Forays into the Internet

GAME OF THRONES! Yes, I’m actually super excited for the book I plan to read next. I promised myself that after I finished my exams this semester that I could start reading the series, and previously I had only seen the show. I’ve been burning through them as fast as I possibly can, even though they do take longer to go through than most books.

I’ve also had to pace myself. If read too much of one thing it gets into my head like when you hear an accent for long periods of time. Not limiting myself would mean I’d probably end up going around calling people ‘blood of my blood’ and ‘my sun and stars’ while going through the malls trying to pay the iron price, finishing sentences with “it is known”. Society just wouldn’t understand. Plus when Peter Dinklage and the rest of the GoT cast start showing up in my dreams I think it’s time to slow down.

Game of Thrones and Clash of Kings went by almost too quickly and now I’m up for Storm of Swords, where I have been assured, shit goes down but of course, if you think about it, when in GoT does shit not go down? And as much fun as I am having reading the books I never want the series to end. A series this consistently good is an extremely rare find.

So I’m off to finally start the third one. What am I hoping for? The Hound to show up more, some sweet Arya/Gendry moments, for as much crap to go wrong for the Lannisters as possible (excluding Tyrion), and for Theon Greyjoy to get punched repeatedly in the face.

I doubt I’ll be disappointed.

So after my last blog post I got to thinking, if I had to choose a favorite picture book now it would probably be a Robert Munsch picture book. The Paperbag Princess holds a special place in my heart, especially when I heard that he originally wanted to Princess to punch the Prince out at the end of the story, but I think it’s another one. Love You Forever gets me every time. I would say that maybe it’s not a story that gets read to kids as often as his other ones because I think you need to be a little older to get the full impact of the story (and when I say full impact I mean ball your eyes out like a little baby). It’s about a mother who brings her kid home from the hospital and sings to her child a lullaby that goes something like:

I’ll love you forever

I’ll like you for always

As long as I’m living

My baby you’ll be

And as the kid grows up into a toddler, a child, and a teenager the mother would sneak in and sing the kid that song. Eventually the kid moves out and the mother is left all alone, and the kid comes to visit one day and rocks his mom like she always rocked him and sings the song. It makes me want to ball just thinking about it. I wish I were kidding. The one thing about Munsch books that I’ve always loved is that no matter how old you get, most of them have some pretty valuable life lessons that will stick with you. The stories, while simple, only seem to get better as you get older. For high school graduation I decided to get my friends picture books as grad presents. Robert Munsch seemed like the best option, and I made sure to get everyone a different one. Everyone opened their gifts and was completely surprised. The joy on their faces as they remembered their favorite stories was priceless and it wasn’t long before the stories came back to them. This is the third blog I’ve done on children’s books and what’s become clear to me is how many memories, and emotions, and even little lessons are tied to these books. All it takes is a title and a few flipped pages to bring them back. I guess what my favorite picture book reminds me now is that everything comes full circle. No matter how much life goes on it always manages to stay the same. In 20 years as much as I love this book it will have a million new connections for me, as well as the old. So I challenge anyone out there who has a few minutes to spare. Dig through those old boxes (I bet you have them) and reread your old picture books. It’s surprising how fast you find yourself on a trip down memory lane.

As a kid I’m sure I suckered my mom into reading Stellaluna to me a thousand times. I’m not sure exactly why now, when you give the bare facts of what happens in the story it seems about as contrived as any children’s book. Not that I understood “contrived” as a kid.

Stellaluna is a baby fruit bat the gets separated from her mother when an owl attacks (pretty fearsome actually for a children’s book). She finds herself in the nest of a mother bird and her 3 chicks, and she is allowed to stay only if Stellaluna behaves like a bird, eating bug and flying during the daytime. While Stella and the baby birds become close friends it doesn’t take long for her to break the rules and flies at night. All turns out well though, as she runs into her mother on her night voyage. When Stellaluna returns to the nest to try and show her friends how to fly at night they fail miserably and Stella has to save them, and they agree that they may be different but they would always be a family. The end.

It was definitely different from most of the stories I was read as a kid, but for some reason I loved this one the most. I’m not going to lie, bats and owls are pretty awesome. I think the name appealed to me too: Stellaluna. Say that name five times fast and in a French accent and suddenly it’s a great name for a kid. Or perfume. Or even beer.

Ok, so it’s a cute story to read to little ones. It’s kinda even has a new twist on the ugly duckling story, without the whole beat-them-at-their-own-game, you’ll-be-pretty-one-day shtick. I’d say it has a better message: let people love you for who you are.

If I rephrased that to “you’re fine just the way you are” Lady Gaga starts playing Born This Way in my head. (Now I’m picturing a children’s book written by Lady Gaga and its scaring me and scarring the children.)

And like all my favorite books as a kid, this one was made into a short movie too; except they added a jumping spider, a toucan, and a parrot for curb appeal. I say that’s stupid and I’m glad I never watched the short as a kid.

Looking back at books I was read as a kid, I have to say that I probably still like this one, so if you feel like rereading kid’s books, go for this one.

I don’t really know how many times I have read The Wayward Tide but my love for this book appears to be undying. It’s practically tied with Lady of Horses for me. Now, without intentionally sounding like a hipster, I doubt many people have ever heard of this book, but more should have.

What is it about? For anyone who loves the Victorian period this book is for you. It starts with Rachel Deen, a lonely child growing up in NewFoundland, Nova Scotia in an unhappy family. One day she is granted a reprieve from her lonely existence when a ship wrecks on the coast and an injured Adam Gaunt comes to stay. Rachel loves him in her childish way, but soon the wilderness calls Adam away and Rachel is left to alone again. The Deen family slowly begins to accumulate more wealth, and by the time Rachel comes to be fostered by her aunt in London fate steps in and she finds herself in Adam’s company once more. Rachel’s fortunes are always changing as travels to the American frontier, and back again, losing as much as she gains.

The ups and downs of this book are incredible. Love, romance, fortune, coincidence, fate, complicated family relationships all rolled up in the period. In its own way it’s as believable as it is stretched, but you never notice. It beautifully written and intriguing.

I found this book in the library, that most hated place, around the time I found Lady of Horses and it has stuck with me ever since. I had to go through hell to track it down. They don’t exactly sell in book stores anymore, so if you want to read it, you might have to order it off a use book site. On the bright side that probably makes it really cheap if you live in the US. There is even an equally hard to find sequel that following another heroine who interacts with many whom you were introduced to in the first book. It will never compete with its predecessor but it’s a good read if you want to find out how Rachel’s life plays out after the final chapter.

Unfortunately if you want anything recent by Alison McLeay she died a while back, so you’ll never find another masterpiece of hers like A Wayward Tide (though if you come across Passage Home that is it’s alternate title). It may be a pain in the ass to track down but I suggest you do it. If you do, it may become one of your most read books too.

I would argue that this book is actually a good book, but whenever I recommend it to anyone I always have to justify it, because when you hear who the author is you’re going to wince and go, “really?”

The Host is written by Stephenie Meyer. I know, there is that face again. The woman who brought us sparkly vampires, normalised stalker boyfriends, and gave us the useless Bella Swan; believe me I understand. I picked this book up when it first came out. Twilight was in the height of its fame, and I had just begun to really realise stupid the series was (I mean, the first one was OK, it’s only when you add the whole series together than it begins to become absolute drivel). But curious me decided to see if Stephenie Meyer could have produced anything decent, and I was pleasantly surprised.

Wanderer is a Soul, one of the many body-snatcher-esque parasite aliens that have taken over Earth. Everything goes on as usual, people still go to work, play with their family, create art, but they are no longer the people they were. The Souls have embedded themselves in their brains and now live human lives. It’s just their thing.

Wanderer wakes up in the body of Melanie, who was once a free human, constantly hiding out from the Souls. When she was caught they put Wanderer in her body to see if she could find other rebel humans, but Melanie doesn’t disappear like she is supposed to, she is still in the back of Wanderer’s head.

Wanderer ends up falling in love with Melanie’s boyfriend and family through the memories she is slowly shown and searches out the people that Melanie got separated from. But, big surprise, the colony of free humans are not too happy when Melanie’s body comes back with a passenger inside. When not having to fear that she is going to be offed in a dark cave with no one to hear her scream, she truly begins to learn what it’s like to be human, you know, love, lust, irrationality, and all the fun stuff.

Sometimes Wanderer is a little problematic, a little too helpless. She is more the self-sacrificing womanly/mother figure, which, don’t get me wrong is a kind of strength, just not one that goes against the traditional grain. Melanie, though she does not exactly have a body to give us much, is a little more rough and tumble, so I withhold my judgement about Stephenie Meyer and weak female characters, at least until the next book comes out.

And I’m not sure it would be a Stephenie Meyer book if there wasn’t some ultimate heart throb who the heroine could not live without, but in this books its, well… bearable. Meyer in this book is working to explore love, its connection to the body and humanity itself, rather than just a teenage girl who falls in love with her sparkly stalker. It’s about the nature of humanity with all our idiosyncrasies and it raises a lot of interesting points for debate, if you could ever convince enough people to read it.

The Host could be considered my guilty pleasure, and I wish I didn’t have to tell people who the author was and then go “but I promise, it’s good”. Maybe it will even be a good movie (they can’t botch The Host special effects like they did for the first Twilight movie). If you’re willing to chance it I urge you to read the book. Or read it and argue with me that I’m wrong. I would accept that too. But as for me, I’ve decided, I like it.

Well if you are being English geek technical it’s a novella. But hey, I’d be shocked if you hadn’t heard of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It’s a bit of a landmark for me, since I am just finishing my final year of university as an English major and it was the book I wrote my 4^thyear paper on. I enjoyed reading and thinking about the book, which was a nice change.

There is a lot under the surface that can and is exploited every time someone adapts the novel. My course was Disability and Victorian Lit, which is not an angle that is often examined by pop culture when it comes to this novel, but when you start reading looking for disability you would be shocked at how often the word pops up. So what was my boring old paper about?

Well Hyde is most scary to the characters of the novel when he is doing something transgressive, and more specifically transgressive against the social codes and laws of the time. He beats an old man who engages him in boring pleasantries, never uses his manners, and cannot control his emotions. On top of his forgetting to mind his ‘p’s and ‘q’s, he also takes special pleasure in breaking the laws, which makes him weird by almost anyone’s standard. I mean, if murder is punishable by death, what kind of weirdo would kill someone for fun? He must be mentally ill, and that leaves anyone who meets him searching for a disability on his body that does not exist.

Besides my paper there were tons of other topics that were discussed, like about how Hyde could be read as a closet gay man, which was fascinating when you think about it. Being an English course the variety of interpretations you get is always fun, because it’s so hard to be wrong when you can find proof. I think English majors would make good lawyers.

Despite having never read the book before I chose it from the list of books we could write on I had seen the Mamoulian film for my Horror and Gothic Film course, and have been interested in the text ever since.

There are so many things that can make Hyde terrifying, thousands of ways to make him frightening, and from all that you can get from the novella you would never guess how short it is (some 70 pages in my copy). More than that, it’s been popular since it was first published over 100 years ago, so there must be something there that keeps the generations coming back to it. Me included.

Let’s say ironically, the shortest book I read was one of the most interesting.

Ok, so I didn’t read it myself. But it’s still my first chapter book, and unfortunately I don’t really remember what happens past the bizarre basics.

When searching for pictures to put in this blog youtube automatically came up with a movie or OVA series for the novels made in the 80s, and further wikking tells me that there is a TV show airing now about the book. I’m not sure the experience is the same. I’m glad I read the book as a little kid and didn’t see the show.

The Secret World of Og, as far as I can remember was actually by a Canadian author and followed for kids. Peter, Pamela, Penny, and Pollywog. Pollywog was a baby of limited vocabulary and ends up being snatched by the inhabitants of Og who can enter the children’s playhouse through a trapped door in the floor. They are green people and from the drawings I can still see in my head they had long finger, long ears, and wore no clothes.

The thing that I remember most about the book was vibrancy and humor. There were several mix-ups and misunderstandings as the siblings try to get Pollywog back from the people of Og. In the end, as with most children’s books it ends happily. I do remember feeling sad at the end. Somehow I think it managed to capture that bit of nostalgia and regret that comes when the kids at the end of the novels must grow up and give up childish things. I doubt the children really ever went back to Og.

I loved it a lot as I kid. I still remember being bored in the library at age 5 or 6 as my mom looked for books to read for me (even then libraries bored me apparently). She picked it out, and I’m sure I made her check the book out several times after that. And then I guess the library got rid of its copy and I stopped reading it; moved on to bigger things.

Still, the book has stuck with me and I’m sure my brother ended up being given a copy years and years ago. It’s probably buried in our basement somewhere.

Turns out I ended up going out of order. So the next blog: main character I want to marry. Ok so he’s not THE main character but I’m skipping the explanation. He’s a large part of the plot and the side kick is always better developed anyway.

Kira Sakuya from Angel Sanctuary. Man melts my heart 10 ways from Sunday. Of course he is a character from a manga so I get a visual reference, but I think I would in love with him even if he wasn’t drawn deliciously.

Kaori Yuki manages to put something in his eyes that is just an IT factor. And the way his hair falls. Perfection.

Plus his backstory! This is only a half a spoiler; it’s not his BIG REVEAL, so if you happen to have plans to read the manga and don’t want minor spoilers, stop reading here. Kira is a spirit bound to a sword holy sword Nanatsusaya. The sword was Alexiel’s: the angel who rebelled against heaven and was cursed to be separated from her body and reincarnated into the body of a human over and over again. Her human incarnations are cursed to be mentally and physically tortured throughout their existence. Kira follows Alexiel throughout her incarnations, watching her, and he ends up falling in love with her. He has been forced to watch her pain over and over and there is very little he can do to help her, but he does what he can.

Kira is currently watching over Alexiel’s new form Setsuna, and the two have been friends since they were kids. Just watching Kira be a friend to Setsuna is the sweetest thing.

There tons more going on with Kira that would be too complicated to go into but take my word for it. Kira Sakuya is the one. If he were, you know, real…

He’s better than Edward Cullen, he’s better than Peeta (ok, maybe not, but Peeta is on par with Kira (not the other way around!)). If you have a chance, read the manga. If you don’t just stare at this yummy picture of him: