Treasure at the Heart of the Tanglewood

I love to be astounded by a sentence. A word. A name. Meredith Ann Pierce's novel Treasure at the Heart of the Tanglewood astonishes me on each page. The story's ink is vivid with magic and pulls the reader into the soul of Brown Hannah, a girl whose sprig-filled hair holds more living secrets than she herself knows. After rebelling against the magician who has held her captive since her first memory, Hannah sets out to uncover her hidden past. Her only companions are a cranky magpie, three foxlets, and a black fox that is truly a knight, or perhaps a knight that is truly a fox. Read the story and find out!

Courting the Invisible

The loveliest thing I ever heard I never saw. I was at the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga when I passed a music box tree in a street whose name I have since forgotten. The tree itself was rather small and unremarkable, but given the noise, there must have been an avian legion concealed within its tidy foliage and tight-woven branches! The leaves all but chimed with their lyrical racket. Starling or sparrow, I have no idea, and I don't really care. The sound stays with me like their silhouette. Too often, I think it is easy to rely on the sense of sight to describe a scene, but then I remember the music box tree and try to do better.

Amber Syllables

I recently watched this splendiferous clip about the universe. Dr. Michio Kaku, author of Physics of the Future (which I'm dying to read now!), said that "when you look in a mirror, you don't really see yourself. You see yourself as you were a half a billionth of a second ago."

Wow.

So now I've been wondering if literature (meaning ALL the arts and sciences) is the only place where we catch a timeless, living reflection of humanity and minds in motion. Perhaps the present is too fluid to ever truly catch unless it is pressed between the pages. What do you think?