I'm sure you've seen this posted before (possibly by me), but I love it, so here it is again:

I salute you! There is nothing I can give you which you have not;
but there is much, that, while I cannot give, you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today.
Take Heaven.
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present
instant.
Take Peace.
The gloom of the world is but a shadow; behind it, yet within our
reach, is joy.
Take Joy.
And so, at this Christmas time, I greet you, with the prayer that for
you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.
--Fra Giovanni, 1513

What I think of as the "Harry Potter Effect" - a renewed interest in YA or children's fantasy - has resulted in the welcome recent republication of authors who had been well-known in certain circles, like DWJ, or well-known from the past, like Edward Eager. It has also seen the reprinting of some rather more obscure but equally deserving works, like A String in the Harp by Nancy Bond or Elizabeth Marie Pope's The Perilous Gard. I've been thinking for a while of beginning a series of posts on old forgotten treasures from my own collection - not necessarily SF or fantasy, but books I loved that I wondered if anyone else had heard of, that I think deserve a bigger audience and potential reprinting. So, I thought I'd launch that series here, and invite others on my flist or from the bigger bittercon community, to link comments to posts about their own forgotten but deserving treasures.

My first oldy but goody is Ellen Kindt McKenzie's ( Drujienna's Harp )

1. I've been reading since just about the time I started school in England (Osborne House School, Ryde, Isle of Wight), which was when I was four. This caused problems for me when I came to Canada because by that time I was already far beyond the level of the grade I entered here and I got into trouble with the teacher because I never took books out of the school library. Well, would you read Dick and Jane when you were already reading Noel Streatfield?

2. I've probably read every possible genre of fiction, yes, including Westerns (Lonesome Dove), but my favourite has always been fantasy. It's getting more difficult to read fantasy these days, because although there's more of it written, there's no more of it that's really good than there was when I was younger, and I've read everything...

3. At the time I was in China it was incredibly difficult to get anything to read in English so we used to read anything that was going. This meant whatever was on sale at the Friendship Hotel shop in Beijing. For this reason, I worked my way through the complete works of Robert Ludlum, which I probably would never have read under normal circumstances. It's amazing what desparation will do. Which leads me to the fact that

4. I can't live without something to read. I think this is common of many people on LJ, or at least those I read. I would read cereal packets and instruction manuals if I had nothing else, but will if absolutely desperate read the likes of Barbara Cartland.

5. I read more fiction than non-fiction, I confess.

6. The non-fiction on my shelves includes critical theory, biography, mythology, gardening books, dog books, photography books, philosophy, physics, film criticism...

7. My "to be read" non-fiction include Paris 1919, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Nora(a biography of James Joyce's wife), and something called A Sideways Look at Time

8. I'm currently re-reading Cynthia Voigt's Tillerman books, up to A Solitary Blue. I'm not sure why these should "hit the spot" at this particular time, but they do.

9. I have owned no less that five different editions of The Lord of The Rings. The first was the one volume paperback edition with the cover by Pauline Baynes; I lent it to someone who didn't give it back... may she be cursed forever... then my parents gave me a boxed set of paperbacks that fell to pieces after about five years, then my mother gave me the beautiful onionskin hardcover boxed one volume edition, and then I bought myself the Unwin paperbacks because I couldn't bear to use that one, and recently I also bought myself a set of hardcovers illustrated by Alun Lee (who did the art direction on the films...)

10. The Lord of the Rings is my favourite book in the whole world, and I've re-read it so many times I've lost count. I taught it once, which was wonderful - it was the first time I've ever taught a novel I quite literally knew backwards and forwards. Quite extraordinary.

11. I've been taught to respect books physically, too. I try never to place a book down face down and have a repugnance towards writing in books as well.

12. I have a large collection of bookmarks, commemorating various royal figures, other public personages, "Snoopy for president," and no end of bookstores from all over the world, not to mention all those leather embossed ones from historic sites all around Britain and more recent ones with pictures from Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings on them.

13. Although the death of Beth in Little Women never made me cry, dog deaths invariably did and still do. "I'm a poor mis'able dog; I do not understand" from Kipling's Thy Servant a Dog still has the power to make my eyes sting with tears. They are now.

14. Every Christmas Eve I read Raymond Briggs' Father Christmas, a wordless comic book featuring a cross but cuddly Santa Claus who likes his brandy.

15. I have given books to charity and then bought them back again; I can't imagine -not- wanting to reread things.

...loudly sing goddamn (as I think Ezra Pound wrote). The sky is that flat gun-metal grey that so often presages snow. And for the first time in my life, I really dread it - middle age, gimpy hip, for whatever reason, the thought of shovelling makes me cringe. Oh well; it'll be a good photo op, at least, she says Pollyannishly. And the dogs love it, even if it does freeze in little clumps on their paws.

Just come in from putting out what seems like pounds of bird seed for the winged denizens of my garden. Seen just today: junco, northern flicker, rufous sided towhee (sp?), a clump of bush tits, house finch, chickadees, fox sparrow, house sparrows (by the ton), Anna's hummingbird (my wicked hummer), one starling (surprisingly only one), several silly pigeons, oh, and one squirrel pretending to be a bird. No nuthatches today, though they are usually regular visitors.

Clio the cat has taken to spending all her day indoors instead of pursuing her secret catty life outside. Right now she's pretending to be asleep on her favourite perch on top of the chest of drawers in my study, up where the dogs can't reach her but she can oversee all comings and goings. She's only pretending to be asleep, because every so often I catch a gold gleam through a slit in her eye as she checks to be sure that I'm not doing anything foolish or otherwise interesting.

brisingamen writes today about the high winds in Britain. Here on the far side of Canada, on the Pacific coast, we too are experiencing a gale. A heavy south wind, which is unusual for this time of year, when our prevailing wind tend to be westerly or south-westerly (we learn to fear "outflow" winds from the east in winter, not because they come from Mordor, but because they most often bring snow). I was woken with a jolt this morning by my window blowing open with a bang; luckily it didn't make the dogs bark, but Robinson got up and shuffled around edgily - he still hasn't quite got over the Halloween fireworks. A huge branch of a great Gary Oak in the park had blown down - luckily noone was under it at the time - and there were news shots at lunchtime of a large oak tree in, guess where, Oak Bay, burning down. I didn't catch whether this was as a result of lightning or fireworks or some other cause but it's sad in any case...

Brisingamen was also writing about her comfort food, leek and potato soup. Strangely, I had been thinking about making a thick _onion_ and potato soup for the weekend, and yesterday made one of my favourite comfort casseroles, a kind of tomato version of scalloped potatoes. You cook onions and garlic together with either chopped fresh tomatoes or I usually use a good quality can of diced tomatoes and lots of basil, parsley and some oregano. Then you layer that with thinly sliced potatoes and grated cheese and bake in the oven until the potatoes are all soft and have absorbed the tomato juices - it is good if you pour a little extra tomato juice over it so it is really soft and gushy. Serve with a green salad and some bread if you really want a carb fix. Yum :)