down. But there is a cost to accessing other worlds. . .
Okay, I’ll leave it at that.
No fair!
9, you’re being silly. You know as well as I do that we heard every word she read. We know exactly what happened.
January is the voice of the story, a voice that evokes curiosity, imagination, and a determination to find the people and things she’s lost. Hidden passages, horror, magic, love, mystery. A collection of complex and very nasty bad guys, and equally complex good guys to even the odds.
Whatever books you enjoy- -whatever flavor of fiction or non-fiction- -I hope you, too, will take a book break. Because sometimes we need to open the doors between worlds, too.
