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Book Review: Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
Summary:
Anna Oliphant’s dad totally sold out and started writing crappy books that for some reason became incredibly popular. Now he’s insisting that she spend her senior year at a boarding school–School of America in Paris. Anna knows she should be enjoying her year abroad, after all, it is Paris! But she can’t help but miss her friends and family at home. She slowly starts to find her own new circle of friends and discover the wonderful things in Paris…..and to realize that she may be falling for one of her friends. A boy who is decidedly off-limits for multiple reasons.
Review:
Perkins takes a typical YA storyline–teenage girl sent away to boarding school, complete with teen angst–and puts just the right amount of her own twists and flavors in it to make for a delightful, unique read. I enjoyed this as an adult, but I’m sure 15 year old me would have been in love with it, re-reading it, and sighing over the main interest St. Clair.
The setting of Paris is delightful. Perkins captures the binary of excitement and trepidation at being in another country for the first time enough so that Anna is realistic but not annoying. Similarly, all of the characters act like actual human beings. They are neither perfect nor evil. They are simply doing their best to figure out how to function in the world. I appreciated this, and I’d imagine teen readers would too. Similarly, Perkins describes Paris in such a way that I wanted to move there instantaneously myself if for no other reason than the descriptions of the bread and eating meals in cemeteries. This is what it should be to be young. Angst combined with first-time glorious experiences.
Perkins manages to be both subtly funny:
“Huh?” I have such a way with words. I should write epic poetry or jingles for cat food commercials. (Location 1054-1058)
And perfectly capture what it is to be an adolescent female:
It makes me dizzy. It smells like freshly scrubbed boy. It smells like him. (Location 3100-3104
This is what an ideal YA book should be. Realistic about what young people face, but also about who young people are. Holding out hope that they can become good people, and they can learn and grow and overcome their mistakes. I highly recommend it to teen girls, as well as to adult women who still enjoy YA.
5 out of 5 stars
Source: Amazon
Movie Review: Saw (2004)
Summary:
Two men wake to find themselves chained on opposite sides of a worn-down, underground bathroom, the newest victims of Jigsaw. Jigsaw doesn’t actually commit murder himself, but instead puts people into situations where they have to make horrible choices in an attempt to save their own life. These men are told the only way out is for one of them to kill the other, and as their time limit ticks on greater amounts of information are revealed about the men’s lives and Jigsaw’s previous victims.
Review:
My very first comment as the end credits rolled was, “Holy crap, I can see why this became a franchise.” The story is sufficiently complex to hold interest. Jigsaw is incredibly creepy as he uses a voice distorted puppet to communicate to his victims. Puppets are always creepy. Bottom line. I love the concept of a serial kidnapper/torturer doing so presumably to teach people a lesson as opposed to just really enjoying gore.
Speaking of gore, it definitely exists in the film, but the most gut-wrenching moments take place just off-screen. Apparently this was re-edited as the original cut showed those moments on-screen, and the MPAA required the cuts for it to receive an R rating. Personally, I think given their low budget, it works better letting the audience’s imagination fill in the worst moments.
Also, Losties will be pleased to know that Michael Emerson, aka creeptastic Ben, has a rather significant role in the film. I loved his acting so much in Lost, and his work here is just as good. I may have squealed a bit every time he showed up on screen. One casting negative, though, is Cary Elwes, who plays one of the men locked in the bathroom, has the worst fake American accent ever. He repeatedly slips in and out of it. I have no idea why they didn’t either just let him be British or hire an American actor for the part. Very odd.
Overall, this horror movie primarily gives viewers chills from the whole idea of such a situation far more so than gore. If horror movies are your thing, you definitely need to give the Saw franchise a shot. It became a franchise for a reason.
5 out of 5 stars
Source: Netflix
Book Review: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
Summary:
Ned Henry is a time-traveling historian at Oxford, who has unfortunately been assigned to Lady Shrapnell’s quest to recreate an historic church. For the last…god knows how long, he’s been searching for the bishop’s bird stump in the 1940s. He finds himself suffering from time-lag and is promised a vacation in Victorian England where Lady Shrapnell can’t find him. Of course, the Oxford historians need him to take care of one teeny tiny little incongruity caused by fellow time-traveling historian, Verity, who just so happens to be as beautiful as a naiad. Of course, that could just be the time-lag talking.
Review:
Wow. Wow. I literally hugged this book multiple times as I was reading it. I love it that much. You know that old Looney Tunes cartoon with the abominable snowman who finds Bugs Bunny and then scoops him up and rocks him saying, “I will hug him and love him and squeeze him and call him George” ? If I was the abominable snowman, this book would be my Bugs Bunny.
It is incredibly witty in that highly intelligent manner that expects you to be educated to get the joke. Multiple references to classic literature, historic events, and more tossed around as quips and comparisons to events characters are currently going through. It also features the put-upon hero, Ned, who maintains a good sense of humor about the whole thing in that lovely self-deprecating way that makes me wish the character could pop out of the book and be my best friend.
Additionally, I love history as long-time readers of this blog know. History was one of my two majors in university. I was the 7 year old girl who sat around watching war movies and PBS documentaries. I also love scifi. Hence, the entire concept of time-travel is one of my all-time favorite things, and Willis handles it so intelligently and beautifully! I love that time travel is something only the academics do since everyone else finds it dull once it’s discovered they can’t loot from the past. It makes so much sense! I love the implication that non-academics are quite happy with shopping malls while Ned and Verity go traipsing around through the past navigating a world distantly related to our own. One of my favorite moments is when Ned discovers that Victorians actually used exclamations like “pshaw” that are found in Victorian novels. It’s a historian’s dream come true!
Finally, a significant portion of the storyline revolves around cats. Adding an extra layer of awesome to this is the fact that cats are extinct in the future, so Ned has never encountered one before. He makes the initial mistake of thinking cats are like dogs. Any cat lovers, I’m sure, can envision the hilarity that ensues from this little thought process. Also, seriously, Willis clearly understands animals perfectly. The mannerisms of the cats and the bull dog, Cyril, are written to a T.
Put together humor, time travel, history, and animals, and this is the perfect read. If you enjoy any one of those things, but definitely if you enjoy more than one of them, you absolutely must give this book a chance. I haven’t loved a book this much in years, and I just….I just want to spread the love. I also want to go re-read it right now.
5 out of 5 stars
Source: PaperBackSwap
Friday Fun! (Graduation and Strategizing Season)
This week I finally finished all of my graduate work not only for the semester, but ever! My MLIS will be officially awarded in January, but as of this week, I don’t ever have to do homework or go to class again! I am so excited, not only to finally be done, but to officially be a professional librarian. :-) Not to mention that I’ll have more time for reading and writing for fun, hehe.
In other news, the winter cold has finally hit Boston. I am so glad I managed to find a nice, cheap pair of warm boots just in time. My pair from last winter fell completely apart by the end of the season. I blame salt and all the walking I do all the time. Thus we have entered what I refer to as the strategizing season. Bostonians start walking that line between looking cute/fashionable and actually being warm. There of course is a whole urban dweller look to being warm though. The multiple layers. The knee-high boots for the ladies. The various versions of gloves that still let you use your smartphones and iPods. My personal favorites are the commuter gloves that you let fold back the fingertip of the glove to use your smartphone, but glomits (fingerless gloves with a mitten flap you can fold back) seem to be the most popular on the bus. Personally, I currently have two pairs of fingerless gloves. I need to get the commuter gloves. My fingers can’t take it.
Then there’s the how to stay warm at the bus stop strategies. There’s the stationary dancers who hop from foot to foot. The leaners who attempt to block the wind by leaning against something. This strategy makes sense at bus stops with a shelter. At ones without a shelter though, they wind up leaning against a telephone pole, and I honestly think any warmth they feel is psychosomatic. Then there’s the stoic crowd that I’m generally a part of. We stand there firmly in one place either staring the direction the bus is supposed to come from glaring at it or employing the watched pot never boils concept and looking the opposite direction.
But it’s not just the commute that’s cold. If you have to pay for your own heat, your apartment tends to be not as warm as one would like either. The layering employed for the commute gets extended inside, only the coat is replaced with a sweatshirt in an attempt to trick yourself into thinking that your apartment is actually a bit warmer than outside. At least there’s no wind inside. Personally, I acquired an electric blanket to put at the bottom of my pile of blankets. This means that I’ve been winding up in bed earlier and earlier every night. Since the tv isn’t in there, this means a lot more reading is occurring. I’ve also heard of other strategies, such as running the oven, doing jumping jacks, drinking tea repeatedly, running the hot water in the shower, etc… Ah, winter. How we’ve missed you.
I actually don’t mind the cold that much. I’ve lived in New England my whole life, so I’m used to it. I do, however, think it’s a travesty when it occurs without snow. I love snow! You hear that, weather? If it’s this cold out, you may as well make it snow….
Book Review: How To Be An American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway
Summary:
Shoko dealt with the consequences of her decision to acquiesce to her father’s wishes and marry an occupying American soldier and return with him to America in the 1940s. She did her best to hold onto the best parts of being a Japanese woman and meet the expectations of being an American housewife. But now she is sick from an enlarged heart, possibly the result of radiation from the bombs dropped on Nagasaki, and the consequences of her multiple decisions made in the war and occupation years are coming back to haunt her. Although her relationship with her biracial daughter, Suiko, is strained, Suiko still does her best to assist her mother, and in the process, learns something about herself.
Review:
I came into this book expecting it to be your typical book about an immigrant adapting herself to the surrounding culture. That’s really not what this book is about, and that actually is a good thing. It subtly addresses how complex not only family can be but inter-cultural relations as well. The world no longer consists of the simple, straight-forward rules that Shoko grew up with. Since the world is a smaller place, the concepts of what one should or should not do slowly change throughout her life.
Of course, I find everything about Japan completely fascinating, so I enjoyed getting to see it not only through Shoko’s eyes, but through her daughter Suiko’s as well. Japan truly has changed drastically in the last 70 or so years, and showing the difference in experience simply from Grandmother Shoko to graddaughter Helena is astounding. Often in America we only think about how our own nation has changed, but this is true for others as well. Reading about it is a mind-broadening experience.
Dilloway also handles the delicate situation of dealing not only with your parents’ immortality but also their fallibility and essential humanness in a gentle manner. It is there, but it is not preachy. It simply reflects the experience of realizing as an adult that your parents are people too, and they’ve had their own life experiences that they regret or have dealt with in their own way.
Still, although I found the story enjoyable to read, it fell short of being deeply moving or memorable. It felt as if it ended too soon, or we didn’t find out enough about everyone’s stories. In particular although I understood and felt for Shoko at the beginning of the story, by the end I felt distanced from her, wheras I was still rooting for Suiko. I think some of the choices Dilloway made for Shoko did not fit with the tone of the rest of the story.
Overall, I recommend this enjoyable read to fans of contemporary or historical realistic fiction with themes of inter-generational and inter-cultural conflicts.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Amazon
Book Review: A Tale of Two Demon Slayers by Angie Fox (Series, #3)
Summary:
Lizzie is ready for a vacation what with having spent the last month first saving her grandmother from the second level of hell and then saving Las Vegas from a hoard of succubi. Plus lying around on the beach in Greece with her hunky Griffin boyfriend, Dimitri, sounds like quite the treat. Of course, nothing in Lizzie’s new life ever goes as smoothly as planned. Their arrival in Greece leads to the discovery that someone has stolen something from Dimitri. Something intertwined with Lizzie and that has put the whole Helios Griffin clan in danger.
Review:
Due to the title and the various repercussions so far to Lizzie sharing her demon slayer nature with Dimitri, I expected this book to deal with that. Actually, the story it told was far more engaging and interesting. Can Dimitri with his classical European family of tradition work in a relationship with Lizzie and her globe-trotting work and crazy motorcycle gang witch family?
Although the situations surrounding this romance are highly paranormal, the relationship itself is very normal. Lizzie struggles to trust in Dimitri’s love for her, let alone allow him to love her. Dimitri struggles to find balance between his life and family and Lizzie. It gives a heart to the overall action and story that was missing in the other volumes.
The paranormal aspects are stronger this time around too. The paranormal world seems to mesh together in a better way. The addition of more animals besides Pirate make for a more entertaining menagerie. Dimitri in particular is more fleshed out now that we see his family and where he comes from. New characters too are well-drawn, particularly Lizzie’s new teacher.
Fox manages to avoid common paranormal romance cliches this time around, although at first the reader thinks she is falling into them. This combined with drastically improved sex scenes, the better characterization, and the addition of a real world heart to the story makes for a far better tale overall. I’m glad the humor in the previous two books kept me around for this one.
Overall, this is an excellent example of everything paranormal romance should be–colorful characters, believable paranormal circumstances, the heart of the story relatable to real world circumstances, good sex scenes, and plot twists that manage to avoid cliches. It is thoroughly entertaining, and I highly recommend it to all paranormal romance lovers.
5 out of 5 stars
Source: Amazon
Previous Books in Series:
The Accidental Demon Slayer, review
The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers, review
Friday Fun! (Happy Hanukkah!)
Hello my lovely readers! It’s certainly been a busy week here in Boston. The holidays are officially in full swing, so on top of finishing up my final semester of grad school, I’ve been balancing everything that goes along with the holidays.
I hit up the sales on Saturday after all the crowds were mostly gone and picked up a couple of things I’ve been needing, including a rectangular baking dish, a bread pan, and a coffee maker. The coffee maker was massively on sale, and I know it will save me a lot of money compared to buying coffee every day at Dunks. So far, I’ve only forgotten my traveling mug full of coffee once….. I already put the bread pan to good use by making banana bread. In lieu of regular plain yogurt, I used pineapple Greek yogurt, and you guys, it was to die for. The bread was incredibly moist. I think this may be the secret to nommy banana bread.
I also did about half my holiday shopping (entirely online. I’m a cyber maven). Most of what’s left includes baking massive amounts of baked goods for various people including the mailman, coworkers, etc…. I then decorated my apartment with the few holiday decorations I actually have. It didn’t take too long, particularly since my fake tree is pretty tiny.
Wednesday night was the first night of Hanukkah, which I celebrated with my cat. She seems to have forgotten the menorah between last year and this year. She loves sitting in the window with the menorah to the extent that I have to lock her in another room while the candles are burning. Last night, for the second night of Hanukkah, I went over to my friends’ Nina and E’s apartment. We celebrated with their downstairs neighbors/landlady. We made three different types of latkes and had them with sour cream, homemade apple sauce, and homemade grape juice. Then Nina and E gave me my Chrismukkah presents, and they know me so well! I was totally blown away at the wide assortment of baking accessories, craft projects, cat accessories, and naturally a book that they gave me. :-) I have the bestest friends. Next week, on the last night of Hanukkah, they’ll come to me and get their presents from me. I’m excited for them to see what I got them!
Happy holidays to all. I hope you’re already enjoying and celebrating this lovely month instead of letting the holidays stress you out.
Review: Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show 2010
Every year I mark the start of the holiday season with the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. The lights! The music! The lingerie! The half-clad back-up dancers! The holiday-themed VS commercials played during the Fashion Show that is essentially one long commercial.
Anyway, this year’s was a bit disappointing compared to what I refer to as The Year of the Tartan Themed Line, but. It was still the VS Fashion Show. So, let’s take a look at it, shall we?
The night started off with a bang with the Tough Love line. This line is supposed to appeal to women who like to be feminine and tough. Yes, please, thank you.
Hot stuff.
Also, notice the gold glitter runway? I’m not sure how they did that. The glitter didn’t seem to move around, but it’s way cool.
The next line, however, was one of the weirdest things I’ve seen in a while from VS. They call it the Country Girl line. I call it the Grandma I’d Like to Fuck line. GILF for short. This line featured tons of lace (barf) and, I shit you not, quilts. Quilts covering the model’s asses. Wtf, VS. Wtf.
What has been seen cannot be unseen.
Now the next line, Game On, was fun for multiple reasons. First, the shirtless back-up dancers doing various upper-body strength moves. Which I cannot find a picture of, because clearly the internet does not have its priorities in order. This line was clearly about the designers showing off their artistic skills far more than designing many things a woman would actually wear in the bedroom. The outfits were still all cool to look at though. Well, and there was one outfit that was totally wearable.
Would I wear this? Hells yes.
They followed this up with a very stereotypical jungle/wild animals/bla bla bla oh ladies, don’t you feel like a wild thing? The best part of this line, by far, were the shirtless male back-up dancers doing tribal dances. Now this whole jungle thing isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but I get some women like it, so whatever. Unfortunately, something possessed one of the designers, and they thought it would be brilliant to design a bra and panty set that are attached to each other.
Yes, VS. Because clearly I want my lingerie to look like I made some very bad decisions in the swimsuit aisle.
Yeah, I have no idea what they were thinking. There was also a line that I think was supposed to be angels. There were a lot of wings and Akon rambling, er *cough*, singing on about how women are angels.
There were a lot of really boring outfits like this one and Akon looking like he was having a seizure in the background.
Let’s move on, shall we?
Naturally that just left the Pink collection, which I always find fun and amusing. There was one year where they were all toy soldiers or something like that, anyone remember that? That was fun. Well this year appeared to be the year of putting the pride rainbow into all of the outfits. This was awesome. I love that VS did this, and it also led to one of my favorite angel wing outfits that I’ve seen in the fashion shows so far.
Thigh highs? Yes. Clear plastic pride flag wings? Hells yes.
Yeah, um, I kind of want that outfit, and I’m not even gay. So pretty!
That pretty much wrapped up the evening. The models came out and did their prancing/bowing to the camera thing.
Random Thoughts:
- Yes, I know Katy Perry “sang.” Twice. Her new album is nowhere near as good as her first one, and she looked like she was going into labor every time she came anywhere near a high C.
- I know that the straight guys (and possibly the lesbians) watching the show probably enjoy the interviews with the models, but is it really necessary to try to convince us that their job is hard? We know it’s not. Stop messing with us, VS.
- Quote of the evening: “I fantasize more about wings than I ever would about my wedding.” Clearly this model has her priorities in order. Also, I can never imagine my life goal being to wear VS wings, but….whatever floats your boat? Also, anyone have any idea what she’ll do now that she’s achieved her highest dream in her early 20s?
- Dear cameraman: You could be a *bit* more subtle at the zoom in on the boobs shots. Just saying.
Book Review: Eva by Peter Dickinson
Summary:
Eva wakes up from a car accident to discover that her scientist, chimp researcher parents have allowed for her to be part of a new experiment. Her brain patterns have been implanted into a chimp’s brain. She is a human brain trapped in a chimp’s body. What will this mean for Eva? For the chimps? For the world?
Review:
This a truly horrifying concept. What would it be like to wake up from a car accident in a body that is not your own? There is much potential for exploration here, but the direction Dickinson took it in fell flat for me.
The setting is a near future in which the world is vastly overpopulated and nearly all animal species have died out except for chimps, who are all kept in captivity. It’s odd in a world that is so overpopulated that the vast majority of people never leave their apartments that scientists have made such an ethically questionable move to save human lives. As Eva herself points out, not only is there the problem of what it means to be a human in a chimp’s body, but also there’s the fact that the chimp essentially had to die for Eva to live. How is that right or fair?
I appreciate that Dickinson has Eva start to identify with the animals and fight for animal rights, yet I simultaneously did not appreciate his depiction of the inner workings of animals and their social groups. In spite of Eva being one of and among them, Dickinson persists in presenting them from a largely disconnected human perspective. I’ve read more sympathetic passages on the inner workings of animal groups on vegetarian websites than I got from Eva’s perspective as, essentially, one of the chimps herself.
*spoiler warning* Some readers will also be disturbed by the fact that Eva goes on to mate with one of the chimps. Although this is not shown, it is shown that a male is interested in Eva when she is in estrus, and it is later shown that she has had multiple chimp babies. Although I am highly sympathetic to animal rights, this is far too close to beastiality for my own comfort. Perhaps if Dickinson had addressed the issue and made it a thought-provoking issue instead of glossing over it I would feel differently. But he truly just makes it happen and tries to skip over the issue. I found this disturbing and was disappointed that this overshadowed the more interesting questions of animal rights versus human welfare. *end spoiler*
Overall, the book is well-written and thought-provoking, but falls far short of what it could have been. I’m sure there must be better YA books out there that address the issue of animal rights in a clearer, less disturbing manner.
2 out of 5 stars
Source: Swap.com
Movie Review: Soylent Green (1973)
Summary:
In the then moderately distant future of 2022, the world has turned to being a congested chaos due to overpopulation and global warming. People survive on various colors of food-like paste sold by Soylent, the favorite of which is Soylent Green. When a police man is called in to investigate the murder of an unusually wealthy man, he realizes it all has to do with the Soylent Corporation and makes a sinister discovery.
Review:
Obviously I came at this movie knowing the “spoiler” that Soylent Green is people. What scifi nerd hasn’t heard that quote? Still, even coming in knowing the big secret, I was expecting more from this film. By far the most enjoyable portion takes place in the wealthy man’s condo where we learn women have come to be attached to condo’s as part of the “furniture” and are passed along with the condo from owner to owner. In return for being the lady of the house, they get safety, security, and food. A whole other story could be told with what is essentially a return to the caveman way of doing things. Unfortunately, this gets glossed over for the supposedly more interesting plot line.
The story is told like a 1970s futuristic version of a film noir. We have the detective fighting all odds to get to the nitty gritty truth of the story. Of course, this is the 1970s version of a future dystopia. As such, the wealthy dwellings look straight out of a 1970s porno, and the unfortunate dystopic surroundings of the poor look eerily similar to a hot and sweaty version of communist Russia. It’s an odd dichotomy that doesn’t quite work.
I was waiting for the film to move from setting up the dystopia to slowly building the horror up, but it never happened. Honestly, given the intensely overpopulated surroundings these people live in and severe lack of food, I actually came away thinking that recycling the dead almost seemed logical, and being a vegetarian, that’s quite the leap for me to make! Clearly the film missed its mark somehow. When the policeman rants about the humans being treated as cattle, all I could think was how earlier in the film both he and a friend drooled over a slab of beef. Why should I be horrified that he feels as if he’s being treated like cattle when he would willingly treat cattle exactly the same way? I was left with no sympathy for him, only for the women who get passed along as furniture with the condo’s in this future.
Overall, Soylent Green had the potential to tell an interesting story of a future where women revert back to their old subservient roles as a survival tactic. Instead, it unfortunately veers off toward a storyline I find unsympathetic and that rings as falsely horrifying given the general set-up of the movie. There are far better 1970s horror films out there, as well as better dystopias.
2 out of 5 stars
Source: Netflix
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Opinions of a Wolf 