Storytime 2013: Revisiting

These are a bunch of books by authors I have read before, once, or seven times.

"The Casual Vacancy" by J.K. Rowling

This was the highly anticipated "J.K. Rowling's book for adults." It seems to me that since finishing Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling did nothing but watch "EastEnders" and reading the sensational bits of British papers. It's as if she really didn't want to be pigeon-holed as a writer of fantasy for children, so she threw in some sex and swearing and wrote about the most "real" lives possible.

The beginning of the book is hard to follow because there are SO MANY CHARACTERS. Rowling never really focuses on one character, unless you count Krystal Wheedon, but she spends so much time hopping around telling little tidbits about the many people in this little village, who all have problems with each other, that it's hard to even care about any of them. If Harry Potter is a tale about good winning over evil and true friendship, then The Casual Vacancy is about how shitty people can really be to each other. C-

"Days of Blood and Starlight" by Laini Taylor

This is the sequel to "Daughter of Smoke and Bone" that I liked so much. Karou and Akiva have been separated, and, each sure that the other is dead, attend to the warmongering of their respective races. They serve their commanders somewhat against their wills, but still hold the secret wish for there to be peace between angels and chimeras. Each finds out that the commanders are secretly condoning acts of brutality. The lovers' stories work in parallel until they are reunited, unsure of how their relationship will proceed. I feel like this whole book was a bit of a placeholder for a big showdown of love in the third book. Reading it, I just kept thinking, "war, strategy, war, war, more war, when are they going to reunite?" The creation of the worlds in Earth and Eretz is really imaginative though, and it leaves off with a huge cliffhanger that I really hope pays off. B

"Ash" by Malinda Lo

This book takes place several hundred years after "Huntress." Like "Huntress," it is YA lesbian fantasy fiction based on a previous work, which, from the title, is obviously Cinderella. It differs from the traditional tale in that the fairy godmother is a male fairy trying to trap her into promising her life to him. Ash also doesn't fall in love with any prince, but the King's Huntress. It's creative, but since the story is so well known, it's harder to accept than "Huntress" was. Ash also just seems like a wretched creature, more pathetic than I like my female characters. C

Storytime 2013: Heroines and Headspace

"Daughter of Smoke and Bone" by Laini Taylor

This book was on a table at the library promoting young adult literature, and the author had been at LeakyCon, so I put it on my list. It started off clunky, as young adult novels often do, in that "OK, so some stuff happened before... See it? Got it? OK..." kind of way. Taylor first has to explain Karou's ex-boyfriend, her best friend, and then her whole life up to the point at which she is an art student in Prague. Long story short, she's been raised by chimeras and goes running teeth-collecting errands through portals for the creature who raised her. When it really got time for the story to start, the first half of it was rather unnecessary. But then the story really starts and makes up for it.

Karou's inhuman family keeps parts of her own life a secret from her, and she always feels like there is something that she has forgotten about herself. One day, she meets Akiva, an angel. OK, not a problem, the girl deals with monsters on a regular basis. Except that this angel burns all the portals and probably her chimera family inside their home. Problem. Inexplicably, the tattoos that Karou has had apparently since birth are a powerful weapon against Akiva. Also inexplicably, Akiva, though he knows he should kill this girl who is on the side of the "demon" chimeras, can't bring himself to do so. There is some really great banter between them as they negotiate what they know and feel about each other. Akiva can't believe that chimeras could actually be kind enough to raise a human child. Along the way, we find out the backstory of the angels vs chimera war, which unfolds from Akiva's point of view in an excellent past/present jump sequence. Then there is a big reveal, and Karou finally remembers who she is and who she was.

I really can't write any more about this without spoiling it, but rest assured that I am fired up for the sequel, waiting on my shelf. A

"Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me" by Ellen Forney

The title appealed to me when I saw it in the library, so I grabbed it. This book is a "graphic memoir" about the author's life with bipolar disorder. I think that the illustrations add a lot as she chronicles her steps through therapy, medication, manic episodes, depression, yoga, work, and finally, balance. She spends a lot of time addressing the artist's dilemma: lots of great artists had mental illness; did the mental illness enhance their craft? She doesn't want to let go of her identity as a crazy artist, but also knows that a lot of those artists killed themselves or were institutionalized. I felt like this personal account was helpful to me as I sort through my own mental health issues because the author methodically lays out the ways that bipolar disorder negatively affected her life, and the benefits of sticking to getting better. B+

"Huntress" by Malinda Lo

This book is a prequel to a book called "Ash," and since I like reading things in chronological order, I wanted to read this one first. The story is supposed to be based on the I Ching, which I have not read or researched, so I can't draw any parallels. I will say, it's not everyday that you find young adult lesbian fantasy fiction. The author, I found out later, used to write for AfterEllen.com.

Kaede, a lord's daughter, and Taisin, a sage-in-training, go on a quest to find the Fairy Queen. Before they even meet, Taisin has a vision of Kaede going alone to an ice fortress, and the only other thing that Taisin feels in the vision is her profound love for "this person" whom she does not know. So does she fall in love because of the vision, or does she have the vision because she will eventually fall in love? Oh, questions. Lo manages the queer flavor of the book matter-of-factly; at the beginning of the book, when Kaede is faced with the prospect of marriage to some lord's son, she states that she can't marry any man. Her mentor sighs and says "It's not likely that you'll be able to make a political marriage with another woman. It's happened before, but rarely." So homosexuality is a fact of life in this society, therefore, the romantic characters don't have to tear themselves up about being queer, just that their romance interferes with Taisin's life goal of becoming a celibate sage. Well played. However, the book's plot is not really clear, and ends abruptly, so I will have to see how it is supposed to lead on to the next book. B-

Depression, Anxiety, Herbs, and Being Present

It's been a few months since I made this video for the Project for Awesome, in which I talked about mental health and my experiences with depression and social anxiety. Shortly after that, my family made a decision to move my grandpa, who has dementia, into a care home, and my grandma moved into a retirement home of her own will, leaving the house they had lived in for the past 60 years. My grandparents have been a huge part of my life, especially since I moved here for university 10 years ago, so this change has had a big impact on me. No longer can I just stop over and watch PBS with Grandma if I need some human contact. Knowing that my grandpa is confused and alone most of the time makes me feel guilty. At the same time, some friendships that I hoped would develop fell flat, a big disappointment as I try to break out of my loneliness. I spend a lot more time alone in my apartment than I did before.

In an enormous spiral of depression, I made a very deliberate decision to distract myself from my life. I did not want to think about my grandparents or my job or my lack of social and romantic life, so after work, instead of reading a book or writing down my feelings, I turned on the TV or got on facebook for HOURS. I did not clean the house. I did not get errands done. Sometimes, when my roommate was staying at a friend's house, I drank too much so that I didn't feel so bad.

I don't remember what caused me to go out and buy St John's Wort. Desperation? Probably. Honestly, I didn't think it would actually work, but a few weeks after I started taking it, when my roommate had again left me alone all weekend, I was shocked and amazed to find that I didn't feel like laying down and dying. I didn't feel particularly happy. From my perspective, I was still poor and alone and unhappy, but it was as if some invisible emotional force was keeping me from sinking into my normal depression. Huh.

My faith communtiy is doing some rather abstract practices for Lent, the first of which was "practicing presence and fasting from distraction." My friend Mara, who has experience in the Orthodox Church calls it "Protestant choose-your-own-adventure Lent." So I'm fasting from my biggest distraction, Facebook, and instead of dwelling on how sucky my life is as a single 28 year old with an employer who takes advantage of me, I'm taking a vacation from trying to fix my life. Until Easter, I guess, I'm just trying to be in my life, even though I am not content with it. That means not casting around for all sorts of things that I could do, like join a new club or look for a new job. I make appointments and things for later in the week, but I'm refusing to make long-term "this is going to make my life better" inquiries. I'm taking things one day at a time, as it were.

Sometimes I even take things minute by minute, and the combination of this presence practice and maybe the herbs seems to be changing my experience with stressful situations. I was supposed to mail a package on Monday, but things weren't working out the way I wanted before work. During work, I just decided not to dwell on it, because I couldn't do anything about it until afterward. It worked. On Sunday morning, I wanted to check out another faith community, but I got into my car a bit late and would show up late. I hate being late, but instead of putting myself in the position of arriving late as a new person, I decided to just not go, but drive over and see where it was, to soak up some sun and listen to Irish music on the drive. It was fine. No one was even expecting me to be there except for me. Normally, I would beat myself up over it, and even thinking about it now, my anxiety threatens to bubble up, but I am calm. I am a leaf on the wind.

Storytime 2013: January

Just so you're all aware, this is my to-read list for this year, on an 8 1/2 x 11 page

"The Name of the Star" by Maureen Johnson

I got a booklet about this duo (the next book is apparently coming out this month) at LeakyCon, and I wanted to read it because I'm one of those sickos that's fascinated by Jack the Ripper, but really I just grabbed this because every so often I cruise the YA section to see if there's anything by Maureen Johnson available. She's a female author, and there's a lot of myth around Jack the Ripper, so I think it fits both of my themes for the year.

Rory Deveaux is a teenager from Louisiana whose parents take a university fellowship in England, giving her the opportunity to spend a year at a boarding school in London. Things are going well until Rory chokes on a sausage and the near-death experience allows her to see ghosts. At the same time, a series of murders take place in Whitechapel, mirroring those of Jack the Ripper from 1888. Rory's gift, and those of some kindred spirit-seers, may lead to the murderer.

The story reminds me a lot of "13 Little Blue Envelopes," another Johnson book in which an American teenager just about to start her senior year goes to England and develops a crush on the first British boy she meets. Factoids about England and Jack the Ripper are doled out as Rory starts her school year. They would probably be more exciting to someone who doesn't already know a lot about living there (I know, you feel so bad for me...), but as it is, I found those parts a little forced. After the sausage incident, the whole thing gets a little Scooby-Doo, complete with rag-tag detective agency. So the story is a little cheesy, but still a thrilling mystery with a big cliff-hanger at the end that makes me want the next book SO BAD. A- for the target reader

"The Snow Child" by Eowyn Ivey

This book was a recommendation by someone on the Nerdfighter Ning group "Nerdfighters Who Like Talking About Books."

Mabel and Jack left their home in New England to be homesteaders in Alaska. After 10 years of hard work, they are barely getting by. Mabel wonders what she has done with her life, leaving the academic society she grew up in to be a farmer's wife, and suggesting the move to Alaska. She and Jack have settled into a dull routine, and the never-resolved emotional pain of a still-birth still hurts. Feeling empty, she even attempts suicide.

Then one day, a surprise snowstorm inspires the couple to make a little snow-girl, and soon a pale, skittish child appears to Jack and Mabel from the woods near their house. With much coaxing, she starts to develop a relationship with them, almost becoming the child they never had. However, when the spring comes, the child disappears, leaving them to tend to their farm without her. The girl reminds Mabel of a story her father once told. In it, a snow-child comes to a childless elderly couple, like Jack and Mabel, and she stays with them each winter and leaves in the spring. Mabel's sister says that the story ends in different ways, depending on which legend you hear, but always with the snow-child melting at the end.

The beginning of this story was really good, as magical as the legend it was based on, but I felt that it went on a bit too long. When I got to the middle of the book, I thought it should end a certain way, but there was still more book. The bits of magic started to fall away, and the story just became another sad story. It was definitely not the book to read right after a certain episode of Season 3 of Downton Abbey. I am impressed with the author's commitment to stick to the "fairy-tale" ending of the story-within-a-story, but I was left wanting for those magical elements that drew me into the beginning of the book. B-

Storytime 2013: Short story blitz

I think I will start saying how I happened upon these books. Sometimes that can be fun.

Short stories are great to keep on the nightstand, because you can read a whole one, then close the book up and go to sleep. Unfortunately, these two are not exactly bedtime stories...

"Black Juice" by Margo Lanagan

This collection of short stories was recommended by a friend from my program in college and who is now an English teacher. It was a suggestion for my quest to read more female authors.

Every single one of these stories is really strange. I am the first to fall in love with grotesque stories, but I bristle against books where the author creates a whole new world with specialized jargon and societal rules, and that happened in every one of these stories. In the time that it takes to read one story, I just start to get used to the setting, and then it's over and I have to start again with a different kind of world. For example, the first story is about a family whose sister has committed a crime, and her punishment is to be slowly sunk into the tar pit. The next story is about a lord's wife who has run off with gypsies and the next is about clown killers. Yeah, clown killers. And all of them have special slang to interpret, which is tiring, one story after another.

Where the stories do work is that the reader gets little hints about what is going on and why. Lanagan spaces out the information so that first the family packs a picnic as if going on a day trip, then the sister starts to sink into the pits, then you find out why she's being executed. I appreciate the dark nature of "Black Juice," but I found the stories hard to relate to because I felt like I needed Lanagan's personal dictionary just to get my bearings. C+

"There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales" by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

I found this book at my local library by doing a search for fairy tales, then clicking the category "Slavic."

The first half of this book is mostly ghost stories. You know the type, the Vanishing Hitchhiker, Sixth Sense type of story where throughout the whole story someone has been dead and either they or their loved one doesn't know it. They all kind of end the same way. Plus they're set in Russia, so they're all pretty bleak apart from the whole death everywhere thing. Not to say they're not well written, just go out and get some sunshine afterward, okay? The section at the end, Fairy Tales, gets a little bit lighter and there's less death. This is a good story selection for someone who likes a bit of the supernatural in the real world, and who doesn't need a happy ending. Even if you don't know anything about the Soviet Union, you get the feeling that the characters are used to a life that doesn't treat them well or often, so a little supernatural harassment doesn't bother them. The author doesn't waste any time on "Oh no! A ghost!" and I appreciate that. B-

Storytime 2013: "Leviathan" by Scott Westerfeld

This year I am not setting a goal number of books to read. 50, 60, maybe I will read that many, but there are some really long books on my "to read" list that might slow me down on a goal like that. So I'm setting some themes for myself this year. I'm sure that not all of the books that I read will fit into these themes, but it gives me an area of focus, and I feel like I haven't really studied a specific area of literature in a while. One of my themes is books by and about women. I am a lady writer, but I read very few books written by ladies. I also want to honor my historical sisters by learning their stories. 2012 was the 100th anniversary of the women's right to vote in Oregon. A friend once called me "a stubborn woman," and I am very thankful to the stubborn women who came before me. Another theme that I'm setting for myself this year is folktales and fairy tales, or modern stories based on folktales. Specifically, I want to read stories set in cold places like Scandinavia, Iceland, Russia, etc. Don't ask why, it's just the mood I'm in at the moment. If you have any suggestions for books that fit into either of these categories, please leave them in the comments! Happy New Year and happy reading!

"Leviathan" by Scott Westerfeld

The first book that I finished in 2013 is an alternate version of WWI, where the German and Austria-Hungarian forces fight with mechanical animals and the British forces fight with genetically engineered animal machines, clankers and beasties, respectively. Alek, the (fictional) son of Archduke Ferdinand is forced into hiding after his parents' assassination. Deryn, a young Scottish girl disguises herself as a boy to join the Royal Air Service. They meet in Switzerland, where Deryn's airship, the Leviathan, crash lands near Alek's secret hideaway. They find that they have a lot in common despite cultural and military differences and decide to trust each other.

The semi-steampunk flavor of the book is all right, but what I find really imaginative are Westerfeld's "beastie" creations. The lizards on the Leviathan can scramble around with their sticky gecko feet, but they serve a purpose as messengers, speaking in the voices of the humans that "record" the message. The flechette bats are fed metal spikes that they then "drop" on the enemy in the natural fashion. The Leviathan is a huge whale like creature that fills itself up with hydrogen and floats like a zeppelin. The controversy of manipulating nature in this way is not glossed over. Alek and Deryn each openly criticize and secretly admire the innovations of the other's culture.

The writing style is simple enough for middle school readers who are just learning about world history. In the afterward, Westerfeld points out the historical facts and fictions in his book, which will probably stir up some interest in the time period. There is an inkling of romance between the young main characters, which I'm not so keen on, but we'll see how he continues that plotline. Leviathan is the first in a series of three books. B-

Resentment and forgiveness

I've had a lot of opportunities to be resentful lately. I try hard to be giving in my life, and sometimes that leads to people taking advantage of me, and that never feels good. I sometimes want to teach someone a lesson when they take me for granted. "Oh yeah?" I think. "Well what if I just didn't want to?" It's a bad attitude. It's resentment.

Today I had one of those opportunities. To avoid naming names, I'll be vague. Some friends had left a mess, and the one who would normally clean up didn't show for our regularly scheduled meetup. My first thought was disbelief, then judgement. "Oh, X person is always so irresponsible." Then I told myself that I shouldn't be surprised because I already knew that part of X person's nature. What was the real clincher was that the mess had to be cleaned up for a special meeting of strangers that needed to be impressed a little. So in order to make the place presentable, it had to be me and my roommate to cover X person's backside, who, I felt, was lucky that we'd showed up at all.

After getting the place ready for the meeting, I sent my roommate a snarky text message about how the dark carpet would cover the blood stains if I killed X person. I realize how uncharitable that was, but in my defense, that dark carpet surely does cover blood stains, and I was thinking of the movie "The Unsinkable Molly Brown." But it made me appear angry when I was really just annoyed. I'm not sure if this was passed on by my roommate, but later in the day, I got an apologetic text message from one of the people responsible for the mess. I thought about how I could respond. "It's fine" didn't seem right. It wasn't fine to repeatedly shirk responsibility. But it all got done, and I lost no special time out of my day to do it. What it was was all right.

"It's all right." I said, but what I meant was "All is right between us." I do not want to stay angry at my friends. I don't want to resent them, keep record of wrongs, scoff "Typical!" like a bitter Brit. If I can't be forgiving to my friends, who can I be forgiving to? If any one of us can't be forgiving, how can we ask for grace?

More than having to clean up someone else's mess, I was disappointed that my friend didn't show because I was really looking forward to kicking back and talking about Jesus and what to do about Him. Looking back on today, I wonder if God chose to give me a more direct lesson.

Discomfort zone

Picture by Jessica Hagy of thisisindexed.com

Inside my comfort zone I am around people that I already know, or maybe I'm alone, because being around anyone these days makes me nervous. It makes me feel like I've got to say the right things and make the right moves or the people around me will not like me. So inside my comfort zone are people I already know who for some reason or another are obligated to be around me and be civil. Inside my comfort zone are familiar places like University of Oregon, the Spring-ghetto, the libraries, Sara's Treasures, and Milton Keynes because I know how things operate there. I am rarely going to go to those places and be surprised by something out of the ordinary. I know how to behave in those places. In my apartment or at my parents' house or grandma's house, I don't even have to worry about anything new. I can go there every time and do what I always do. The internet is part of my comfort zone (unless it's on Skype voicechat) because I can always take my time to think about what I'm saying.

Outside my comfort zone is where the magic happens. The magic happens when I perform onstage. Magic happens when I meet new people, maybe people who need someone to listen to their stories. Magic happens when I can readily respond to my fellow human beings with kindness. Magic happens when I catch myself getting worked up or mad and stop and count backwards from five. I learn more outside of my comfort zone. My new placement is currently outside my comfort zone because I don't have it mastered yet. Dating is outside my comfort zone, not because I wouldn't like to date someone, but because it has been so long since I've gone out with someone that I don't believe in my ability to hold it together. After I try something new or open myself to criticism and then come back, I sometimes let myself hold onto my panic. I tell myself that I never want to do that again because it was so frightening. Sometimes I slay the dragon and do a kick-ass karaoke number and feel like a rockstar.

When I leave my comfort zone, it feels like I'm an astronaut doing a space walk and my tether has just been cut. It's terrifying. Sometimes I want to leave, but most times I don't. Mostly I want to stick to what I know, but sometimes I want an adventure, to mark another thing off my list of things I've never done. It's important to my faith practice to get out of my comfort zone so that other people can experience comfort. Sometimes getting out of my comfort zone means having to reevaluate the way I have thought about something for a long time.

The Little Mermaid: Feminist Role Model

I have an ongoing argument with some egalitarian friends regarding Disney princesses. They have a three-year-old daughter and don’t want her to grow up believing that she is helpless and needs saving. I can see their point for some Disney films. Sleeping Beauty, for example, falls into an enchanted sleep and is unable to act for half the film. She awakens after her man has defeated the evil witch woman. Snow White finds a messy cabin in the woods and immediately sets to cooking and cleaning for seven bachelors. She also falls into an enchanted sleep and has to wait for Prince Charming to resurrect her.

However, when they start attacking “The Little Mermaid,” I start fighting back. Aside from her awesome voice and gravity defying hair, I think Ariel is a fine role model for any budding feminist.

On the surface (oh, nautical puns!), Ariel is a teenage nightmare. She’s irresponsible, disobedient, and goes to extreme measures to modify her body. Some would even say that she’s a spoiled brat. She hoards a grotto full of treasure from shipwrecks, but is not satisfied. Not much is asked of her except that she stay away from the surface for her safety. Plus, she’s royalty in a kingdom that adores her; what more could a girl want?

What she wants is to be her own woman. Long before she meets (and saves!) Prince Eric, Ariel longs for a break from a society that doesn’t understand her differences.

“Betcha on land, they understand/ Bet they don’t reprimand their daughters/ Bright young women, sick of swimmin’, ready to stand/ And ready to know what the people know/ Ask ‘em my questions and get some answers”

This is a girl who wants an education. She knows she’s intelligent, but she also knows that what she can learn under the sea is limited. She is tired of the constraints put on her by her overbearing father, who discourages her passion for exploring and learning. She has a grotto full of material things, but she doesn’t want thingamabobs; she wants experience.

Honestly, who wouldn’t want to go up to the surface considering the life she leads as a mermaid. She has six older sisters, all apparently still living at home with Triton. The only scenes we see of the sisters are their musical performance in honor of their father, and something akin to a group beauty session. Ariel may enjoy the occasional dinglehopper, but vapid homebody she is not. While her sisters flounder at home, our heroine seeks adventure as far as her fins will carry her.

Ariel has good reason to get out from under the thumb of the overbearing King Triton. The man has some serious control issues. After she misses her concert, he shouts down her explanations, expresses his prejudice against humans, and forbids her to participate in her favorite hobbies. When he destroys her most prized possessions in a fit of rage, Ariel decides that she’s had enough. With “no one else to turn to,” she swims straight into the tentacles of the Sea Witch.

Some feminists would argue that the fact that Ariel gives up her right to speak for a man makes for a sexist film, but I argue that the exchange between Ariel and Ursula unites sexism with evil, and therefore, the film is against it. Ursula is able to wrest Ariel’s voice from her by convincing her that “on land it’s much preferred for ladies not to say a word,” because she knows the girl is desperate, not because it’s true. In fact, the rest of the film proves the opposite. Eric is devoted to the woman with the golden voice who saved him, and when Ariel appears voiceless, it’s a serious hitch. He clearly wants to get to know her better, because he’s a nice guy, but doesn’t really fall in love with her until she again has the ability to speak her mind. (As a person who works with students with disabilities, I have mixed views on this, but that’s another blog.)

In the end, Ariel and Eric have each saved the other’s life once, and so are on equal footing in the relationship. Their marriage is a celebration of the unity between two worlds where there had previously been misunderstanding and hatred. A diplomatic mermaid sounds like a feminist heroine to me! Ariel is a good role model for girls young and old because she seeks to free herself from an oppressive, closed-minded society, she takes risks to become a woman of the world, and because it is her courage to speak her heart and mind that gets her to her happily ever after.

My roommate really stunk up the place

Soon after my roommate moved in, she told me that she was a furry. I can't recall exactly how this came up. All I remember is how easily she volunteered the information. "I have some furry art that I made... It's tasteful, of course." With visions of mating mascots in my head, visions I am still trying to erase, I nodded, "Ah....well...ok." When I had to pass her room, I averted my eyes to avoid the beady stares of her collection of fox plushies. I tried not to squirm when she said that her goal in life was to be a wildlife veterinarian.

It wasn't long until Merlin moved in. Far from magic, Merlin was a meek little thing who had just enough guts to sneak into my room and use my cat's litter box before fleeing in fear. Try as I might to clean the box every day, the apartment started to stink. Really, really stink. It got into my hair and clothes. I started keeping my clean clothes out in my car and getting a clean outfit each morning so that I could go to work without smelling like cat poo.

The cats did not get along well, so I tried my best to keep them in their own territory. One day, my roommate left her door open and Whiskers, being a cat, wanted to go wherever she was not allowed. When I entered my roommate's room to retrieve her, I found the source of the smell, and the reason that Merlin was always sneaking into my room. It was his own litter box, flowing over with cat turds! It was clear that it had not been cleaned since they had both moved in. Poop and grains of litter spilled out onto the carpet underneath my roommate's lofted bed. Gagging, I grabbed Whiskers and shut my roommate's cat and his bin of poo off from the rest of the apartment.

Lucky for me, my roommate's job transferred her to another city, so she, the plushie collection, and the litter box of plenty left me and Whiskers in sweet smelling peace.

New Year's Revolutions

I resolve this year to take more chances as opportunities come up. There have been too many times when I didn't take an opportunity because I was too afraid or because I wanted things to be just so. I waited so long without making a decision that the opportunity was lost. I have missed out on the kind of opportunities that I'd been waiting for for a long time, chances to make a difference in the world, relationships that would have made me happy, choices that would have saved me money.

I also resolve to get a handle on my social life, which is a brutish entity apparently separate from myself, because the two of us are in a constant battle. I have learned that my shyness, anxiety, and chronic loneliness is so extreme that it interferes with my ability to make new friends. I have an even more difficult time growing close friendships, which I can count on one hand. The rest of the world has access to deep, meaningful relationships and I'm trying to communicate in Morse code. I'm taking steps to learn some skills that have broken down over the years as I came to expect rejection, and some that I never had in the first place.

On that note, I'm also learning how to distinguish between realistic friendships and ones that I have built up in my head, and how to let the superficial ones go. I don't want to be anyone's friend because they pity me, and I don't want people to lead me on. I think I'm a pretty awesome person, and I want my real friends to think I'm awesome too, not weird, not creepy, not a burden. I've nearly buried all those "out of sight, out of mind" friendships, those "he's/she's not into you if he/he isn't calling you" friendships. I want to spent my time on people who identify with me, not waste my time on people who would rather be somewhere else.

Here's to a new year.

Project 50 Restart: June

"Looking for Alaska" by John Green
"Looking for Alaska" is about Miles, a boy who moves, in his junior year, to a boarding school in Alabama and into a culture of have and have nots, pranks, and plenty of vice. Now that I think about it, I'm sure that there was just the same amount of vice among students at my high school in rural Oregon, but I was a naive good girl, so I knew nothing about it. Miles meets and falls in love with a beautiful, wild and crazy, but untouchable girl named Alaska (she picked the name herself). They spend a lot of time alone together because Alaska doesn't want to go home for holidays. Along with Miles' roommate, "the Colonel," their friend Takumi, and Lara, the girl that Alaska chooses to be Miles' girlfriend, they have a good time pulling pranks and talking about famous last words.
The first part of the book has an ominous "# of days before" countdown, so you know something big is coming. I won't say what it is, but I cried, just a little, and not many books can make me cry.
From there, the book turned into something similar to Paper Towns, with a mystery to solve, and it was only then that I saw the similarities between Alaska and Margo in the first half of the book. Both are amazing yet wounded girls, making best friends with the nerdy boy. I found Alaska a little bit cheesy and forced sometimes, especially her claims of militant feminism, while the boys define her by her insatiable appetite for sex.
I think the book gets its strength from is base around Miles' World Religions class and its relation to his fascination with famous last words. It's this this that makes the novel not just a romp of high school hedonism and trajedy, but depth and inspiration and encouragment for a young adult reader to think about more than just what they want out of life. B

"Judgement of the Judoon" by Colin Brake
This Doctor Who novel features the Tenth Doctor on his own. It's got a brain teasing plot, but it got a little bit thin in places on its representation of Tennant's Doctor. It played a little too much on the "lone alien explorer" bit. I thought that the sudden humanish transformation of the Judoon guard's personality was a little bit weak too. C-

"Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth" by Rick Riordan
Percy Jackson is in trouble again. He and his friends have to battle monsters and tricksters through the infamous Labyrinth to find its inventor, Daedalus and find a way to defeat Luke, the half-blood camper who's allied himself with the Titans threatening to bring down Olympus. He gets in a bit of a mix with his friend Annabeth when he asks a gifted mortal girl to join their quest. The ending didn't end like I thought it would, but it did end exactly like it should. B+

"Martian Time-Slip" by Phillip K. Dick
This story reminded me a little bit of the Martian Chronicles, but not enough for me to hate it for that. Its fractured plot that jumps back and forth between several characters gives the novel about a time when 1/6th of the human population has schizophrenia its own fractured feeling. Arnie Kott, a big boss in the Mars black market, subscribes to a school that says that schizophrenics have pre-cognition, and he wants one of these fortune-tellers on his payroll. He chooses an autistic orphan boy who doesn't communicate, and tells his machine repairman to create a system that would allow him to tell the future to those who would use it. His theory is that autistic people operate on a faster timeline than other humans, and that normal speed communication goes by too fast for them to understand. I can't tell the rest without ruining the plot, but I found the book and the way it addressed mental ability absolutely fascinating. A-

"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" by JK Rowling
I adore this book, just for Gilderoy Lockheart. He's so flawlessly over the top, I cheer everytime he shows up. I think the reactions from his fellow teachers are the best because they're so UNCOMFORTABLE! It's the third time I've read it, and I still laugh my head off. A

"The Larion Senators: Eldarn Sequence Book 3" by Robert Scott and Jay Gordon
I thought that all was lost for Steven Taylor and Mark Jenkins after "Lessek's Key," but there was enough hope for one more book. Except that it was really awkward. Mark's bits were half in an inescapable dreamworld, and half about killing people. Steven Taylor gets nerdy with math, and Hannah has awkward pity sex with someone else. Why is sex always out of nowhere in these books? I was mildly disappointed with most of the book, with just enough intrigue and magic to keep me going. C

Project 50 Restart: May

“Bagombo Snuff Box” by Kurt Vonnegut
This is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s short stories which had previously been released in various magazines. The introduction, an ode to the bygone days of magazine fiction, is as worth reading as the stories themselves. It’s a good variety, with some stories ending quite pleasantly, but most ending in that state of fallen discontent that is the common experience of being human. There were three stories about the same man, a self-centered band teacher who cared about his own goals rather than the lives of his students, and got his comeuppance every time. A+

“Les Miserables, Volume 1” by Victor Hugo
Although Hugo can get a bit wordy, this was a wonderful book. He really takes the time to craft characters and events, waiting for just the right moment for it to all come together. I knew enough about the story to watch him build up the life of the priest, then use him for one moment of grace. It’s a short moment of biblical proportions, and the theme of redemption and turning from evil keeps coming up. Hugo describes Paris with such affection that I’m considering going there again, even though it didn’t treat me right the first two times. Here’s hoping I can find the second rest of the book. I think there’s a British conspiracy against it on account of Waterloo… A-

“The Two Towers” by J.R.R. Tolkien
It took me a long time to get through the second book in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. It reminded me of Harry Potter and the Extended Camping Trip, I mean Deathly Hallows. How many times can you describe the troupe bedding down for the night and trading off on watch? The fellowship is thoroughly separated now: Merry and Pippin are captured by orcs, Aragon, Gimli, and Legolas meet up with the Riders of Rohan, and Sam Gamgee faithfully follows Mr. Frodo on the trek to Mordor. There were a couple of highlights in the long, dense, repetitive text. My favorite part was where we get to meet the Ents, a tree-like race that drink with their feet and care for Merry and Pippin after their escape from the orcs. And of course, anything with Gollum tends to liven the story up a bit. C+

“The Name of the Wind” by Patrick Rothfuss
This book was recommended by the president of the Harry Potter Alliance as the next big thing in fantasy. It starts in an inn where the barkeeper is a famous magician in hiding, so depressed by his losses in life that he refuses to claim his identity. A traveling scribe recognizes him, and convinces to tell his real life’s story, the truth as opposed to the fables that everyone tells about Kvothe the Bloodless. Kote (Kvothe) finally consents, and most of the rest of the book is told from his point of view, starting with his childhood as part of a kind of traveling gypsy family. He learns a bit of magic (and shows a lot of talent) from an old arcanist who joins their troop, whose last advice before leaving the troop is that Kvothe to go to the University to become a real arcanist. Kvothe longs to know the names of things, the secret names that put them under his control. Terrible events take Kvothe’s family from him, and he spends several years roughing it in the big city before pulling himself together and attending University, which reminded me a bit of Harry Potter and a bit of the Edge Chronicles. The story carries on to the point where Kvothe is apprenticed to the Master Namer of the University. There is a love story throughout, which was as frustrating to me as a reader as it was to Kvothe, who can’t manage to keep her. I just don’t see what could have been so special about this woman who clearly didn’t give a care about him. I would like to read the rest of the trilogy, but I’m afraid that I won’t be able to find the other books. This one was hard enough to find in a bookstore. A-

“Dambuster” by Robert Radcliffe
The title of this book stood out to me, because my grandpa, a Lancaster bomber pilot, mentioned it as the title of a movie when he was telling me all he remembered about Lancs. Dam busters are the popular title of the RAF crews who flew special missions to destroy key dams in Germany during WWII. This book is a novel, but features a lot of technical explanations about just how difficult this kind of mission was, from the size, shape, and casing of the bomb that they needed to use, to the extremely low, straight flying they had to master in order to get just the right angle. If the wings tipped just a tiny bit, the plane would skim the water and the whole crew could perish in a crash. Despite my hardline stance against war, I was interested in finding out about the planes that my grandpa flew. I had a couple of problems with the storytelling though. Periodically, Radcliffe will stop the story and give a running total of who had died and how they died and how many crews were left, which got repetitive. The story centered around a pilot who had had a tryst with a girl as a teenager, who had his child and disappeared from his life at the pressure of her family. They reunite just as the dam buster mission is getting ready. The thing is, their story is never finished. The pilot is captured, then escapes, and his love interest knows that he’s alive, but the novel ends with another list of the dead rather than their reunion. Could have been better. C+

“Relative Experience” by various authors
This book is a collection of essays by Quaker parents about parenting and Quakerism and where the two meet. It was published in 1994, so it is a bit odd to read about parents raising their children to support nuclear disarmament… it seemed a little bit 1960s, but I guess the Quaker peace witness is that important that the message carries on. It’s good to read how the Quaker view of peace and non-violenve forms the discipline of Quaker parents, an internal battle that I’m sure most parents experience, but these had a clear doctrine to keep them at peace. I got it from the Quaker Center library where I’ve been attending because I had been thinking a lot about being a parent and just wanted to read something by parents. B

“The Book of Rubbish Ideas”
I’m trying to read books which will get me into an Earth-saving mindset, so I won’t have to keep reading the same things over and over, that they will just be second nature. This book encourages readers to think about the waste that comes from the things that they buy, where it came from, where it goes, and how long it takes for it to go away. Plastic is bad, people. The author goes through the house room by room and gives tips on how to reduce household waste in each. She has some pretty creative ideas on what to do with the rubbish as well. B

“How Bad Are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything” by Mike Berners-Lee
This is a list, from smallest to largest, of the carbon footprint of our choices for electronics, food, transportation, clothing, and recycling. Some things were obvious, like that locally grown organic food in season was low-impact. Air-freighted out of season produce can have the impact of several transatlantic flights. Heavy stuff. His statistics are not always exact. Tracing and measuring all the ways that a product can impact the environment can be difficult, and there are several places where the author says that he just couldn’t be bothered to track everything, which was a bit off-putting. But I think he achieves his goal to give readers a “carbon instinct,” figuring out just how much their extra effort to make eco-changes matters in the big scheme of things. B+

Project 50 Restart: April

"I, Claudius" by Robert Graves
I got this book to take with me on my holiday to Mallorca, where Graves wrote the book. It's a retelling of Roman history from the point of view of crippled, stuttering Claudius. While I love a good unreliable narrator--historian Claudius presents "only the facts"--I wish I'd had another book to read. If I wasn't so bored on my vaction, I probably wouldn't have finished it, as it is very repetitive. C

"The Surgeon of Crowthorne: a tale of murder, mystery, and the Oxford English Dictionary" by Simon Winchester
I think all English majors have a nerdy affection for the OED. When we were set loose on OED Online, we often forgot our projects and spent nights pouring over the origins of our favorite words. Simon Winchester is a bit of a sensationalist historian (I couldn't get through his book on Krakatoa) but the tale of a criminally insane man and his contribution to the most prestigious work on the English language wrapped me up. I think we all have a little fascination with madness and insane asylums... As well as a history of the OED, this piece of Victorian history shows the ways that the world was changing regarding treatment of mental illness during the years that Dr. Minor was at Crowthorne. A-

"A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Vile Village" by Lemony Snickett
This episode has the Baudelaire siblings chasing a vague clue in search of their friends, the Quagmire triplets. With no willing relatives to be their guardians, a number of towns have signed on to the axiom, "It takes a village to raise a child" and the Baudelairs chose the custody of the village of V.F.D. The clues in this book are particularly clever and even as an adult, I really enjoyed playing detective along with the children. Of course, the ending isn't perfect, and the Baudelaires flee to... A-

"A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Hostile Hospital" by Lemony Snickett
Thsi book takes an unexpected turn from the mystery of the Quagmires to the mystery of the fire that killed the Baudelaire parents and just what the name "Snickett" has to do with it. He's becoming my favorite unreliable narrator. The hospital houses the worlds most counterintuitive filing system and is frequented by Volunteers Fighting Disease, who force heart shaped balloons on patients and ignore their actual diseases. Dark humor at its best. A-

"The Frugal Life" by Piper Terrett
Faced with the prospect of living as a poor college student like I never have before, I got this book in hopes of discovering some cheapskate tips that I didn't know before. I didn't, really. Some things didn't apply to my college life because it's a UK author. Some things didn't apply because I'm a vegetarian. It did bring up some ideas that I hadn't really thought of before, like foraging in the woods for food (proceed with caution: ONLY IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING) and it does have some good tips for eating well on the cheap. However, I'm used to living without extravagance, so not a lot of things in this book were new to me. B-

"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" by JK Rowling
I told myself that I would reread these while I was in England, and with 3 months to go, I'd better get started. Starting with the first book again puts me back in that state of 11 year old wonder like Harry experiences when Hagrid tells him that he is a wizard. I forget about those iconic details from the first book, like the flying keys and potions test guarding the Philosopher's Stone. It still makes me wonder how powerful the teachers must be if even 11 year old first years can pass the tests... A

Project 50 Restart: March

It's been nearly two months since I finished some of these books. Good thing I wrote down the reviews by hand then instead of now.

"The Eyre Affair" by jasper Fforde
I was given this book for Christmas, with a note that said "to be enjoyed in peace and quiet." I didn't manage to accomplish that , but I did read a lot of it during a day of 7 hours on trains. The novel is a literary detective story, set in an alternate 1985 where literature is such a big deal to the mainstream that there is a special branch of government intelligence to investigate literary crimes. One of these literary criminals plans to change the literary world by stepping into Jane Eyre and taking the heroine hostage.
I found that the actual plot took a backseat to the scathing literary humor. For example, my favorite part was when the main character goes out with her ex to see Richard III...performed in the style of Rocky Horror Show, with the audience shouting out lines and putting on sunglasses and dressing in costume. Ridiculous names like Braxton Hicks and Jack Schitt just add to the hilarity. It's great for the literary buff or ex English major. A

"Stardust" by Neil Gaiman
This was a read treat to read. Gaiman maintains a high fantasy effect not only by the story (half-Faerie boy goes in search of a fallen star to win the girl of his dreams) but by sticking to flawless high fantasy language. Reading it was like rolling around in magic and possibility. The only thing that I found difficult about it was having to follow three interwoven (but oh so masterfully woven) story lines, but the book was short enough that they came together quite nicely. A

"Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
I started reading this because it was a request by my partner in a reading craft swap. It's a complex but humorous story about the Apocalypse. Even though it was written by two authors, it's not really obvious where one stops and the other starts. I did feel that the book climaxed too early and left a lot of fussing around at the end. Mm, well, at least their later works were OK. B-

"The Sign of Four" by Arthur Conan Doyle
This was the second Holmes novel written by Conan Doyle. It begins (and ends) with Holmes in a depressed and drugged state, the dramatic opposite of his manic behavior when on a case. In walks Mary Morstan, who needs help solving the mystery of her long lost father. Someone has been sending her single pearls for some time, but it's unclear whether it is out of goodwill or as a threat. Somewhat awkwardly, Watson instantly falls for the woman, and spends the rest of the novel mooning over her. Holmes manages to pull together enough random clues to form the real story, involving India, prison, treasure, and murder. I loved the beginning and the end, and the rest of the story kind of paled in comparison, and still had the "after the fact" tell-all trope that is in other Holmes stories. B

"Pop Goes the Weasel: The Secret Meanings of Nursery Rhymes" by Albert Jack
We learn and cheerfully recite nursery rhymes as children and teach them to the next generation, never worrying about what they mean. But many of these poems and songs have history, some political, some medical, and some far too gruesome for children. This book is exhaustive. It covers a huge number of rhymes and cross references them to others that are connected by theme. i recommend this book to anyone interested in history or children's literature. A

My job is painful

Augh! I've been threading a loom with linen thread that is really rough. It's meant to be for linen placemats. But it's so rough and tough that in tying up the end of the warp to the stick, pretty much the last step before the resident starts weaving, (as seen in this picture)I wore small but really painful blisters on the outsides of my pinkies and the inside of my pointer fingers. I'm very happy working in the weavery three days a week, but it does hurt sometimes!

Project 50 Restart: February

Mockingjay by Susanne Collins
I didn’t like the other books in this series, but I REALLY didn’t like this one. It’s hard to get behind a heroine who always makes the wrong moral choice. Katniss and Gale fight to lead the resistance and Peeta is supposed to have been brainwashed by the Capitol to hate Katniss with a murderous passion. I just didn’t buy any of it. The ending was the worst, with key people dying indiscriminately, and then after all the horrors, “love conquers all” and they live fairly happily ever after. Honestly, it was weak as a story before this book, but Mockingjay was proper pitiful. D-

Dubliners by James Joyce
God, it’s good to read something literary for a change. I’d been reading such simple YA fiction for so long that it took me a while to get my brain used to the language and keep on the look out for metaphors. Dubliners is a collectipon of short stories (set in Dublin, of course) so it’s easy to pick up, read one, and get a whole narrative in 20 minutes. What I love about Dubliners is it’s romantic but depressing reality. None of the characters really end up getting what they hope for and the stories end with this delicious post-modern sadness that makes you feel like you’ve read something that matters instead of “good fun.” A-

Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
This is the first Holmes story which was a big hit for ACD after he sold the rights to the only publisher who would take it. It stirs something expectant inside to read about Holmes and Watson’s first meeting, knowing the volumes of stories that come after. I’m beginning to see the pattern in these novels, where Holmes solves the story with apparently little proof, then we get the backstory, in this case, set in the American West, that gives all the evidence. I liked this one better than Valley of Death. B+

Vox by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
This is not a book in the series that you can pick up without having read the previous book, “The Last of the Sky Pirates.” Ook Barkwater manages to return to Sanctaphrax, having been captured as a slave. He finds a number of bizarre shady characters in service to Vor Verlix, the once powerful most High Academe, driven mad with revenge for the goblins, shrykes, and Guardians of Night who drove him to his pitiable state. The Librarian Knights hatch a plan to escape their hiding pace in the sewer, which gives a chapter or two of intense action, but overall, I felt like the book was lacking structure as a whole story and leaning too much on the reader’s previous experience with the Edge Chronicles Series. C+

The Stealers of Dreams by Steve Lyons
This doctor Who novel features the Ninth Doctor, Rose, and Captain Jack Harkness. The author really captures Nine’s personality to a T. I can see Christopher Eccleston’s performance throughout the whole book. The trio land on a planet with a number for a name and a police force that institutionalizes purveyors of fiction. Writing groups operate in secret because stories are considered highly dangerous. Those who indulge eventually go “fantasy crazy” and lose touch with reality. The book is expertly crafted with a plot twist at the end that I totally didn’t see coming. Fantastic! A-

Off beat mama

I think a lot about being a mother. A lot more than I talk about out loud or than other people probably think I do from my appearance and personality. I've wanted to be a mom since at least five years old (I also wanted to be an astronaut and a doctor, but that's a different blog post) and at 26, my biological clock is ticking louder than Big Ben. And I don't just want to be a mom; I want a huge family, maybe five kids.
Two things threaten my natural motherhood: the fact that I haven't had so much as a date in 5 years and a hormonal condition called Polycystic Ovary Syndrome of which infertility is a common symptom. Even before my diagnosis, I've been pretty comfortable with the idea of adoption, you know, since I want five kids and don't really want to overpopulate the world. I don't really care that much about being a wife anymore, although it would be really nice to have a love life to go along with my family. I am more and more interested in single-parent adoption.
I don't talk about adoption all that much because people get weird about it. My own mother only brings up the problems that our adoptive family friends have had. My condition doesn't give a promising future for IV fertilization, and I don't feel right about it anyway, not with all the parent-less children out there for whom even one parent would be better than aging out of foster care.
I worry about reception from my family. I worry that my parents would not think of my children as their real grandchildren. I worry that all they would try to do is talk me out of it instead of supporting me and preparing themselves just like they would as if I were pregnant. I am afraid no one will take me seriously, as if it were a phase I'm going through instead of a constant internal battle that's been raging for years. I am afraid that they will think I'm not mature enough, that they will only express doubt instead of confidence in my parenting ability. I have enough doubts, thank you! But so does every expecting family. I've been blessed with lots of nuclear families in my life, but why should I bear the barren curse of my namesake (Hannah) just because I don't have a husband? I have so much love to give, and I feel like it's a waste if I don't get to fulfill the only thing I want out of life at the cost of everything else.

Project 50 Restart: January

I really left off this project of writing reviews for every book I read. I've been reading a lot of young adult series, so a lot of them have been kind of the same. I'm not sure if I got to 50 books last year, but I have read a lot of books in the first month of this year, so I'm off to a good start.

"The Valley of Fear" by Arthur Conan Doyle
The first part of this Sherlock Holmes novel was perfect to read on a train ride to London through the snowy English countryside (and I finished the book in Edinburgh, Arthur Conan Doyle’s birthplace). As per usual for Holmes and Watson, the murder of a well liked man in the country is not quite what it seems. But when the mystery is solved, the book continues with a lengthy back story that appears a little redundant. I haven’t read many Holmes mysteries, but I assume the back story is a set up for the next book, which is the last of Holmes adventures. Nevertheless, it was half a book without Holmes and Watson, and after spending the first half of the book with them, I missed the characters and never took to the strangers. B-


"The Hickory Staff" by Robert Scott and Jay Gordon
I didn't have any real reason for picking this book at the library, other than that it had regular humans in a fantasy world, which was what I was writing my NaNo novel about. I started it, then had to put it down for November. Then as soon as I picked it up again, I found that the method the authors used to get their Earlings into Eldarn was almost exactly the same as the method that I had used. I was really excited to read it after that. It was an all right story, which kept fragmenting and following different characters in different places for almost the entire book. Mark and Steven are two friends from Colorado who find a portal to another world that is torn apart by magical and political strife. A Gandalf figure leads them around trying to find a way home for Steven and Mark as well as a way to defeat the evil magician threatening Eldarn. The fragments that follow different people are a bit disorienting, and you never get to stay with any one group for long enough to really figure out what's going on. There are random forced flirtations and sexual scenes that seem like they're just thrown in because a fantasy needs love and sex right? And it's lengthy, a 700 page monster with two more books in the series. I might read the others if they happen to come in at the library, but I'm not in a rush. C

"Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief" by Rick Riordan
I used to be really into ancient Greek gods as a teenager, so I thought I would be really into this book about the half-blood son of a god. Actually, I felt like I was reading something that I had read before. Percy thinks it’s just impossible that gods could exist even after he’s been shown that they do. It’s one NO WAY! moment after another for a while, yet he has an encyclopedic knowledge of Greek gods. When Percy tells the reader that he has ADHD and dyslexia, then finds out that they are actually symptoms of his hero blood, battle ready and hardwired for ancient Greek (???), yet he keeps referring to “my ADHD acting up,” which was a little odd. I liked the idea of a learning disability making him more able as a hero, but the author didn’t really follow through. C

"The Hunger games: Catching Fire" by Suzanne Collins
Like the first in the series, Catching Fire is written in present tense, which reads like fan fiction to me. It’s extremely difficult for me to put down a book like that then come back to it. The story was really intense though, and since I didn’t like having to restart and adjust my brain to present tense, I finished it in three days. After winning the violent Hunger Games, where young people are forced to fight to the death in submission to a totalitarian government, Katniss Everdeen should be living a comfortable victors life. But because she and her District 12 ally, Peeta, both won the games by threatening a “both or none” suicide, the Capital senses rebellion and keeps them under tight control. Katniss knre that their display of solidarity against the unfair Games would mean she would have to toe the line, but she never expected that she and Peeta…(no spoilers!)
There are times when the author throws in misfit lines, especially Katniss’ suspicions of…everyone seem like something I might have written as a teenager, and it’s not really something I like reading. But I want to find out what happens to Katniss, so I’ll give it points for capturing my attention. B-

"The Sorceress: Secrets of the Immortal Nicolas Flamel" by Michael Scott
I think I've finally figured out what bothers me about these books (I've read two other books in this series). Every chapter, EVERY SINGLE CHAPTER ends with a cheesy cliffhanging one-liner. It's like reading David Caruso from CSI: Miami. It was the same old thing, famous figures popping up as immortal humans and Sophie and Josh wrestling with the pressure of being the supposed "twins of legend." Are we to trust Nicolas Flamel or not? Meh, I'm kind of getting bored with this series. C

"Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters" by Rick Riordan
In the second of the Percy Jackson series, Percy learns that he has a brother. Through magical dreams, he also learns how he can save the sickening Camp Half-Blood, poisoned by a traitor. He starts off on a rebellious streak that I think will carry through the series, a hero that can't take orders when he gets it in his system to go save people. He still kind of leans on dyslexia and ADHD, and I'd really like to see Percy own himself as a half-blood. It's a good quest too, and ends with a great cliffhanger. B

"Percy Jackson and the Titan's Curse" by Rick Riordan
This book went pretty quickly, with a couple of new pretty flat characters coming in who instantly find their places in the story, carry out their tasks, and are finished. Percy is now 14, and starts getting interested in girls, just as his best prospect gets carted off. A quest to get her back? Oh yes. I think that this book relies a little heavily on the Oracle's prophecy, but then the characters seem to forget it when it's most important. More like an Oedipus Rex "aw, I knew that was coming" moment. It's the first time that I've seen the author appear to plan anything, setting the stage at the beginning of the book and waiting until the very end to resolve it. The underlying plot to defeat Luke and Kronos carries on though, so I'll be reading "Battle of the Labyrinth" soon. B-

Project for Awesome time!

Here's the video that I've made for the Project for Awesome about the Camphill community where I'm living and working this year. Project for Awesome is a day when youtube promotes videos made by people who care about charity rather than kittens playing piano. Here's my video: