#KrampusBrought
Christmas cookies! pic.twitter.com/UPSiBbSJuY— Parody Pam (@PammyJC) December 10, 2022
I've not read any of The Dark is Rising sequence, but given that Robert Macfarlane mentions it here in the same breath as Alan Garner and Ursula K Le Guin I am really looking forward to this radio adaptation.https://t.co/wr3GS4SuV5
— Jon James (@Jon_A_James) December 15, 2022
It’s probably been forty years since I read The Dark Is Rising… I should dig out my copy:
I first read Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising the summer I turned 13, the year the Berlin Wall came down. I read it by torchlight under the bedclothes, not because of parental curfew or power cut, but because that seemed the safest place to read what was, unmistakably, the eeriest novel I’d ever met.
Eeriness is different in kind to horror. Eeriness thrives in edge-of-the-eye glimpses; horror is full-frontal. The eerie lives in the same family of feelings as Freud’s “uncanny”, which in its original German, unheimlich, means “unhomely”. A core power of Cooper’s novel lies in its counterpointing of the homely and the unhomely. It opens in the domestic clamour of the Stanton family house, in a quiet English village in the upper Thames valley. It’s 20 December: the eve of both the winter solstice and the 11th birthday of Will, the youngest of the Stanton children. Inside the house, all is pre-Christmas chaos, baking smells and familiarity. But in the wintry landscape around, something is very wrong. Rooks are behaving strangely, dogs are suddenly afraid of Will, a blizzard is coming, and “a shadowy awareness of evil” is building. Will’s life is about to change for ever – for he will become caught up in an ancient battle between the forces of the Light and those of the Dark, which are always strongest at midwinter. His young shoulders are soon to bear an immense burden.
The Dark Is Rising sank deep into my bones. Its characters – tall Merriman, capable of such warmth and such wrath; the Lady with her leitmotif of haunting, ethereal music; wise young Will; horned Herne – leapt into my imagination, and have never left. I was also deeply influenced by Cooper’s sense of landscape as a memory-shaping, time-slipping medium, present more widely in the tradition of Anglo-American fantasy fiction that runs from John Masefield’s The Box of Delights, through Alan Garner, Ursula K Le Guin’s Earthsea books, Cooper herself and on to Robert Holdstock and Philip Pullman…
Millions of other readers have met Cooper’s work and never forgotten it. Five years ago, with the poet Julia Bird, I co-ran a midwinter Dark Is Rising reading group on Twitter. Thousands of people joined from dozens of countries. #TheDarkIsReading trended nationally on Twitter, and the online outpouring of affection for the book was immense.
This winter, I hope The Dark Is Rising will find new audiences around the world. For, working with the actor, director and theatre-maker Simon McBurney, and supported by Complicité (the theatre company that Simon co-founded) I’ve spent the past year adapting The Dark Is Rising as an audio drama. It will be broadcast first on BBC World Service in 12 episodes, beginning on 20 December, with an episode following each day, such that the broadcasts correspond to the “real time” of the novel’s own unfolding across the solstice, Christmas and New Year’s Eve…
Don’t you just hate when that happens?!?
I am once again asking for the Hallmark Christmas movie where the high-powered lawyer who moved to the big city sees that her ex boyfriend from her small town is now on trial for being at the Capitol and her mom is completely redpilled sharing QAnon memes on Facebook.
— Eric Michael Garcia (@EricMGarcia) November 26, 2022
babe i hear what you’re saying but the guy at the bird store said no returns after 12 days so you are just going to have to learn to live with this
— soul nate (@MNateShyamalan) December 4, 2022
Deterrence is most likely to be successful when a prospective attacker believes that the probability of success is low and the costs of attack are high. pic.twitter.com/T75MYcPkDq
— Giant Military Cats (@giantcat9) December 4, 2022
HinTN
That’s quite the force field! Also, I thank you, AL, for introducing me to a book on par with LeGuin. That’s high praise. Happy Solstice, tomorrow at 1547 Central, and the returning of the light.
Tony Jay
Oh, absolutely. The Dark is Rising blew my mind as a young teen. It’s basically the general theme of Harry Potter with every single ounce of sentimentality flensed off and all of the cutesy boarding-school trappings consigned to a deep, dark hole where monstrous things stir and seethe.
Scared the crap out of me. Must read it again.
GregMulka
The Grey King was the first of the sequence I read. Got it from my school library. Thank you Mrs. Kelly for putting it into my hands. From there I had to track down the rest. These and Eddings Sparhawk novels, did more to set my fantasy novel tastes than Tolkien ever could. This will require a listen.
Edit to add the first part of the poem.
When the Dark comes rising six shall turn it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; Water, fire, stone;
Five will return and one go alone.
oatler
@GregMulka:
Speaking of The Grey King, why couldn’t Will Stanton understand the Welsh he heard spoken there, when supposedly as an Old One he could understand all languages? “Young Will, I’m gonna need you to get all the way off my back about that.”
Ken
Now I’m trying to title that Hallmark movie from Eric Michael Garcia’s tweet. “Christmas Tradition: Sedition”, perhaps?
Glidwrith
So, how does one find this broadcast?
Lyrebird
@Tony Jay: Funny, I thought it was wonderful but on the lighter side, after binge reading the LOTR books!
Shout out to my mom for buying me Greenwitch which got me started.
Generally worth noting that Susan Cooper also wrote Dawn of Fear… it gets mixed reviews, but I appreciated reading it. It’s semi autobiographical, about kids during the London Blitz.
Shalimar
Elon Musk has announced that only paying Blue subscribers can vote in future polls. As with everything Elon, I don’t think he has thought this through. 17.5 million accounts voted on whether he should quit or not. Future polls are going to show how few people are paying to use Twitter.
JML
Man, it’s been quite a while since I read The Dark Is Rising! I have a box set that I picked up of the entire sequence that’s rather lovely and I should really go back and do the re-read. I’m only working 2 more days in this calendar year after today, so maybe this would be a good hibernation project! (it’s going to be cold AF the next few days anyways…)
Jay
Snow day today. 6 inches on the short walk to Skytrain, could not load my Compass card as the machines are all off line, jumped the gates to get to my platform, trains running every 20 minutes, rather than every 5 minutes, and only over 1/4 of the route, Transit notice that busses are just sitting at the transit exchanges waiting for the roads to be cleared, ( maybe tomorrow), gave up walked back home, 8 inches of snow.
Plus no warm, comfortable place to sleep in the shop if I were to be stuck overnight.
Ken
@GregMulka: “Iron for the birthday, bronze carried long….” After nearly 50 years, I can still recite that whole poem.
Omnes Omnibus
@oatler:
Only the Welsh can understand Welsh. It’s their super power, along with punching above their weight at the rugby.
Ken
@Shalimar: Maybe Blue subscribers will be allowed to vote as often as they want. Vox pecuniae, as it were.
Though he doesn’t listen to the advertisers and their dollars, so maybe not.
GregMulka
@oatler:
@Omnes Omnibus:
Probably this. But I also seem to recall he was blocked from accessing the Old One part of his brain for the first third of the book. It’s been over 20 years since I re-read them.
GregMulka
@Glidwrith: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xtvp7
Paul in KY
Just ordered the box set. Had never heard of it till now.
oatler
@GregMulka:
Yes, the hepatitis that sent him to Wales to convalesce. But as an Old One, isn’t Will immune from illness? I can pick apart juvenile lit all day, don’t get me started on E Nesbitt.
GregMulka
@oatler: That part I distinctly remember as being an attack of the dark disguised as hepatitis.
They can’t destroy each other but they can taken out of play.
Glidwrith
@GregMulka: Oh, that’s cool! Thanks!
rikyrah
I am so guilty of watching Christmas movies..
Hallmark
Hallmark Mystery Channel
Lifetime
BET+
VH-1
TVOne
I’ve watched two with Dolly Parton
opiejeanne
Thanks for telling us about this event. I’ve never heard of this series but it sounds very good. I’m going to download it to my e-reader.
Fair Economist
I really liked The Dark Is Rising as a kid but I would not put it on a par with LeGuin, at least not for adults.
I remember sneak reading it on the steps of the community theater where I was playing Little Patrick. I was supposed to be rehearsing my lines (I did them fine anyway.)
Sandia Blanca
Amy Schumer made that Hallmark movie: https://youtu.be/LYQM1NESLsc
opiejeanne
@rikyrah: My sister loves the Hallmark movies. I’m an old curmudgeon but I have been watching Christmas movies for the past week: The Santa Clause 1 & 2, the current Disney Santa Clause series, Die Hard, and Elf, A Christmas Story, It’s a Wonderful Life, and more are in the offing. Maybe we’ll watch Elf tonight. (I have an embarrassingly large collection of Will Farrell movies.)
Alison Rose
Zelenskyy visited Bakhmut to award soldiers. Once again, I am experiencing a mix of admiration and “please someone put him inside a giant bulletproof hamster ball when he is in these places omg”
opiejeanne
@Sandia Blanca: Thanks. That made my morning.
NotMax
One more thing to mull over.
Bostondreams
Speaking of books…Florida English teacher gets 150 of them removed. And the reasons are as dumb as you think.
Josie
@opiejeanne:
I can relate. I love Will Farrell. For some reason, I had never seen Elf. My kids sat me down to watch it last week and now I love him even more.
mrmoshpotato
@Bostondreams: Got 4 tweets into Judd’s thread.
Oh, the racist, Trump-trash (assumed) snowflake.
Walker
The tried to make this into the new post Harry Potter film series back in 2007. It was called The Seeker. It (the movie, not the books) was awful.
I have fond memories of The Dark is Rising. But I have learned not to revisit a lot of books from that era in my life as they have not aged well. YA chosen-one fiction has gotten a lot more sophisticated since that time.
mrmoshpotato
Some cat wrote The Twelve Days of Christmas.
opiejeanne
I just looked out the window and it’s really snowing hard. Two minutes ago there was nothing. I’m supposed to go out in this stuff in about an hour, but now I’m considering staying home. I need to drop off an old quilt that my husband’s grandmother pieced and hand-quilted, to have someone put the binding onto it so that it’s finally finished. It’s a large double wedding ring with scalloped edges, and someone else can do that, thankyouverymuch.
opiejeanne
@mrmoshpotato: For Christmas we drove from LA to KC in 1961 to spend it with my grandparents and cousins. I was 11. When you drove cross-country like that, you’d lose one AM radio station after about 20 minutes and have to hunt for the next. We heard the 12 Days of Christmas on that trip so many times that I wanted to heave.
Paul in KY
Now I can’t read any comments in thread as plot spoilers (for me) abound :-)
mrmoshpotato
No spoilers here, Paul!
Via bluegal
mrmoshpotato
@opiejeanne: Quite the road trip! I hope you all were still talking to each other once in KC.
Spanish Moss
Thanks for the heads up about the series, I loved The Dark is Rising series! I started reading The Grey King to my kids. I picked it out because it sounded like something they would like, not expecting to get caught up in it myself. We then bought the rest and started at the beginning, and ended up reading the whole series together a couple of times.
Ken
@mrmoshpotato: The Number10Cat twitter account was riffing on that.
“On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a partridge in a pear tree. Ate it.”
…
“Eight maids a-milking. Good gift, needed some milk to wash down all these birds.”
Karen S.
My wife and I started watching a Hallmark movie called “Hannukah on Rye,” the channel’s attempt at inclusivity, I guess. It’s a riot, partly because my wife, who’s Jewish, pauses the show every five minutes to point out how inaccurate or outlandish something that is said or done on screen is.
mrmoshpotato
@Ken: WTF? These golden rings aren’t birds!
Ken
@mrmoshpotato: Close, it was “anyone want to swap some gold rings for something I can eat?” Which I think missed an opportunity; surely a cat would bat the rings around and lose them under the couch and stove?
mrmoshpotato
@Ken:
Definitely. And go knock over a glass of water because cats…
frosty
@opiejeanne: If you include Die Hard, then add The Long Kiss Goodnight to your Christmas roster. Geena Davis as an action hero! Samuel L. Jackson! A bunch of carolers singing at gunpoint! What’s not to like?
Another underrated cult classic.
Miss Bianca
@Tony Jay: Oh, man. I discovered this series as an adult, newly separated from my ex and going on a Christmas train trip with new bf to see his folks in California. Read the whole series in, like 36 hours from Grand Junction, CO to Oakland CA.
Winter Solstice is a weird time for me anyway – December 21 was my wedding day. That season it felt particularly weird.
Geoduck
You don’t have to read the whole series to enjoy TDiR on its own, but it does improve it.
Avoid the movie adaptation at all costs.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I would love an urban Hallmark movie. You know, where the small town girl has to move to the city for work and is taken in by a diverse and accepting group of coworkers and neighbors that she comes to love. In the process, she realizes her rural boyfriend is an intolerant jerk. The boyfriend participating in Jan 6 is the last straw. In the end, she falls for her elitist (aka educated) neighbor, the college professor who also volunteers at a homeless shelter.
Elizabelle
Anne Laurie: thank you for recommending The Dark is Rising. Had never heard of it/its series before. Got the ebook from the library, and it seems quite good. Will enjoy it. (Just a few pages in. Whatever events of the evening … haven’t happened yet.)
Happy Solstice Eve, jackals
ETA: OK, this book is second in the series. Can I start here? (Already have, obviously …)
Tony Jay
@Lyrebird:
I may be misremembering, because it’s been a hell of a long time, but I recall feeling the initial storyline with the comfortably cosy kids finding adventure in the affairs of their crazy sort-of uncle Merriman was all kinds of undemandingly Narniaesque… then Will enters the story and it suddenly takes a sidestep into ritual magic, pagan symbolism, and ancient sacrifice. Where ‘anyone can be a monster’ and the line separating the brightly lit ‘normal’ world your family inhabits is only as solid as the Forces of The Dark are willing to allow it to be.
Brrrrrrrrr.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@opiejeanne: I know someone who heard every version imaginable of The Little Drummer Boy that way, driving across Texas once, late at night. He says he snapped somewhere around Midland and began screaming about letting the goddamned baby sleep.
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@oatler: OK let me get all the way off that thing
Tony Jay
@Miss Bianca:
I feel you. I was left with the eerie conviction that there was at least a 50/50 chance that on the other side of any random misty hill there were things going on that I really shouldn’t get involved in.
Like dogging, but with more rhyming.
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: Much of that comes from the trains’ brakes. I think some of the Underground lines are introducing, or planning to introduce, rolling stock with regenerative braking, which will both save energy and reduce this type of pollution.
Capri
Also a sucker for formula Christmas movies. Recently watched The Holidate because it was listed first on a “worst Christmas movie” list. Earned that rating honestly.
Elizabelle
I love love love Last Holiday with Queen Latifah and LL Cool J. Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. Even made a pilgrimage to the Hotel Pupp after seeing this film.
On Amazon Prime, free this month.
Miss Bianca
@Tony Jay: One of these days I will find the words and occasion to describe how I felt walking on one of the islands in the Outer Hebrides in October, with a blood-red sunset streaking the sky, and seeing a weird figure ahead of me that just seemed to get weirder and weirder, till I got close enough to it to see that it was…a scarecrow, maybe?…anyway, a parka that had been lashed to a swastika-like kind of cross on a fence railing. It was spooky as hell, and I definitely found myself wondering what it was all about – but beating a hasty retreat rather than investigate further!
trollhattan
@mrmoshpotato: I must question drummers drumming and lords leaping being ordered up by a cat. Was it drunk after all the earlier orders arrived?
trollhattan
@Miss Bianca: Hmm, did “The Wicker Man” perhaps pop into mind?
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
Not really my thing, but Mama Cisco was watching a Mariah Carey joint one year when I was home and the production values were AWFUL. Example: a FULL MINUTE CLOSEUP on a soda can. WORST PRODUCT PLACEMENT EVER.
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@trollhattan: NOT THE BEES
Miss Bianca
@trollhattan: Total Wicker Man vibe!
WaterGirl
@Shalimar: Don’t like the outcome of a vote. Simple. Limit who gets to vote.
Now why does that sound familiar?
Tony Jay
@Miss Bianca:
The Hebrides are lovely.
And now I will never, ever be going there.
cckids
Thank you, AL for the Guardian link and the news about the BBC The Dark is Rising series. I’m so happy!
I read it first in 3rd grade; checked it out of the school library, and loved it, but, as kids will do, didn’t clock the name/author of the book, and couldn’t find it again (someone with a similar feeling about the book but fewer scruples probably kept it). It stayed in my mind, though, as “this is what a GOOD BOOK is really like”.
Fast forward 30-ish years, I’m in a Borders bookstore, shopping for my kids, and lo – there is MY book, (holy shit, it’s a SERIES!!!!), and I got to introduce it to them. They didn’t share my abiding love for it, but who cares, now I own them all :)
PaulWartenberg
IO SATURNALIA, BEECHES!
We need more Hallmark Saturnalia movies!
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Capri: I enjoyed Holidate anyway. It was fun.
Sandia Blanca
@opiejeanne: you are most welcome!
opiejeanne
@frosty: Dead thread, but thank you. I love both actors and it sounds great. Maybe.
Redshift
Dead thread, but The Dark is Rising cycle is one of my eternal favorites. I happened across the first in my local library as a teenager, and read them as they came out, reading the final one in college (appropriately) lounging on a comfortable old leather couch in a reading room at a gothic revival library.
VFX Lurker
@opiejeanne: If you can find it on streaming, consider also watching The Hogfather (2006). The jolly fat man has gone missing, so Death sets down his scythe and puts on the red suit to take his place. A lovely adaptation of one of Terry Pratchett’s Diacworld novels.
opiejeanne
@VFX Lurker: we own a copy of The Hogfather and will watch it soon. Maybe tonight. Thanks for reminding me.
Tehanu
@Tony Jay:
You’re not misremembering. I’m afraid I’m in the minority here about The Dark Is Rising and its sequels; I thought it was self-conscious and contrived; the good guys were too good and the bad guys were evil for its own sake. However, it’s been a long time since I read it; maybe I’ll give it another try.
@VFX Lurker: @opiejeanne: Totally agree with you about Hogfather. Wonderful book and the TV version is good too.
Pappenheimer
@Geoduck: Done both, emphatically agree.
Pappenheimer
Please note that Alan Garner did finally finish his Weirdstone of Brisingamen series with a novel, Boneland, showing Colin as an adult with issues about his missing sister.
Pappenheimer