Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

This was the second book in the Little House series and almost just as lovely as the first.

I say 'almost' because there was one thing that really, really bothered me in it. The portrayal of American Indians as scary savages. I was not able to get past it AT ALL and each and every reference made me cringe. The father's attitude wasn't too bad, but the mother and the neighbors were horrible! I did like it when one of the small girls asked about the Indians, saying something like 'but if this is Indian Territory then won't the Indians be mad if we make them move somewhere else?'. Yes, they will.

I hope that this gets better in the next books and that they all realise that we're all people, etc. Otherwise how does one explain such an attitude to a child? I like the series and planned on keeping it for when my son is old enough to read it, but I guess I need to give an explanation for the Indian bashing. Sigh.

(As an aside, has anyone read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown? I read about half of it and had to stop because it was too sad... I'd like to get through the whole thing at some point though.)

The Little House series has loads of good stuff too though - what I like most are the descriptions of their daily life, like of the father building the house. You can actually see him building it, log by log. Most of us don't really make things from scratch ourseelves anymore, so it's nice to read about how you can make things and use things and not produce any waste. That part's great for kids!

Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris and R.I.P.

Living Dead in Dallas is the second book in Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series and is just as good as the first book. I'm really enjoying the world that Harris created, the believability of it all. My friend Larissa is currently watching the True Blood series based on these books and calls is 'Buffy for adults' - I guess largely due to this believability (is that a word?) factor. If you like vampire stories, these books are for you. I bought the first eight I think as a boxset from Amazon - it was on sale - so I have loads of Sookie left to savor. :-)

Challenges: 4 Month Challenge

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Unfortunately, I read this in August and am just really late with the review, otherwise it would have qualified for Carl's famous R.I.P. Challenge. It's the challenge's fifth year and it looks like the list of fans is growing steadily. As is my list of potential books...

As always, Carl offers various levels of participation - I'm feeling ambitious so will try for Peril the First, which requires me to read 4 scary books. Can I do it?

Completed: 4/4 as of 6 October 2010 (wrap-up post)

Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
Lonely Werewolf Girl by Martin Millar
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morion
The House at Riverton by Kate Morton
The Likeness by Tana French
Room by Emma Donaghue

Like Water for Chocolate

Beautiful book. I'm a big fan of Latino writers anyway, since many include everyday magic in their stories, and Laura Esquivel is no exception. I understand that there is a film version of Tita and Pedro's story, I wonder how such a book can be translated into film... has anyone seen it?

A quote from the San Francisco Chronicle on the back cover of my edition calls Like Water for Chocolate "A tall-tale, fairy-tale, soap-opera romance, Mexican cookbook and home remedy handbook all rolled into one". I have to say that there is no disagreeing with this... the story of Tita and Pedro's romance is so out-of-this-world that all those terms really do apply!

I don't want to say much about the plot, it is a short book and I don't want to spoil it for you. But I will share a favorite passage:

"My grandmother had a very interesting theory; she said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, word or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches."

Isn't that a nice way of phrasing things? This sort of mood pervades the entire story, which aside from the regular action has things like beans that won't cook because people have been arguing - you have to sing to them so that they're happy again and then they'll cook properly.

The phrase 'like water for chocolate' is used only once in the story and means 'on the verge of boiling over'... there are so many ways to interpret that!

As I said, this is a beautiful book, definitely worth reading. The food/cooking aspect reminds me of Joanne Harris and of Alice Hoffman and also of Sarah Addison Allen so if you like any of those authors, give this great Mexican writer a try!

Challenges: 1% Well-Read, 999 Challenge, Celebrate the Author

Let the Right One In

I can't remember who recommended John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let the Right One In to me, but it was certainly one of you, someone in the blogosphere who shares their thoughts on books with the rest of us. In any case, thanks whoever you were, as I probably would not have picked this up otherwise. There are so many vampire stories these days that you really need a personal recommendation, I think... This Swedish take on vampire stories is great.

Let the Right One In is the story of Oskar, a twelve-year-old boy with a life that I'm sure is not out of the ordinary. He lives with his mother in a mediocre apartment building, his alcoholic father unable to break his habit long enough to form a proper relationship with him. He is badly bullied at school and becomes obssessed with stories of murderers, as they inspire scenes of revenge in his mind. He is a pretty regular bored kid.

Until he meets Eli, a 200-year-old vampire who looks like a girl about his age. They strike up a friendship and pretty much start to love each other. You can imagine that this does not have positive consequences, life becomes even more complicated for young Oskar.

Their relationship grows amid mysterious ritual murders, unexplained events and the tedium of the dreary housing estate they live on. The story never stagnates, even though I suppose it's not that eleborate, as stories go.

The characters, however, shine. The author has a way of making fictional people come to life and he gives personal information on even the most secondary of characters. Really, the richness of the people living in this story makes the book worth reading.

Challenges: R.I.P. IV, Genre Challenge, 999 Challenge, 2010 Countdown Challenge

The Little Prince

I read this (or re-read it actually) by accident, because I still didn't have anything read for the Celebrate the Author challenge and today, June 29, is the birthday of Antoine De Saint-Exupery. I read it online here and although I know that it's much nicer to read it in book format and probably also in the original French, it was still as delightful as I remembered it to be.

The Little Prince is one of those children's books with a simple story and a magical message that appeals to adults as well. If it doesn't appeal then you've left it too long between re-readings. :-)

Basically, a little prince ends up on Earth and encounters an airman whose plane has crashed in the desert. They start an unlikely friendship and the airman gets to hear about the little prince's adventures on his own planet and on the planets he visited on his way to Earth.

The messages about children and how much of the beauty of childhood we lose when we become adults are wonderful. Only children understand certain things, see certain things. As adults we forget to look with our hearts, for example. We forget what's really important.

I'm sure you've all read this at some point, but if you haven't then you must.

Oh and the illustrations are fantastic. Really a part of the story.

I feel all young and innocent now! :-)

Challenges: 999 Challenge, Celebrate the Author, Classics Challenge, Orbis Terrarum

Life As We Knew It

I can't believe I finally read this book by Susan Beth Pfeffer! Everyone's been talking about it and it's been on my list forever. I'm home sick with a stomach flu this week and was looking around for something that would grab my attention and there it was!

Life As We Knew It is about Miranda and her family as they try to cope with life after the moon gets knocked out of its orbit and ends up closer to Earth. This of course affects tides and weather so suddenly the world sees a lot of tsunamis, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, etc. Add to that the general problems of no electricity, gas shortages, food shortages and isolation and life gets pretty tough.

From day to day, teenage Miranda's life turns upside down. There is no more school and friends and socialising at the mall. Instead, she needs to learn to take care of herself and of others and to do things like do laundry by hand.

The book is pretty grim of course, but the way Miranda and her family handled the situations thrown at them was uplifting, I thought. And since the changes in life and weather were not (in this case) caused by man's selfishness but by natural occurence underestimated by scientists, they really were sudden - just to say that what I took out of it was pretty much 'enjoy life while you can'. Here's a passage that touched me:

Maybe because I don't know anymore if there is a future, I'm grateful for the good things that have happened to me this year. I never knew I could love as deeply as I do. I never knew I could be so willing to sacrifice things for other people. I never knew how wonderful a taste of pineapple juice could be, or the warmth of a woodstove, or the sound of Horton [the cat] purring, or the feel of clean clothes against freshly scrubbed skin.

I'm not pretending to know how Miranda felt, but the passage touched me at this point in time because our heating had been broken for almost a month and temperatures were around zero. I never really thought about heating as a luxury until then. And now that it's been working again for a week, I barely remember what the cold felt like and I'm taking it for granted again.

I think we can all benefit from thinking about all the things that we do have on a daily basis, the simple things. My friend Amy recently told me about something she heard on Oprah about writing down 5 things you're grateful each night before you go to sleep. Might be an interesting thought.

Now, I do want to point out that just because in this book the climate change was caused by nature, we can lead ourselves to the same point anyway. Read The Carbon Diaries 2015 by Saci Lloyd for more on that.

By the way, at the end of my copy a companion book called The Dead and the Gone is mentioned - about the same events but in NYC. Has anyone read it?

Challenges: A-Z Challenge, 999 Challenge, Countdown challenge, New Authors, Young Adult

Little House in the Big Woods

Charming little book! Even if I never watched the tv show... I'm actually surprised that I learned a couple of things about life back then as well. Bonus!

Laura Ingalls Wilder describes growing up in one of the first pioneer families in Wisconsin in the late 1800s. She didn't actually write the books until the 1930s and they're all autobiographical. I think that's amazing.

Laura Ingalls Wilder was born on 7 February 1867 so I'm using this book for the Celebrate the Author challenge. Visit Wikipedia ro read more about her life.

Even more amazing is the fact that this is a children's book and it describes so many details of life in the 1860s - including how Ma churned butter and how Pa made bullets. It's a great book for kids to read - childhood today is so very different, after all.

There's plenty for adults too, though. What really struck me was how hard everyone had to work all the time and how they didn't let anything go to waste. Nothing was wasted. Wow, compared to today? I wonder what those people would say if they saw today's world...

Anyway, I loved this book and will certainly be getting the next ones in the series.

Challenges: 1st in a series, 999 Challenge, A-Z Challenge, Casual Classics, Celebrate the Author, Decades 2009, In Their Shoes, New Authors, What's in a Name

My first graphic novels!

I finished my first graphic novels this weekend - Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Long Way Home by Joss Whedon and No Future for You by Brian K. Vaughn and Joss Whedon. They're Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8, only in comic format.

I am a HUGE fan of Buffy and of Joss Whedon. I've seen the series numerous times - in fact we're re-watching it again and are on season 4. When the season 8 comics stared to come out I was excited, but somehow I put off getting them until some later unspecified date. As some of you know, I didn't really consider comics and graphic novels as something I'd like - and certainly not as something like a book!

Thanks to Nymeth I'm overcoming the stereotypical information that lives in my head. :-)

I LOVED these two books. I loved the storylines, I loved the artwork, I loved the experience of adding something visual to my reading. I won't go into the story because of spoilers, but if you like Buffy then it's definitely worth getting this. I have my Season 6 of Angel one lined up too and I can't wait!

Having said that, it did take me a while to get used to the comic format - I had trouble telling some of the characters apart and I didn't know what order to read the dialogue in. I got used to it though and I think I have it now. I hope, at least!

The only negative thing I have to say is that they went by too fast! I can't wait for the next installments!

Challenges: Graphic Novels, My Year of Reading Dangerously, 1st in a series, Countdown Challenge

The Lollipop Shoes

My friend Amy recommended this Joanne Harris book to me, saying that I'll really like the magical side of the story. Since I trust her judgement, I immediately went to buy Chocolat, to which The Lollipop Shoes is a sequel. I loved Chocolat and so when I saw The Lollipop Shoes at the library I couldn't resist taking it.

I'm sure that The Lollipop Shoes can be read as a stand-alone novel, but I think you gain a lot from having read Chocolat beforehand. Here, the lives of Vianne and Anouk are continued and the place that Vianne wants to make sure they end up is very much dependant on what happened to them where they lived before. They now live in Montmartre in Paris and call themselves Yanne and Annie. Yanne is nothing like Vianne - she is trying to lead a normal, stable, non-magical life and to ensure that Annie is just a regular girl. Things are going fairly smoothly, Yanne has become an expert in masking her unhappiness, even from herself. Until Zozie de l'Alba swoops in and befriends them. She seems to be a best friend and good luck charm all rolled into one, but she's certainly not either. What ensues requires both teenage Annie and grown-up Yanne to confront who they really are and how they want to lead their lives.

I loved The Lollipop Shoes. The everyday magic was much more central and vivid and I loved every minute of it. I hated Zozie more with each page until I could barely get myself to read the parts of the book written from her perspective. Thankfully, Joanne Harris wrote some chapters from Zozie's perspective, some from Yanne's and some from Annie's. The writing was great and the three voices were disctint where they needed to be, but they spilled into each other and became one when they needed to as well. Genius.

It made me want to read up on herbs and charms again too! :-)

Challenges: Seconds 2008, Chunkster Challenge, Countdown Challenge