A review of Red Riding Hood by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright and David Leslie Johnson

WARNING:  This review is full of spoilers.  Read at your own risk.  

I started reading Red Riding Hood with very high hopes.  I’ve been reading a lot of fairy tale retellings over the past couple months, and this seemed like it would be good.  

It wasn’t as good as I had hoped.  

At first I loved it.  I read all of part one plus a couple chapters in part two in a morning and couldn’t wait until I could figure out what happened next.  After two hundred pages, the stereotypical young adult love triangle started to irritate me.  Boy loves girl; girl thinks he’s nice but she loves mysterious boy who showed up out of nowhere; mysterious boy likes her too but has some reason for why they shouldn’t be together.  Really?  Why haven’t all the young adult authors moved beyond that?  Shouldn’t they?  Shouldn’t the readers demand that they do so?  Personally, I’m pretty sick of love triangles, especially if they’re predictable and poorly written.  

The characters themselves are not very engaging.  I never got attached enough to any of the characters to care what happened to them - even if they died.  I was just like, “Oh look, Lucie’s dead.  Now Henry’s father died.  Now Claude died.  And now The Reeve died” (I actually wouldn’t have cared about The Reeve no matter what because I just didn’t like him).  Some of the deaths were just so unexpected and random that I didn’t even feel upset.  Oh, Valerie’s grandmother died?  I should feel upset.  But I don’t.  They just weren’t that well developed.  

I also didn’t like that there was a “Bonus chapter” online.  Really, it wasn’t like an extra bit about one of the characters or a couple pages of back-story or what the heck Peter did while he was gone.  It was a chapter of the book that got cut off and put online.  It was important to wrapping up the plot.  But why put it only online?  To get people to watch the movie?  To get people who liked the book to buy the movie?  The book isn’t complete without the bonus chapter.  The ending of the last chapter in the book doesn’t make sense without going online and reading the “bonus” chapter which is really not a bonus but the ending of the story.  I hate it when authors do this.  Some people don’t look to see if there’s a website for a book so they have no idea what something means or, in this case, how the story ends.  Seriously, why is the last chapter on the website?  It’s not like they’re making money by advertising things, they just advertise the movie trailer.  

My last complaint is that the level of gore was completely unnecessary.  I didn’t want to read the details of how people were hit by an axe, or how they looked after they were hit by an axe.  Nobody wants to know that.  Well, maybe some people but I don’t want to know them.

Two stars.  

Why adult literature ruins that written for children

Neverwhere ruined Un Lun Dun.  

Stardust ruined any young adult fairy-themed romance ever.  

We Have Always Lived in the Castle ruined Green Angel and any other book with insanity.  

Books written for adults are more interesting because they are often better written.  In addition, the books have more accurate situations because adult writers will not think that they cannot write something that would be inappropriate for children.  Some children’s authors do not know how to explain certain situations because they don’t know what the child knows or does not know.  This leads to scenarios in children’s literature where the violence is too staged, the relationships are too scripted and awkward.  Yes, it tells the story but it leaves the characters a bit flat.  

In We Have Always Lived in the Castle Mary Cat actually poisoned her family because she was mad at them.  Then she went on to do things like nailing books to trees to keep herself safe.  When her cousin came, it was because the book fell leaving her unprotected instead of just a happenstance.  She is clearly insane.  She talks about flying to the moon and living there with her sister-it is always nice on the moon.  In Green Angel, the main character’s parents die but she doesn’t kill them.  Instead of nailing books to trees as protection, she sews spiky things to her jacket to keep herself safe.  We Have Always Lived in the Castle has the space to let a character be truly insane and the writer knows how to do real insanity.  Whereas, in Green Angel the main character, who could easily have been insane and it would have made for a better story, is not.  Her parents were killed in a fire while she was mad at them.  It would have been understandable for her to go insane from fear, guilt, and sorrow.  She does the things an insane person might-adding spiky things to her clothing, gathering rocks for her family members-but the author never makes the leap to true insanity.  

It is this resistance to making situations and characters too real that holds children’s literature back.  There are so many young adult books out there about depression or suicide and other problems that real people face, but even those seem almost unreal.  Sometimes there’s an unrealistically happy ending where anyone who wasn’t nice suddenly sees the error of their ways, or a depressed character is suddenly happy and everything is good.  All bullies end up good in the end, just misunderstood.  People always end up either with their crush or with the right person they hadn’t realized they were meant to be with.  Life is not like this.  

Adult writers know this and they don’t write books that lead to a falsely happy ending.  They have realistic endings even when they are sad or unexpected.  If there is a character who completely changes, it is in a more natural and realistic way.  There are probably some adult books with falsely happy endings and adults who want to read them, but there is a greater potential to present a more honest and realistic telling.  

I know there are books written for children that have more realistic characters and situations, but they often read as an adult trying to relate back to children instead of one human telling another human a story.  

Toys 'R' Us: Marketing to the Voiceless

Today the Toys ‘R’ Us Christmas Catalog came in the mail.  The packaging is like a Christmas gift.  Colorful candy canes and trees and a big orange bow in the corner.  It also advertises a free poster inside.  

To get to the catalog, you actually have to unwrap the gift-wrap-like packaging.  Kids don’t normally get much mail and to get something that looks like a present would be very exciting for them.  They would want to have it, open it, and look at it.  The inside of the wrapper is the free poster, which is actually a decorated list of all the Skylanders Trap Team figures-the poster is an advertisement.  On the sides of the poster there are more advertisements for limited edition comic books, video games, and more products.  

There are sixty-five different figures to collect.  Most individual figures cost around sixteen dollars, so if a child wanted all of them they would spend almost a thousand dollars, if not more.  Some of the figures are closer to ten dollars, but there are more things to collect.  Don’t forget the trap crystals and video games and everything else.  

To play this video game, you’ll need whatever gaming system is needed-and that kind of thing isn’t cheap either.  According to the Toys “R” Us website, an Xbox 360 gaming system is normally 199.99 (nice charm pricing) and it’s on sale for 179.99 (probably only on sale for the holiday season, so buy now).  To buy the 500 GB Media Hard Drive, which you’ll need to have if you want to save your game and the games of all of your friends, it would cost an extra 109.99 dollars BUT, the Media Hard Drive will be shipped to your house for free with any purchase of 49+ dollars (so it would ship free with the purchase of a few of the Skylanders action figures or the purchase of an Xbox 360).  It even says “Skylanders Trap Team and Xbox go great together!”  

And the spending doesn’t stop there.  You can also get extra controllers, batteries and chargers, special cables, headsets, and storage.  But not all of the storage is for games, some of it is to store your Skylanders.  

You don’t have to buy an Xbox to play with your Skylanders though, you could buy a PlayStation 4, if you preferred.  They only cost 399.99, think of the savings.  Of course, they would require all of the extra cables and controllers and hundreds of dollars of other extra things.  

But wait, there’s more.  

On the first page of the catalog, you see a bunch of characters and toys.  The man from Monopoly, an orange hippo (I assume that this one is from Hungry, Hungry, Hippos, but I don’t know as it was just a mere board game when I played it), Littlest Pet Shop animals, Play-Doh creatures, Nerf Guns, My Little Pony (they don’t show pictures of the toys, they show pictures of the characters from the TV show), and what looks like a Transformer dragon/dinosaur/robot thing.  

The catalog comes complete (as does nothing in it) with a special page for kids to make their wishlists, or they could just check the boxes beside each of the products to show “Santa” what they want.  

The catalog talks directly to the parents (“Your little Turtle is showing off his new powers and Elsa’s singing her heart out.”) and then it says “And you finally got that cup of coffee.”  It’s not about getting toys for your child now, it’s about getting time for you.  That well earned break you deserve can be your’s if you just pick the right items from the catalog in your hands.    

Talking about something as if the customer already owns it (the child and parent are already envisioning themselves in the scenario the catalog has set up) is a marketing trick, but children won’t think about that.  They’ll think about how happy they would be to have an Elsa doll, or how fun it would be to play with a Ninja Turtle.  

Here are some of the highlights from the catalog:

The Fabulous 15! list is the list of cool toys for 2015.  The first toy is a little car from a TV show.  It is shown with a stuffed animal and a plastic sheep.  It’s on sale for only 44.99, but the stuffed animal and plastic sheep are sold separately (and probably not on sale, either).  Children won’t look at that, though.  They’ll just check the box beside the toy and move on to the next page.  

The second toy is-unsurprisingly-the Skylanders Trap Team Starter Pack.  

The eleventh toy is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figure.  

The twelfth is a Disney Frozen Snow Glow Elsa.  The price isn’t listed anywhere in the magazine.  I looked online and it’s on sale for 34.99 (normally 39.99).  I don’t know why they didn’t have the price.  Maybe it’s just an error in the catalog?  Or maybe the need to have it takes you to the store or online where a whole new round of marketing can begin.

On the next two pages, there are babies and toddlers wearing fashionable clothing and playing.  Even the toys for little kids are expensive.  A plastic riding-elephant is 39.99.  A door for toddlers to walk through is 79.99.  Thank goodness it’s on sale.  

On page nine there’s a “Leaptop” for children ages 1 1/2+.  There’s also an alphabet dog, many different cars and tracks, and Doodle Bear, and an Elmo whose personality changes depending which hat he’s wearing.  Just like your child can change from a rollicking turtle to a quiet video game player.  

On the next page, everything is a toy from a TV show.  Now the TV show advertises the toy and the toy advertises the show.  The catalog says that there are over one-hundred-twenty choices in store and online.  This connection between show and toy not only creates a marketing circle but also tends to limit the way children play with the toy.  Instead of free play, they act out the story line creating the need to watch more shows and buy more toys.

There are also SpongeBob themed toys.  SpongeBob isn’t a show for three year olds, but these toys are.  They are advertising the show to younger children.  The young children might watch the show to seem cooler in the eyes of older children.  Older children might relate to them because of the toys.  This does not make the content of Sponge Bob appropriate for young children, though.  

There are two entire pages covered in pictures of girls in Disney-Junior themed costumes, playing with Disney themed toys.  Disney is a marketing giant genius in its own right.  They are everywhere and they protect their brand quite well.  Every girl wants to be a Disney Princess.  Every parent of a little girl knows this.  These outfits are expensive, though.  Not to mention the ramification of buying into the princess ideal on young girls as they grow up.  

On page fifteen, The Home Depot Big Builder Workshop is just an advertisement for The Home Depot.  Of course, one must give equal time, so the tool toys are the realm of little boys.  How will this work, though?  No Disney Princess marries the handyman?  What roles are being sold to the children and how will that impact their future view of the world?

There are so many advertisements for tablets for kids.  They are advertised for kids ages three and up.  Why would a three year old need something so they could play video games?  Why would a three year old want to play video games instead of interacting with the real world around them?  

Perhaps one of the most egregious toys available has to be the board game where you identify logos.  It’s marketed for children as young as four.  Clearly, these children are able to play - they know enough logos to name the brand even as pre-readers.  Before they even know how to read they know how to identify logos and can probably identify their favorites.  

The Toys ‘R’ Us catalog should be a frightening read for any parent.  It should make clear that children are being primed as sales targets even as babies.  Television leads to toys leads to sales.  This is the drive of the marketing engine to children.  

A review of Rags and Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales edited by Tim Pratt and Melissa Marr

I loved this book.  I already love short stories, but these were excellent.  

“That the Machine May Progress Eternally” by Carrie Ryan is inspired by “The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster.  It is the tale of a man who goes underground and gets stuck there.  While reading the story, I had mixed feelings.  At the beginning I thought I was going to like it, then around the middle I became unsure about it.  I didn’t know if I liked it or not.  I didn’t like the main character AT ALL and had no idea why he wouldn’t make more of an effort to get out (I would have been kicking walls, screaming, and throwing things at people).  When I got to the end, I realized how awesome the story was and I was very glad I read it.  I’m giving it four stars instead of five because even though I liked it, I didn’t like the middle as much.  

“Losing Her Divinity” by Garth Nix is based on “The Man Who Would be King” by Rudyard Kipling.  It is the story of a goddess seeking escape from her immortality.  I’ve heard very good things about books that Garth Nix has written.  I really hope that those books are better than this.  I don’t know what to say other than I just didn’t like the story.  I didn’t connect with any characters, I didn’t enjoy the writing style.  I started to read it, but I just got bored.  I had to force myself to finish it.  One star.  

“The Sleeper and the Spindle” by Neil Gaiman is a retelling of “Sleeping Beauty”.  I can’t find the right words to describe this story.  All I can say is READ IT!  It will probably be one of the best Sleeping Beauty retellings that you will ever find.  Five stars.  

“The Cold Corner” by Tim Pratt was inspired by Henry James’s “The Jolly Corner”.  This is about a man who encounters alternate versions of himself during a trip home.  This story was okay.  It was better than some of the others, but it wasn’t my favorite.  I would probably appreciate this story more if I read the original.  Two and a half stars.  

“Millcara” by Holly Black is a retelling of Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and it is about vampires.  I LOVED THIS STORY!!!  I love most things written by Holly Black, but I LOVE when she writes about vampires!!!  This was the first story I read and it gave me very high expectations for all the other stories in here.  Fifty-thousand stars.  

“When First We Were Gods” by Rick Yancey is based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark”.  This story is about a man who finds a way through technology to kill his wife and live with her maid.  I like the idea of people’s minds being saved every day so if something happened to them they could still survive.  In the right hands, that could make a really good sci-fi story.  But this is NOT that story.  I didn’t like the characters or the writing style or anything.  One star.  

Horace Walpole’s “Otranto” is the seed for “Sirocco” by Margaret Stohl.  This is a tragic love story/murder mystery of sorts.  I probably shouldn’t have read this when I did.  I read this one after I read “New Chicago”, “The Soul Collector”, “Awakened”, and “Millcara”.  After reading four really good stories, this one really fell flat.  I kept telling myself it had to get better, but it didn’t.  Ever.  Not even a little bit.  One star.  

“Awakened” by Melissa Marr was inspired by Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening”.  It is a selkie story and I have been loving selkie stories since I was very little.  I loved this one too.  I remember listening to an audiobook when I was little about a selkie who lost her skin.  My sister and I listened to that repeatedly (much to the annoyance of my father).  I have no words to describe the awesomeness of this story.  If you like mermaids, read this.  Even if you don’t like mermaids, read it anyway.  Five stars.  

“New Chicago” by Kelley Armstrong is a retelling of the “Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs.  I remember reading The Monkey’s Paw when I was younger (I also remember thinking it was really creepy).  Looking back on it, I would like it a lot more now.  But I probably won’t like it as much as I like “New Chicago”.  I loved the characters and the story and how it didn’t say what he wished for at the end.  Five stars.  

“The Soul Collector” by Kami Garcia was inspired by “Rumplestiltskin”.  I LOVED this short story.  I will definitely read the original, and probably read this again.  And again.  And again.  Five stars.  

“Without Faith, Without Law, Without Joy” by Saladin Ahmed is a take on Sir Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene”.  This is the tale of three brothers captured by a fairy.  I didn’t like anything about this one.  Maybe I didn’t like it because I read so many great short stories before I read this and expected something better?  Probably.  One star.  

“Uncaged” by Gene Wolfe is a retelling of William Seabrook’s the “The Caged White Werewolf of the Saraban”.  I read this one right after reading “Awakened”, and it wasn’t even close to being as good as that one.  I didn’t like any of it and it didn’t make the most sense.  One star.  

I averaged my ratings for each story to get my final rating and I got this:  4169.291666666667 stars.  But Goodreads won’t let me rate anything that high, so I’ll pretend the rating for “Millcara” is five instead of fifty-thousand.  Now I have 3.041666666666667 stars.  But I’ll round it up to four stars.  

Review of Zen and the Art of Knitting: Exploring the Links Between Knitting, Spirituality, and Creativity by Bernadette Murphy

This book was good, but I didn’t like that there was no mention of anyone who did something interesting or unique with crochet or any other craft.  When someone did something close to crochet, the author talked about considering not including them because they weren’t knitting.  This book could be much better if the author included activities that weren’t just knitting.  She could have had chapters about spinning, weaving, sewing, crocheting, and a bunch of other crafts that can be just as calming and spiritual as knitting.  

I think the book would have been better if, instead of having a knitting pattern at the beginning of each chapter, she had something about different crafts.  It wouldn’t even have to be a pattern.  It could be something like the history of knitting or crochet or spinning or weaving, or even something about the animals that yarn comes from.

The author proves her point that knitting is calming and people knit to get through hard times.  However, people can do that with crochet or other crafts, too.  She speaks of a woman who crochets food and is impressed by her work but goes to great pains to make sure the reader understands that this artist’s work is not as good as pure knitting.  She goes so far as to say that she would not include anything that wasn’t close to knitting even though there are lots of people who do interesting things with weaving, spinning, sewing, or crochet.  

The author asserts that knitting is calming because you can not concentrate on a bunch of things that would worry you - you have to focus on your pattern.  This forces you to clear your mind just as you would in meditation.  However, this is not unique to knitting.  It can be done with many other crafts.   The author exposes her own bias and it colors the impact of the book.  

Three out of five stars.  

Top ten books I read over the summer (2014)

          10.  Teen Spirit by Francesca Lia Block
          9.  Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones
          8.  Sailor Moon Vol. 1 by Naoko Takeuchi
          7.  Alice 19th Vol. 1 and 2 by Yuu Watase
          6.  Fruits Basket Vol. 1, 2, and 3 by Natsuki Takaya
          5.  Coraline by Neil Gaiman
          4.  Stardust by Neil Gaiman

          3.  Kat, Incorrigible by Stephanie Burgis

          2.  Red Glove by Holly Black

          1.  The MirrorWorld Anthology by Cornelia Funke

Top ten books so far this year (2014)

10.  The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

9.  North of Nowhere by Liz Kessler

8.  Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Vol. 01 by Magica Quartet, Hanokage

7.  Raising Demons by Shirley Jackson

6.  Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson

5.  Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman (Yes, I am aware that this is not a young adult book, but it's still awesome-just ask the Wumpires.) 

4.  The Poison Eaters: And Other Stories by Holly Black

3.  The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

2.  White Cat by Holly Black

1.  Reckless by Cornelia Funke  (Yes, this is the same book that was in first place last year, but I read it again last January and cried at the ending even though I already knew how it ended.  Any book that can do that deserves to be first on this list.)  

Book Recommendation

                You've probably read something by Shirley Jackson, or at least heard of something she wrote.  I read The Lottery a while ago, and it really stuck with me-like that nightmare from when you were two that still haunts you.  I also heard a little of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and my mother told me what it was about, it's not exactly a cheerful book.  Based on what she writes, I thought Shirley Jackson's life would be serious.  I was wrong. 

                I expected that Shirley Jackson would live alone in an old, dark, dusty house with a never-ending assortment of grim rooms at the end of a dark, twisting road surrounded by bears and wolves.  In that house, most things would be grey, there would be a musty smell in all of the rooms except the kitchen (which would have a burnt smell to it), and the heating wouldn't work very well.  She might have an angry black cat with one eye and a big scar, or a bite taken out of one of its ears.  Perhaps she'd have a guard dog as big as a car with bristling black fur and luminous red eyes and maybe a bark that could be heard for miles.  Even on the brightest days, the sun wouldn't manage to get through the thick trees that surround the house for miles.  If she had children, they would all wear dark clothes and spend their free time chopping heads off of dolls. 

                Yes, she had a black cat and a dog, and she did have children, but they were nothing like I would have imagined.  If anyone would have cut the head off of one of Sally's dolls, she probably would have called them a snick. 

                In Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons, Shirley Jackson writes about her life.  There's everything from when a bat gets into her house to Sally's missing blanket (I really liked that one), and Sally doing magic ("That boy still can't sleep."), and when her children played with water balloons inside the house (also a really good one). 

                My favorite by far was the story of Sally's missing blanket.  They all got sick and each person had with them their favorite drink-both adults had alcohol while the children had apple juice.  Each also had a pillow and their favorite blanket.  They headed off to bed but it wasn't long before Sally and Jannie wanted to sleep in their parents bed.  Their father was sleeping in the guest room to be more comfortable.  So they climbed into bed with their mother and went to sleep.  Eventually, Sally and Jannie were taking up too much space so she collected her drink and blanket and headed off for an unoccupied bed.  Through a series of bed changes for each member of the family nobody had the right pillow, blanket, or drink and Sally's blanket was nowhere to be found. 

                This is not what you would expect from horror writer.  It is funny, engaging, and enjoyable.  I wish there were more.  

Opinions

When I posted the open letter on my blog, it made me less likely to explode and furiously quote Harry Potter at that person.  (Yes, I would quote Harry Potter, and it wouldn't be very nice.) When I wrote the small rant about people looking at me funny when I was spinning, I felt better too.  The little silly things, like the letter to my library books and How To Tell If Your Best Friend Is Supernatural, were nice, and I could write them quickly so I could post at least one thing in each month. 

When I posted those light, carefree things, a lot of my friends said that they were funny, or they emailed with something like, "LOL!  That post was so funny!  You should write another like that."  Sure, when I wrote the open letter I didn't send out an email about how I had a new blog post.  I think I told only a few people, but that was it.  Reactions ran between reading it and relating and reading it and asking for a more happy post next time around.    

The thing is, most of the time I'm very serious.  The kind of serious that started at two when I discussed death for hours before my Great-Grandmother's funeral (and asked my mother to be sure to sit with me when I die) and continues to today when I read slightly depressing books where the description starts with something like "After her parents were killed, (name) feels like she can't go on."  Since I do really like fantasy, there will probably be something with a near death experience and possibly ghosts, vampires, werewolves, or demons.  Think-if this is what I read just because, what do you think my brain is like?  Okay, I'm not depressed or anything, but cute, silly novels that always have a happy ending and, of course, the right girl always ends up with the right boy don't hold my attention.  I have nothing wrong with romance, but if that's all the book is about I'm not going to read it. 

The same can be said for my music.  What I listen to can't exactly be called feel-good music.  Rock?  Yes.  Emo?  I guess.  Grumpy?  You bet.  Yes, I listen to Lenka and Taylor Swift.  Rarely yes, but I do listen to their music sometimes.  More often it's Superchick and Icon for Hire and Flyleaf and Paramore.  Yes the lyrics to Superchick can be upbeat.  Yes, not all Paramore is the kind of angsty that Flyleaf can be.  It's not totally impossible for me to be happy. 

I think I've made my point-the happy posts aren't always an accurate representation of me. 

Sometimes I wish that I didn't send out an email to all of my friends telling them that I have a blog.  That way I could bring it up in conversation sometime and just say, "Hey look at this blog.  I'm not sure who writes it, but it's really cool."  Yeah, I'd be saying that what I write is really good;  Yeah, I'd be praising myself.  But think about it, then I could write anything that I wanted and not worry about offending people.  Of course, my friends are very smart and they could figure out where they were mentioned, then I'd be called out as a liar, but, for a while, I would be free.  For a while. 

Sometimes I wish I didn't tell specific people about my blog because now I can't talk about how they say things that make me want to erase what I've written so far. 

Like when I showed a friend some of my angry poetry.  This isn't the same thing as Stardust or any of the poems I wrote when I started writing poetry.  These are the poems that would leave people with their mouths hanging open if they heard it.  This friend had bugged me until I showed her.  She repeatedly sent me emails urging me to send the file to her.  Finally, I read some to her.  She wanted to hear the grumpiest poem I had.  I didn't read it, because the event it was about was still too fresh in my mind.  She reacted rather poorly to the poem I did read, saying that it was really grumpy.  That made me want to scream.  Why can't you just be happy that I showed you what I wrote?  Only a few people have ever seen these poems, and those few were carefully selected because I thought they wouldn't judge me as much as other people.  That night I wrote a poem called Poetry Is....  It's about how writing poetry hurts and it isn't easy.  Here's a bit of the unedited version. 

Poetry is cutting my heart out of my chest with a dull knife. 
Poetry is selling my soul to make a few pennies. 
Poetry hurts. 
Poetry is letting everything I keep in the darkest pockets of my soul out into the world. 
Writing poetry is opening Pandora's box. 
A Pandora's box made just for me.
So there is no hope at the bottom waiting to buoy up the world.
Poetry is unlocking the misery that feasts on my heart. 
You do not want my pain.
Don't make me share my misery with you. 

Cheerful, isn't it?  Sometimes, in my "poetry diary" I even write little paragraphs to explain why I am disheartened that day.  I even admit that the poems I write sound morbid and morose.  Seriously, who would want to hear this kind of thing.  See the line of the poem that says, "Don't make me share my misery with you"?  That's basically saying "Don't hassle me until I break and read you these poems". 

So, before I get off on a rant about that, let me get to my point so I can at least stay on topic while ranting. 

I'm torn between posting my true opinions on things and continuing to post the light, happy things.  I think I can guess what a lot of people will want, but I also know what I want.  I've always tried to not be self-centered and I've tried not to do what I want just because I want to do it.  I've made a serious effort.  Maybe, like the girl from the open letter and the friend I mentioned above, I'll finally get sick of trying to make everyone happy.  And I do try to make everyone happy.  I just get sick of everyone's expectations sometimes. 

I'm going to try posting this and seeing how it goes over, see if I get angry ranting emails about how selfish I can be, or if I get understanding emails about how I shouldn't feel bad about posting my true feelings toward things.  Or maybe everyone will begin to doubt me when I say that I'm telling the truth.  Maybe they'll think I'm lying.  I mean, if I could pretend to be cheerful, maybe people will think I've pretended about a lot of things.  I mean, people never know. 

So here it is.  My opinion, true and complete without a lie or sarcasm.  I'm going to wait until next week to see the reactions, then I'll reconsider what I said about changing what I post. 

                "Thus I am saved from my own grim self."

                                                                -Holly Black, The Land of Heart's Desire  

A book review of Tricks by Ellen Hopkins

I wanted to like this.  Sort of.  My mom picked it out at the library, and she's really good at picking books I like.  And it's a book written in verse-I love poetry.  Yes, I admit, my standards for poetry are ridiculously high, but this didn't even start to measure up to what I normally read.  Maybe I've read too much Emily Dickenson. 

In Tricks, it seemed like all the characters were nearly the same.  They either do something their parents don't like, don't like their parents and fight with them constantly, or get rejected by their parents.  Then, four out of five of the characters run away.  Not just running away to a friend's house, no, they run away to Vegas.  Except for the character who already lives there, because he's in the right place to be able to meet other characters. 

For the first twenty pages, I liked it a little.  Then, after two hundred pages I was sick of it.  I made myself finish it because I had already taken so much time to read two hundred pages, I might as well finish it.  After three hundred pages, I put it on my windowsill and forgot about it for a few weeks.  A few nights ago I decided to finish it, just to get it over with. 

For a while, I even considered skimming the chapters about the characters I was interested in and seeing what happened to them.  I am glad that I read all of the book instead of skipping some, but only because if I hadn't read Cody's parts, I wouldn't know who Misty was, and she came up in other later chapters. 

Maybe I didn't like it because I couldn't identify with the characters.  At all.  Ever.  They would drink or do drugs, and I would never drink underage or do drugs.  Ever.  No matter what.  They were also very concerned about having a boyfriend, and one of them even ran away with a boy she barely knew.  Seriously, who does that?  That's the sort of storyline Lifetime Channel movies are made of. 

Also, I wanted a little bit more detail about what happened after the story ended.  Like, what happened to Cody?  Was Whitney okay?  And a little more about Ginger's future would have been nice. 

I don't plan on reading any other books by this author.  Actually, I plan on looking through my bookshelf to find Neverwhere and reading that again instead.  

A letter to my library books

                Dear library books (Anna Dressed in Blood, Lockwood and Co. The Screaming Staircase, Emily the Strange: The Lost Days, etc.),

                I am terribly sorry to inform you that my box set of the Modern Faerie Tales series by Holly Black arrived in the mail yesterday.  Since I've been waiting not-so-patiently for these books to get to my mail box, I will be reading all of them.  The only times I will stop reading them will be to do pointless things like sleep, eat, and drive places. (Because if I read in the car I get sick to my stomach.  I wish I had the audio-books.)  One of my goals for this year is to read all of Holly Black's books, so, since none of you are written by Holly Black, I'm not going to read you yet. 

                Another reason why I'm reading Tithe, instead of you, is because of one very simple reason:  It's fantasy.  I read fantasy even more than I eat chocolate, and that's saying something.  Yes, most of you have ghosts and one of you has feral black cats and amnesia, but I would rather read about elves with bluey-silvery hair which sprang from Holly Black's imagination.  I didn't even insist on plugging my iPod into my radio to listen to music (my normal reading situation) when I was reading Tithe last night.  I read until well past midnight (nothing weird there).  Yes, I did surrender to sleep until I had to get up and do something, but dreams of elves and magic and white cats filled my head while I slept. 

                I really am sorry.  Really.  But you know how I am when I get new books about faeries. These books are even better than normal books about faeries because these books are by Holly Black!  What did you think I would do!?!? 

                I can't say enough that I'm terribly sorry, but, in a way, I'm not sorry at all.  I'll really try to finish reading one or more of you, but if I can't finish Tithe fast enough (which I can, but if I get the flu or something and sit on the couch like a slug for a few days-just like on Christmas, happy day-I might not be able to read because I'll be sleeping like a slug.  But even if I have to sleep, I'm going to literally hold my eyes open and read.) I might have to return you to the library unread, but at least you will have lots of other books to keep you company. 

                I really am sorry, sort of...  Okay, I'm not as sorry as I keep saying I am, but I will read you at some point...  I think. 

                Blueshoe

                P.S.  Dear Spellcheck

                Bluey is a word, no matter what you think.  Also, all of your suggestions for what I might want to write instead of bluey are terrible.  What would bluesy hair be anyway?

Poem

This is a poem I wrote.

Stardust

We're made of stardust-

Stardust!

-Like dreams of faeries

and mythical beings. 

We're made of moonbeams. 

Like the shining, glowing pictures that light up your wall. 

We're made of earth stone,

sea breath. 

We're made of more than skin and bone and blood. 

I am stardust. 

Like a fairytale whispered to children before they go to bed. 

Like magic, recorded in books until it's better than reality. 

We are stardust. 

Forever one with the universe.

Our dreams are made of stardust. 

We see the world through floating, swirling, shimmering moon dust. 

We are stardust-

so much more than we seem.  

The ten best things about last week

                I always try to think up ten good things about every day.  Sometimes, one day is harder than others.  I can list more than one day in the past month that has only had a few "best" things.  So, since last week was not the best week of my life (my sister had surgery and was in the hospital), I'm coming up with the ten best things for the week.  Coming up with seventy things would just be way too much effort.  Not to mention time:  I wouldn't have enough time for writing about seventy things.  Well, here I go. 

                (BTW, they aren't in any particular order, these things were all awesome.) 

                One:  A sleepover with a friend.  When my house feels empty and my room feels colder than usual, the only thing to do is take back the words I said earlier about wanting to stay home and go to a friend's house.  It was even more terrific because we ate pancakes for breakfast and made up stupid Harry Potter fan-fiction where we were best friends with the main characters. 

                Two:  Staying up until twelve A.M. playing Rocksmith with my dad.  Even though I didn't know or like many of the songs, it was still fun to avoid sleeping for a few extra hours.  You might be scratching your head and asking why I wanted to avoid sleeping, here's why:  Judging by the dreams I've been having lately, lying in my bed wide awake until one thirty is still a better bet than sleeping.  (Also, realizing that if I just lived with my dad I would probably do this way more often.) 

                Three:  This might seem a little strange to be in the top ten things for this week, but I'm putting it in anyway.  Wearing my old horse-riding boots with brightly colored skinny jeans.  I also wore my Harry Potter themed necklace that says "I solemnly swear I am up to no good" until it broke.  I'm happy to say that I super-glued it earlier today and it's not going to break anytime soon.  Actually, it probably won't break in the same place ever again.  Even if the world ended in a fiery ball of flame, that bit of superglue and necklace would float through space for the rest of time. 

                Four:  Quoting my favorite books without anyone noticing.  This was much better than just quoting Fred and George (Harry Potter) without anyone noticing.  No one seemed to notice that I kept saying "All will be well" whenever I got nervous.  Actually, I tried to act like I wasn't nervous at all, so people might have not seen a connection.  Oh well.  I still loved quoting books.  (The quote is from Reckless by Cornelia Funke, by the way.) 

                Five:  Listening to Lorde in the car on the way to and from everywhere I went.  Seriously, that's one of the best things I've done all week.  I will never get tired of that CD. 

                Six:  Listing in my head all of the reasons one of my favorite book characters from one of my favorite books would not be a jerk in real life, but only saying one of them out loud.  I thought of a lot of reasons why that person wouldn't be a jerk in real life, one of them was that I've quoted them a million times over the past week, and the quotes all go perfectly with my personality and how I was feeling.  And I had dreams that I went through my bathroom mirror and ended up in a mirror world, so you can see how much this book has stuck in my brain.  (If you can't guess the book, look at my top ten books so far this year post.  It's my favorite.)

                (Getting harder to think of things to add to the list...)

                Seven:  Having a friend ask when I'm going to make my next blog post because she likes reading my blog.  That was AWESOME and it totally made my day.  This is that blog post I promised. 

                Eight:  Thinking about really weird stuff.  Here's an example:  "No matter how weird and irritating my life gets, there will still be a dachshund eating its own poo."  And another example:  "All soap-operas are the same.  Someone works for the police, someone breaks up with someone else, somebody starts dating someone else, and someone orders take-out.  I shouldn't even get started on the names!  Someone's always named Victoria, Ashley, or Emily."  These are just some of my weird thoughts.  Maybe that will be my next blog post...

                Nine:  Sleeping as late as I could without anyone freaking out.  That prepared me for Sunday morning when I was forced to get up at seven thirty. 

                Ten:  Looking for the attachment thing for the food processor with my dad for thirteen minutes and then finding that in was the cabinet we had both looked in many times.  Then eating the tofu and potato scramble we made.  Might not sound that fun, but it was really funny because we had looked in the cabinet about five times each and didn't see it. 

                So I guess, by some standards, I've had a boring week.  By other standards I've had a thrilling week and I should sleep late for the rest of it because I need the rest.  By my standards, I'm completely willing to sleep late for the rest of the week. 

BONUS THING!!!

Five things I learned last week:

                One:  I really don't like parking garages. 

                Two:  The Maze Runner is much better when I try to read it the third time. 

                Three:  I don't like the city, either. 

                Four:  I can balance two Hershey's kisses on my nose.    

                And finally, five:  My cat, Crookshanks, can eat really quickly.  It's almost unreal how fast he can eat.  And how fast he can barf it all back up.  Repeat.