Chrissy's Rants

The Ruby Key by Holly Lisle

2008-11-13T13:11:00.003-05:00

- First an aside - I haven't reviewed in a great while. I may post on some reasons why but I haven't decided yet. We'll see how this goes. I'll try to be more conscious of editing now and in the future (mostly because I'm embarrassed at all the typos already in the blog)-

I came across this book in a rather strange fashion. I was looking at a Collectible Card Game specifically for the art. I ran across an artist I really liked, went to his website, saw that he had done a cover for a juvenile fiction book that had just come out and decided to read it. Yes, I picked up a book purely based on cover art. I had no expectations.

It was good. It was quite good. It's the first of a series (DAMMIT). It's high fantasy. If I had to super simplify it I would say it's a book about Fairies and humans, but not exactly, and it's the not exactly that makes it stand out and makes it original and worth reading. So let me quote:

Mankind is Sunkind
And rules by the Light;
Nightlings are Moonkind,
And rule in the Night;
Or there will be War.

That was enough to hook me. Thirty pages in and the author had the world built, the main characters (brother and sister) established, and the Dilemma well moving (Mother is ill, and Uncle wants us dead, HOLY MOLEY the reason). It was fast paced without feeling rushed. You were pulled along with the characters who were forced to be More Than Children, but struggled with it in believable ways.

I could say it was a familair fantasy formula, and to certain degrees it was, but that did not detract from it at all. The construction of it was orginal and there were enough twists and uncertainties that it was never truly predictable. I was prepared for the resolution to come along certain lines, but there were enough variables that I never really knew how it was going to end.

It's definately worth reading for fantasy fans. I'm seeing it shelved as Young Adult, though I am referring to it as Juvenile, so it's probably an inbetweener - for reference I would say younger than Sabriel, older than The Dark Is Rising, just as dark as both.

Memorable quote:

"...and somewhere in the Great Book of Common Sense, which I clearly have never read..."

Other things:
The book is printed in purple type. I have no idea why.
There is a talking cat. It's forgivable.
This books has hands down the best "negotiate with a fairy(-like immortal)" I have ever read. This is usually a big pet peeve of mine that interferes with my enjoyment of a story, but this author handled it beautifully and how I would expect characters to act knowing how untrustworthy these creatures are.

I'm Not Sure Why Leila Hasn't Posted About This

2007-02-13T11:39:00.000-05:00

But, OH MY GOD she got mentioned in School Library Journal! That's so cool! Congratulations! Is this a congratulatory thing? I have no idea, but it's really cool!

A few other folks that are familair also got mentioned so congrats to them as well, but I'm really excited for Leila, because I know her and she got mentioned in a magazine so I'm not only excited for her that she got mentioned, I'm excited that I know someone who got mentioned in a magazine. Hmmm, yeah, I'll stop babbling now.

Now I can send her the cool book I found as a "congrats gift" rather than a kind of weird "I saw this and you HAD to have it gift".

I promise I'll get to the post office soon.

Now, I'm Pissed

2007-02-10T23:47:00.000-05:00

OK, I haven't been reviewing lately. I haven't really read much that has made me stand up and go "WOW" (well, maybe one or two things) or anything that has pissed me off enough to throw it across the room...

Until now.

I've been slogging through a lot, and I mean A LOT of the paranormal chic books. You know the ones I'm talking about. The vamp bounty hunter books, the shifter books, the basically "Well Laurell K and Buffy are so popular, let's publish all these others and see if we can get rich" books. I got to the point where some one would mention on of these series and I couldn't remember if I read them or not, so I'm basically in the process of making a road map of them.

So, here I am, recovering from a migraine, reading my newest random pick, Mona Lisa Awakening by Sunny (yeah, yeah, the singular author name really should have been a clue). It got decent reviews in Romatic Times and is PLASTERED with "if you like Laurell K and Anne Bishop you'll love this". Not that this is huge praise these days. Just about every paranormal book with a female main character now is marketed as "if you like Laurell you love" but I like Anne Bishop and most folks don't pay much attention to her.

So, what do I find? A book that is based up on the concept of another race/species separate from human (I won't even get into that they're from the moon) that centers on males serving Queens. Gosh, that sounds so much like my favorite series The Black Jewels, but I'll read a bit more, and reserve judgement. Turns out, the main character is a Queen and gee, also a healer. Wow, that sounds just like the main character from Black Jewels. And we meet another Queen named Janelle, who is the chief healer of these "mooninites". Alright, Janelle is sort of a popular fantasy name, I won't call foul just yet despite the fact THAT'S THE NAME OF THE MAIN CHARACTER IN THE BLACK JEWELS. And then we meet and very random side character named Tersa. Tersa? Not a common name at all. As a matter of fact I've only seen that name one other place. AS A VERY IMPORTANT CHARACTER IN BLACK JEWELS.

OH MY FUCKING GOD I'M READING FAN FICTION.

From Mona Lisa:

"We are drawn to Queens," Amber replied. "It is our nature to desire to serve you, protect you. We require your warmth, you presence, as much as you require our strength. She is the Queen I have dreamt all my life of serving."

From various passages in The Black Jewels Trilogy:

"Just once, I'd like to serve a Queen I could respect, someone I could truly believe in. A strong Queen who wouldn't fear my strength. A Queen I could also call a friend."

"For Blood males, the First Law is to honor, cherish and protect. The second is to serve. The third is to obey."

Jaenelle is referred to often as "Dreams Made Flesh" in The Black Jewels Trilogy.

So basically, we have the same social concept (not the same world or story because Mona Lisa takes place in our modern day world and the Black Jewels takes place in its own original fantasy world) , but Bishop writes far better.

And the dedications page finally got me:

"And special thanks to Laurell K. Hamilton and Anne Bishop, whose wonderful stories inspired my Monere Children of the Moon series."

Just because you thank someone, doesn't make it OK to steal their work. Fans of Laurell and Anne will not like this because they don't want the same story they've come to love stolen and poorly rewritten (That's why so many fans of LKH have already stopped buying her work.).

I can't believe this got published. It's nothing more than concepts, names, ideas and almost full phrases cobbled together from various LKH and Bishop work to make a very poorly written attempt at semi-erotica paranormal fiction. I say semi because it's chock full of queasy sex scenes, that can't decide if they want to be graphic/raunchy or romantic-euphemized and numerous near rapes. Just what I love in my erotica.

Edited to address severe flaws:

The Monere (mooninites) have been living on earth for 4 millenia, yet they have neither integrated themselves with humans, nor seem to know anything about them. One of the 150 year olds didn't know what cheese was.
They derive no joy or pleasure from mating with humans yet there are enough Mixed Bloods running around to require Queens to keep midwives on hand to dump unwanted mixed offspring off at local orphanges. And if therey're working in the damn sex industry, birth control anyone?
The Queens are TERRIFIED at the idea of one of their males going rogue and raping them, yet they seem to encourage that behavior in their society. There is no law against raping a Mixed Blood (they keep them around as servants) and folks just stand around and watch. Also atleast two of the Queens encouraged their males to rape other woman.
Halcyon, the demon dead High Prince of Hell. HE MAKES NO DAMN SENSE IN THE CONTEXT OF THIS BOOK. He only makes sense in the context of concepts swiped from the Black Jewels books, where the demon dead were explained and made sense and the High Lord of Hell, Saetan, played a main roll. Oh, and by the way, the physcal descriptions almost match.

EWW EWW EWW EWW EWW

2006-10-18T21:20:00.000-04:00

I could be blogging about books I've been reading, like I should be. I could be blogging about our upcoming move. I could even be going on and on about my level 60 troll rogue.

But no.

Instead I am writing about a sequel to THIS.

Yes! It's finding gross horrible bugs in my food Part Two!

Pizza. Three pieces in. Cockroach.

The Classics Rant

2006-08-17T10:40:00.000-04:00

This is in response to something over at Leila's blog. I just wanted a copy of it here in case I needed to find it again later.

I appreciate that you folks had good experiences and good teachers while learning the classics but I however did not, and I suspect that the article's author is speaking from an experience similiar to mine, or has a child with a similiar experience. I still have a knee-jerk reaction whenever someone tells me a book is a classic.

Tenth Grade: We had a book report due every two weeks. We had a list of classics to choose from expressly for these book reports. I remember maybe four books. That's 9 months of school, 2 books a month (vacation was not an excuse) and I remember maybe 4? We never talked about any of those selections. Also we read, as a class, 1984 and Juius Caesar. When we weren't handing in rough drafts of book reports, getting quizzed on vocab, or diagraming sentences, we were MEMORIZING passages from the classics being read as a class. That's two weeks at a time dedicated to 30 14-15 year olds getting up in front of the class and reciting Mark Antony's speech, which after the second stuttering rendition loses all meaning.

Eleventh Grade: American literature year in Shrewsbury. I remember reading Grapes of Wrath and Moby Dick. We never discussed the Great Depression or how it occured or the ramifications of it. We were quizzed. We were spoon fed that Moby Dick was a story about revenge, and were not allowed to come to any conclusions about it ourselves.

Twelfth Grade: Oh, this one was my favorite. I had one of the best teachers, by reputation, in the school. I was taking AP english. I thought we'd be reading and discussing, finally, because wouldn't that be what a college course did? I was disappointed. We had quizzes 3-4 times a week, on what we should have read the night before. Mind you this does NOT include the constant that was the Friday vocab quiz. When we were't being qizzed, we were writing timed practice AP test essays about the diction or the syntax of our classics. So when did we have time to discuss these rather thickly written books (eg. Crime and Punishment)? We didn't. It seemed to be enough that we could name the characters on the quizzes.

In summary, I went to Art School not so much becasue I wanted to be an artist, but because I was sick of "reading" classics and being forced to regurgitate names and places and essays on the successful diction. Despite my love of reading I never wanted to have to read classics ever again. My high school experience almost killed my desire to read. I can't imagine what it did to those folks who already didn't like reading. So while, yes, there are ways to teach them well, for many it is not the norm. I share the author's opinion. If you can't teach classics well, don't teach them. Teach kids to love reading. Don't teach them that some books are more worth reading than others because of a label. Just let them read.

Heavy Metal and You - Christopher Krovatin

2006-08-01T14:32:00.000-04:00

I didn't think this book was going where it went and then it did, so I was kind of disappointed.

What that all means:

Heavy Metal Kid, Sam, starts dating preppy girl, Melissa. Personality wise, these two have no business dating, but they really seem to like each other and get along. Actually Sam is truly jazzed and excited in such an adorable way (this is how I know I'm old, I think teen boy in love is adorable - in a kitten eep kind of way) that this is what made me think the plot wasn't going to be reminiscent of a John Hughes movie, two incompatable people get together and are pushed apart by their different philosphies/life circumstances/asshole friends and then find some how to be togther anyway. This isn't really where the story went, but I was still just a little dissapointed.

Now that that's out of the way, umm, I thought the book was adorable, and I'm sure the author would be thrilled to hear me describe it that way. I finally understand what ya'll are talking about when you say 'literary crush'. I loved Sam. I'm willing to forgive the Holden thing, because his mix CDs were right on target, and his story pauses and rants were great. I was so pissed at Melissa for here reaction to the club incident. I thought what he did was awesome. I was happy where the book went in the end, and how in went there, though I will admit I was worried for a while.

It was good. Read it.

Leila's review.

Which Brings Me to You - Steve Almond and Julianna Baggot

2006-08-01T13:31:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure what to do with this one. This falls into the category of something I never would have picked up on my own but since Leila suggested it, I'd give it a try. The premise sounded interesting, two sort of fringe people meet up at a wedding and in lieu of a sexual encounter in the coat closet they decide to step back, and write each other letters (real writing on paper) of personal truths. It was not going to be a courtship through correspondences, it was going to be an exercise in confessions. Ok, still with it.

So what I expected was truths: silly beliefs, philosophies, what shapes a person, and how they came to them. Instead, what I got was a catologue of failed relationships. The first teen age relationships are cute and touching and those always fail and you feel for the characters. But when these same characters are in there late 20's and the relationships are still failing because of personal sabotages, poor descisions, and general ennui with life, it goes from funny to tedious, and just a little pathetic. Was I suppose to feel this? I'm really not sure.

Now saying all that, the writing was fantastic. The authors fall away and you do believe in the reality of Jane and John. Enmeshed into the, what I felt, sad storyline were these fantastic bits of imagery or descriptions that make me want to go read more of both these authors books, as long as they have nothing to do with relationships.

On the Violent Femmes:

I became an insufferable fan. I must have listened to the first album a thousand times, those dark, catchy anthems of the yodeling unlaid, the gospel music of the anguished suburban white boy.

On self knowledge:

Sometimes I would hold onto a simple object-a salt shaker, and aspirin bottle-and I'd envy how it knew its place, its role, its function. It's unbearable now to think how impressed I could be by the pleasurable self-knowledge of a light switch.

I loved the crafting of the language and the descriptions. I just could not take the failed relationship after failed realtionship and the self-absorbed psychoanalysis of the characters throughout each one. So I don't know what to do with this one. I couldn't stand the story, but I post-noted up huge amounts of the books because I loved the language.

Dearly Devoted Dexter - Jeff Lindsay

2006-07-26T13:44:00.000-04:00

OK this is the second time I've tried to sit down and review this book. I've figured out that I can't talk about this one without talking a bit about the first one, Darkly Dreaming Dexter. and maybe I can't even do that, because what I want to discuss will contain spoilers. So, damn it I'm back where I started.

I guess then I'll try to speak in generalities. First book: Loved it. I almost never go for mysteries or mystery thrillers. I don't know why, I just have never had the patience. I do not like based-on-reality gore/violence. Reading about serial killers and how they torture a victim, so far down on my list of what is OK to read as to be invisible. But Dexter is a different kind of serial killer. He's been "squared away" and sorted out by his foster father, who understood Dexter's brokenness and pointed it in a direction. Dexter goes after other serial killers, mostly those who prey on children. He is a force of vengence, and I'm strangely comfortable with that. What Dexter does is still just as horrific, and he is just as inhuman. Much of the book revolves around Dexter's mask of humanity, his attempt to blend in, which provides for quite the humorous observations and made Dexter a very likable character. I also found it rather hilarious that much of Darkly revolved around Dexter trying to figure out if he was crazy or not (well of course he is as he concedes, but is he 'that' kind of crazy).

Second book: Like it, but did not love it. It was very 'sitcom". We see less of Dexter the predator, who I had come to love, and we see more of Dexter the trying to play at human, albeit through very legitimate plot devices. The "girlfriend finding the ring and assuming it's a proposal" scene was a little much for me. I also still take issue with how the first book ended and there being not the fall out from it that I would have expected (this is where I have to be vague to avoid major spoilers). The ending to this one was also just a little too neat wrapped up in a nice little package. Perhaps I'm being too picky. I still enjoyed the book and really hope we will see more Dexter books in the near future.

Some quotes that were just plain priceless and why these books are so fun to read. I like Dexter's voice, and I enjoy that while on the surface he tries to blend in, but in his own head he just doesn't get it and has no capacity to care that he doesn't get it.

From Darkly:

"What was sleep, after all, but the process by which we dumped our insanity into a dark subconscious pit and came out on the other side ready to eat cereal instead of the neighbor's children?"

From Dearly:

"I found that if I limited myself to one or two beers, I could relax just enough to blend in with the slipcover on the couch."

"I knew nothing at all about love and I never would. It didn't seem like such a terrible lack to me, although it does make it difficult to understand popular music."

And for more info, Leila's reviews of Darkly and Dearly.

Fallen made into a TV show

2006-07-21T20:32:00.000-04:00

The YA book series by Thomos E. Sniegoski that begins with The Fallen has been turned into a TV series on ABC Family.

Mostly just interesting. The Fallen was pretty good as supernatural thrillers based on Christian beliefs/Angel Wars go.

Yes this is random

2006-07-21T13:59:00.000-04:00

I got to the end of Lamb and read the afterword. I immediately happened to start reading Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay, and caught the acknowledgments page where I made an interesting discovery. Christopher and Jeff share the same literary agent. Just thought that was cool. My and Jeremy's thanks go out to Nick Ellison for getting these authors published.

Lamb The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal - Christopher Moore

2006-07-21T13:30:00.000-04:00

I've talked about this book, I've recommended this book, this is the second time I've read it, so now it's time to comment on it.

Lamb describes Jesus' (actually Joshua in the Hebrew) life, all the missing stuff the Bible left out. It's fiction, it's humor, it's highly blasphemous, but it is also touching in a variety of ways. I read this book for the first time around the same time that Mel Gibson's The Passion came out. Lamb with its humor and completely ridiculous situations did more for my faith in the man that may have been The Christ than some horrible movie about how he was killed could ever have done. Yep, that's how I feel.

We follow Biff and Joshua as Josh tries to learn how to be the Messiah. Josh knows who and what he is, but he struggles to figure out what that means and what it means that he should do. As one can imagine it's quite the journey, both of self and across the ancient world. Biff offers not only comic relief, but also a look at the very human side The Christ.

Lamb was recommended to me by Jeremy's younger brother. This is the passage that was described to me that made me want to read it:
[scene takes place at the wedding in Cana, where Jesus turned water into wine]

Just then Joshua stumbled though the gate and crashed into us. We were able to catch ourselves and him before anyone fell. The Messiah was holding the little girl's pet bunny, hugging it to his cheek with the big back feet swinging free. He was gloriously drunk. "Know what?" Josh said. "I love bunnies. They toil not, neither do they bark. Henceforth and from now on, I decree that whenever something bad happens to me, there shall be bunnies around. So it shall be written. Go ahead Biff, write it down."

Now, come on. Have you ever heard a better reason of why there are bunnies related to Easter, the resurection of Christ?

Freaks Alive, on the Inside - Annette Curtis Klause

2006-07-18T13:19:00.000-04:00

Off the top of my head, I can give atleast 6 reasons why this book will get banned. Of course, that's only if anyone bothers to actually read it.

It was pretty OK. I liked Klause's other books better. I keep having the feeling like this book is written for a younger audience, though what is making me feel that way given the 'bannable content' in it I have no idea. At it's heart it is Historical Fiction, taking place in 1899, but unlike many YA books in this genre, it doesn't read like a history lesson at all. It's rather fantastic in this respect. The main character belongs to a family/troupe of performing 'freaks', human oddities in other words, though he himself has no such oddities about him. Given that set up there is a lot about predujice and judgment of folks based on appearance, but again not of the frying pan variety. Our hero runs away to find his fortune and finds a great deal of adventure in the process. There is also the supernatural romance, which just gives the story an extra kick. It was very much in the style of a fairy tale.

Lots of action kept me pretty glued to the book. To me this is a very 'boy' book and I would not hesitate to recommend it as such. But be aware, there is swearing, vague sexual content, allusions to masturbation, murder, violence, but come one, the main character is a teenage boy, so all this stuff fits in with the story just fine. There is also great and accurate info about circus/side show life of this time period. It's what we've come to expect from Klause's work, good solid story, original characters and setting, good read. And a happy ending, which I was not expecting given the other books. Maybe that is what is making me feel like it's meant for younger readers. Huh, interesting thought, that.

Stuff I've been reading

2006-07-14T14:56:00.000-04:00

I promise I will document what has been going on, but not yet, I'm not ready to. I'm still having nightmares.

But, just to prove I haven't been completely slacking, though I kind of have, here's a list of stuff I've read/been reading in no particular order.

Jim Butcher

Storm Front
Fool Moon
Grave Peril

I only got through book 3 of the Dresden files. I have book 4, but really haven't been interested enough to read it. I really like the world Butcher creates, but truthfully, I can't stand Harry Dresden. He comes of as arrogant and yet too stupid to live. It's seriously impressive. I would love these books if Harry would just die. The folklore system is original and I love all the dumb geek pop culture references and I love Bob. Harry just gets in the way to me, and it's just sad. Saying that though, I have no prolem recommending these to folks who are fans of the paranormal mystery genre becasue I'm pretty sure my issues with Harry are just me.

Simon R. Green

Something From The Nightside

I was casting about for another series of paranormal mysteries (seems a popular trend these days) and this series came up. It's perfectly servicable, but I should NOT have read the Amazon reviews. On reviewer complained that the author constantly used the phrase "in the Nightside". He does. I may not have been as bothered if I hadn't been somewhat looking for it, but as it was it became glaring and almost comical how often that phrase was used. If you can get past that though, this is a very original look at a dark para-dimension that we in the normal world can sometimes slip into. My other issue however is it is EXTREMELY unclear what the series order is. It is not marked ANYWHERE on the books. That alone was enough for me to not bother reading further than the first book.

Lilith Saintcrow

Working for the Devil

Sound like a made up pen name? Yeah, does to me too. I ran across this title in my grandmother's copy of Romantic Times Book Club Magazine. I don't care what anyone says, this is one of the best review magazines for genre fiction I have ever read. Obviously, they center on romance and books with romantic subplots, but still. They are extremely thorough and TRUTHFUL. If a books sucks, they tell you and then explain why. They are not like Publisher's Weekly who seem to give every popular book a good review.
As far as this book is concerned, it was pretty OK. I'd probably read more by this author or about this character. It is a paranormal mystery. The Devil is in it. The main character is a Necromancer. There is a romantic subplot. It does not take place in our world. I had some problems with the other world thing at the begining, there were some sci-fi tendencies that were bugging me, but those issues eventually faded as the story got moving.

Edward Lee

City Infernal

This book was describe in some review, I have no idea where now, as an X-rated Neverwhere. I really still have no idea what that means. CI was very, very grusome. It is about a teen who, for various reasons, goes to Hell to find her twin sister who commited suicide. This is not a pretty or romantic vision of Hell. It is about as horrific as one can imagine. Rather well done I think too. The writing is certainly nothing to rave about, but the story was interesting and kept me reading. Despite the severe, and I do mean severe, content, I could see handing this book to older male teens. You know, those ones who end up with a bizzare fascination with serial killers for reasons I will never understand. It's like the teen version of the trucks or dinosaur phase.

Susan Sizemore

I Burn for You
I Thirst for You
I Hunger for You
Master of Darkness

If you couldn't already tell, these are romance books. Cheesy covers and all. I really have no excuse for these other than my grandmother told me to check them out. They are vampire books. But they are also very standard formula romance books. I admit, the vampire lore in these is very original and well constructed, we just don't see whole lot of it. I will pick up the next one comingout this month. They are very good vampire candy, if that's all you expect from them.

Anne Bishop

Sebastian

First book in a new series. Doesn't hold a candle to the Black Jewels trilogy, but and interesting new world from Bishop. I will be checking out the rest of the series when it comes out. Yes, the main character is a half-Incubus.

Jeff Lindsay

Darkly Dreaming Dexter

I loved it. This was fantastic and I have been telling everyone I know to read it.

It must be nice

2006-07-14T14:30:00.000-04:00

This little thought of mine is vaguely related to the discussion of The Giving Tree over on Leila's blog.

While working at The Monkey I could help but think how nice it must be to have your favorite book as a child, the book that you always will remember with fondness, still be in print. To have it be so popular that it will never disappear.

For whatever reason these are my 2 favorite books from childhood:

The Great Green Turkey Creek Monster by Jim Flora - 1976

In the Peanut Butter Colony by Louis Ross and Margot Apple - 1979

Books under scrutiny

2006-03-16T14:41:00.000-05:00

In the wake of James Frey's memoir turning out to be fiction, it seems that more and more books are being poked at to see if they stand up to the pressure.

Now, Dan Brown has been accused of plagiarism but for the most part has been denying any possiblility of such a act. Atleast until I read this article.

I'm not sure I care. I have no interest in Dan Brown's works. I'm more interested in the book industry trend. Maybe editors will actually have to start to work again. Who knows?

Not really excited about this

2006-03-10T11:34:00.000-05:00

LKH's Anita Blake books are being made into a monthly comic books series.

I really liked the books. I was with her up until about Narcissus in Chains. I even was intrigued by plot developements in Incubus Dreams. But I just no longer have faith that these plots wont just be dropped, like so many others have in her books. I won't even buy the latest book, I just don't care anymore. And I especially don't care about the character featured in the latest novelette (hate that term).

I'm really sad that the series didn't hold up as it grew.

I feel I owe an explanation

2006-02-27T13:52:00.000-05:00

Why have I been so absent from posting for about 4 months? Well, I could blame it on World of Warcraft, but, really that's only a coping (or hiding) mechanism. I admit, I haven't been reading, and I know that's a bad sign, but I've been choosing to ignore it. It's been hard to find joy in anything these days. My grandmother's dying. It's pretty official at this point.

I've been bouncing over to New York as much as possible to spend as much time as I can with her. Needless to say I was very pissed that I got two very bad colds, one during Christmas that prevented me form spending almost anytime with her then.

The short of it is, the breast cancer she beat about 8 years ago came back. It moved into her bones, lungs, pancreas and ovaries. It's not responding to radiation and chemo. At all.

Somehow, I've been designated the strong one in this situation. My mother completely can't deal. She's not only losing her step-mother, but also her best friend. They (used to) shop together, trade shopping bags full of books back and forth, gossip about the family. Yet, I'm the one the used booksellers, the libray volunteers are quietly approaching and asking "What did the doctor's say?" and "How's she doing?" The only answer to these questions being "It's not good." I get to watch them try to hold back the tears same as I've been trying to do.

She has decided to stop with the chemo meds. They are making her sick and too tired. She is the kind of lady who would get up at 5 a.m. and paint the garage, wash the car, do the laundry, work in the garden and read 2-3 books all by 10 a.m. so the loss of energy has been devastating to her. Her doctors keep telling her there are about a dozen more chemos they could try, but they can't prove that any will actually help. She doesn't want to be a guinea pig, as she says. She is choosing quality of life over time.

She is buying hardcovers because she doesn't have time to wait for the paperbacks.

She is pissed that she won't get to read the last Harry Potter book.

She is leaving me her car, and wonders why I don't seem excited about it.

Leila, I wish you could meet her, but there is no way she'd let me bring someone new to meet her, because she is too embarrassed by how she looks right now. All her hair is gone and she's lost a huge amount of weight.

That's about all I have to say.

Vanyel, the last Herald-Mage part 2

2006-02-27T12:57:00.000-05:00

Since I started reviewing and keeping track of juvenile and YA books (which started in earnest when working for the Monkey) I have not been able to read ANYTHING with out evaluating it. Whether this is good or bad, it's true. So, there is one more thing about this series, and about this author that I want to bring up. Vanyel is gay. The hero of this semi-epic fantasy story is gay.

I really couldn't figure out how to fit that bit of info into the review, mainly because his being gay has no bearing to me on whether or not I liked the series/story. But, it occurs to me when faced with a customer/patron who would like to read books about gay characters this and other books by Mercedes Lackey would be good picks. In several of her books, especially her Valdemar books, there are gay and lesbian main and supporting characters. They're there living their lives, saving the country and it's just normal. Yes, there are still conflicts. In Vanyel's case his family had a very difficult time accepting that he was gay, he was first-born male to a landholder and was supposed to get married, have heirs and take over the land. But his becoming a Herald-Mage was also difficult for his family to deal with, but in a different way. Vanyel spent a great deal of time trying to figure out who he was in relationship to those around him because he was gay, but even more because he was the most powerful Mage in history.

The other reason I wanted to bring this up is I can't think of any other high fantasy books where the main characters are gay. It seems to be somewhat common in sci-fi, but seriously, I can't think of any other high fantasy. It's just part of my internal list making and databasing I would like fleshed out. Can anyone help me out here?

The Last Herald-Mage series - Mercedes Lackey

2006-02-23T16:56:00.000-05:00

So, this is what I recently chose for comfort reading, so, heck, I'll review it. Someone may find this useful.

I dig Mercedes Lackey. A lot of hardcore fantasy readers would disagree with me, but screw them, this is my blog. I dig her because the worlds she creates are interesting and original, her characters are pretty well developed and you care for them, her magic systems feel original but are still very familiar and graspable (sure, that's a word).

Reasons why folks have complained to me about her included he need to pair her characters up romatically, just about everyone gets a significant other at some point in her books. But that's cool, there's nothing wrong with romance. Also, good and evil in her books are very black and white. Good is always very noble and self sacrificing, evil is always, well, evil, and usually pretty one dimentional (and ocasionally somewhat faceless). There is no grey in her stories. Not a huge problem either, just something to be aware of and prepared for. If you want a deep thoughtful evil, these aren't the books for you.

This particular triolgy is somewhat ancient history of a bigger collection of works, her Valdemar series. It's the story of a hero. As it's called the *Last* Herald-Mage, we also know that it going to be a tragedy. So, yes, I spent 3 days on my couch reading these sobbing. It was good.

-more later-

Grand & Humble - Brent Hartinger

2006-02-23T16:48:00.000-05:00

I can't review this book. In order to review I would have to tell you what it's about. If I tell you what it's about I ruin it.

So, here's the solution. Go read it. Don't argue with me. Go buy a copy of it and read it. Seriously. Brent hasn't written a bad book. Go read it.

When everyone's read it, we'll discuss.

Go read it.

OK, Fine

2005-11-16T13:19:00.000-05:00

Subtitile: Why I think Lelia's should spend her limited reading time on more worthy books (like The Garden) than the Charlaine Harris Vamp series.

Now, I read this like 3 years ago, and I didn't finish it because I thought it sucked, so this review is probably going to be a bit lacking. My apologies.

So, it started off well enough. The main character is some flavor of psychic, in that she can hear other folks thoughts. Ok, cool. This 'talent' of her's makes her pretty skittish about being around other people, it's noise, noise, noise all the time. Strangely enough though, she's a waitress in a bar. I don't remember how the author justified this decision. She also lives with her grandmother, the only cool character in the book.

For various reasons, she rescues a vampire from blood harvesters. Vamp blood in this world has healing properties, and people trap and drain vampires and sell the blood on the black market. Vamps are legal people, but viewed with extreme predjudice. Still, basically interesting premises, and holding my attention. It turns out that the vamp is completly silent to her, she can't remotely hear his thoughts, and she finds this comforting, and the unlikely romance between the two begins. We enter dangerous territory in a vamp book as far as I'm concerned. When the author decides if this is still an horror/mystery, or if the book is going to be a supernatural romance. (bear with me, there are cetain 'formulas' of romance that I abhor, that completely turn me off of books, no matter what else is going on in them)

There is some conflict between Sookie and her family over land ownership (I think, possibly inheritance, can't remember) that leads to a very strained relationship between her and her brother(?, possibly a cousin). Basically extremely obvious murder set up stuff. This is where the details are really fuzzy, as I don't remember the timeline of the events. The grandmother is killed. The GRANDMOTHER. The only character that I liked! And quite honestly, it seemed really unecessary. It felt so much like purely a plot device to rope Sookie in the main plot of the book. There were already other murders happening. It seriously pissed me off. Of course, it looks like a vamp kill, etc., etc.

Other stuff that put me off:

We meet a group of "evil" vamps. We know they're evil because they hang out in a bar/club and wear SPANDEX. Why the hell do authors think 1) Spandex says evil?; 2) Spandex is acceptable club wear anymore?; 3) Spandex is 'fetish' wear (yeah, if you have an 80's fetish)? 4) Spandex is sexy? Apparently the undead have no taste, and that's why they're evil, inflicting spandex upon the world. I say this like I've seen this device before? Well, I have. Too many times.

This is one of those romance formulas that I was talking about earlier that will make me run screaming from a book, so I admit this is a personal taste thing:

Sookie is a virgin. Not a teen virgin. An adult virgin. Her thought hearing is so severe that she could never be intimate with anyone. OK.....kind of with you, sort of. So, she sleeps with her new vamp buddy, because he's so quiet, in one of those ridiculous romance scenes of "I'm a virgin please be gentle with me I've never been with anyone before, but you're so different" CRAP that I HATE. And this amazingly touching sex scene of Sookie losing her vriginity and finally being able to lose herself in another person LASTS FOR A PAGE AND A HALF. This incredibly important and life altering moment in Sookie's life is given a page and a half. I really don't like the "I'm a virgin and so this sex is more justified and meaningful" romance world crap. I don't find anything romantic about virginity. But the fact that the author was so disrepectful of this moment to give it only a page and a half was offensive. And before you ask, no, it wasn't and off camera sex scene. I would have been fine with an off camera sex scene. If you are not confident enough as an author to write a good sex scene (whether in just the details of it, or fearing backlash from your audience), you should move it off camera and give your characters some respect in doing so.

It was an interesting world, despite the characters. It was really too bad it lost me in the details. Unfortunatly, this is the most highly recommended other series for fans of the Anita Blake books. I don't agree with this at all.

Rock On Pennsylvania!

2005-11-09T12:39:00.000-05:00

Dover voters oust intelligent design supporters.

The Plucker - Brom

2005-11-08T16:02:00.000-05:00

Once in a great while a book gets published that is so different, so beautiful, so completely perfect that aquiring it and reading it just makes everthing OK again. The Plucker was this kind of book for me.

I love fairy tales. I love stories about the dark side of childhood. I love stories that are original, yet tap that deep well of beliefs and superstitions inside of us and make us feel this is somehow familiar so must be true on some level and we start watching the shadows a little more closely.

The Plucker is an illustrated book for adults. Not a graphic novel. It is a picture book. It is a fairy tale, but a dark, dark one, so not so appropriate for the younglings. It is a horror story, evil comes, evil kills and destroys, and evil perverts what it touches. It is a fairy tales, so evil is defeated, but with a high cost. The toys will never be the same.

I'm not going give a summary, or get into what the story is about, you can read for yourself on the website. The book is beautiful. I don't know who will like it besides me. I know I have dark tastes, but this book it worth being aware of, and certainly worth a read if you're ready for it.

Perfect - Natasha Friend

2005-11-08T14:46:00.000-05:00

I read this book just before we moved. I'm not sure why I wanted to read it at the time, other than I had yet to read a YA novel that dealt with eating disorders. I've learned a lesson here. Do not pick a book at random purely based on topic.

The gist of the story: Main character is discovered throwing up by her little sister and in the way of little sisters informs mother. Mother "makes a deal" with main character. Main character is forced to go to an eating disorders group. Seems pretty good as a start. Main character meets 'the most popular girl in school' in said support group and learns that even folks who seem perfect have problems. Ok, still with you Ms. Friend, even if this is a little heavy handed. We have several, rather graphic, passages describing the binging and purging motions both girls go through, supporting each other as they become closer friends, and even new ways to do it and ways to hide it from others. Graphic is good with a subject matter like this. It puts the reader right there, so kudos Ms. Friend.

So, what my issue? You all know me well enough to realize that this is leading up to a "what the hell". Well, remember that they're in a support *group*, which implies that there are other girls dealing with these issues? All we get of those girls is a name tag at the beginning of the story, and rather demeaning descriptions (the Skeleton, the Whale). We never find anything else about those other girls, they are simply wallpaper. Also, for a book about eating disordes there is very little talk about body image. There are a hand full of "oh, I hate my body"'s, but it's more as if the author is paying lip service to the disorder rather than bothering to delve into the psychology of it. We have instead a plot line in which we find out that Isabelle's dad has died, and her mother is refusing to deal with the death, and therefore not allowing the girls to deal. Binging and purging is Isabelle's way of "dealing", it's something she can control. Fine. Bullemia is a disorder that has roots in trying to control things that are out of one's control. But to suggest, as this books does, that that all it's about is irresponsible. Isabelle confronts her mother, they bleed the old wound, and finally deal with the death, and Isabelle GETS ALL BETTER. She stops "feeling the need" to vomit. It is implied that if her "perfect" friend would just deal with her home situation, she will get better too. But she's just not ready yet, and so continues the behavior. There is no mention of the bonecrushing self esteem issues that can cause girls (and boys) to have eating disorders. It's as if the author herself was in denial that self image plays a huge role in eating disorders, and I found that rather disturbing.

I would not recommend this book. I might recommend using it as a supplement to something that discussed body image, because the 2 messages together make up a whole. But Perfect by itself feels like it missed the point, or was simply too afraid to go there. It was strange.

Looking For Jake - China Miéville (Guest Blog)

2005-11-06T22:09:00.000-05:00

Hiya! This is a "special edition" guest blog from Chrissy's husband, Jeremy. I've just read Looking for Jake, which Chrissy said she was sadly not going to have time to review, but wanted a review for it.

There were a couple surprises waiting for me to discover:

This is a book of short stories that I actually enjoyed. No, really.
The author, China Mieville, is a guy. That was only semi-related to the name - I didn't discover the gender bit until the very end, when I read the 'about the author'.

The collection is 14 short stories, for some reason labeled as science fiction, likely due to the fact that, well, they're really weird.

How weird?

I won the lottery!
I mean, I didn't win the lottery. But I was one of a bunch of runners-up, and it was a peach of a prize. An invitation to a special, licenced Christmas™ party in the centre of London, run by YuleCo itself.
When I read the letter I was shaking. This was YuleCo, so it would be the real deal. There'd be Santa™, and Rudolph™, and Mistletoe™, and Mince Pies™, and a Christmas Tree™, with presents underneath it.

- from 'Tis the Season

Some of them I was a bit indifferent to (including the title piece), because they started a bit interesting, but would then either fizzle or go somewhere stupid. Even those, however, had some neat ideas (also including the title piece).

But, boy, the ones that are good, are GOOD.

"Reports of Certain Events in London" details the events that follow after our lead receives incorrectly addressed mail from the 'Brotherhood of Watchers of the Viae Ferae', a secret society that tracks roaming feral streets and the battles between them.

"Entry Taken From a Medical Encyclopedia" details "Buscard's Murrain", a curious literary disease, also mentioned in The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases.

"Details" is creepy. Really really creepy. I'm now trying to avoid ever staring at anything for too long:

     "I opened my eyes fully, for the first time.
     "I had chosen an old wall. I was looking for the answer to some question that I told you I can't even remember now, but the question wasn't the main thing. That was the opening of my eyes.
     "I stared at the whole mass of the bricks. I took another glance, relaxed my sight. At first I couldn't stop seeing the bricks as bricks, the divisions as layers of cement, but after a time they became pure vision. And as the whole broke down into down into lines and shapes and shades, I held my breath as I began to see.
     "Alternatives appeared to me. Messages written in the pockmarks. Insinuations in the forms. Secrets unraveling. It was bliss.
     "And then without warning my heart went tight, as I saw something. I made sense of the pattern.
     "It was a mess of cracks and lines and crumbling cement, and as I looked at it, I saw a pattern in the wall.
     "I saw a clutch of lines that looked just like something... terrible - something old and predatory and utterly terrible - staring right back at me.
     "And then I saw it move."

But the best, the one that's kinda stickin' with me when I look out into the dark or catch a reflection, is The Tain. This won the Locus Award for Best Novella. Good. It's a story about post-apocalyptic London that has been overrun by Imagos, bringing about what could be the end of humankind.

The only technical bit of the story, but it's so deliciously complex, I had to look up some references after reading it:

     There is something called the Phong Model, Sholl said. It's a graph. It's a model to show how light moves. The shinier the surface, the more precise and bright the reflected light, the narrower the range in which it can be seen. The model used to describe how light bounced off concrete and paper and metal and class, its angle of specular reflection narrowing, approximating the angle of incidence, its bright sport brightening, as the surfaces became more mirrored.
     But something happened, and now Phong describes a turning key.
     It used to be a sliding scale. Asymptotic. An endless approximation to infinity or zero. It's become a threshold. As the reflected brightness grows more precise, as its angle of exit narrows to more closely mimic its entry, it's approaching an edge, it is becoming a change of state, he said. Until a critical moment is reached: until light meets the sheen of a gloss surface, and everything alters, and the light unlocks a door, and what was a mirror becomes a gate.
     Mirrors became gates, and something came through.

It bounces between two different characters: the human, 'Sholl', who is trying to make sense and survive, but has a plan; an unnamed Imago who gives us insight (and history, but the quote's insight):

I have seen my people debased. Entities more powerful than your moon made to smear scarlet wax and fat on peeling lips, lick it off lumpy teeth, made to preen with you. Bulked into spasming fibrous meat and mutely raising and lowering iron bars, without complaint, unable to complain, as you stared at yourselves, at them, made to wear your sweat-wet clothes and jostle mindlessly from machine to machine as you worked to change you shapes. You have put mirrors by your beds, or over them, and trapped my people in your clammy fuck-embraces. You made us fuck each other, stare at the eyes of our siblings with shared hatred and apology as the bodies you made us wear did the corporeal things you did.
For six thousand years, and forever, you have held us down. Each of us alive and watching, and waiting, and waiting, undying all that time. You didn't know, but not knowing is no excuse. And you have taken our freedom away in slow increments, until in a sudden flurry of three centuries you sped it all up, and took away our last escapes, and made our world yours.
One day, we whispered. We had whispered it forever.
When it came, the time was not one day but many, stretched out over months, a luxuriant, languorous release, in pieces, in parts and parcels, and the more infuriating but ultimately the more wonderful, liberatory, for that.

So, all in all a good read, but definitely dark. A strange uplifting dark. Read it, but prepare for it to leave a strangely pleasurable melancholy taste.

So, yeah, I took a little break

2005-10-31T10:45:00.000-05:00

I needed it.

The move was horrendous. Three days of scheduled movers and three days of them not showing up or not showing up on time. Three flights of stairs, 29 boxes of books - that's why we hired movers. Even when Jeremy and I were moving the smaller stuff in my legs gave out going up the stairs to the new place. That point where you are 4 steps from the tops and your thighs just won't take weight anymore.

I quit my job at the library. The "you're not suppose to talk to the patrons" comment was really the final straw. The "please don't schedule me for weekday afternoons" and then working an entire month of weekday afternoons was just the nails in the coffin.

This past October 13th I turned 30. I did not deal well with this. My mom took me clothes shopping shortly there after, and I found myslef thinking "I can't shop in the juniors section anymore, I'm 30." So I proceeded to shop in the grown up section and was reminded why I shop in the juniors section. Frock-coat style cardigan in grown up section: $85; frock-coat style cardigan in juniors section: $25; having to buy large and extra-large junior sizes because my boobs are too big (is this supposed to button?): priceless. [For those who did not know me before I met Jeremy and got healthy, I used to wear juniors sizes small and 0. Often those sizes were too big.]

I've been mostly comfort reading, so it's stuff I'm not going to review. I've got a small To Be Read pile built up, which I will probably start on this week sometime. I've also gone back to playing World of Warcraft, which is still addictive, but more under control than it was last year.

Oh, one last thing. My GYN doctor has officially told me that getting pregnant will probably be helpful to my chronic girly issues. He's encouraging us to hurry up and get moving on that front. -.-

What Vampire Are You?

2005-09-08T22:14:00.000-04:00

You scored as Akasha. You are the ultimate in ambition. You don't just want to own the world you want to make crawl to you on its hands and knees begging for mercy or at the least a taste!

Akasha - 100%
Blade - 92%
Dracula - 92%
Marius - 83%
Armand - 58%
Spike - 50%
Deacon Frost - 42%
Lestat - 33%
Angel - 25%
Louie - 17%

Whose your Vampire personality? (images)
created with QuizFarm.com

Sandpiper - Ellen Wittlinger

2005-09-06T09:56:00.000-04:00

So, after and while reading Rainbow party, I was casting about for a book on a similiar topic but, obviously, with a better message. Sandpiper came up on my radar (hmmm...too much time hanging around geeks?) so I gave it a try. Oh and also obviously, Doing It has so far beat anything else hands down, but it's also very guy-centric, and whether that really matters I was keeping my eyes peeled for a girly or a combo book.

Truthfully this book centers more on reputation than it does on actual sex. There's no sex in the book only the, well, social results. It was an interesting angle. But I'll get more into that momentarily. First, it's well written, unlike some books we might mention. It's full of angsty goodness, which was just fun to read.

It was one of those nights when the sky gets all streaky with orange, and the sun is radioactively red. From the cemetery you can look down over the sailboats in the harbor and all the old houses along Front Street with gardens full of tall flowers just comming out. Hammond seemed really pretty from up there, like a town anybody would love to live in. From a distance you couldn't see each individual jerk who made your life suck.

And some of the descriptions were just priceless.

Meryl McKee took a step back. She probaly didn't want anyone to think she was actually conversing with a bad influence such as me. Meryl is barfingly perfect: always gets As and keeps her skinny legs glued together like Popsicle sticks.

Between the chapters was poetry 'written' by the main character. While poetry's not really my thing I always appreciate little touches like this that good authors put in which just makes for a better crafted book.

Black sheep wear white shirts
So that when they dance
Under the black light
They look beautiful too.

And despite the seemingly obvious reference, THERE ARE NO GOTHS IN THIS BOOK. And it would have been really easy for the author to throw them in. We have two loner characters with issues which could easily have been morphed into the stereotype. I want to hug the author for not jumping on that bandwagon.

Now back to the content. As I said, there is no actual sex in this book. The main character is actually still a virgin, but only performs 'certain acts'. Her reasoning behind why she was so into that was very well done, and made sense. Her deterioating social standing, for lack of a better phrase, felt very realistic for a high school scenario, heck for any judgemental social scenario. It also adressesed the climate of a "she got what she deserved because of what she was" mentality. The author made it VERY clear in a number of ways that this was not the message, only a very disturbing attitude that had to be dealt with. (I'm being purposely vague. It's sort of obvious where the book intends to go, but that still no reason to give everything away.)

It's a good book. I'm still a little unsure how I feel about the message. The character wanted to change how people viewed her, and it was quite clear how truly hard that was going to be. But it brought up really good issues.

Second opinions please.

Rainbow Party - by Paul Ruditis

2005-08-25T11:53:00.000-04:00

First of all, this is the most controversial book in young adult literature right now. Bookstores have opted to only sell it through their online businesses, and there is not a library shelved copy in the entire state of Massachusetts (the one I read came from CWMARS, not from a specific library in my system). For those of you who are wondering why is it so controversial, please see this definition from the Urban Dictionary.

There is a great deal of debate as to wheather the term 'rainbow party' existed before Oprah's October 2003 show "Is Your Child Living a Double Life?". Personally, I have never heard the term before, and my very thorough dictionaries of sexual terms, The Big Book of Filth and The Bald Headed Hermit and the Artichoke, have no entries even hinting at such a thing (and I would like to point out that the BBoF, first released in 1999, has entries like "Russian salad party [1950s-60s] an orgy in which everyone is drenched in baby oil". Somehow, I think that if 'rainbow party' had been a real term, they would have included it.)

Anywho...

As far as the book is concerned many folks are deciding that its poor quality of writing is enough of an excuse to not include in aquisitions or make it worth defending. While I agree that the writing is quite simplistic and honestly not very good, I have read MUCH WORSE and I don't see this as a good enough reason. The authors insistance of naming all the character after colors was rather annoying though.

Now we get to the content of the book. It's about teens having sex. Plain and simple. There are no two ways around it. This is enough to get a lot of folks in a tizzy. It's not actually about a 'rainbow party' happening, but the planning of one, and how it causes several teens to examine their own sexual choices. It actually brings up many really good issues including, abstinance, love, reciprocation, STD's, reputation, pregnancy, is oral cheating, and a few others. I think this book could easily be used as a jumping off point for a very good and very frank discussion of sex and its role in relationships. And I felt this way until I got to the end of the book. And then I slept on it. The next morning a rage of monumental proportions decended upon me when the full message of the book hit me.

EVERY CHARACTER WHO HAD SEX IN THIS BOOK WAS PUNISHED IN SOME FORM.

I think that bears repeating. Every character who had sex in this book was punished, with STD's, unfaithful partners, or unplanned pregnancy. Even one of the character's ADULT sister did not escape this. Admittedly, most of these characters had unsafe sex, and the message of sex needs to be safe is important, but there where still NO positive examples of relationships with sex included in this story. The characters who had good relationships, of course abstained from sex and therefore were rewarded. I take issue with this message. I also take issue with the semi-abusive relationship involving a closeted gay male that was not resolved, he was simply punished with the rest of the degenerates. This is reason enough for me to not defend this book. I could forgive the heavy handed handling of the material, but I cannot forgive the "sex is bad, will always be bad, and if you have it something really horrible will happen to you" message. I don't like scare tactics, and I found them very unnecessary in a book that has all appearances of a very open and candid discussion of sex and teenagers.

OK, I think this one broke my brain

2005-08-23T10:43:00.000-04:00

Spanish Catholic Church ordains married priest

It sounded cool, and a step forward for the Catholic Church as a whole, until I read this passage:

In 1980, Pope John Paul allowed married Episcopal clergy to join the Catholic Church and serve as priests. After the Church of England decided to ordain women as priests in the early 1990s, several Anglican priests in Britain opposed to that move converted to Catholicism and the church modified its celibacy rule to admit the married clergymen.

Who, what, now?

Momo - by Michael Ende

2005-08-19T09:12:00.000-04:00

Read this book*. What ever you have to do to find it, read this book. Everyone who told you that it was one of their favorite books from childhood meant it.

Much like The Neverending Story, Momo is social commentary told in a fantasy set fable (is that redundant?). Where NE gives importance to imagination, Momo cherishes the time you have while you are here, not "saving" it so you can spend more and more time at work and less and less time with your family and taking pleasure in life. Intense simplification, but it's a fable.

The storytelling is beautiful. I found myself trying to explain to Jeremy what was the difference in my mind between a good writer and a good storyteller. Good writing captures you, pulls you along and makes you care, but it takes work and patience for the author to craft this. Good stroytelling to me just flows. It seems as if the author would be able to give a story whether he was sitting in front of you speaking off the cuff, or laboring over a keypad. Michael Ende strikes me as the latter. It seems as if I could just sit down in front of him and the most amazing thimgs would then be created. But that's just me.

The inside back book jacket cover says "...Mr. Ende has become a veritable publishing legend." Where the hell are the rest of his books Hmmmm!? Why have only TWO been translated and published here?!

*I'm not linking it. It's out of print and all the versions of it I can find pictures of are seriously ugly. I got it out of my library, and it's a very nice copy and harkens back to the original (german?) title The Grey Gentlemen. Go to your library. The screen commands you!

Buffalo Tree - Adam Rapp

2005-08-02T12:11:00.000-04:00

I was all set to defend this book. I really wanted to defend this book. I don't know if I can. I don't know if I can finish this book.

What's really bothering me, and feel free to chime in with comments/disagreements, is it doesn't feel accurate. I HATE that I'm agreeing with that woman, but I have to question the research.

For those of us who read Last Chance Texaco, we have a first hand account of what a last chance group home is like from Brent. And we know he worked at one for a period of time. I have a difficult time believing that the security in a juvenile PRISON would be less than that in a group home, eg. no bed checks every two hours, no complete lock down after lights out, apparently even no doors.

Also, do I really believe (especially after reading Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos) that 1, if ANYONE had lice that the entire population would not be de-loused and have their heads shaved, 2, that the prison would allow hat wearing let alone stolen hats with lice running rampant, and 3, that the kids who are setting watch each night (thanks to the complete lack of doors on their cells) are most worried about having their stuff stolen. No, no I don't really believe it, and that's the problem.

I was all set for a really hardcore, frighteningly accurate, scary book. So far, it's losing points for believability.

I'll stop here because I have not finished the book. It's going to take a lot at this point though to make me feel better about this one.

Hope Was Here - Joan Bauer

2005-08-02T11:46:00.000-04:00

Wow. I mean really, WOW. Leila had described this as comfort reading (hmmm, can't find that post, sorry). I can't think of a better way to describe it.

This book hit me like the Lois Lowry books hit me, I just couldn't believe how beautifully a seemingly simple story was told.

It had some 'issues', abandonment, cancer, death, but they are building blocks of the story, not what it is founded upon. It was a very sweet story, without it feeling sappy. Nope, can't explain why I feel that way.

It's a sad book. I read it while I was at my grandmother's watching her go through radiation and chemo. But, the death in the book is not an unexpected death. It's one of someone who's lived a good life, and while we could be sad for the loss, we could not feel cheated by it. It was strangely comforting at the time I read it.

Looking for Alaska - John Green

2005-08-02T11:15:00.000-04:00

I wanted to quote passages from this book. I kept the book, risking overdue fines, so I could quote passages. I can't find it. I am now dealing with the fact that I may have LOST a library book.

I liked this book. Parts of it made me laugh out loud and read to Jeremy. I would have put some of those passages here if it weren't for books growing little feet and wandering off.

One might ask why did I like Looking for Alaska but not As Simple As Snow. I don't know, but let's try to examine it.

First, the weird girl of the story, Alaska, was not a goth. Nor was she particularly weird. She just was. And she was believable. She had her issues and her baggage but they made her a person, not a stereotype.

Two, the main character, Pudge (real name lost with the wandering book), was not an invisible normal cardboard cut out guy. He had his own personality that was not related to his being obsessed with weird girl. I liked his penchant for last words. It made him interesting and his own person.

Three, I just enjoyed the story. I enjoyed that the characters felt like teens, not someone's image of teens. I cringed at the amount of drinking and pranking (and bad rapping), but I couldn't fault it as being inaccurate of teens at a private high school trying to break as many rules while still doing well, and not losing a scholarship or getting expelled in the process. But not so focused on what can easily be described as stupid high school hijinks that it was a chore to read.

The ending was brilliant and touching. I was just a little unexcited about the book until I got to the ending. There'd probably be another quote here.

As Simple As Snow - Gregory Galloway

2005-08-02T10:04:00.000-04:00

This book has the most awesome opening paragraph I have ever read. It made me desperately want to read it. About three more paragraphs in, however, I felt as though I had been hoodwinked and taken advantage of.

I can't really say the book was bad. There was really nothing technically wrong with it. It was the reason for my goth in YA lit rant though. I spent the first 160 pages wondering whether the weird goth girl was going to die, disappear, run away, move away, or go psycho. Turns out I needn't have wondered as we ended up with a little from all categories. Sort of.

Also, I kept putting down this book and reading others. I just wasn't that engaged by it. It was trying too hard to make Anna weird and deep, and I found it annoying. The 'deep' interests in literature, the fascination with Houdini, the themed music compilations, the short wave radio. Again, nothing technically wrong, and it all was important to the story, but it just kept bothering me. I don't think it would have bothered me as much if the author hadn't made the weird girl a goth girl. They don't need to go hand in hand, but it's becoming a stereotype and it's glaring to the point of interfering with a potentially decent story.

I enjoy weirdness for the sake of weirdness, not because someone's trying to squish a character into a pre-defined concept of weirdness.

I would still recommend this book to the right folks. It definately has qualities to it that I can see myself going if your interested in [blank] then read As Simple As Snow. I just don't think I'll be raving to anyone about it.

Everything I've read so far this year

2005-07-10T20:10:00.000-04:00

It's about halfway through 2005 so I'm taking count. Where applicable I tried to link reviews as well.

Hope Was Here by Joan Bauer Chrissy's Review
Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block Chrissy's Review
Forever : a novel by Judy Blume
Here's to You, Rachel Robinson by Judy Blume
Running with Scissors : a memoir by Augusten Burroughs Chrissy's Review Leila's Review
Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko Leila's Review
Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher by Buce Coville
The Sledding Hill by Chris Crutcher Leila's Review
The Midwife's Apprentice by Karen Cushman
Boy : Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl
Going Solo : [the thrilling sequel to Boy] by Roald Dahl
Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo Chrissy's Review
Kick Me : Adventures in Adolescence by Paul Feig Chrissy's Review Leila's Review
The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman Chrissy's Review
The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox
Head Games by Mariah Fredricks Chrissy's Review Leila's Review
Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos
Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key by Jack Gantos Chrissy's Review
Playing in Traffic by Gail Giles Chrissy's Review
Stroke of Midnight by Laurell K. Hamilton
Geography Club by Brent Hartinger Chrissy's Review Leila's Review
The Order of the Poison Oak by Brent Hartinger
Margaux with an X by Ron Koertge
Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
A Summer to Die by Lois Lowry Chrissy's Review
Anastasia Again! by Lois Lowry
Anastasia at Your Service by Lois Lowry
Anastasia Krupnik by Lois Lowry
Taking Care of Terrific by Lois Lowry
The Year of Ice by Brian Malloy Chrissy's Review
The Year of Secret Assignments by Jaclyn Moriarty Chrissy's Review
Saffy's Angel by Hilary McKay
Sunshine by Robin McKinley Chrissy's Review Leila's Review
Handbook for Boys by Walter Dean Myers
The Story of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit
Drowned Wednesday by Garth Nix
The Other Side of Dark by Joan Lowery Nixon
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson Chrissy's Review
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
Bill Peet : an Autobiography by Bill Peet
Sweet Miss Honeywell's revenge : a ghost story by Kathryn Reiss
Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez Chrissy's Review Leila's Review
Knights of the Kitchen Table by Jon Scieszka Chrissy's Review
Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie S. Tolan
The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray by Chris Wooding Chrissy's Review

Running With Scissors - Augusten Burroughs

2005-07-07T12:34:00.000-04:00

Ick, Ick, Just Ick.

Sorry, I guess I have a different sense of humor and we just have to accept that. This book was just highly disturbing, not funny to me.

Taking issue with Goths in YA lit

2005-07-06T16:40:00.000-04:00

This really should be a rant about As Simple As Snow, but I'm not done with it yet, so it's not really fair to blast it yet.

I'm getting REALLY tired of the invisa-nice-guy hooking up with/being fascinated by the resident freaky goth girl plot line. No other sub culture is treated like this. (If it is and I'm just missing it PLEASE let me know.) It's like goth is the new, I don't know how to put this exactly, racial category. I can imagine to be edgy a YA author used to have interacial couple and have everyone freak out. (That's really not a perfect comparison, but imagine a ridiculous version of Guess Who's Coming To Dinner but substitute Sidney Poitier with a goth boy and you can sort of see what I mean) Now it seems like inter-gothal couples are the new thing. And the goth always has some dark secret that the 'norm' finds out about and makes him so understanding about why she's so freaky to begin with. And she's not really freaky, she's actually really deep and teaches the 'norm' about so many things he would never have experienced. And they have to struggle against people who just don't understand.

Sound cliche enough yet?

Part of me is going why the hell am I even defending this? But I really don't like stereotypes and this one's getting very overused. It just seems like way too easy of a plot device for authors and a hook for YA authors (look! I understand you gothic people. Buy my book) and I just want them to stop.

Oh Shit

2005-06-22T16:57:00.000-04:00

House OKs flag desecration amendment

"By a 286-130 vote — eight more than needed — House members approved the amendment after a debate over whether such a ban would uphold or run afoul of the Constitution’s free-speech protections."

Everyone grab their inner tubes. We're heading down the slippery slope.

Thanks Leila

2005-06-20T12:50:00.000-04:00

I specifically did not read this on Friday because I was having a Happy Baking Day and didn't want to switch into Angry Rant Mode. Decided to read it this morning. And then all the posts about it.

Leila, why do you hate me so much to do this to me?

I'm so angry I'm shaking enough to spill my tea. My Tea!

Can't find angry music....

I can accept that people are snobs. I can accept that they think if it's not high literature they think it's not worth reading, and therefore not worth teaching. I'm used to this flavor of stupid.

I understand that adults have no concept that if a kid is forced to read something that he/she cannot relate to he/she will associate "reading" with "sucks" and this is as much a product of how it is taught as well as content of reading.

But this I could not let slide:
-From reply 'how to keep a child childish-
When it comes to selecting texts for middle school and high school, I'll take Hemmingway, H.G. Wells and the rest any day over what some politically correct, moralizing modern author would have kids read. I want my kids to have a literary experience (for cultural literacy's sake; for the discovery of philosophical ideas; for the witnessing of well written prose; etc.) and it gauls me to think that what they'll get is a lesson in how to cope with troubling teen issues. If they want to teach this, and I'm not saying they shouldn't, they should have a weekly 'teen dilemmas' class.

Is this class going to have such units as "Suicide: Don't Do it" and "Suze is a Punkrocker: Why Suze Cuts Herself" and "Having Your Room and All Your Belongings Destroyed by Your Father: Why Johnny Should Get Good Grades" and "Running Away: Your Step-Dad's Not Mad, He's Just Adjusting"?

Are you f**king joking me? Because Sex Ed is received so well by most communities I can imagine how well a class containing 'teen dilemmas' like drugs, rape, abuse, depression, and SEX would be received. God forbid they read books about characters dealing with these dilemmas. Just have a class that says Don't Let This Happen to You! or Make Sure to Tell an Adult!, because it's never the adults in the kids lives who are the problems. Because reading about a character, even a fictional character, can't possibly make someone feel less alone or that he/she didn't cause these problems, or that maybe there is some hope. Of course these books have absolutley nothing else to add other than their "issues". They have no life philosophy, no way to help, nothing to do with social inequalities or ingrained social apathies.

I think I'll have to come back to this later. It happens when a rant gets so big it starts to lose it's coherance in my head and just becomes a jumble of screaming.

I'm just so glad I went to college and majored in Photography

2005-06-16T13:17:00.000-04:00

Photo giant to discontinue production of film paper

And, no my college has not yet changed the course requirements for the degree in photo despite the mention of the two companies at the end of the article going bankrupt being those who we bought most of our supplies from. With Kodak now ending production of black and white photo paper it is essentially ending black and white photo process.

I'd like to go back to my school and bitch slap my teachers who ALL claimed that digital would NEVER replace film based photography and that we had nothing to worry about.

This is it

2005-06-06T14:25:00.000-04:00

This probably best articulates why I want to do what I do:

A free public library is a revolutionary notion, and when people don't have free access to books, then communities are like radios without batteries. The entire flow of communication is bricked off. You cut people off from incredible sources of information -- mythical, practical, linguistic, or political -- and you break them. You render them helpless in the face of political oppression. We were not going to let this happen.

The longer I work in a library, even as a drone, the more I feel like librarians are the LAST defense of free information, and the more I want to smack the librarians who just think of it as a 9-5 job.

Sunshine by Robin McKinley

2005-06-06T12:11:00.000-04:00

For some reason the irony of reading a vampire book called Sunshine did not hit me until I picked it up fromt he library. I can be dense sometimes.

I really liked how it started off. The reader doesn't really know they're in an alternate reality from their own until the vamps show up. Then it's suddenly 'this is not the book you thought you were reading". That was cool. The psychological battle during the captive scenes of Part 1 were also cool. Once part one was over though, the book became very formulaic for me.

The"all vampires are evil and we must destroy them but there's this one who's kind of nice and for some reason he's going to help our heroine destroy his peers AND there's going to be weird but unfufilled sexual tension between them" has been done. And it's not my favorite vamp device.

Then there were these two things that bugged me. One, I understand not stopping the story to explain everything about this world that the story takes place in and generally I appreciate authors not believing their readers are so stupid that they can't infer things by context, but to explain so little that the reader is begging for more details about how magic, wards, the "paranormal police" operate can be just as frustrating. It can feel like you are reading the middle of a series and you missed all the explanation in previous books. Two, the same holds true for slang. Making up your own slang as an author gives an otherworldly feeling to the story and prevents the book from feeling dated. But IT HAS TO MAKE SENSE IN CONTEXT. I must have read this passage over a dozen times and I just can't figure out what the author was trying to convey.

Jesse and Pat would be trained in hand-to-hand, and even amok, and thor as hell with the muscles you get if you bash The Blob into trays of cinnamon rolls every morning.

My last issue may or may not be valid. I may be reacting to the latest Laurell K Hamilton books where the plots (what little there is left of them) have slowed to a crawl because of this same issue. We spent so much time inside Sunshine's head that the action seemed secondary and unreal. That was my basic reason for not really digging the book after part one. It worked in part one. It did not work for me in the rest of the book. I kept being like"stop thinking about it and DO something", to both the main character and the author.

So there it is. Sorry that I cannot read vamp books cleanly anymore, but I haven't been able to do that in years. They still all fall into categories for me, and it's ususally a matter of which cliche they become.

Strangely enough I was in a bookstore immediatley after I finished Sunshine while another woman was begging the booksellers for "books like Sunshine". I couldn't belive the stupid advice they were giving her. Anyway, my advice for books like this one would be Barbara Hambly's Those Who Hunt the Night and Traveling with the Dead and Mercedes Lackey's Children of the Night (this is a series but I haven't read the others, last I knew it was out of print, but that no longer seems to be true). No, I didn't offer my advice. I did not work there and was not being paid. No, it's not very nice, but there is a certain point where you must go, I don't work here and I don't need to help customers. Just like I don't need to straighten their shelves either.

And so it begins

2005-06-04T11:40:00.000-04:00

Or atleast this is the first incident I've heard about so far.

Men charged over plot to sell new Potter novel

This isn't supposed to happen in real life

2005-06-01T22:59:00.000-04:00

This is only supposed to happen in horror movies.

So, we were cooking dinner tonight. Our "quick" version of beef stroganoff was going in the crock pot. Towards the end of that cooking process Jeremy put on rice to cook. We use sushi rice because, I personally like it better than long grain white rice, and I find it easier to cook. I came down stairs to fix my plate, only to be met in the kitchen doorway by Jeremy with a horrified look upon his face. I thought perhaps the rice had burnt (it would have been expected with how many other things had gone wrong in the dinner making process). But no, it wasn't that mundane.

There was, well, what appeared to be a LARGE MAGGOT in the cooked rice.

EW.

My first thought was did something get into our dry goods cabinet. But, no, Jeremy informed me that he had just opened a NEW (sealed plastic) bag of rice.

EW.

I'm totally skeeved out. I'm not going to be able to eat ANYTHING tonight.

Non-Book Stuff

2005-06-01T13:22:00.000-04:00

First, we had a computer/hard-drive crash this past weekend. I don't have regular email right now. Not sure when that will get settled again.

Second, I saw Stars Wars III. I went into it with VERY low expectations. It was OK. I would probably not sit through it again, but atleast Lucas didn't gloss over all the things I expected him to. I have no idea what the point of the Wookies being in the movie was though.

Third, I recently found out my grandmother now has bone cancer (she had breast cancer a few years ago). Or atleast we are pretty sure she has bone cancer. Technically I am not supposed to know. She is not telling large chunks of the family, but because she is like this about her helath, we already had in place a grapevine. Unfortunately, that's what it is, a grapevine. I don't have the details. I don't know how serious it is or if her doctors are expecting it to be treatable. There is also rumor that she is being tested for several other cancers. My grandmother is also telling various folks different things, so nobody really has the full story. It's incredibly frustrating. I respect her wanting privacy, but I also don't really want to be suprised to find that she's suddenly past away and I don't know why. I am currently trying to figure out how to get her to let me spend a bunch of the summer with her without her thinking I'm hovering. The library is cutting more hours and B&N STILL has not contacted me, so this would be an ideal time for me to just take some time off and go spend it with her. I don't know if pages are allowed leaves of absences, but I think I will talk to my assitant director about it tonight.

Another Entertaining Web Comic

2005-05-27T13:19:00.000-04:00

Apparently everyone except me knew about Unshelved so here's another web comic. It's about paintball.

Incidently, Unshelved's comic of August 10th 2003 actually happened at my Border's. Not kidding.

Yep, still overcast and dark. My cats are going nuts.

Entertaining Web Comic

2005-05-25T11:37:00.000-04:00

http://overduemedia.com/

Guys Write for Guys Read - Jon Scieszka

2005-05-19T18:01:00.000-04:00

Jon Scieszka is on a mission to get more boys into reading and the collection of short stories, Guys Write for Guys Read, is aimed at helping. Visit his website for more info about this program.

Does this collection further this goal? I'm not sure. I read it cover to cover, which is not really how it's intended to be read, but hey. It is a collection of short stories, not one longer than 5 pages, many in the 3 page realm, so as not to overwhelm reluctant readers. Many of the stories are damn funny. But, in honesty, I really don't know if the 8-12 years will really be attracted to it.

A portion of the stories fall under the category of " I never told my mother this, because she would have KILLED me", or in other words biographical accounts of the incredibly stupid things the authors did just being boys. (As a potential future mother I was a little disturbed at how often the idea of riding one's bicycle off a house roof came up.) These are HILARIOUS.

From Jack Gantos:

My mother said he was trouble the first time I met him. His name was Frankie Pagoda and he had just been catapulted across his yard like a human cannonball and landed badly in ours. He was moaning as I stood over him, not knowing what to do. He was on his back and at first he wasn't moving, but slowly he began to gyrate his arms and legs like a stunned crab.

Many of the other stories were simply random stories from the authors' youths several discussing not fitting in, how reading/writing became important to them, what was expected of them as "guys". There are a couple of "I wish I had been closer to my dad/My dad just didn't get me." kind of stories that I think I could have done without. There were very few actual fiction stories, or maybe there were more than I thought. Some were difficult to distingush between fiction and "stupid acts".

All around, it was a fun read, but mostly from the point of view of learning more about a lot of (I consider) cool authors. I don't really have any sense of if handing a 10 year old boy this would be any more successful in getting him interested in reading than handing him Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

Personal Update

2005-05-18T14:29:00.000-04:00

So I've forgotten to let some folks know what's up, and at this point I don't remember who I've told what to so I'm just going to post it here.

Big stuff first. I got all my medical test results back and everything is FINE. My doctor was very relieved to tell me that there was no evidence of cancer or anything else. Yes, that was on the radar. Very scary. However, I'm still having the same problems which led me to get these tests in the first place. So, while there's "nothing" wrong, there are still issues. We are playing a waiting game while I wait for a certain birth control medication to get out of my system to see if my body realigns itself. Six months or so.

Other stuff. Yes, I had two interviews at Barnes and Noble. One with the childrens' department manager and one with the store's general manager. I have NEVER been interviewed so fast, except when I interviewed for the Monkey. However, I had not heard from them since. It's been just over 3 weeks now. I know perfectly well they are no in a hurry to get someone hired. The person I would be replacing isn't leaving until August. Yesterday I visited the children's manger, just to touch base. I hope it helped. I want this job. I want this job because it's specificaly children's and young adult. I have little hope if finding anything like it anywhere else. I don't care that's it's retail. I don't care that I'd be going into it just before a HP release. I don't care that it means I'll be spending another Christmas season in retail. I don't care that it's a half hour drive and I haven't driven since I got my license in December. They are doing good, inteligent things and I want to help. And I want the management experience for my own nefarious (Ok, maybe not nefarious, but I like that word) future plans.

Notthing else of note really. My mom just turned 60. That's a little weird. Listening to muppet music, but that's pretty normal for me.

DAMMIT!

2005-05-17T00:36:00.000-04:00

DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT

Of all the...

I can't believe...

Stupid timing...

AAAARRRRGGGGGGGG!

If someone asked me what author would I REALLY be excited about getting to see right now, I would almost immediately answer Chris Crutcher.

Who's is going to be just outside Albany next weekend on the 21st? CHRIS CRUTCHER!

Who's going to be with ALL HER ALBANY RELATIVES, but not in Albany on the 21st? ME!

We are celebrating my mother's 60th birthday. Which was today. We have been planning this party for about a month, so I can't really be grumpy about it.

But I'm seriously getting tired of the lack of authors visiting New England. This is SO close it's painful, and I still can't go.

dammit.

Calling all book geeks

2005-05-11T15:11:00.000-04:00

Has anyone heard mention of content advisory labels aimed at books? Like the "Explicit Content" labels put on all music. I want to know if it's a potential reality or just a weird forum discussion I ran across. Apparently, manga is label by age, but then, so are anime movies, so I do not consider this strange or the same thing.

If anyone finds any info, can you post a link?

Random weird and creepy RPG game

2005-05-06T12:54:00.000-04:00

I've been debating posting about this, but I figured, heck it's on the brain and a few of you folks are gamers or semi-gamers and might be interested like I was.

I noticed this gaming book a few years ago while browsing Pandemonium in Harvard Square. It looked cool, but I did not have the money to spend on it at the time. Last year I ended up picking it up from a mostly gaming bookstore out by North Hampton. I read it in it's entirety in one sitting and then had to banish it to a book pile in my book room, because quite honestly, it just creeped me out. I picked it up again a few days ago and re-read it. It's still a fascinating concept for a table top RPG, and really really creepy. It's called Little Fears by Jason Blair, and I would link to it but as I recently found out it's basically out of print. It's possible a well stocked gaming store may still have copies, but the print run it basically dead.

Anyway, what fascinated me so much about it is that it's an RPG based upon playing children who go up against 'childhood fears'. In essence, the monsters under the beds and in the closets are real and a serious threat to children. But that's a really simple explanation of what the game actually is. If that were all, it would bring to mind scenarios from Monsters Inc. But, Little Fears is a horror based RPG, so things are much, much worse. Jason Blair went and did a lot of research into child abuse and abducted children and made a game based around the concept of what if there were a parallel dimension where all these horrible attrocities were devised and coming from. Closetland (an appropriatly childish name)is a world made up of fear where the denizens feed off of innocence. The closet monsters are only the base foot soldiers of this place. The generals or kings are each based on one of the seven deadly sins and each have their own agenda and reason why they are hunting children. Regardless of how I feel about this idea, it an amazingly constructed mythology, in a really short book. Belief plays a huge factor in the game, and can be the children's strongest weapon or worst enemy. If your character believes that his teddy bear will protect him from monsters, it will. Conversely, if your characters believes there is a hideous tentacled monster hiding under his bed, he better not put his feet on the floor.

On of the other game concepts is the loss of innocence, defined in this case by one's willingness to believe, basically. As one gets older (the oldest a character can be in the game being 12) the less likely they are to believe in what is happening and the more likely they are going to try to rationalize a logical explanation. This translates to adults neither can see nor believe in the monsters. The kids are on their own.

This concept of belief is what truly sucked me in. I spent several hours reading the old forums for this game and was blown away by the consistencies of what folks reported as things they feared as children, and what they did to combat these fears. Very similair things were talked about from people living all over the globe. So regardless of the author's weird Closetland mythology, there is already a very strong childhood belief system.

I don't think I would ever actually want to play this RPG. It's trully dark and horrifying, but it's just a neat storyline. I just thought other folks might find the concept of childhood belief sytems kind of fascinating. So much of it is still reflected in children's literature, which is not surprising since so much of it originated from folk lore and fairy tales in the first place. I have to say, this is where I found fault with the author. While he obviously did much research into the horrible crimes children are subjected to he sort of missed the boat on researching belief systems and fairy tale "rules of engagement" for lack of a better way of putting it. (I have no idea if that will make sense to anyone. I'm sorry, I've been collecting fairy tales since I was very small, and I know the rules.) So, to try to sum that up, the game feels really misbalaced in favor of the bad guys. But maybe this is acceptable in a horror genre scenario.

Well, that's it. Just some musings on a neat game concept.

I had a bad day yesterday

2005-05-03T13:41:00.000-04:00

I had one of those insanely grumpy days yesterday. I don't know why. I tried to exorcise it by writing a rant, and it helped for about 30 seconds. I was really happy I was not working yesterday because I ended up just going back to bed and staying away from people.

So that's why yesterday's rant was a little over the top. I still support what I said, but I don't usually let them get that vicious.

Authors and their fans or about fame in general

2005-05-02T13:39:00.000-04:00

So, one of my favorite adult (non-kids, not porn) author has recently had to remove her guest book from her blog and get a new mediator for the forums attached to her website. I guess what has been happening are folks are not only unhappy with her recent books but have been posting personal attacks to her and her family. This is wrong. I do not blame her for her reactions. I am happy she is protecting herself. The latest incident was someone (it is very unclear who/why/what etc. and they are investigating it) claimed on her PUBLIC forums that a member of her family had had a stroke and as a result someone (also unclear) tried to pull her out of an event. The author’s official response was that no, this family member was fine and they will try to press charges against the culprit if it is possible.

OK, that’s the back story, here’s my rant. Authors DO NOT OWE their fans ANY personal information. I say this because the only backlash I could find on her website forums were people COMPLAINING that she’s punishing them, by taking away direct contact to her and banning forum abusers. No one seems to care that some ass published personal family information on a public forum to strangers who had no business knowing EVEN IF IT WERE TRUE.

It is a gift to fans if a celebrity, be it author, actor, famous physicist, CHOOSES to share his or her personal life with his/her fans. It is by no means a requirement. I can’t stand hearing bullshit like “Well, they think there too good to talk to their fans” or “They’re trying to live in an ivory tower” or “We [the fans] made them. They owe us this.” or my favorite “She’s betraying us by limiting her access to us.” FUCK YOU ALL. A person’s work and a person are two separate things. Just because you love a person’s work does not give you the right to be a part of their life or invade their privacy. They have already given you the gift of their art/occupation/job, they owe you NOTHING more.

If anyone disagrees with this, let me give you a more down to earth example. I worked in a children’s bookstore. I sold books to children and their parents. I loved doing this. One night we had a family come in very late and close to closing time. Closing time came and we had to, as politely as possible, push them out the door. The father had the nerve to say to us “Think of all the money you are losing by not letting us stay”. Excuse me? We’re closed. Yes, it MAY have been good customer service to let them stay past closing and spend money (though they were ‘just browsing’) but balance that with overtime for employees staying late. Would it really have been worth the extra money the company would have had to spend to let ONE family stay and MAYBE buy something, while we turned away everyone else who saw that the lights were still on and customers were still inside? NO. Is it worth letting fans into your personal life to MAYBE gain popularity and therefore sell more whatevers? I personally don’t think it is. I love going to author signings and hearing them talk about how they got where they are, which is usually a very personal story. Do I think this gives me the right to contact them afterwards or insist that they keep a web blog detailing everyday of their lives? No, most distinctly not.

Ok, I think that's it. Needed to do that rant. I feel bad for this author, but she's being too nice. She has been too open with her fans and this is the unfortunate result. If something you once did because it brought you joy is now hurting not only you but also your family it needs to stop. You are not betraying your fans. You are hurting yourself to accommodate strangers.

Any Other Monkey Drones Having This Problem?

2005-04-30T11:41:00.000-04:00

I miss Tealuxe. I mean I REALLY miss Tealuxe. I'll be the first to admit I'm a total tea junkie and Tealuxe just fed that addiction nicely. I thought I would survive leaving. I thought my need for 100's of tea options daily would subside with time. But it's not. It seems to be getting worse. Especially as the weather gets warmer and I remember getting the daily iced teas everyday before starting my shift, and then getting another fix during my dinner break. I've been putting off mail order teas from them because it seems silly. I don't know how much longer I can hold out though.

The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray By Chris Wooding

2005-04-28T13:01:00.000-04:00

This is the first book I've picked up in a long time purely on the basis of it looked interesting to me.

I would describe it as Victorian Horror set in an alternate dimension London. This London seems frozen in time as all scientific progress seems to have stopped based on a dire problem London, and as we learn all major cities, are facing: the appearance of the wych-kin. We don't really know what the wych-kin are or why they are here. All we know, at the beginning of the book atleast, is that they are nasty demony critters that seem loosely based on european folklore (mostly nursery boggles) with a light sprinkling of Lovecraftian lore. Wych hunters have risen to combat these creatures and to keep them from spreading further into London. The story centers upon basically one wych hunter, Thaniel, when he happens upon a girl, Alaizabel, wandering the wych claimed parts of London apparently crazy. The story unfolds as we learn that Alaizabel is actually possessed and Thaniel tries to help her. All kinds of other stuff happens, which I'm not going to go into, because half the fun of reading this book was learning what the hell was going on at the same rate the characters were.

There are several reasons why this was a good read.

First, the wych hunters were not all powerful all knowing slayers of beasties. Everything they did was based on theory and superstition. There were no hard and fast rules when dealing with the wych-kin. What worked on one was not guaranteed to work on another. There were also no pools of research. Defeating a wych-kin was often trial and error, if you didn't die it was a good night. Everytime a wych hunter went out there was an expectation of death if they ran into something they weren't familiar with. I liked this aspect, you don't see it often.

Second, I think this is the first what I would consider true horror books I've read in an age. And it has NOTHING to do with vampires! Yay!

Third, while it felt like the critters were based upon something familair, it wasn't blatant. You weren't sitting there thinking my God this is all stollen from X. I was an impressive balance of making things feel familiar yet like nothing you've ever read about.

I've read the reviews on amazon and I can't tell if I'm desensitized or if some of the reviews are being just a little silly. There are many claims that this book was gory. I didn't think so. No worse than Dracula in my opinion. Yes, main characters die and the wych-kin are REALLY unpleasant and satisfyingly creepy. It's part of the story telling. There were complaints that is was fast paced like a movie or a video game and would only appeal to teens with corresponding attention spans. I couldn't disagree more. You don't get a solid sense of what the mystery is, or the big picture until over halfway through the book. The author is very miserly about details and the history of what has been going on in London, almost to a frustrating degree, but I also really appreciated that he(?) didn't feel the need to spell everything out to his audience like so many authors do. I feel like the, mainly adult, reviewers were confusing a fast READ with a fast PACED read. Of course it's a fast read, it's a teen book, and not an incredibly long one at that. It becomes more fast paced when the characters find out what's going on and have to attempt to stop it. The change in pace reflects the urgency felt by the characters and the fact that they have very little time in which to act. I think it works well with the story telling.

I still can't decide how I felt about the ending. I enjoyed the rest of the book, but the ending may have been a bit of a cop out.

It's not a fabulous read, but it's original and interesting. A nice change from the onsalught of vamp books.

Did I already know about this?

2005-04-25T17:52:00.000-04:00

I may have blocked this out and was reminded of this over the weekend. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is being made into a movie coming out this summer. There are so many reasons that I am not happy about this that it's not worth going in to.

Knights of the Kitchen Table - Jon Scieszka

2005-04-15T22:00:00.000-04:00

I had to read this. It was always and remains to be such a popular recommendation for trasitional readers (done with early readers, not quite ready for chapter books) I couldn't go any longer without taking it for a test ride.

But really, it's Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith. I haven't read anything that they were involved in that I didn't think was fantastic.

The only complaint I have was it wasn't long enough. I suppose that's to be expected from such little books when one is an adult. It left me wanting more of the story, and that's always a good thing when series are involved. I loved the puns, I loved the mix of fantasy and literature references, and I loved the interaction between the boys.

So, I'm happy to be recommending this series. The first book has a good mix of humor and cleverness and I would assume much of the rest of the series holds up as well. I will press on and see if this is true.

The Whipping Boy - Sid Fleischman

2005-04-15T18:02:00.000-04:00

This is another of Shrewsbury's summer reading books. I really glad they are changing them this year.

The Whipping Boy, while an orginal story, is another one that doesn't feel like one. You know how it begins and you know how it's going to end. I know this isn't a fair way to judge books, but this is also the best reason to update your reading list more often that every 10-15 years.

We start off with a brat prince who wants to run away becasue, well, he's a brat. He drags his whipping boy a long for the ride. Oh my word, they get captured by bandits. Oh my word, they try to switch identities to fool the bandits. Oh my word, it ends with the prince realizing how much of a jerk he's been.

The historical value and the moral to treat people how you would like to be treated do not stand up in a story that's been told over and over and over in various incarnations. I can't even judge this book objectively because it's just that too familiar of a story.

Please, for the love of God people, change your reading lists periodically so your kids don't feel like they are reading stereotypes.

Again, it may be simply, I am just too old. But I did know the story of the Prince and the Pauper at a pretty young age.

Bridge to Terabithia - Katherine Patterson

2005-04-15T17:49:00.000-04:00

I think I must be just way too old for Bridge to Terabithia. It's a story of young friendship and of course towards the end of the book through an accident one of the friends dies and the other must deal the the death of "the only person who really understood me". I don't know if this was one of the first of these stories, but unfortunatly it's been so over done in both books and sappy movies, it lost a great deal of meaning for me. I can't say I was particularly thrilled with the writing and the story telling, but those are more difficult for me to pin point why I didn't like them.

This book is still on tons of reading lists. This story felt really dated for me and I can't help but feel like there are more current books of the same theme. But don't ask me why this one feels dated, but A Summer to Die didn't. Maybe it really is just a vast difference in writing and story telling style.

Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key - Jack Gantos

2005-04-15T17:04:00.000-04:00

I knew this was a book about a kid with Attention Deficit Disorder. What I was not prepared for was to be taken along for a ride with Joey. For example, when reading Kissing Doorknobs, the writing explains what OCD was like, but as the reader you didn't really experience it. In Joey Pigza you were pulled through the episodes. You couldn't help reading faster and faster. It was almost scary. It was also amazing. I don't know a lot of writers who can successfully put the reader into the situations his characters are experiencing.

In the book Joey's mother comes back into his life and tries desparately to help him. We learn that while medications help with the disorder, it takes the proper type and amount, and not getting the mix right you almost might as well not bother. Joey had previously been raised by his grandmother, who not only had the same disorder, but was also basically emotionally abusive to Joey. There is a great deal of healing in the book. Joey and his mom find actually USEFUL doctors and things improve for him, with a get deal of work.

I really don't know how this disorder is so often misdiagnosed. There is a huge difference in kids who just behave badly because they've never been disaplined (unfortunatly a very common problem these days, just watch those nanny reality programs, or work in a children's bookstore) and what Joey was going through.

This is a good read for both boys and girls. Apparently Jack Gantos visited one of the schools in my library's town (no, it was not mentioned to me) and the kids loved him and his books. They are funny enough pull kids in even while trying to make people more aware of this disorder. I would highly recommend them. I am looking forward to reading his other books.

I'm really annoyed I missed the cockroach story.

A Summer To Die - Lois Lowry

2005-04-14T13:35:00.000-04:00

This is hands down the most beautifully written book I have ever read. Yes, it was one of those horrible books where someone dies, but it was such a gorgeous read it didn't give me that sense of depression afterwards, just an OK sadness. I don't have much else to say. I was completely blown away.

Rainbow Boys - Alex Sanchez

2005-04-14T13:17:00.000-04:00

As a homosexuality recruiting tool Rainbow Boys is pretty poor. I mean it describes getting beat up, parents disowning you, and the scary realities of the consequences of un-safe sex. Seriously, not one orgy scene. But kidding aside...
It's a very real and accurate portrayal of 3 different gay teens in 3 different situations. This book also doesn't pull punches. The scene where Kyle tells his parents he's gay and his mother point blank asks him "Did you think we would stop loving you?" actually made me cry.
Saying all that, I still have this niggling feeling that I didn't really like the book, and I can't figure out why. There's no reason I can' think of that I shouldn't have like. Really. It was good and I couldn't ask anything more of it. But there we are.
I can't decide if I want to read the sequel.

I may be going back to retail

2005-04-12T18:32:00.000-04:00

For various reasons, most of them involving money, I dropped off a resume at a B&N over the weekend. According to hotjobs they are looking for department managers and assistant managers. While I could do both jobs blind-folded I still had shivers at the thought of returning to retail let alone going over to the BIG ENEMY. The one I applied at is much further than I am comfortable driving, but I'm not sure what distance I would be comfortable driving seeing as how I have not driven since I past my driving test in December. I also had the dawning realization in the car ride on the way home that I had applied for a management postion THREE MONTHS BEFORE A NEW HARRY POTTER BOOK COMES OUT. Jeremy laughed at me.
The library gig isn't really panning out. They are in a major deficit. Last I heard they were going to have to cut huge amounts of money from the payroll budget and they don't think they will be able to be open on weekends during the summer. I don't know what will actually happen as the library is still in negociations with the town, but I have little hope. There is also a huge bias in my state against folks working in libraries without masters degrees. I am just not prepared for spending that much time and money getting a degree when the current library jobs are paying about as much as retail and they are not offering benefits. It's pathetic.

The Year of Ice - Brian Malloy

2005-04-12T16:16:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I picked The Year of Ice up purely because it was mentioned on the back of Geography Club. By saying that we all now know that it's about a teenager (male) who is dealing with discovering he is gay.
There are so many other issues packed into this book that the sexuality issue become almost buried, only to be resurected by the kid's almost constant quest to want to get laid. Let's list the issues that I can remember (POSSIBLE SPOILERS):

Kid's mother has died a year previous to the story
Father has started dating again
Mother's death may have been a suicide as the father was cheating on her at the time
Kid's best friend gets his girlfriend pregnant
Father plans a marriage and move in with current girlfriend
Father abandons this woman and begins to date former mistress (who may or may not have been indirectly responsible for the death of kid's mother)
Next door neighbor keeps dead wife in a freezer becasue he didn't want to be alone
Father marries former mistress
Kid is gay
Former mistress/New mother gets pregnant
Kid worries about paying for college
Father runs away
Best friend's baby is put up for adoption....after abortion discussions
New sibling is born with a birth defect, Down's Syndrome I think

By about halfway through I was making bets with Jeremy that the main character would lose his virginity to a black transvestite just so that the author could make sure he also covered racism and transgender issues. I don't remember any pets dying.

There is a really funny passage towards the beginning of the book in which the main character blames Easy Bake Ovens for relationship problems between men and women that's worth a read.

I can't say that this book was bad, but it was so packed full of issues it became comedic and lost some integrity in my mind.

Head Games - Mariah Fredricks

2005-04-12T15:48:00.000-04:00

I picked up Head Games because it mentioned online role-playing games and how the characters deal with those perceptions of reality (or something like that) in the review I read about it. I was very excited that an author was breaking ground and using online RPG's as a theme for a book (I don’t know of any others that specifically use these games as a theme). Unfortunately it became very clear very quickly that the author knew nothing about online RPG's. Fortunately, these types of games ended up playing such a small role in the book that it was OK. What the book ended up being about was perceptions of reality or how people see you/how you see yourself, and can you change them. We have a character who is dealing with fear, for various reasons. She uses a role-play personality to see if she can change how she acts and therefore get over her fears. We have other characters who are so used to portraying other people’s impressions of them that it is unclear who they really are and if they can or should change. The story was a weird mix of role-play both in fantasy and in real life.

I’m probably reading more into story than is healthy, but it had some intriguing parts. It was good, if not spectacular and it was original as far as I can tell.

I think it would be a good recommend for teens wanting to figure out who they are and how to change, or those who feel like they have been pigeon-holed. I would not recommend it to computer geeks. The inaccuracies and lack of real detail to the computer game described are a little too glaring.

Kick Me - Paul Feig

2005-04-12T15:17:00.000-04:00

I always dislike it when I have to disagree with Leila about a book, especially when I'm vehemently disagreeing. So, Leila, I'm sorry, but I thought this book was crap.

I read this back in January and I've been putting off most of my reviewing because I just couldn't get this one out. Most of my dislike of this book comes from Mr. Feig and I have VERY different views on what makes school years 'torturous'. It's possible that because I had just read Geography Club I had different expectations going into Kick Me. This book was described to me as being about an outcast who 'survived' school. I immediately thought of Brian Bund from GC. I thought it would be about some one who WAS ACTUALLY TORTURED throughout their school years and managed to survive it with a sense of humor intact. I was intrigued by the concept and the strength of character it would take to achieve this feat.

What I was met with was and author with a very whiny and condescending voice describing several minor embarrassments that most school children go through in some form or another. An author who had so much contempt for everyone around him that I couldn’t help thinking, “gee, I can’t imagine why you have no friends if this is what you think of people.” An autobiography not describing his peers ‘out to get him’, but simply several cases of poor decision making and bizarre neuroses on his part. It was a tiresome and unpleasant read ending with me deciding that Paul Feig is not a person I would like to know or would ever care about. I found the chapter about the bus drivers especially hypocritical and vexing.

I was as kind as possible in this review.

My Catch The Hell Up Reading Personal Reading Program

2005-04-12T14:47:00.000-04:00

Since I mentioned this over at Leila's blog I figured I might as well explain myself. I've realized that I've been reading so many new books and so many YA books that I've missed a lot of the classics.
Let me explain my own personal definition of classics: I do NOT mean stuff like H. G. Wells and Mark Twain and all the books which were originally written for adults and have wheedled their way into reading lists. I mean the juvenile books that are most often associated with reading lists. The books by the authors who have been pioneers in the juvenile and YA fields, like Judy Blume and Lois Lowry. I mean the Newbery winners and honors. I mean all the stuff we would all recommend.
In other words, I missed a lot of good stuff. I am trying to rectify that.
I made this decision a while back when Leila had mentioned Avi on her blog. I realized I had never read anything by Avi. This to me is not good. I wondered how many other authors I had done this with. The list was surprisingly long. I also realized that I've become enough of a geek that I don't like recommending books that I have not read. Who knows, there may be other Francesca's out there and I could not have that on my conscience.

Dear Customer Service

2005-04-09T13:16:00.000-04:00

I am contacting you regarding my desire to return to you the past two days. I was extremely dissatisfied with their content and I have decided that I do not wish to keep them.

Day one's, Thursday April 7, content revolved around the death of one of my cats, Banshee. It was the culmination of the better part of a week fighting for her life. The vet could not diagnose with certainty why she became so ill so quickly. We at first thought she had an infection and treated her accordingly, with rest and antibiotics. By Wednesday she had developed a fever of 106, was refusing to eat or drink, and was reluctant to even move. We brought her home Wednesday night in a last ditch effort to reduce her temperature and get fluids into her. By late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning her temperature was reduced to 102 and she was willing to drink chicken broth. We thought we had succeeded. On Thursday (the day I wish to return) all the progress we had made was for naught. She again refused to take any sustenance, her fever began to go back up and we began to notice her twitching...eventually tensing and relaxing as if she were being hit with waves of pain. She was no longer opening her eyes and was not acknowledging our presence. There was nothing more we could do for her. At 8:40 P.M. Thursday night we took her to the vet's one last time. She did not come home with us.
Day two that I wish to return was the day of my latest surgery, Friday April 8. It began with waking up with extremely sore eyes as I had been weeping a great deal the day before and the realization that I had been clenching my jaw all night and was now in pain from it. I was due at the hospital at 9:30 A.M. It was very crowded, apparently Fridays are busy surgery days. As a result I sat in my little cubicle, in my johnny, with Jeremy desperately tring to keep me from bolting, from 9:30 until almost noon. By this time I had a bad tension headache. Since I had fainted last time I had surgery from shear terror, they allowed me to bring Jeremy with me to the prep area, where they insert the IV and begin the anesthesia. The IV continues to be my bane. Despite having an amazingly kind anesthesiologist, it still did not go well. Multiple attempts were made and I was reduced to a whimpering ball. The medicine given to me to "calm me down" did not seem to have any affect at all, and I did not stop crying until I was fully out. I woke up with wet ears as if I had been crying while lying on my back. I was fairly disturbed by this. To my knowledge, they did not find anything to be concerned about. My hand where the IV was inserted hurts more than my belly. But I am very tired.

I fully realize that there is a "No Refunds" policy. That is acceptable to me. I simply wish to return these days and you can do with them as you wish. I just don't want them.

Thank you,
Chrissy

An aside on Francesca Lia Block

2005-03-14T16:48:00.000-05:00

I've known a lot of folks in the past who have loved her work. Becasue of the genre of these folks, I always believed the books to be vampire books. Obviously, they are not. But it still brings me to: WHY? Why does she have such a hardcore following and is hailed by so many people? I'd really like to know. If anyone likes her or knows someone who does, I'd really like to know why. I'm not being sarcastic, and I won't make fun of them. I really just want to know why. To me, the had little to nothing to offer. There must be something in them that appeals to her fans. What is it?

So, I read Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block

2005-03-14T15:32:00.000-05:00

I was supposed to have surgery last Thursday. Due to health insurance stupidity it had to be cancelled last minute and will have to be rescheduled at a later date. I decided to take this opportunity, since I had already been taken off the work schedule, to read a bunch of stuff I've been meaning to read for a while. I picked up over a dozen YA and Juvenile books from my library, including a couple of Block's since she won that YA award this year (sorry don't feel like looking it up just this minute and I can never remember half the award names). I read Weetzie Bat on Thursday in lieu of surgery.

I WOULD RATHER HAVE HAD SURGERY. Even with the anesthesia, surgery would have been less mind numbing and a more pleasant experience. I would have been less nauseated from the after affects of the anesthesia. It would have been a more useful experience to beat my head with the book for the hour and a half it took to read rather than subject my brain to the onslaught of horribleness that this book was. In short, I did not care for it.

Where to begin, where to begin. First of all, it's written as if the author is speaking to a four year old. Let me demonstrate (I read this passage aloud to Jeremy and he threatened to hit me if I didn't stop. Yeah, that bad):

"You're my best friend in the whole world," Dirk said to Weetzie one night. They were sitting in Jerry drinking Club coladas with Slinkster Dog curled up between them.
"You're my best friend in the whole world," Weetzie said to Dirk.
Slinkster Dog's stomach gurgled with pleasure. He was very happy, because Weetzie was so happy now that her new friend Dirk let him ride in Jerry as long as he didn't pee, and they gave him pizza pie for dinner instead of that weird meat that Weetzie's mom, Brandy-Lynn, tried to dish out when he was left at home.

Second, the character names were reminiscent of a bad children's TV show : Weetzie Bat, Dirk, Jerry (a car), Slinkster Dog, Duck (Dirk's boyfriend), My Secret Agent Lover Man (not kidding, Weetzie's boyfriend), Cherokee (Weetzie's child), Witch Baby (Weetzie's adopted child), Go-Go Girl (partner dog to Slinkster), and the puppies: Pee Wee, Wee Wee, Teenie Wee, Tiki Tee, and Tee Pee. Did I mention nauseating?

Three, no plot. We follow Weetzie and Dirk as the find boyfriends, move into together, and decide to have children. I'm sorry, this does not a plot make. Mainly becasue there is no climax of the story, and no struggle. Weetzie, get this, finds a magic lamp and wishes for boyfriends for her and her friend and then a place to live. Before this they were club kids. OOO AAH. You think it might get a little interesting when Dirk's grandmother dies in order to grant the place to live wish, but no. They just go "Oh, well, she was old. How cool is it that she left us her house!" It was repulsive.

I don't know how this got published. I would not let a teenager read this purely on the basis that he/she MIGHT believe that this is acceptable writing and story telling. I think "consciousness" was the most complicated word used in the whole book. I'm impressed that it was spelled correctly.

I will read one more YA book by this author, just to give the benefit of the doubt. I'm not holding my breath though.

Book 4

2005-01-26T15:11:00.000-05:00

Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo

I don't think I would have choosen to read this book on my own. The reason for picking it currenly is I was brought to a sneak pre-view of the movie by my library's children's staff. They thought I would be interested, and I appreciated their thinking of me.

This is the story of a girl and her father (a preacher) who move to a new town. The girl has trouble making new friends, and he dad is pretty uncomminicative (sp??). We find out the her mom abandoned them when the girl was 3 (she is presently 10) and her dad doesn't talk about it. For various reasons the girl meets a dog who proceeds to drag her around town to all the sort of forgotten folks who she then proceeds to befriend and it ends wtih them all having a party. Could we get anymore saccharine and Disney?

As far as the movie goes, I have no idea who it's going to appeal to, other than teachers and librarians using to to supplement the book. I mean, it was like watching Steel Magnolias for 10-year old girls, except nothing bad happens. Things seemed arbitrarily changed as well. The landlord became a more prominant figure, the dad in the movie couldn't stand Winn Dixie at first, the dad refused to go to the party at the end of the book. I'm not sure why the production company felt these changes were necessary.

However, Dave Matthews played Otis, and he made the movie worth watching. I have never been a fan of him, but he made the character.

It's a book about friendship, about not judging people by looks or rumors, it's about getting out and bringing folks together. I still feel really "eh" about it. I have no favorite quote.

Book 3

2005-01-26T14:32:00.000-05:00

Geography Club by Brent Hartinger

Yes, I finally read it and you were all right. It was fantastic.

A small group of gay and lesbian students find each other, basically by chance, at a high and decide to start their own club. In order so that no one else knows about them, and so that no one esle would possbly think about joining, they call the Geography Club, because no one would want to join such a boring club.

That's the basic gist of the plot, but what's really at the center of the story is being alone, and what you are willing to do to not be alone. It's a painfully true depiction, the islands of popularity and their heirarchy, and then there's Outcast Island, somewere you don't want to be, but once you're there you don't get out. What are the characters willing to do, to betray, to sacrifice, to not end up there? Of course being outed would end you up there, or possibly somewhere worse.
I really felt for and identified with Brian Bund. I loved the rest of the story and the characters and the sweeteness of Russel's and Kevin's relationship, but Brian made the story for me.

I've removed the stuttering to save my bad typing skils:

"How do you do it?" I said. I wasn't sure if he'd know that I was talking about his being an outcast, but he did know.
"You get used to it," he said simply.
"All day long, I've felt like I'm going to burst into tears. Everyone staring at me, whispering things."
"No. You can't think like that."
"What do you mean?"
"You can't care what people think, You'll go crazy. You've got to save your energy for when people really do stuff."
Do stuff? I thought. But even as I thought this, I knew what kind of stuff he meant. Stuff like throwing food at him in the cafeteria. Or puling him into a darkened theater and dressing him up like a girl. Or trapping him in a deserted hallway after school.
It was good advice. It was also a fascinating insight into his life, evenif it was phenominally depressing.
"You ever want to change the way things are?" I said.
He looked down at his food. "Things don't change. Not for me, they don't." I didn't bother giving him some stupid pep talk about having a better attitude. He was absolutley right. For him, things never would change, not as long as he stayed at Goodkind High School.

He's right. The movies all lie. There is no make over, or foreign grandmother, or shiny new attitude that will save you once you find yourself on Outcast Island. I don't know how anybody ends up there. One year everyone's friends, and the next year, the Islands have formed up. I don't know how anyone survives it. I changed schools.

Book 1

2005-01-14T13:50:00.000-05:00

The Year of Secret Assignments by Jaclyn Moriarty

This was a very cute and low key (for YA) book. It was great. It was damn funny and I particularly liked the revenge, and that they didn't go soft on it or feel bad, which at one point I thought they would. The writing was in my opinion quite good, and the telling of the story though journal entries and letters was succesfull. I was apprehensive about it, I've seen that REALLY not work. I loved the mock trial at the the end ("..hey, Bindy's putting all kinds of adjectives in the transcript.") This is a fantastic example of a light read without it being complete trash. Even though one character is dealing with the death of her father, it is handled well without it taking over the entire story, yet still being sensitive....and that sentence is getting out of hand.

Damn Good Book

This is still my favorite quote. It's what made me interested in reading the book, and strangely enough pulled Jeremy in as well.

In actual fact, I always think it's funny when a teacher tries to be cool. Most people want to slap them across the face, but I want to sit them down, like with a hand on their forehead, and say, "It's okay, you're a grown-up, you're allowed to be a nerd, just breathe in and out, that's all you need to do," and they would look up at me confused but also relieved and teary-eyed.

Book 2

2005-01-14T13:13:00.000-05:00

Playing in Traffic by Gail Giles

When one of the school's 'invisibles" suddenly gains the attention of the school's wacko outcast goth girl, what will ensue? Well, it's certainly not hilarity. This is a Gail Giles book after all. This book deals with, amoung other things, what can you believe when a stranger decides to tell you all the most horrible things that are happening to her? Of course you try to help her, in any way you can. What happens when parts the stories start contradicting each other? How far will you go?

I have yet to see a positive portrayal of a goth in literature. Just pointing that out.

This does not have quite the hardcore twist that other Gail Giles books have had, but it definatley has the punch you in the face ending.

Damn Good Book

Favorite passage (possibly my favorite passage in a YA book EVER):

I didn't answer. I was seventeen and my bemoaned and as yet unrelieved virginity had made me unreliable in matters of character appraisal.

50 books in a year

2005-01-12T13:50:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I really liked the idea of keeping track of what is read this year as sort of per Leila's suggestion. I really have no interest in joining another blog in order to do that. I think one blog is quite enough, thank you. I'm also curious as to how much I actually read in a year. I'm sure that Leila must read upwards of 200 books, but I would be interested what her count is too. Since I just said that, I in no way wish to suggest that this is a competion of ANY sort. I really am just curious what some of us wackos do.

(I am also in the process of forming some kind of list to of amazing YA book to present as a proposal to change the face of summer reading in high schools, but that's another project, in it's baby stages. I would appreciate any input any folks have towards this end at any point this year. I know you all have your favorites. I would like to have a finished proposal by fall, hopefully.)

Now a question for any one who feels like answering: If 10 books were republished in one huge QP to keep foks like me from loosing their place in the series does that count as 1 book or 10?

OW! OW! OW!

2005-01-10T18:34:00.000-05:00

Subtitle: How the Biopsy Went

I don't think there are words I can use here to describe how much that sucked today. Really. Unless you are collecting new and interesting pains, avoid this at all costs.

Not much else to say: it sucked; OW!

Ok, I'll try to be Good

2005-01-03T13:50:00.000-05:00

So the game that Jeremy and I got addicted to is World of Warcraft
They're so awesome that they did a special holiday patch that decorated the major cities with trees and lights and made quests that you had to bring milk and cookies to Father Great Winter. The undead city with wreaths all over it was a hoot.

Jeremy and I keep getting sick and if I have to go to the emergency room one more time I think I'm going to kill someone. We got a flu right after Thanksgiving, and THEN we got one right after Christmas. Flu part 2 is now tied for how I envision the 8th circle of Hell. Jeremy vomited so much in 4 hours he looked liked he had lost 15 pounds. We went to the ER for and IV for him at 1 AM, in Albany, NY, during a snowstorm. My mom wouldn't let me drive.

At this point I would like to comment on my general health problems, but I'm not sure you all want to hear about them and I'm not sure how comfortable I am talking about them. But, I am officially worried and a bit scared. I will say that are womanly problems and next week I am going for a biopsy.

I hope everyone had a good holiday and no one esle gets the horrible flu we had. We got an electric blanket that Jeremy is very excited about. I got some very good/expensive kitchen knives that I am very excited about.

Jeremy officially proposed to me on Christmas morning. I said yes.

Sorry, Sorry

2004-12-09T13:31:00.000-05:00

Despite running over the curb as I left the RMV during the test, I did pass.

I think my driving teacher expected me to be excited. I felt bad about that. Passing the test just means I actually have to drive now. No more excuses.

The Universe Hates Me

2004-12-07T19:03:00.000-05:00

In a kiss your glasses lens with chapstick on kind of way.

Tomorrow is my driving test. It is currently freezing raining out. I am recovering from a REALLY bad flu that Jeremy and I got right after Thanksgiving. I have a blocked tear duct, which means my right eye is constantly weeping down my face and causing vision issues.

If any of you pray, sacrifice, or dance for a God, please put in a good word for me.

More info about the D&D book

2004-11-17T11:31:00.000-05:00

I'm kind of surprised it got attention in Newsweek, but Rock On!

Vampire Movie Rant - Part 1

2004-11-16T15:38:00.000-05:00

I’ve been putting this on off because it doesn’t have a starting place. It’s going to be a true rant as I don’t know what’s it’s going to encompass, where it’s going to go, or how it will end.

I have been a fantasy fan forever. I have always lamented that it had not been a genre that the movie industry took seriously. The only movies we had were either BAD (Conan, Dungeons & Dragons) or really poorly received because they were just too weird (Legend, Labyrinth). Then Harry Potter came along and the world took fantasy seriously, both as a writing genre, and finally as a movie genre. We were given stunningly beautiful and basically book-accurate movies. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was more popular than anyone would expect coming from a previously cheesy genre.

No such savior has yet arrived for the poor neglected vampire genre. I have also been a vampire fan forever. I get it from my mother. She used to chase me around the house as a child saying “I vant to bite your neck and drink your blood.” Weird but true. It ensured that I grew up with no fear of the critters and always wanting to see them in movies, and usually wanting them to win.

But what have I been faced with all my life? CHEESY VAMPIRE MOVIES! Crap like Love at First Bite, Once Bitten, My Best Friend Is a Vampire, all stupid not even trying to be horror movies. Treating vampires like they’re a running gag instead of a MONSTER. Then we have movies like The Hunger, which every Goth on the planet will tell you to see because it’s “the best vampire movie ever”. Uh-huh. It sucked. It’s only redeeming quality was it had David Bowie in it, and HE DIED!!! Which made me wondered why I bothered watching the rest of the movie. Then we have flicks like Fright Night which at least are trying to be horror, but as we are in the eighties, we are smack in the middle of slasher flicks and Hollywood wouldn’t know subtle horror if it hit them in the face. So that leaves us with The Lost Boys. This is the best vampire movie we have. This is the best vampire movie we have? A Corey Haim/Feldman eighties movie with a vampire gang that looks like it stepped out of a bad heavy metal video is the best we have to offer? Yep, ‘fraid so.

In the early nineties, it looked like we might be saved. Francis Ford Coppola decided to do Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Since he was the one doing it, we knew it was going to have a budget, differing it vastly from its predecessors. He also signed up some REALLY good actors, Gary Oldman (sorry Leila, I really like him) and Anthony Hopkins. There was hope. But then he turned it into a love story. This was NOT Bram Stoker’s Dracula. We also were forced to watch Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves try to speak with British accents. And for no particular reason, he turned Lucy into a whore. Well, it was pretty. Maybe we can just watch it on mute.

Two years later, there was again hope in the form of the movie version of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. I was already cynical. I didn’t particularly like the book (I’m not being fair here, actually I CAN’T STAND her vampire books – but that’s a different rant). Again it had a budget and big name actors were signed up for the parts. Big named actors for their big names, not because they had anything in common with the book’s characters, in looks or personality. Well, it had a really cool scene in which the vamps turned into ash in the sunlight…and blew away.

And then we had years of crap again, Vampire in Brooklyn, Bordello of Blood, From Dusk Till Dawn. And then Blade comes along. It’s based on a comic book, they didn’t have to think about it, it’ll be good! And I truly believed it would be. The most amazing early scene in a vampire movie – the rave in the meat packing plant, really cool, and really horrific. And then down I come, with Blade’s one-dimensional character (or Wesley Snipe’s one dimensional acting) and the most moronic villain ever – “I’ll turn the whole world into vampires”. Yeah, what will you eat, genius? And if Blade had all the strengths of vampires why did the rest of them fight like second grade school girls?

Blade began the tradition of seeing all new vamp movies with my mom, and ripping them to shreds afterwards.

<> Must stop, more to come.

One of the most Catholic countries in the world

2004-11-16T11:45:00.000-05:00

Thinks gay marriage rights are a good idea:

Ireland should give greater rights to homosexual couples

*blinks*

And so it continues

2004-11-16T10:25:00.000-05:00

The battle over evolution being taught in schools.

What's next? Are we going to re-explain dinosaurs?

1) What the HELL happened to separation of Church and State? It shouldn't EVEN be a question about teaching religious 'theories' in public schools. If you want your kids to learn religious doctrine, either take them to church or send them to a private school. Catholic schools are still pretty popular.

2) Good Christians don't try to PROVE what's written in the Bible. That's why they have FAITH (raised Catholic, you didn't question, you just kept your faith). All these societies that try to find scientific basis for what's written in the Bible are ridiculous. Did they miss the whole definition of what Faith is suppose to be? They shouldn't need to prove what they believe, they should just believe. If their faith is that shakey, they need to reexamine their choice of religion.

Metal Chicks Anoymous

2004-11-15T13:53:00.000-05:00

Hello, my name is Chrissy and I was a Heavy Metal Chick.

It's true, in high school I wore stretch jeans with zippers down the sides, a black suede jacket (with fringe, no less), black pointy toed leather boots, and listened to Metallica and Danzig. Why am I bringing this up now? Because over the weekend I watched possibly the funniest thing I had ever seen: VH-1's 40 Least Metal Moments. (I'd put a link here, but there's nothing useful on the website to link to, sorry). I too was appalled to find that Mariah Carey covered a Def Leopard song (Bringin' on the Heartbreak), Sheryl Crow covered Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns N' Roses, and blasphemy of blasphemy, Celine Dion covered AC/DC's Shook Me All Night Long. What were they thinking? Why did anyone let them? Ick. I'm not even going to get into Pat Boone's "metal album".

I know that this music is no longer a part of my life, but I still can mourn it's complete misuse. "Bringin' on the Heartbreak" still conjurs up memories of bad junior high school dances, but listening to Mariah's soft and uninspired rendition of it makes me want to bang my head - into a wall, just to make the noise stop.

So, why, you might ask, was I doning ripped blue jeans and denim jackets instead of black lipstick and white face? There were no goths to speak of in my town or those surrounding it. I didn't know they existed. Despite growing up on The Cure and Siouxsie & The Banshees, I never associated them with a "culture". When metal "died" I was on my way to college and had already replaced Appetite for Destruction with Pretty Hate Machine. New friends gently introduced me to bands like Sisters of Mercy and gave name to songs and bands (Peter Murphy, Chameleons) that I had been listening too, but never knew who they were, thanks to recorded tapes that I stole from my sister. These same friends brought me to my first Goth club when I was just turning 19. Up until then, my roomate had been bringing me to Boston dance clubs and I couldn't figure out why anyone would want to go to these things. At the Goth club guys didn't try to (rudely, and literaly) pull you away from your friends as a pick up tactic. As a matter of fact, people just left you alone. I appreciated this. And dear God, the guys were beautiful. The long hair and pretty faces that I had been fooled into believing were to be found within the Heavy Metal scene, thanks to all those damn lead singers, were all actually in this new scene in all their angsty glory, complete with beautifully done eyeliner and clothes that made most girls sigh with jealousy (this was before Marylin Manson came along and ruined the fashion sense). Yep, it was all the pretty boys that completed my fall in to the world of Goth. So sue me.

So yes, I was a Heavy Metal Chick. But ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I didn't know any better. I didn't know that there was a more fitting place for me. I do not regret the time I spent tryng to tease my hair (which I quickly gave up on) or singing along to When the Levy Breaks. Even though I have left it behind, I know in my heart that Celine singing Shook Me All Nigh t Long, is just wrong and a blot on our culture.

I still hear Zepplin's Tangerine in my head when I see a copy of Tangerine by Bloor. Though they have NOTHING to do with each other, it's a sign that somewhere in there is a girl who's still bangin' her head.

Health Insurance - The Lack There Of

2004-11-08T13:23:00.000-05:00

I would rather pay way less taxes and pay out a few hundred per month on private insurance and at least know what I am paying for instead of the way things are now [with national health insurance].

This rant's been a long time coming, and it was finally pushed into being by this quote by a Canadian responding to the reactions to the election that so many Americans want to leave their country, possibly moving to Canada (akward sentence, sorry).
I'm going to paint a picture for everyone, and it's one I'm sure many Americans are familiar with.
I have been living without health insurance for 3 years now. The first year was because I was unemployed. I could not find a job when I first moved back to Boston. Jeremy was employed, but his company did not cover domestic partners, which meant that because we were not married, I was shit out of luck. The second year Jeremy was unemployed and I quickly did what I could to find a job, which meant going back into retail, something I swore I would never do again (I don't think I need to explain to anyone why I tried to keep this promise to myself). Unfortuneatly, because of how little retail pays I could not afford to have the measily $30 dollars a month taken out of my paycheck for health care coverage. To put it in perspective for everyone, I took home about $1100 a month. Our rent was $900. That leaves $200 a month for electricity, gas, phone, T pass, and food for TWO people and 2 cats. [My manager at the time actually gave me a talk that winter about my being "sullen" and perhaps I did not have the right "attitude" for that job. He never asked me what could be making me so "sullen". I think it might have been lack of food. I lost 10 pounds that year.]
So, I couldn't have gone to a doctor if I had wanted to. Not only is it difficult to find a primary care physician who will accept patients without insurance, but when you are using change jars to buy your groceries, $75 for an office visit is too much of a luxery. If something really goes wrong, you are forced to visit the emergency room of your local hospital. I had to do this at one point. $500 to have a nurse tell me to go home a put a hot compress on it (blocked tear duct). God forbid if I saw an actual doctor, or had to have tests run, or had to be prescribed meds (recently found out, the hard way, that a 10 day run of antibiotics is $110). The bill with tests and IV's can easily run around $5000.
For all his faults, I am thankful that manager wasn't like my manager at Borders who INSISTED upon doctor's notes for sick days. Can you imagine having to spend $500 dollars to get a doctor's note for 1 sick day, when you make less than $70 in one day?
So, I say to folks who have national health care, but are dissatisfied with it: Something is better than Nothing. If you need to go to the doctor you shouldn't have to decide what utility bill you will have to let slide or how many meals you are going to have to miss in order to pay for the visit. Little things like eczema, an infected cut (turning to blood poisoning, despite precautions), and BIRTH CONTROL become huge when you have no health insurance. And if you are fortunate enough to want to plan a family, pregnancy and brth and all that goes with it become a laughable non-option without health insurance. Not to mention having children and not having health insurance is to truly too frightening to even contemplate.
I still don't have health insurance. My hypoglecimia seems to be getting exponetially worse despite my eating better and exercising. Jeremy and I have not yet decided what to do.

Comfort Reading

2004-11-07T23:24:00.000-05:00

I haven't written anything this week because if I had started to comment on the election, it would have become more than a rant, and I feared for Jeremy's keyboard.
Instead, in order to deal with my disenchantment, I am falling back on some comfort reading. This means that I have just stopped reading the 2 books I had started in order to re-read a favorite series. It's not that I don't like what I'm reading, they're just not holding me right now. Luna by Julie Anne Peters was turing out to be rather interesting. It's the story of a junior high school girl whose older brother is on his way to becoming a transexual, and she's the only one who knows. I had also started The Eyre Affair, which was shaping up to beone of those books where all you can think is 'What the heck was going on in that author's head'. I like those kind of books/authors. Nina Kiriki Hoffman is one of these authors. She's a hoot.
As it turns out, I'm reading my favorite comfort read. Which given what it is, could be considered a little disturbing. It's The Black Jewels Trilogy by Anne Bishop. Why is this series the series I curl up with like a safety blanket when I feel bad? Is it because it's really original fantasy with a neat system of magic. Is it because I think the characters are fantastic? Maybe, sort of. Is it because the bad people not only get defeated but they get their comeuppance in a rip them apart and eat them fashion? Yeah, yeah it is.

Titian cleaned her knife with a scrap from the black coat while the other Harpies hacked up the meat and tossed the pieces to the pack of Hounds waiting in a half circle around the body.
The body twitched and still feebly stuggled, but the bastard could no longer scream for help and the muted sounds he made filled her with satisfaction. A demon couldn't feel pain the way the living did, but pain was a cumulative thing, and he hadn't been dead long enough for his nerves to forget the sensation.
...
Titian picked up her ax. The Harpies moved aside for their Queen.
The limbs were gone. The torso was empty. The eyes still held a glimmer of intelligence, a glimmer of Self. Not much, but enough.
With three precise strokes, Titian split Greer's skull. Using the blade, she opened one of the splits until it was wide enough for her fingers. Then she tore the bone away.
She looked into Greer's eyes. Still enough there.
Whistling for the pack leader, she walked away, smiling, while the Hound began feasting on the brain.

For those who have the courage and stomach to read this series, know that it is amazing.

Daemon Sadi is my hero.

I'm sorry if anyone has been disturbed by this.

My 34 year old sister and my birthday present

2004-10-31T18:29:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago a box arrived from my sister who lives in Portland, Oregon. Her gifts to me have been getting increasingly weird (weird: huh?, not weird: Cool!) for the past few years. I think she out did herself this year. I opened the box only to be face to face with a Barbie doll. That's right, a Barbie doll.
Now, I have quite frequently bought toys for adult friends when the toys were 1) just plain really cool (like an RC Cobra, as in snake, with flashing red eyes from Fisher price, if you get 2 you can race them!) or 2) somehow spoke of the person's personality (a nerf dart gun for one of my managers at Bordes so she could shoot co-workers when they did something dumb at the register). I think my sister was trying to do one or both of these things, but it falls a bit flat since I HATE BARBIES.
I never understood the fascination with Barbie dolls. As a little girl I was always like "You can take their clothes off and put on new ones? What else do they do? Oh, nothing. Uh, no, thank you." I liked my dolls to actually DO something. My favorite toys included Transformers (still have an original Soundwave), G.I. Joes (only the females), Golden Girls (no, not the TV show about the old people, they were warrior women complete with WEAPONS), Sectaurs (very obscure), Jem dolls (I preferred the Misfits, thank you), and My Little Ponies (unicorns, of course).
To a certain extent I can see her amusement about it. It's a wizard (Mattel cashing in on the Harry Potter phenomenon) Barbie named Christie. Ok, kind of amusing. I did go through a pagan stage in my teenage years, but I got better. And Christie is almost like Chrissy, but I still don't answer to it. It's more of one of those things you point to in a store and laugh, not buy and send cross country. I am being bothered by how much she doesn't know me anymore, or by how much she is not adjusting her view of me. We used to be ridiculously close. Several years ago she got me a Jack Skellington mug (I still use it). A few years after that she bought me an X-tra large 'I Leave Bite Marks' t-shirt (XL?! and 'I Leave Bite Marks' is a little creepy coming from one's sister). This year it's a "Pagan" Barbie (yes, that's what she called it in her card to me).

An aside:
Jermy bought me two stuffed dragons from Manhatten Toys for my birthday. I pointed them out in the store and snuggled them before I put them back. He also knows that I've been heartbroken because I came to the realization this summer that sometime in the last few moves I lost my pewter dragon collection that I started when I was like 7 or 8. Included in that collection were atleat 2 dragons from my grandfather that I will never be able to replace. It's been like loosing a chuck of my childhood.

Dragons from Jeremy made sense. A Barbie from my sister just made me go Why?

They Might Be Giants, they might be right

2004-10-29T00:24:00.000-04:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6355259/

Cooking Failure

2004-10-27T13:59:00.000-04:00

So, I've been spending the past year or so learning to cook more interesting things. Previously, I had just been concentrating on baked goods, cookies, cakes, breads, and most recently brownies. I've gotten quite good at the baking thing. Most of the time, if something doesn't come out right (like about a month ago I baked the Worst Brownies Ever, despite following an award winning recipe. Yes, it was the recipe's fault, not mine) I can figure out exactly where it went wrong and fix it in the next trial recipe or two. I have no idea what I did yesterday.

I set out to make baked beans, the kind you eat with good barbeque stuff. I like them, and I figured they couldn't really be that complicated. So, I looked at a bunch of different recipes to see what the basic ingredients, cooking times, and methods were. I based a recipe on a combination of several. Since I didn't have a cast iron dutch oven, I decided to use my crock pot (yes, I have a crock pot, it makes REALLY good stews and beef stroganoff with hardly any effort). I checked again with several recipes, and crock pot "baked" beans were supposedly utterly feasible.

Yesterday before work, I set said dried beans to soak, by the time I would get home it would have been 8 hours, plenty of time for soaking dried beans. I prepared the beans in the crock pot whille we cooked dinner. Since the cooking time on them was 8-10 hours I figured cooking them over night would be best. Since it was my first trial, I didn't want any sort of meal revolving around them, and baked beans for breakfast didn't sound too ridiculous.

So at six this morning I got up to check on what should have been a pot of well cooked beans. They weren't. It didn't look like thay had taken in ANY more moisture, let alone turn into a pot of delicious baked beans. I did remember around 5 that I had forgotten mustard, but that shouldn't have affected the cooking, just the flavor. The beans were still hard and I have no idea what I did wrong. I haven't a clue where to begin to "fix" this recipe for another trial.

I'm a little sad.

How I Paid For College take two: An Epiphany

2004-10-24T23:11:00.000-04:00

Ok, actually having to write this down in some sort of coherant method got me thinking about this. It's certainly not the book's content that's bugging me, though, for good or bad, I have take it into consideration when deciding whenther it should go in the Young Adult or Adult section. Having just finished Doing It before starting How I Paid for College I can say that the HIPFC is rather tame in comparison (so far, still about 80 pages from the end, I have little desire to force myself to read it). However, Doing It was amazing. It was funny, it was poinant, it was so on target that I had a hard time believing it was written by an adult, not some 16 year old that this all happened to last year. There are so many elements in it that so many people who choose to remember what those years were like can relate to. On the other hand, how HIPFC was written has forced it to be only relavant to a small clique of folks. And yes yes yes you can argue that relevance is subjective and who the hell is fantasy relavent to? But if your characters are so esoteric why should your readers care about them? If I can care about a British kid who's a bit of a jerk and all he seems to care about is loosing his virginity, why can't I care about a bisexual kid from New Jersey who all he wants to do is escape to a college of the Arts? [For those of you who don't know, I went to Art school, and spent a great deal of effort to get there. My art teacher actually told me I wasn't good enough to get in. I showed her! Now I work in a Library.] It just seems wrong to me, to absoloutely not care about a character who I actually have something in common with, but just can't stand because of how his story is told.
Jeremy and I quote movies we like to each other constantly, but I would not choose to write a story based on either of our youths using those quotes. No one else would get it. And I understand that.
oodilolly oodilolly, golly what a day

How I Paid For College

2004-10-23T20:54:00.000-04:00

So this is the book I keep talking about. Full title and author: How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship, and Musical Theater by Marc Acito. Mind you I STILL haven't finished it, so many of these thoughts are impressions while reading. To catch everyone up these are what I've said to Leila about it already:

Ok, So, I read a few more pages yesterday....and it took quite the unexpected turn. I don't know if I should tell you what happened, because I think it should be unexpected (well, there were hints, but I never expected a YA book to go THERE), and I don't want to color your reading of it. But, this new plot twist has me going, "OK, so it has annoying characters, it has references to 20 year old culture, it has musical/drama in jokes, and NOW it has a (it may have more, I haven't gotten that far) scene that will have numerous parents running for their torches. What exactly does it have to offer the YA community?" So, yeah, I need a few more opinions on this one, and some discussion. I am the LAST person who would censor this scene, but I also am aware of what tweaks all those crazy book censoring folks out.
The rant that's brewing about this book is just getting too big. I'm tempted to read Shadowmancer to see which one wins the "Worst Book I Have Ever Read" contest.
My current recommendation is keep it in Adult (actually my current recommendation is send it the fuck back to B&T and get our money back and spend the $13 - after discount- on someting worth while like Paris Hilton's memoirs. Atleast folks will WANT to read that crap.)

Ok, I may be being unfair about this book because I was expecting a YA book. It's about a boy in his senior year of high school (and the summer before) who wants to go to Juliard to be and ACTOR. His dad being a business guy, thinks this is useless and tells boy that he won't pay for something so frivolous. Boy (Edward for those who care) needs to figure out how he's going to get into said college and, supposed, hilarity ensues.
Why would I think this wasn't a YA book? It has all the elements that generally make up a good YA book: high school setting, going against parental unit, finding oneself, discovering one's sexuality, a struggle to get into college.
Ok so we put it in the adult section. But I have to ask, how many adults would care about this book? It doesn't relate to them, it about high school kids. Your average adult (who doesn't normally read YA lit) why would they care about a 17 y/o struggling to go college against dad's wishes. They wouldn't. But unfortuneatly the humor revolves around culture that's 20 years old.

"that I am to lead the Play People Parade like the Pied Piper or the Dr Pepper guy."

The Dr Pepper guy? I BARELY remember those commercials.
Then there are the DOZENS of references to plays, musicals, movies that the humor revolves around that if you don't know what he's talking about makes you feel like you are sitting in a group of folks who have all their own in-jokes that you were never a part of.

"I imagine us growing up and getting married (to women, I mean) but still carrying on annual clandestine trysts in the manner of Same Time, Next Year."

"It's not long before the place [his house after a party gets going] looks like Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights."

and you guys can use your imagination to figure out what this next scene has to do with.

"Of course Doug is reluctant, but eventually I wear down his resistance by telling him he doesn't have to touch me and if he just closes his eyes, well, a mouth's a mouth, right? I even go so far as to sing a little of Aldonza the whore's song from Man of La Mancha"

These references are not few and far between. They happen every 2-5 pages.
There are also atleast 3 times where the author (posing as Edward as this book is told in the first person) describes what the movie of his life would be like.

"When they make the movie of my life, this trip will definately have to be another of those montage sequences filled with madcap adolescent high jinks"

Quite honestly I feel this comes off as pretentious not humorous.
I have to stop at this point. I may say more in another blog when I actually finish this book. but to sum up:

Is this book engaging enough to finish? No, but I've come this far I might as well finish it.
Do I care about the characters? No, I think they're all pretentious assholes.
Does it speak to its intended audience? I have no idea who its intended audience is. That's one of the problems with this book. It seems like it was written for the author's 3 friends. Or maybe just so the author could hear himself talk.
It is original? Not particularly. I've read other books that deal with similiar issues and handle them better, probably because they choose an audience.

Spell check's not working in my browser, so deal.

It's all Leila's Fault

2004-10-23T19:56:00.000-04:00

So I've given into peer pressure again, just like when I joined Friendster. Leila's been enjoying my rants that I've been sending her through email so much that she thinks everyone else should get to read them. So, here I am. I can only assume that this blog will take on a format similair to Leila's in that I will be talking about what books I'm reading and what I think about them. In saying that let me get a few things clear. I in no way shape or form pressume to know or understand what good writing is. I am not nor was I ever an English major. I don't read to improve my intelligence and I don't read books because they're "classics". As a matter of fact if you tell me a book is a classic I'm more likely not to read it. I'm just like that. I read because I'm addicted to it. Plain and simple. I get uncomforatable if I have nothing to read. I also read because I enjoy it, and I always have. So what am I looking at when I say a book is good or not? Well, here are a few example of things I consider when I actually have to explain my reasoning to others out side my head:

Was the story engaging? Did it pull me in enough to be bothered reading it instead of the 10 other books on my need to read list?
Do I care about the characters? Do I want them to succeed in their endevors or do I just wished they'd die and stop whining?
Do I think this book speaks to/has meaning to its intended audience? This is used mostly when I'm critiquing juvenile and young adult literature.
It is original? Many things aren't completely original these days and I understand that. But is this story original enough that I'm not screaming at the book when I read it "For the love of God, do ALL elves have to be whiny dwarf haters?" Yes, I yell at books when I read them, leave me alone.

These are all I can think of at the moment, but I'm pretty sure they're most most common ones.
The only thing else I can say is everyone prepare yourselves and remember It's All Leila's Fault.