Waifs and Strays by Charles De Lint

I still haven't read any of De Lint's novels, but I really liked his Best Of collection. So I bought this collection for my sister's xmas gift, intending to read it before giving it to her. Why not? De Lint's stories are magical and heartwarming, inspiring you to cultivate magic in your own world.

Sometimes if you stretch your sights just a bit, you can find the magic. It's so close and so fleeting. You will likely miss it every time if you don't look for it. De Lint tells coming-of-age stories for all ages. He thinks targeting his writing toward teens or young adults would be condescending. My kind of guy. You might put his stories into the trappings of Low Fantasy or Urban Fantasy, but he refers to them as Mythic Fiction. Maybe that's your kind of thing. I like it.

The Very Best of Charles De Lint

This book was loaned to me by the man who bought me Some Guys’ Pizza and fathered my ally, Lord Reptile. The pages are big and have a lot of words on them. There are a lot of pages too. But when a doctor who is not your doctor or your professor makes it a point to lend you one of his books, you have to read it and return it within a reasonable amount of time; as if I were exempt from the book borrowing code of never returning anything to anyone until you’ve paid your fines. After a month of wonder, I tuckered down on The Very Best of Charles De Lint.

Short stories often give you a fair amount to remember and chew on once you put down the volume. So I tried to read just one of De Lint’s stories every night and I felt a lot of things. I felt the hot power of my imagination and an itch to dream. I felt a renewed weight in the value of things I do that have no value to anyone else.

From every angle, De Lint illuminates the magic in the mundane. Everyone is a character in a bigger story. Often those who neglect their status in our world, make up for it in worlds we can’t see. Heroes don’t have to kill orcs and challenge evil sorcerers. De Lint’s heroes are artists, musicians, and magical creatures of consensual reality. His mythical fiction/urban fantasy takes us away from the violent and into the pre-existing magic we often forget about.

Tenth of December by George Saunders

 

It was loaned to me by Amy of the cool witch house.  If you ever find yourself lacking in an emotional connection with the world around you or lacking in general empathy, then I would strongly recommend this book.  Often, fictional circumstances encourage us to look for opportunities to make a difference among the indifferent. 

At just over two hundred pages, you can read this book in a day and in each of these short stories, put yourself in someone else's shoes and feel inspiration to do good in seeing the causality in subtle heroism.  And maybe that inspiration can give us the courage to accept and remember that integrity comes at a price and that is a fact of life.