2015 Witches & Witchcraft Reading Challenge

02/26/2015
I have this lofty goal of 16 books for the 2015 Witches & Witchcraft Reading Challenge! That would put me, just barely, at the "Crone" level. I am not sure yet what books I'm reading, or how I'm going to list and review them. I think I will probably post about them individually and keep a running list on this page. We'll see. If you would like to join the challenge too, there's a link in the sidebar.

02/28/2015
I took a look at Goodread's Best Books With Witches list. It jogged my memory. I wanted to read Neil Gaiman's Stardust! This is the cover on the PDF I found. When I finish reading the book, I'll watch the movie. The movie, according to IMDB, is based on the book, which, in turn, is based on Gaiman's original version of four comic books.

03/02/15
I finished the book and then immediately watched the movie! First of all the book read like an English fairy tale. There was a fallen star, witches, unicorns, and magical trees.  It was all about balance. The mundane and the fairy world. Good versus evil. Honor versus deception. The book started out in a real world Victorian English village and ended in a fairyland mountain kingdom. Besides the main character looking for a fallen star the book ties together three other sub-plots: brothers vying for a throne, three witches wanting to recapture youth, and another witch holding a fairy as a slave. These are witches from traditional fairy stories and not like ones in today's paranormal romances. I would so like to re-read other parallel world novels like Little, Big by John Crowley and Weaveworld by Clive Barker.

The first half of the movie was a condensed version of the first two thirds of the book. Then the movie turned into a crazy steampunk adventure based on the last third of the book. At this point the book and the movie scenes differ but the main elements of the plot are carried along to a similar ending. I think the movie was trying to be like another Men in Tights or The Princess Bride.

3/03/15
The Witching Hour by Anne Rice is up next. Depending on how much I like the first book in the trilogy,  I will read all three of the Mayfair Witches' books in a row. There is a movie with the same title as book coming out this year, but looking at the actor/character list on IMDB I think it is totally unrelated.