The Hollow Tree by Janet Lunn

I really enjoyed this book when I was younger, and read it more than once.

It is a story about a girl named Phoebe in the time of the American revolution. Phoebe's father was a rebel in the war and was killed, so she had to go live with her loyalist relatives. Her elder cousin was fighting in the war as a loyalist, but was caught for being a spy and hanged. As children, Phoebe and her cousins were close and they would play games or send messages by leaving each other notes in a hollowed out tree. After her cousin's death, Phoebe goes to this tree and discovers an undelivered mission that her cousin was unable to complete, so she takes it upon herself to deliver the message. She sets out on her own and travels over a mountain, picking up a stray cat and a bear cub on the way. After she got across the mountain she meets up with a group of loyalists traveling to Canada so they won't be killed for supporting the king. She travels with them for a while before going to complete her mission.

I'm not sure whether or not this person actually existed in history, but if she didn't, this story sort of mimics the Laura Secord story. It's a fast paced novel with action, adventure, and a bit of romance. It's well researched and overall, and enjoyable read.

The Root Cellar by Janet Lunn

I read this book back in elementary school, and I enjoyed reading it at the time.

The story follows this orphan girl named Rose who is sent to live with relatives after the death of her grandmother. Rose is something of a tomboy and doesn't really have any friends, so doesn't feel like she fits in when she arrives and spends a lot of time by herself. One of the places she likes to spend time in is a root cellar near the house, and one day she goes into it only to find herself transported back in time to the 1800's. There she meets a boy and a girl with whom she becomes friends. At that time the Civil War was going on, so the boy goes off to fight in it, and the sister and Rose then go off in search of him.

It's a good story about a girl finding a place for herself to be accepted and needed, and be finding that she gains a little more self-confidence by focusing more on how to help others. It's fun and adventurous and even throws a bit of history in there as well.

Ginger Snaps (2003)

I delayed watching Ginger Snaps for years because of the DVD cover. It gave me the impression of some really cheesy 90's b movie and I didn't want to waste the time. But. A friend strongly recommended that I watch it, and thank god I did. This is one of the best paranormal movies I've seen.

The story is about two sisters and one night walking home, the elder, Ginger, gets bitten by a 'dog'. Slowly the bitten sister begins to change, in a social sense as well as a physical sense. She begins taking an interest in a boy she and her sister previously looked down upon, she distances herself from her sister, Brigitte, with whom she shared a very close bond before the bite, and she even experiments with drugs. In addition to this, her hair begins to change colour and she grows more of it all over her body. She even grows a tail. Brigitte becomes concerned and looks into many possibilities, one of which is that her older sister was bitten by and is now changing into a werewolf. She then goes about trying to find a cure, while having to deal with Ginger, who is getting cravings for blood and is changing into something that is less and less like the sister she was once so close with.

What makes this movie different than a lot of other paranormal horrors is that there is a really strong feminine voice present in both of the sisters. Other than Buffy, women play the wilting heroine in horrors, and in a lot of other genres as well. Not so in this movie. Ginger has a very powerful personality throughout the whole movie. Even before the change, she'd stick up for Brigitte when she got picked on and would talk back to people who would speak against either her or her sister. After the change she exuded an even more pronounced air of self- confidence. she doesn't show doubt. Brigitte on the other hand at first seems very timid and meek, which she might be, Brigitte displays an inner strength that ginger lacks. She resists the temptation of power, which she would get if Ginger bit her and she turned into a werewolf. She seems like a follower at the beginning, but she's just loyal.

Something else that makes this movie interesting is that it's an allegory of puberty for girls. After Ginger gets bitten, she also gets her period for the first time. Then when she is reacting weird to being bitten by a werewolf, adults just assume she's acting so abnormal because 'its that time of the month' instead of seeing it for what it is. It's a great social commentary on how society tends to deal with women as something foreign and potentially scary, especially around menstruation. The funny thing was that it was women voicing these views. The mom just fluffs off Ginger's moody behaviour as 'growing up', and the school nurse does the same thing when Ginger tells her about her symptoms. All of the Ginger Snaps movies have some sort of feminist theme if you look for it, but this one is the most blatant and deals most directly with how as a society we choose to perceive women as foreign, evil, and abnormal.

Even without the allegorical reference this was an awesome movie. It was fast-paced and suspenseful. On my top five list for paranormal movies of all time!

Where the Spirit Lives (1991)

This is a movie about residential schools in early North America. Residential schools are essentially schools set up by christian churches in early North America with the sole purpose of purging Native Americans of their language/ heritage/ pride/ what have you. Children were taken from their families and forced to attend these schools wherein they were forced to conform to the European way of life. Many children were severely abused and sadly the last residential school was closed down only 10 or 20 years ago, so this is by no means an issue from the distant past.

I first saw this movie in late elementary school early/ high school (on my own time) and it really opened my eyes. Up until that point I'd enjoyed a much happier view of Native American people, relying more on fiction than anything else. And while fiction is based on fact and there are some very good aboriginal fiction books out there, the one's I read were set in the past and painted a proud, concrete glorification of the culture and didn't really mention the current state of Aboriginals in North America. And in school we don't learn too too much about this aspect of history (history as told by the conquerors I suppose) just that Nunavut was created as a territory solely for the use of the aboriginal people, which is nice, but in elementary school they don't tell you why that step was necessary, or not in much detail anyway.

The story here is about an aboriginal girl who, along with her younger brother, were kidnapped by a white pilot and brought them to a residential school to live. We are given the pg version of the story and more of the abuse is suggested rather than shown, but several reviewers of this movie stated that it is an accurate depiction of residential school life, speaking from their supposed personal experiences. The girl in the movie does end up escaping from the school, but not many children were as lucky as this, and keeping movies like this around is an important step in remembering the wrongs of the past to ensure they never happen again.

The heroine of this film was very strong and resilient and she didn't loose her culture to the one being forced upon her in the residential school. Overall this was very well done.

I'm The Biggest Thing In The Ocean by Kevin Sherry

This is about a giant squid who goes around the ocean showing us how he's bigger than everything, and you can tell he's really proud of this fact, in a fun way. Then a whale comes behind him and eats him in all of his glory and he's shocked for a second. But then he looks around at all of the other animals in the whale and then proclaims happily that he's the biggest thing in the whale.

 It's an optimistic book about a squid who happy with who he is enough to see how he's great no matter the situation. It's short, but it's good to read out loud and has bright, colourful pictures.

Metalocalypse – Season One

This is one of my favourite cartoons ever! It's hilarious! The greatest metal band of all time!!! With all of the metal stereotypes. I'm guaranteed at least one chuckle per episode. If I had to pick a favourite character it'd be a toss up between Toki and Murderface, but I kind of like them all. The stream of consciousness aspects of the dialog are amusing.

The show is about a metal band named Dethklok, and the situations the members of the band get into. It's stereotypically 'metal'. They live in a Gothic castle, there are scenes with gratuitous gore, crazy guitar solos, etc. It's very tongue in cheek, if you're a metal fan. If not it might just be weirdly morbid. They even have an album out, and the songs are somewhat comical also.

The most brutally awesome cartoon ever!!

 

 

The Flower by John Light

This is a story about a boy who lives in a concrete world, then one day he's reading a book and he sees a picture of a flower. He's amazed by the picture and he ends up at the tiny pedlar shop where he sees a picture of a flower and asks the man about it. The boy is told that this is a packet of seeds, so the boy buys it and follows the directions on the back. Soon a sprout comes up out of the pot he's planted the seeds in and the boy gets excited. In a stroke of bad luck however, the plant gets sucked up some tube in his house and disappears. He's really sad about losing his plant and goes outside to see what happened to it. He's surprised to find that the flowers had grown all over some hay stacks.

It's a cute story about bringing beauty into the world. The world around the boy has something of a dark atmosphere, and it's countered with the search and desire for flowers.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

This was a great book. It's one of those ones where you just love the main character. Charlie's in grade 9, a smart kid with no friends, and this book follows Charlie's life through a series of letters he writes to us, the readers.

What I think I love about Charlie is his honesty in his approach to the world. He seems somewhat disconnected, and is, as he has no friends to peer pressure him at the beginning of the story. So he views people at school from an outsiders perspective. He never sounds persecuted though (as you would have to be emotionally involved to be persecuted, and Charlie is almost estranged from his own life, being the wallflower and all) he just reports the events in his life with an earnestness that makes you want the best for him. He talks about both touchy subjects and regular 'growing up' issues normally, and approaches these with a cautious nervousness, though at the same time he's... I guess he chooses an opinion and then sticks with that conviction. He makes me smile, I want to hug him. I really got emotionally attached to him, when he experiences something good, I'm really happy for him. I think I teared up a bit when he kissed that girl.

Anyways, Charlie's problem is that he has no presence in his own life. He is a wallflower in his own life, so much so that he writes us these letters so that the reader has a larger presence vicariously in his life than he does himself. There is one scene when he's the DJ at a party, and he gauges the mood of the party so well that he accurately picks out songs to reflect that mood, which he's so good at because he's always looking outside of himself. He's very 'other' focused, too selfless. There's a potential reason for this at the end, though it is debatable as to how much of this is just his personality as opposed to a response to something else.

This is a great book with a great character.

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

This book was very detailed. I read it after watching the movie, and learned more in the first few pages than I did from the entire film. This is a story about the life of a geisha and the complexities and potential heartbreak and constrictions that come with that distinction. We watch as a girl is first sold to a geisha house by her parents, and slowly molded into a geisha. The girl falls in love with a man, a much older man, and we witness her pain of not being able to be with him because of what she is.

I thought that though the author was very descriptive, but I wasn't compelled to immerse myself in the book. Sometimes I felt the author's writing style to be uncomfortably detailed. I do enjoy detailed writing, and... I don't know what it was but at some points I just felt uncomfortable. Maybe that was the author doing his job well, as I know that if I lived in japan at that time and was in that situation I'd be pretty uncomfortable, but people can write about uncomfortable subjects and not make it uncomfortable to the reader, so I guess I didn't enjoy his writing style. In fact, if I remember correctly I put this down for a while somewhere in the middle of it and then convinced myself to finish it just to be able to put it on the shelf. Of course it didn't help that I knew the basic story line from watching the movie.

The story itself was fascinating though. It covers a very interesting subject and is very much worth the read.

The Wild Irish: A Novel Of Elizabeth I And The Pirate O’malley by RobinMaxwell

I got this book anticipating adventure, excitement.. something amazing. Two powerful and notable women from English/ Irish history are coming together, there's potential for a great story. Instead this book was written like a documentary... a very slow paced documentary. I lost interest after the first couple of chapters but dragged myself to the halfway mark, and at that point I could care less about the characters and wasn't at all involved in the story line, so dropped it for something better. History is such a fascinating topic but is destroyed for a lot of people by teachers who make it very much less than it should be. Because of my expectations, this book was the equivalent of that teacher.

As I do enjoy the actual history, I suppose I could see how someone could get something out of the book... not too much, but something about two notable historical women. This is definitely isn't my ideal for a good fiction book, nor a good representation of stories and historical figures who were actually extremely fascinating and worth writing about.

Slightly Scandalous by Mary Balogh

This book is in a series that follows the love lives of these siblings in (Victorian?) England. It's ok. All of the siblings appear in all of the books, but the focus is on one of the siblings at a time. This book was about the rebellious tomboy Freyja. This series is read because of a desire for emotional involvement more than anything else, because the sex scenes are pretty platonic, and the author relies on stereotype to get the reader familiar with the characters. An ok read.

Wild Rain by Christine Feehan

This book is about a woman who goes down to South America, in the jungle, to escape from certain complications in her life. She somehow or another ends up in this house, gets her leg half chewed off by some jaguar and is forced to let a hot stranger take care of her. And it's a paranormal romance, so I guess you'll find out in what respect if you chance upon picking it up.

I guess I should start off by saying I'm not that big a romance reader. I'm not a fan of the caliber of writing and feel that most books like this attempt to pass off a bad storyline/ writing ability with emotional angst and sex, and from what I've read of the genre, most books fill this profile. But they're read anyways. This book also falls under this category as I felt the author developed the characters very hastily and for the purpose of heightening the sexual tension rather than general progression of the story and characters, but then again this is a romance I guess and the whole point of the story. This is more my personal discontent with reading books like these... not really specific to this book, that is to say that when I picked up this book I expected this level of writing (was hoping for a higher lever... but no) and am not overly outraged at finding such.

What I did find successful about the book was that the author did keep me wanting to know what happened next. This book was better than some others I've read in the genre and I think that this author is more affective than some other romance authors out there. She captures a sense of possession well, or I guess I should say a desire for possession. And she isn't too bad with words either, not to say she's a master wordsmith, but it successfully fills the qualifications of the genre.

Americas – Strunz and Farah

Strunz & Farah are amazing artists. I own several of their albums and each... well they all rival each other for the best among them. The guitar-ing is amazingly well done, the instrumentals this band puts together is among the most intensely technical and passionate music I own. It's good.

Each album has it's own flavour, and this one's kind of jungle-y. There is a rainforest-like percussion that accompanies some amazing guitar work. When I think of this album as opposed to the others, it's a bit more laid back. There's most definitely some rippin' latin guitarin' going on... but it's more lying in the sun music if you ask me.

You owe it to yourself to at least hear some of their work, if you don't plan on going all out and buying the album... it's most definitely worth the listen. Be sure to check out their other albums as well.

Old Turtle by Douglas Wood

This was a nice book on diversity. I think one of the things people get the most worked up over is spirituality. It's one of those things that can touch a person more deeply than anything else, and everyone's perspective will differ, even if only minutely.

This book starts off with animals and rocks and trees each telling each other what they think god is, and each being's god seems to resemble the speaker. Then the old turtle stops them and tells them that a new group of species is coming, humans, and these humans are meant to be a message from god. The people come and everything is going well, but after some time, they begin acting in a not so nice way and nature tells them to stop. At this point, all of the rocks and trees and other beings that had said god was like themselves at the beginning of the book, began saying that they were able to see god in others, in what was actually the opposite of what they previously said. I guess the moral would be to have an open mind about that which is different from yourself, because it really isn't so alien to what you believe.

The Quiltmaker’s Gift by Jeff Brumbeau

This is anti-materialist propaganda!!! I'm just joking, this was a nice little story about a greedy king who demands more and more presents from everyone in his kingdom, but no matter how many presents he has, he's never happy, hence the constant demand for more. Then one day he sees a quilt this quilt maker gave someone as a present and the person seems pretty happy so he demands that the quilt maker make him a quilt. The quilt maker refuses to do this however and says that she'll only make the king a quilt when he gives his stuff away, then he'll be able to be happy. So the king tries this out. He gives one of his presents to someone and it makes him feel kind of good inside, so he does it again and again. Years later the king is practically poor, but he's smiling a lot and the quilt maker gives the king a quilt. he says he doesn't need the quilt, but the quilt maker gives it to him anyways. The pictures are colourful and expressive and there's a nice moral to the story.

Why We Buy: The Science Of Shopping by Paco Underhill

I read the book because of the title. I'm kind of interested in how we tick. This was not about why we buy however, but about how stores position things so that you might want to buy them, a marketers perspective on the retail store if you will. And it was interesting for the most part, but it was only a passing fancy interesting, not a stop what you're doing and read this book interesting. Things like who shopped with who was taken into consideration and a hypothesis on how to merchandise or where to put the store was given accordingly. Pretty much the whole book right there. OK I might be simplifying, but still, this book could've been a lot more, or I was expecting a lot more than what was given, so it was a disappointment I suppose. Still, I think it should be read, even if it's only bathroom reading, because there is definitely something to be taken away from the book. Nothing ground breaking, but something none the less.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber

This book was somewhat difficult to get through because of the footnotes (I have trouble with footnotes), once you get over that though, it's a fantastic book. It discusses why the capitalist system we have now, and the morality we have now, is the way it is. We have all heard of the protestant ethic, yes? It is the idea that you must work hard, without receiving too much pleasure, for the sake of pleasing God. Working as hard as you can allows a person to 'most effectively' utilize the gifts God has given them, but they cannot take pleasure in the fruits of this because too much pleasure would result in the breaking of some sin, greed or sloth or what have you. But if you can't have fun with what you're working so hard to create, why work so hard? Because you are pleasing god, setting yourself up for the next life. Well this is wonderful for a historical reference, but we're very much secularized in society today so why does any of this matter? Well, Weber contends that a man named Calvin (yes Calvinism) took the protestant ethic and tied it to capitalism. Calvin took the protestant ethic, which was good because it got things done with little complaint from the workers, and connected it to the economic system by turning the idea of pleasing God into earning money. We can imagine the problems with this. If nothing else, there would be trouble behind the fact that what motivated people before was spiritual, and now we expect the same results because of different motivations. That's like using a car to float down a river instead of a boat. Ya cars go forward wonderfully, on the medium they were designed for.

So now we all ascetically put ourselves into our work towards the end of making more money. I'm not a history buff so I don't know if this is true or was just used as an example of how religion effected capitalism, but I don't really care as I can see the connections between the protestant ethic and our capitalist morality.

Weber calls where we are now the iron cage, kind of pessimistic, but he believes that now that we're in this position, we're stuck here. We can't get out of the mental state we are in now, which I don't necessarily agree with, but can see how someone could. If you leave the economic system today and do not movie to some isolated cabin in the woods, chances are you'll end up on the street. I think this is my favourite quote, it's right at the end of the book and sums up the final point quite well.

"No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive self- importance. For the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said: Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never achieved before"

An eye opener to say the least, but a really good read.

Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations by Serena Nanda

This was a very readable book about the idea of gender and how it's not as black and white as some would love to make it. It basically takes a look at different cultures and documents how they view gender. When we think gender, in the Westernized society we live in (that I am sometimes not that happy about being a part of) we think of only two possibilities, male and female. Homosexuals are still men or women if they like someone of the same gender, they're just weird *dripping with sarcasm*. However, what we fail to realize (when I say we I mean main stream society, the mob, the collective) is that the concept of gender is a mental construction. What we see as fact and set in stone, is about as whimsically held together as a kite made out of feathers, it can fall apart at any time. As nature doesn't provide only two types of human beings, society must come to see that more than two types of human beings exist. Some cultures take this better than others and that is the point of this book. In some cultures there are three or four genders, and in some cultures other manifestations of sexual preference or gender are revered.

This book looks at various cultures around the world and how they deal with the issue of gender. It's a short read, but a fun one.

A Short History Of Progress by Ronald Wright

This was an interesting book discussing the possibility of collapse. Wright makes a point that there is a tendency for something to bring itself to an end, whether this is intentional or not. There is the unintentional way, say, the dying out of a species of animal. Sometimes a species or group of people just can't cope with a change and they die out, like the sabre toothed tiger, as wright discusses. Sabre toothed tigers survive on big game, that's why they need those big teeth to rip into the huge animals, but those teeth get in the way if they were hunting say a rabbit, so as big game died out so did they. But the other kind of extinction, the one more relevant to us today, us being the leading countries with the power to carry out wright's fears, is very much intentional. An example from wright explaining this is the Easter Islanders... there were a few but I like this one best because it makes it more real for me as I live in suburbia. The Easter Islanders cut down all the trees on their island and because of the implications of that, went extinct. That might sound kind of ridiculously basic to us, but we're doing the exact same things today. Wright calls these progress traps and examples would be farming and nuclear weapons. We have become so dependent on farming and use that solely to produce food that if the climate were to change we'd be in something of a pickle.. and I'd assume you can guess how nuclear weapons would hinder the progress of the human species. Wright brings our attention to our possible demise by our own hand. A decent quote is "the most compelling reason for reforming our system is that the system is in no one's interest. It is a suicide machine".

It's not so much a history book as it is a call to attention. It uses history to explain the theories it proposes, because history is all we have, but it is not an all encompassing guide to the progress of humanity throughout time. I thought it was a pretty good book, readable.

Go Ask Alice by Anonymous

This is the diary of an anonymous girl and her struggle with drugs and addiction. As chance would have it, I read it sometime after I watched that movie thirteen, which is supposedly also true, and that was kind of similar so I guess the book had less of an impact on me than it would have if I'd read it without any preparation. It was still a good read though. As you would expect from reading a diary, it did a a good job making the story realistic, though I suppose knowing this is based on an actual diary helped with that, though how much of this diary is fact is up for debate...

Problems I had with this book is how little it went into the drug issue. Drugs in general is a very complicated topic and I thought that this book simplified drug addiction ridiculously. This book is aimed for teen audiences and as such the issue should be fleshed out a bit more... but this book just seemed to perpetuate the boogeyman. Don't get me wrong, drugs can be scary things and can really mess up someone's life, but at the same time nothing is so childishly black and white.

Also, the heroine of this book had little to no backbone. She's dangerously ignorant and too eager to please... so basically she brought this upon herself. At some point when your life is flushing itself down the drain you would realize this, and at points in the novel you can tell she does, she just can't stop 'the outside world' from destroying her. I actually find it kind of interesting that as a society we celebrate novels like this, of complete destruction of the self. I enjoy this kind of story very much when the destruction is intentional, but in this instance the girl just float along on the current she was caught up in. This kind of thing bothers me, but at the same time... meh. Because for myself it's just slightly annoying, but for some young girl who has been sheltered from these ideas, this would be seriously disturbing... and it would be harder, I believe, for someone at that age to pick up on the fact that the girl didn't exercise her will... that drugs is a choice like everything else.

When I look at factors like these, you have to begin to wonder at the motivation of the authors, yes plural. This book was based on a real diary... based on, meaning some or even most of it is fiction. And in a book store you will find this in the fiction section. This book, and books like this, are mean to instil fear that comes from the ignorance that surrounds drugs. Perpetuates the stereotype. As I say, i do not condone drug abuse, but neither to i approve of misinformation for the purpose of perpetuating fear and ignorance.

It was a decent fiction piece though.

Wolf Moon by Charles de Lint

This novel was well put together, I quite enjoy this author. So far everything I've read by him (to date probably 3 books including this one... but still) has been well written. He seems to know what words to use to best capture a feeling or mood or set the tone. Characterization is also very well done.

This book is about a werewolf who comes across an inn and falls in love with a woman there and her family and tries to set up something of a life with them, but he has this evil magician on his tail who wants to kill him. The time in which the book took place has a kind of a solemn almost medieval mood too it, not with the knights n' such, but the way in which the characters speak and the setting, it all has a 'back then' feel to it. So he tries to set up this life and it gets to be near perfect, which he longs for because in his past he hasn't been accepted by neither humans nor wolves because of what he is. But here he has finally found a place where people accept him. Then he goes to this party where the evil magician/ harper is and the harper moves in on his new found happiness.

I wish the author would have went into a bit more detail when concerning the actions of people not narrating, because I guess it's too much like real life where we have to assume inner turmoil and motivation behind their actions, but besides this criticism, this book was pretty good. Even as I noted this I still very much enjoyed the story, only after I've finished do criticisms pop into my head, when I'm no longer under the author's spell :P

A decent read on werewolves. There is a bit of romance, but it isn't the focus of the story. It's more about the werewolf himself and his struggle to find a place for himself in the world. It's a pretty good one.

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

This is an amazing book. If you've seen the movie there won't be any surprises, but the book goes more in depth into the concepts and such so the reader can get a firmer grasp on the ideas the author is trying to convey.

The story starts off with this guy who's going to these anonymous groups for people with terminal diseases, but he doesn't have a terminal disease. So right at the beginning of the book we have the main character searching out destruction as a way to solve his discontent. The cause of his discontent of course would be that he feels he doesn't belong within his own society, that his individual self has no presence when interacting with society as a whole. So the individual revolts against society, reasserting its authority over itself. And this would be the reason for fight club. what makes fight club so wonderfully appropriate as a beacon for the individual to rise up against society is that society finds the concept of fight club so abhorrent, it doesn't understand the logic. Society's morality dictates that we are all special individuals that are to cherished. We are all special individuals... something of an paradox, but as we all sway to society's rhythm we can see the logic. But if we take this statement apart and apply it to our own lives, because the western world believes this to be true, generation me as an example, and yet we are all alienated and desire/ are forced to be the same. One of the mantra's in this book was 'i am not a special snow flake' or something to that effect. By denying society's morality, the individual recognizes their discontent and counters it (of course in real life the contrasting extreme is no better than what caused the trouble in the first place, but one very much deserves the other... and its great for symbolic purposes:P). The members of fight club act in a way that society does not comprehend so that the individual can gain autonomy over itself, wresting itself out of the numbing grasp of society. This would manifest itself as destructive behaviour, both towards the self and towards the other, desiring the loss of the individual in a crowd, looking beneath the superficiality we create around ourselves to present as an image, and presenting something unacceptable in its place.

Besides the extreme need for society and the extreme need for the individual there is also the need for balance, hence there being three components to the novel. the aggravator, the aggravatee, and something detached from both. The aggravator would be society, whose desire is to quell individuality and can be found in characters that are 'normal' like the guy's boss, or the very motivation in each of our heads and within the scope of each character's awareness to conform to the bigger picture. The individual would contrast this in it's desire to rise up out of society establishing its autonomy over itself, and this can be found in the idea of fight club and those who believe in it's teachings. The third party would be able to see the benefits and flaws in both extremes, and that would be our narrator, or even the reader, and this person sees a need for both.. or a need for neither.

It was very symbolic, which I enjoyed, but if you're not the type that goes for symbolism... well it'll tap into your rebellion or something.. and it has the fighting (which is you reveling in the symbolism but denying it!). Great book though. I recommend.

Blue Girl by Charels De Lint

This was a really good book. I picked it up on a whim having heard good things about it, and it lived up to its expectations. I was kind of hesitant to get into it because it's about some street tough girl who has a run in with faeries, and I suppose there is a huge potential for this story line to destroy itself with cheesiness. But I was pleasantly surprised at how well it was put together.

Imogene's a bitingly clever, strong, mature heroine. The book starts with her family moving to a new town and her attending a new school. She was with a rough crowd in her old town and was raised by hippie parents who gave her space to live her life. So as a result she's seen enough of the world to be comfortable with who she is when we meet her and has a kind of inner calm, not getting too caught up with the appearance of things, like social status. So she befriends a solitary girl named Maxine.

I really enjoyed the beginning of the book, it was full of adventurous energy and I wouldn't have minded if it continued on without any supernatural interference. But she meets a ghost who unintentionally brings her to the attention of some unfriendly faeries. Even though faeries are introduced to the story, the mood doesn't go all whimsical and light spirited. This is a great dark faerie tale for teens.

Imogene tackles all of her problems by herself, which I found refreshing. She didn't go running to her boyfriend or family or friends for help, though she recognizes that they are there for her and her friends don't let her go into trouble by herself, she doesn't cling to them and finds strength within herself. I've read many stories trying to achieve this character or this mood and they always fall short of success. This is one of the few teen books I would recommend to someone without commenting on what I found unsuccessful about it. It was just really well written. I recommend.

Psyche in a Dress by Francesca Lia Block

I'd heard a lot of great things about this book before I read it, so when I started reading and didn't immediately see the draw I was kind of disappointed. It wasn't bad by any means, but it wasn't fantastic. As I got closer to the end, however, and the different aspects of the story started coming together for the final conclusion I really thought to myself, this is a really good book.

The writing style is some kind of poetic, stream of consciousness, almost dreamlike approach that allows the reader to take in the information a different way than if it were presented normally. You almost want to pause over the information to make sure you're taking it in correctly. The author doesn't knock her self out with punctuation for most of the book. If there's supposed to be a period or a comma she just skips down to the next line and continues on, but it wasn't hard to read because of this, it just adds to the mood she's trying to create.

The basic premise of the story is that there is this girl who lives out Greek myths in the modern day. She is psyche predominately, but after she looses Eros she goes through different phases and meets different people and becomes other mythological figures, which the author uses to describe different stages of life.

From the book, kind of near the end, but don't worry you won't know how it's relevant until you read it

I have been young too
I have been Psyche, I have been Echo
I have been Eurydice
I have been Persephone, like you
I thought I was not a goddess
My mother was a goddess
Now I am Demeter, like my mother
Because of you

Reading that kind of sums up the book, and when you tie in what the author creates around these myths, its kind of touching. A lot of time is spent on the details which makes the story more than just a plot, and in every part of the book we are told what dress psyche is wearing. I'm not much into fashion so I can't tell you if the dresses she wore at certain times were significant to the plot, but in the beginning the dresses are her mother's and by the end i think she gets one of her own.

Anyway, Psyche learns to stand on her own, exist by herself, which is a nice ending. And if you know your myths there won't be any real surprises in plot, maybe in execution, but that why it's interesting right? Great read.

Luna: A Novel by Julie Ann Peters

This was a phenomenal story about struggle and rebirth. The story focuses on a transgendered guy through the eyes of his sister. And quite honestly I didn't go to sleep last night as I read it from start to finish.

The whole story is about how Luna (Liam's true self) is trapped within Liam, and Liam is a construction what the most acceptable way he can exist without revealing his true self turns out to be, which throughout the book we are told is like a shell of a person. Regan, the sister, has known from a young age that her brother is really a sister and devotes her entire life to keeping up the facade of Liam and dealing with Luna's problems. As a result Regan doesn't really have an identity. Both she and Luna are repressed 'Liam' Liam being society's rejection of transgendered individuals, and 'Liam' stifles those who know the truth to the point where the death of the individual wouldn't matter because the spirit, their soul, is already dead, crushed by society's rigid rejection. As depressing as that sounds however, this book is a phoenix rising out of the ashes story. For most of the novel everyone rejects Luna, even Regan and Liam as they are more embarrassed and wanting to keep Luna underground more than anything else. As the story progresses however, Luna decides that she needs to make herself known, she needs to break free, so she hesitantly goes about doing this, at first just recognizing this fact, than taking ever growing steps toward freedom. People accept or reject her as this process takes shape, but the only viewpoints the readers focus in on are Luna/ Liam's and Regan's. We never hear the final conclusion the other characters come to, which is appropriate as we can fill in our own selves or those we know into those characters, because this is very much an unfinished story as sexism still exists in a huge way today.

For most of the book Regan is just used as a lense through which the reader can learn about Luna and has no personality or character of her own, but she along with Luna, comes to the realization that she has no 'self' because of 'Liam' and though she doesn't act on it the way Luna does, she gets proddings from the outside world (in the shape of a new guy in school) to bring attention to her own life and not focus everything on Luna.

I teared up a few times reading this. Everyone has an inner self to let out, it's a struggle we all go through, some more so than others.

Earth to Audrey by Susan Hughes

This is a whimsical little story about a boy who thinks a girl he sees is an alien. The girl, Audrey, is a free spirited, hippy child who earthily (for lack of better term) interacts with the world around her. The boy is intrigued by the girl so, since his friends are at summer camp, he befriends her and spends time with her. In one instance they were lying on the grass under a tree and Audrey says that she can feel the earth holding her, and the boy agrees, so she turns around and gives the earth a hug right back, these kinds of things.

Something that kind of bugged me about the book was how the author tried to bring about a climax with the big bang theory. I'm not upset about this because it was the big bang theory, but because the book up to that point was so whimsical and detached in a way, so I was expecting something less... grounded.. as a concluding climax. The author kind of ties it into the meeting between the boy and Audrey, nothing and then something, and tried to turn it into a metaphor of sorts, but I guess it didn't really do it for me.

The illustrations were great though and the book is worth the read overall.

Ladybug Girl by Jacky Davis

This is a story about a girl in a ladybug- looking dress that goes about her day as ladybug girl. She tries to play baseball with her brother and his friends but he says she's too small, which kind of makes her a bit mad, so she goes about whimsical little adventures of her own because she is ladybug girl! And is not small at all. The girl is kind of free spirited and imaginative so it's fun reading about her. It isn't the best 'free spirited' children's book I've read, but it's decently done and worth the time put in.

The Dangerous Alphabet by Neil Gaiman

This alphabet book was almost reminiscent of that Tim Burton book for kids in that it picks up on a darker mood, but in my opinion it was done much better than Tim Burton's. It is about these two kids who go on an adventure in some sort of sewer and come across these monsters who want to do bad things to the kids, but they escape by the end. The book rhymes and there's one line per page, which is accompanied by a great illustration depicting the rhyme and a letter. The illustrations match the overall mood of the book, and an example can be seen on the cover. I don't know if it's for young children, though I'd try anyways as everything is so white washed nowadays and anything not max and ruby sets your heart racing. It was well done though.

Cassie and the Kiss Soldier by Marion Rose

It was a nice idea, the kiss soldier. The little girl didn't want to go to sleep by herself because she was afraid, so her grandfather put a kiss on her bedpost, which turned into a little soldier that would protect her while she was sleeping. The idea was better than the final execution on the whole though. The author attempted to have the girl go on a little adventure that seemed kind of forced, maybe it was too short or... well something was missing and I didn't really feel that part, but the idea was nice.

Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr

Well, the first book, Wicked Lovely, was a decent read, so I was expecting I guess more of the same in this book. Instead the author attempted to take on darker subject matter and instead of fleshing this out to the full, she skirted around the issues and didn't really address them, Kind of making the story/ characters fall flat. Basically a PG book took on R rated issues but kept them PG, relying on suggestion to get a point across rather than just addressing the issues. Because of this the plot had a kind of cardboard feel to it. I kind of felt like she kind of skimmed through the plot as well. Events took place, but there was no conviction to anything and the author didn't really follow through and finish an event. I thought the ending was kind of rushed.

Overall decent set-up but poor execution.

The Boy Who Loved Words by Roni Schotter

This story is about a boy who loves words. He collects words and saves his favourites and he's ostracized because of this and comes to a point where he's left home and a man stumbles upon some of his words and makes a poem out of them. He then decides it's his purpose to spread his words around the world. At the end he meets a girl named Melody and the narrator says if ever a word comes upon you it's because of the boy, and if you feel like singing it's because Melody's with him.

Kind of working the muse idea. This book was OK, but I've seen the 'divine inspiration' idea done better elsewhere. It has a little glossary at the back of the book that goes over some of the more difficult words they use, because some fancy words are put to use, so that's good.

Overall, there are better stories out there, but this one is a decent read.

Twelve Dancing Princesses by Marianna Mayer

This is possibly the best children's version of this story I've come across. The pictures are beautiful with attention paid to detail. The illustrations are kind of reminiscent of classical art... whatever era that is, but you get the idea from the front cover. There's a lot to look at in any case. The storytelling isn't bad either. The author knows how to put a decent sentence together.

This story is probably what I would (in this day and age) consider to be a 'classically told fairy tale. A must read.

The Wonderful Pigs of Jillian Jiggs by Phoebe Gilman

Like it's predecessor, this book is a great children's book. Jillian is finished tidying her room and has now decided that she will make pigs! She makes a lot of pigs and then decides to sell them with her friends, but when people start buying her pigs she discovers that she's too emotionally attached to her pigs to sell them. So instead she gives lessons on how to make pigs. At the end of the book there is a little pattern that teaches you how to make a stuffed pig.

Like the first book it rhymes nicely and like the first book, the illustrations are very expressive and energetic. Great series.

Jillian Jiggs by Phoebe Gilman

This is a great story, both to read out loud and to read alone. It's about a girl whose mother wants her to clean her room, but her friends come over and they end up playing instead. Her mother tells her a few times to go clean her room and she seemingly goes to do it, but she takes her friends with her, as well as her baby sister, and they get distracted by their imaginations, so we get to see them pretending to be a bunch of different things. At the end though her mother puts her foot down and tells Jillian to clean her room, so she tells her friends to come back when her room is neater.

The book rhymes, which is amazing for reading out loud, or for singular readings, the flow is nice. The illustrations are great too, the characters look like they're having fun. The way they're drawn conveys a lot of energy and excitement, and yet the drawings are simple... I guess they kind of remind me of children themselves, not a whole lot to them, but invest your time and you'll have more than your share of fun.

This whole series is great. I recommend.

The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum by Kate Bernheimer

I absolutely love the illustrations in this book. This artist is one of my preferred. Her pictures are so soft and expressive, I just love it. And as if the illustrations themselves weren't enough, the story isn't that bad either. It's very short and is about a girl inside a miniature castle in a museum (hence the title). Someone tells us about the girl and then we get to see the girl up close and find out that she wants a friend. In the end she gets the reader to be her friend... in a way. It's a cute story line, but with the ethereal pictures it goes beyond being cute to being something more meaningful.

Amazingly well done.

Od Magic by Patricia Mckillip

Not my favourite by her, but decent enough in it's own right. The story follows a guy who likes plants (as well as a wizard and a princess, three perspectives to tell the same story, from different angles) who is asked by the founder of a magic school to be a school gardener. He accepts and goes off, finding out that he has magical abilities himself.

Brenden, the guy, isn't the typical protagonist. He's extremely introverted and nearing the end of the novel he runs away from someone who is chasing him, which runs contrary to the usual heroes we get who 'face their fears' so to speak. And yet, though he is so timid, the author plays this off as almost a good thing. It isn't stated as such in the novel, but parallels are drawn and statements are made that commend this type of personality. We find out that Brendan is actually very powerful, and for no other reason than he takes the time to listen.

If looking at this book symbolically, magic can be associated with thought, or free will. The king keeps tight control over what magic is acceptable and what is not, and all magic must be used for the benefit of the kingdom or it is not allowed. Kind of like 1984, but not as intense.

I found the wrapping up of the story to be a bit rushed information- wise, it could have been fleshed out a bit more. But this author is one of the better ones I've come across and knows how to do what she does well, so while the information moves... quickly... the story itself is not rushed and there is a pleasant flow making the amount of information she gives acceptable from the readers perspective.

As I say, not my favourite by her, but worth the read never the less.