Baby Loves…Disco?

So I’m reading this book, right now, that parodies several parenting “fads”. During a book break, I read an article in Parenting about slowing down. It got me thinking. There is significant backlash against hyper-parenting (75 activities in a week, praise at every corner, tv, cell phones, etc.) but of course, 2009 doesn’t do anything in moderation (hence the original problem of hyper-) so there is now a “relaxation” movement in the parenting world but it seems to be just as strict as its reverse technique. I’m not one for rules, so I thought I’d embrace this idea of no praise, no reward, t.v. off (it generally is, anyway), no over parenting, the lot, but it just seems to be yet another “solution” for parenting. I guess I’m again in neither camp as I’ve never thought parenting needed a solution in the first place.

Enough negativity, mom. My main point in bringing up child rearing on the blog was that I needed some literary connection to brag about Baby Loves Disco.

Yesterday, Mom, Dad, and Kai went to The Loft (concert venue in Atlanta) for a great dance party. Kai had a fantastic time and no no it’s not just disco. There was plenty of Heart, Bob Marley and Chili Peppers.The thing I liked about it the best was that it was free. Not monetarily but in action. There was a DJ from the local alternative radio station but she basically led the progression of music more than the actual activity. There was a “chill-out” room with hula-hoops and tunnels to crawl through (a two-year old’s version of “chill-out” is different than an adult’s concept).

I’ve been to so many preschools, mom-and-baby activities, story times, where there is too much going on. Too much structure and no room for movement or creativity. I really enjoyed the freedom of the event.

In the spirit of doing away with quantifiers, I won’t do a reading recap this week but I will leave you with this:

Eyes Like Stars ~ Lisa Mantchev

Genre: Young Adult

Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

352 pages

ISBN: 9780312380960

“The weight of words is far heavier than water,” Ophelia said. “They would drag me to the bottom and hold me captive there.”

As though to prove her wrong, Macbeth backstroked through the vellum waves. “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?”

Moth considered the proffered appendage. “Nope, you still have jam on you.”

p. 240

I trust that many of you have either read or watched the grand old plays and their myriad spin-offs. Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Man of La Mancha, The Little Mermaid, Westside, well, you get the point.

Readers and Actors are camps that generally flow into one another as both sets are inherently enamored with words. I, for one, had my feet firmly planted in both, early on.

I grew up either on the stage or behind it in one capacity or another, as did my sister, my husband, most of my friends and a sizable chunk of my family. As we grew older most of us dropped the habit for other pursuits but my little sister didn’t. While I still belt out Newsies more than once a week in the middle of Atlanta traffic (usually with my car windows closed), she can still be found running off to rehearsal or read-throughs on any given night.  My running image of her looks about like Beatrice, the title character, on the cover of Eyes Like Stars.

I picked this book up for her, initially. It’s essentially about a girl who grew up in an enchanted theater. An enchanted theater that happens to house every player who has ever been written in script history. Each player is called to his or her scene depending on which play is being produced at the time.

Sounds great, right?

Well, of course, there’s a bit of a catch. The characters are doomed to confinement in said magical place, by order of The Book of scripts. Needless to say, like most seemingly perfect situations, this doesn’t sit well with all and there are forces brewing to bring down the house and I don’t mean by applause.

Mantchev is fantastic in her story weaving. She grabs hold of the root of Hamlet, Ophelia, Macbeth, Peter Pan, the lot, and expertly intertwines the players through each other’s plot lines. The only downside is that it may make you go running for your stack of scripts, leaving you doomed to read through the classics for several weeks. I, myself, have just ordered half of Dear William’s plays from the library as I haven’t read them in some time.

That being the only drawback, I highly recommend this to the theatrical bibliophiles. For anyone who knows the thrill of a raised curtain or the dim of house lights, Eyes Like Stars will bring you to your feet.

BTT: Me Me Me

Which do you prefer? Biographies written about someone? Or Autobiographies written by the actual person (and/or ghost-writer)?

Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!

To be quite honest, and perhaps this is self centered, I don’t prefer either. Well, I prefer, if pressed, biographies, but I would rather stay clear of both. I like nonfiction when it comes to things like science or history but I don’t like bio/autobiographies. I don’t follow celebrities and I find that, often, my heroes are less heroic when their lives are laid out in a 5,00 page book. I also don’t think I’d read a book about someone I don’t like, thus eliminating the other category. Is that entirely too picky?

The Time Machine ~ H. G. Wells

Genre: Adult Fiction

Publisher: Bantam Classics

128 pages

ISBN: 9780553213515

So, last week your friend had a few gentlemen, all learned men, over for cocktails and conversation. He pulled some sort of elaborate parlor trick by which he made a trinket disappear before the party’s eyes. Thinking him a grand magician, indeed, you meet at his house, again, to find the host nowhere in sight. As dinner is about to be served, your man of the hour stumbles in the front door, covered head-to-toe in scrapes and dirt. In one giant breath he tells you fantastic, daring, and quite frankly, unbelievable tales of time travel and life threatening heroics.

Welcome to The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. Said to be one of the first, and still creepiest, science fiction thrillers of all time, the short story is essentially a monologue on culture, disguised as the whimsy of time travel.

Because the story itself is so short and the basics of it rely on the element of surprise, I’ll stop there on the details.

I’ve recently found myself reading the Victorian classics where I’ve always stayed a bit clear of them in the past. Of course, one trip into a Wells book and a reader quickly realizes that it wasn’t all lace and stuffy parlors. He most certainly held no punches regarding his thoughts on the status-quo.

Through a series of  now antiquated, then cutting edge, revelations, he steam rolls over evolutionary predictions and brings pointed accusations at his peers and countrymen, regarding social economics. Allegories both beautiful and sinister could aptly apply to London (or New York), today, those same questions of moral responsibility framed technologically, socially and spiritually.

I have always loved the story but I don’t think I have read it in its entirety in a long time. It’s a great story and I found myself shaking my head and wondering what Wells would think of our technologically dependant, still socially divided society.

The Embers ~ Hyatt Bass

Genre: Adult Fiction

Publisher: Henry Holt & Company

287 pages

ISBN: 9780805089943

There is something so beautiful about the dysfunction of family. It’s certainly not a warm and fuzzy something but it certainly makes for a pretty picture or a great novel. While it is certainly a time-honored theme, the crumbling house-hold novel, Hyatt Bass has created a new and vibrant addition to the genre with her tightly knit story of a tragically unraveled family.

The Aschers are a family plagued by animosity but not without their bright spots. Their youngest member, Emily, is engaged to be married. She is a successful lawyer, and in love with her fiance. Despite her mother’s reservations, or, perhaps, because of them, she has picked the ultimate spot for her vow exchange: the family’s once fun-filled country-home in the Berkshires. While this may ring true as a reflection of any other family’s good times and happy memories, the Ascher’s land is a source and reminder of the rifts that run between mother, wife, daughter, father and husband.

As wedding plans are made, a semi-linear story is molded, jumping incongruously between a pocket of the 90’s to present-day. A young woman’s fears are pushed on her son, daughter and husband, creating lasting effect, an artist’s love of his art threatens to ruin the lives of his loved ones and two children come of age with their own dark and jaded views of commitment, love and life.

There are two different stories told in The Embers, one of how the past became the present and the other of how the present will become the future. Within those two macro stories, there are micro threads that run through, weaving in the voice of each family member. While it seems like a strange device at first, the idea of intermittently rearranging the narrator allows the short book to expand on each character emotionally in a way that usually doesn’t succeed with so many players. It never becomes confusing as each cast member is allotted his or her own distinct, unique voice.

This is not a fairytale and the men and women are certainly not princes nor are they princesses. Each is deeply flawed in his or her own way, often to the point of paralyzing self-doubt or bitter grudge harboring. This does not dampen the mood of the telling, however. For me, it made each line of thought more realistic in its flaws, rather than sugar-coating what often is in such stories.

The Embers is a fantastic little book and a wonderful debut for Hyatt Bass.

Teaser Tuesday ~ The Time Machine ~ H. G. Wells

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

“Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?” said Filby, an argumentative person with red hair. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells p.1

[TSS] One dark and stormy…morning?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is still raining in Atlanta.

I know, I know, I’m asking myself the same question: how on earth could the sky physically still drop moisture?

I’ll tell you.

I don’t know.

One part of me, the mom, the dog-owner, the runner, the person who needs her daily dose of vitamin D, is screaming on the inside. That person needs for the clouds to go along their less than merry way. The reader in me, however, the romantic, the tea drinker, the fire-side sitter, has reveled in the sogginess the past few months. Today, for example, I will probably end up reading a good bit more than I would have had it been a field-romping, sunshine-filled day.

So, while my spirit my be suffering under your oppressive dampness, dear mother nature, my TBR stack loves you.

Speaking of which, I need to say a word or two about the TBR. I hate it. My taste changes so often and so radically that I can’;t buy books anymore if I’m not reading them that afternoon. I do fairly well with library books because I have some sort of urgency and timeline to get them back to the library within three weeks but I just can’t focus on the lists that I have given myself of books to read. Here’s how my list stands, right now:

As for last week, I seem to be stuck at three books a week.

The Forrest of Hands and Teeth was a big disappointment, Envy was less so and of course, Dolye’s Study in Scarlet was fantastic.

That’s about it. I can’t believe I managed to get through the whole post without mentioning baseball once. I suppose I should hold my tongue, although, I may make a mid-week rant post if a certain team get their 27th World Series ring…

Shelf Discovery Challenge: An Ode to Forgotten Youth

One of my strongest memories from childhood was the day my dad banned me from the Young Readers section at the book store. We’re talking middle grade (it was the 80’s. YA hadn’t quite blossomed, yet) not picture books. We were always allowed to pick a book when we went to our weekly trips to whichever local bookstore, no questions asked, but that ended the day I finished a Babysitter’s Club book in the 45 minutes it took to get home in Boston traffic at Christmas time.

From then I was showed to the adult book section and my taste for 500-1000 page, allusion  and metaphor filled books took shape.

I do, though, every now and then, miss the books I skipped over. Half Magic, A Wrinkle in Time, Phantom Toll Booth, you know, the good stuff.

So my inner 8 year old is really excited that Julie P. is hosting the Shelf Discovery Challenge. I haven’t come up with my list of six books to read for the challenge, yet, but I know that A Wrinkle in Time and The Westing Game will most assuredly be on there.

It starts, tomorrow. Are you in?

Envy ~ Anna Godberson

Genre: Young Adult Fiction

Publisher: Harper Collins

405 pages

9780061345722

 

This review may make little sense to anyone who has not read the first two installments in Anna Godberson’s YA Luxe series. You’ve been warned.

Also, there is this: Godberson’s books fulfill, for all intents and purposes, the same place in my heart as my Friday cupcake dates with my son. We eat well all week. We go to mom and baby classes. I go to the gym and he plays on the playground. We like tofu and V8. Look here, we also like cupcakes from The Library Coffee Company.

Likewise, I am thoroughly enjoying Godberson’s little four-part series on life between the centuries in (sometimes) lavish Manhattan. It’s full of gossip and scandal and, really, I just don’t have to defend myself to you people.

Enough of this and on with the story.

For those of you have read the first two books, this, again, will make much more sense.

I didn’t realize how little I liked the second book until I finished the third. If Rumors was lacking anything, it lacked the speed and feeling that started in The Luxe and returned in Envy. I thought the series would flounder sans a few key characters from the first and second volumes but Anna managed to keep interests elsewhere.

While the same romance and intrigue abounded in the most recent book, I did find myself cringing often for the same reason I never fully loved Harry Potter: There were just too many scripted moments where I, as a reader, found myself yelling, “No! What are you thinking?!” I know it would have been far less dramatic without certain precarious situations but it did require some suspension of disbelieve in the “credulous actions” category.

All in all, though, it was a fun progression of the story. For those who have kept up with the other three books my character allegiance lies as such after this story: I adore Miss Diana, can’t stand Carolina and am bored to death by Elizabeth without Will.

BTT: Blurbage.

Suggested by Jennysbooks:

Something I’ve been thinking about lately: “What words/phrases in a blurb make a book irresistible? What words/phrases will make you put the book back down immediately?”

Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!

Oh! Oh! Teacher, pick me!

So this has been a long standing joke in my family and most of my friends are aware of it, too, but a book gets exactly one “plethora” and then it’s over. It’s just an ugly word and there are so many more attractive forms of “a lot”. My favorite (and I’ll actually swoon) is “myriad”. It’s just so pretty and sparkly. Plethora, meanwhile, sounds like you’re killing a duck.

Ok, the shallow stuff is over. In terms of actual content, I’m not a huge fan of monsters. Such as, you will have to do a bit of leg work to convince me to pick up vampires, werewolves, dragons, zombies, the like.

I also hate to wax political, as I’d like to keep my, ahem, myriad, fan base, but I won’t pick up anything that is overly religious or conservative. I’m not a big fan of, but will still read if it’s high recomended, “family drama” or “coming of age” stories.

I love a good political allegory and anything that mentions a “jazz-age style” or “Kafkaesque” will generally, be picked up. Of course, blurbs can burn, folks, so I don’t always judge a book by its cover, even its back one.