Inspired By Reading Book Club: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

This month I decided to take part in Andrew Thornton's Inspired By Reading Book Club.  This is a virtual book club composed mainly of artists, who take inspiration from the book to create artwork.  The group is predominantly jewelry makers, including my wife Sarajo of Sj Designs. 

The book this month is Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane, published in 2013.  We had a signed hardcover of this one already and I had been meaning to read it, so I jumped on board with this challenge!  I've been reading Gaiman's stuff since the 1990's when he was known for writing the Sandman comic series.  He was a true groundbreaker when it came to adding levels of complexity, myth, and characterization that was nearly unheard of in the predominantly costumed superhero comics industry.  I continued to read as he wrote a wonderful series called The Books of Magic in which a young bespectacled English boy named Tim Hunter discovers that he is a wizard and must learn to use his magic against those who seek to control or destroy him.  Sound familiar Harry Potter fans?  Yup this was written in 1993! 

I continued to read Gaiman's books, especially when he moved to novels, with Neverwhere, and American Gods.  If you haven't read those...do so now!  Sj and I even got to have sushi with him and a group of musicians from the Twin Cities once, a very cool evening for us.  So that is a quick background of my history with this great author...now on to the book itself!

I've noticed that Gaiman's recent works have mostly focused on children's books and those aimed at young adults.  Trust me, he doesn't dumb things down for the younger crowd, but keeps things complex and intriguing.  I would have killed for his smart kind of YA novel when I was younger, but there were limited options back in the 1980's.  The Ocean at the End of the Lane takes place in an older version of rural England and uses the somewhat detached and formal voice that Gaiman often uses in his books.  The book is told by an unnamed narrator after he goes back home to visit after "growing up" and is mostly a long flashback of strange events from his childhood that he has long forgotten.

My first "artistic" endeavor for this book uses my main form of self expression: Beer Making!  The story takes place near and in a farm house, so I took this cue to create a classic farmhouse ale--the Belgian Saison.  This type of ale was typically made on a very small scale mainly for the people working on the farm, and as a result the "style" is really quite varied since every farm had their own recipe, yeast, and brewers.  Most of the brews were fermented on the warmer side resulting in a fruitier flavor from yeast derived esters.  I brewed up a fairly simple light colored beer mainly of pilsner malt, with some noble Saaz hops for bitterness and a hint of floral aroma.  The real player in this brew is the Belgian Saison yeast, which I fermented initially at 67 degrees, then ramped up to 70 for finishing.  The resulting brew is my take on the Saison farmhouse style and I've named it Hempstock's Farmhouse Ale.  I'll be taking some of this brew along for an in-person visit to the live book club meet up in Andrew's home town in Pennsylvania!

I'll try not to give too much away...but want to explain my pictures a bit, so if you hate spoilers, just scan the pics and ignore the words.  Let's be honest mostly we do that anyway!

 Much of the action in the book takes place at the farmhouse of the Hempstocks, a trio of women who live just down the lane from our narrator.  The youngest, Lettie, is just a few years older than the protagonist and takes him under her wing.  She tells him that the pond on the property is really an ocean, along with several other nonsensical things, but he takes this in stride in typical young child fashion.  I took this particular photo of a farmhouse along the pond at Phelps Mill in Ottertail, MN.  This is a place I grew up, swimming in the river, fishing in the pond, and climbing about in the then-decaying and dangerous mill building.  Testing out my new Photoshop Elements, I pasted in this seagull from a shot I took up in Duluth the same summer.  I think it ties in the Ocean aspect of the story...

Creeped out yet?  Gaiman's books often have an element of horror wrapped up in them.  At one point in this particular tale, after getting embroiled in some fantastical events with Lettie Hempstock, the protagonist discovers a disgusting worm living in a small hole in his foot.  In the bathroom he tries to get the worm out, and this is my take on it.  Not sure why, but I found this particular part of the novel especially nightmarish!  So I took this vision of the book and did a bit of a self portrait...now all of you can have nightmares as well!

During the culmination of the book, the narrator has a desperate evening run through the farmer's fields to escape the villain and get back to the Hempstock farm and Lettie's protection.  I spent quite a bit of time thinking about how best to make this work in photography...starting in the spring and not really getting anything great until fall harvest time.  At our Minnesota Landscape Arboretum they had a special limited run of glass and metal sculptures throughout the grounds and this particular grouping of glass people rising and cavorting from the tall grass finally hit the sweet spot I was looking for.

Overall this was a book that was at once simple and complex, hitting many levels at a time.  I highly recommend it to any age reader.  I hope you enjoyed my write-up.  Please check out the other blog entries on this book--I'll be updating this blog with their URLs once everything is posted!

The Drunken Botanist

My wife, jewelry artist Sarajo Wentling, has a habit of getting involved in online jewelry design challenges.  This works for her and often acts as inspiration, sparking some of her more creative pieces.  I envy this aspect of her craft.  Check out her jewelry blog HERE if you want to see what I'm talking about. 

One interesting group that Sj has been involved with is the Inspired By Reading Book Group, started by the talented Andrew Thornton.  Like any book group, each month has an assigned book to read, but instead of just talking about it, these artists work the book into their respective artwork.  While the majority of the group are jewelry designers, other types of art are included as well. 

This month's reading was The Drunken Botanist, by Amy Stewart.  This book is more of an encyclopedia than a novel, including chapters on various spirits, mixed drinks and history of the flora and fauna that flavor those spirits!  While reading this book, Sj would frequently read aloud passages for me or fill me in on little snippets of information.  After a while I realized I just needed to read the book for myself!  Occasionally snatching the unguarded book from Sj's clutches, I would read a few passages.  I have still not read the entire thing, but the way the book is set up, reading bits and pieces works fairly well. 

If I had had more time, I would have used my main hobby of homebrewing to use some of these interesting herbs to make a gruit or herb-bittered beer.  But the discussion/blog-hop is already upon us and brewing would have taken a few weeks at the least.  Not to mention that no one but Sj and I could sample the results, since this is a virtual book club!  Wracking my brain, I finally realized that I could use my new camera and budding photography skills to attempt an entry for this challenge.  Much like Sj when she started to make jewelry, I certainly don't feel like an "Artist" yet, so it really didn't occur to me until late in the game.  Oh, well, why not give it a shot

Reading/skimming around the book, I spent a fair amount of time reading about the herbs, flowers and spices that were involved in many spirits and tinctures.  Saint Germain elderflower liqueur is intriguing, and I've even thought about doing an elderflower beer after tasting one in Belgium.  I have tasted saffron beers before but find I'm not very sensitive to that expensive ingredient so it just isn't worth the money.  This past weekend we were up at the family cottage on Ottertail Lake for a reunion weekend.  My cousin Kathleen is an amateur photographer as well and the two of us took off to find some likely things to photograph.  We were driving past Lake Country Gardens, a family run landscape and nursery place, when Kathleen suggested we see if they would allow us to take some pictures there.  The kind staff had no problem with us sneaking around with our cameras and even pointed us toward a nest of photogenic baby robins.  I discovered some bright, papery orange poppy blossoms on our little tour of the grounds.  As a physician I was intrigued by the storied history of the Opium Poppy and its use in cure-alls and Laudanum.  This was a perfect intersection of my hobby and the book! 

Later, while wandering the back roads around the cottage, I discovered wild pink roses growing in the ditches.  Wanting to get closer I discovered a huge and extensive patch of the three-leafed caustic pest: poison ivy!  So my picture of this one is more of an arty rural background piece than a close up of roses!  The book mentions roses being used in rose petal liqueurs, as well as rose water's use in cocktails.  I was intrigued by the little mention of rose hips as well and this makes me want to use that strange ingredient in my brewing...

Right turn Clyde!  

Hangin' out with Rosemary...

In the back of the book there are a couple of charts including many other ingredients in cocktails and Rosemary is mentioned briefly there.  I think this is my favorite picture from this particular challenge even if the tie to the book is tenuous!

After arriving back home in Waconia after the weekend, I went out to my own garden and took more pictures.  There I have a plant of Sweet Woodruff, another herb used in spirits, that I have been growing for use in a future medieval style beer.  I noticed that the author did not mention the use of violent green woodruff syrup in Berliner Weisse beers in Germany…  After reading about it in the book, it sounds like this can be toxic if not prepared correctly and now I'm a little more hesitant to try using it!  I was sad that while we were out of town the pretty little white flowers on the plant were almost all gone, so this one wasn't as photogenic as I had hoped!

Sweet Woodruff!

Of course I have a cascade hop bine growing in my yard for future use in beer, so I took a quick shot of the the active climber.  We just had some heavy weather this past week and the plant was battered a bit, but these fresh shoots are coming back quickly from the damage.  The hop cones themselves won't  arrive until later in the season.

Hop bine (not vine) spreading up my deck!

And of course there is a whole section in the book on berries!  Here is my ever expanding raspberry bramble.  The flowers are falling off and the fruit starting to form already.  I think raspberries will gracing my beer very soon!

This is a fun book with lots of educational and informative snippets that will make you more popular at cocktail parties for sure!  The book certainly sparked several ideas for herb or fruit based beers that I'd like to try out.  I was happy to get a chance to practice my photography and take part in this!  Later in the year they are reading Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane and I am already looking for perfect pictures to bring out that wonderful book.  Check out the Facebook site and read/look at the other contributors' entries for the month HERE.