Cinderella, Ninja Warrior by Maureen McGowan

First, I have to say that overall, I loved this book. The reader can pick differing paths to reach the same end, but I ultimately read them all. Cinderella finds the magic the she has always possessed (literally) inside and also studies the way of the ninja on the insistence of her cat, Max. This all come in very handy when it comes to escaping her miserable life trapped (by her stepmother's magic) inside her home, made to do an incredible amount of work.

There is another book in this series: Sleeping Beauty, Vampire-Slayer. Try as I might, I could not get into this book. I am rather disappointed, after thoroughly enjoying Cinderella. It just seems very off-putting in tone.

Look At Flower by Robert Dunn

I just read this for LT's Early Reviewers. . . and I wanted to keep reading. I feel it ended rather abruptly in a sense, perhaps. As another reviewer has said, it also annoyed me that the story never returned to the "present", to get the main character's childrens' reactions to the story they never really knew about their mother and the year she ran away from home to join the "hippie world" in the mid to late 1960s. At first the story seems rather disjointed, perhaps because the point of view keeps changing (third vs first person, and past vs present), although I did get used to it fairly quickly. I liked, also, that Flower/Cynda also feels no need to get high like those around her, that she is confident enough to stick to it, too. Overall, it was a quick, interesting read.

Notes from a Totally Lame Vampire by Tim Collins

Notes from a Totally Lame Vampire by Tim Collins

I picked this book up off the new book shelf at the local public library branch. It was a vampire book I hadn’t seen before. It’s an easy, fun read. It is a juvenile/teen fiction title, but that did not stop me, of course. The author basically makes fun of all of the various vampire legends and lore – including Twilight. (Anything that makes fun of Twilight makes me laugh.)

Nigel is a nearly 100-year-old teenage vampire. He has been going to school all of this time, to blend in, but he slacks off in certain subjects (hey, he’ll be learning it all again in the years to come!) He still has the typical and not so typical arguments with his parents (after all, they are hundreds of years old). Nigel did not get the beauty, the speed, and the power that most vampires acquire when they become vampires. It may have been due to his age. When he is exposed to the sun, he even breaks out in pimples! So this is what makes him “totally lame.”

Because he has no natural vampire attractions, how does he get Chloe to go out with him?

This book is written in diary format (Nigel is a talented writer, painter and musician, but he can’t show his talents to the world, or people might become suspicious as to the family’s vampire natures), and really well done. It becomes obvious that Nigel has followed the times . . . he loves various video games and game systems.

I won’t give away the ending! I look forward to reading the sequel.

The Wilder LIfe

The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure is the book (actually in e-book format) I am reading at present.

What I liked:

- Ms. McClure gets the idea of "Laura Land" (as she calls it) right in that I had a “Laura Land” of my own, but as she finds out, everyone’s is just a little different.

- The comparisons between the actual Little House books, the real lives of the Ingalls and the Wilders, and then the TV series. I have such a trained eye when it comes to all of the differences that I could have been bored by things maybe other people don’t know, but I have enjoyed making sure Ms. McClure gets things right.

- Ms. McClure also visits all of the actual Little House sites. . . I haven’t even been to them all, only a portion, so I have enjoyed reading her impressions and descriptions of these places.

- Some of her descriptions of attempts to enter “Laura Land” as an adult quite funny.

- I am jealous that she got to camp during a hailstorm on the Ingalls’ Homestead in DeSmet, SD. . . that would be the ultimate experience! (Besides a triplet tornado in the distance . . . )

- That she came to the realization that she was really searching for her mother and her younger self.

What I am not sure I have liked, or don’t agree with:

- Ms. McClure finds it creepy to walk on gravesites in Pepin. Oh, come on, that is ridiculous! I grew up next door to a cemetery that was a delightful playground in every season. When I am buried, I wish to be in a small cemetery where small children will play hide-n-seek.

- She (the author) always desired as a little girl to be able to have Laura come visit her in present day to “show her around.” I never wanted to do that. I always desired a time machine so I could go back to Laura’s time. I used to imagine going to school with her in about 1880 or so!

Book Sale Find: Health Studies by Hoag

Ten years ago, in 1999 or so, I went the final day of a huge used book sale. It was the kind of day where it was "fill the bag" for a dollar, or five. Something like that. One of my favorite finds that day was an old (90 years at the time, 100 now) school book titled Health Studies: Applied Physiology and Hygiene by Ernest Bryant Hoag, A.M., M.D. (Director of Hygiene and Physical Examinations in the City Schools of Berkeley, and Lecturer in Hygiene, University of California), published in 1909. The book includes several photographs. Dr. Hoag was born in 1968 and died in 1924. He earned his BS at Northwestern in 1892.

First, I must note that one of the reasons this book attracted me was the inscription in the front. The young student who owned and used this book probably as a young teenager wrote the following:
"Roland Koyen,
Detroit Harbor
Town of Washington
County of Door
State of Wisconsin
Country of U.S.
Continent of North America
of Western Hemisphere
of this
World."

I may have searched him online 10 years ago, but if so, I found nothing. Last night, I decided to Google Mr. Roland Koyen. And guess what? I found him!

Roland Anders Koyen, born in the Town of Washington in Door County, Wisconsin, in 1897 and the youngest of 9 children, went on to become an educator himself, as well as, apparently, a dairy farmer. He co-authored a chapter/article titled "Teachers Associations, Organizations and Unions". Mr. Koyen's father Andreas Koyen, was born in Denmark, immigrated to the US, and was over 50 years old when his son was born. His mother's family came to Wisconsin from New York. Roland Koyen died in 1971.

Mr. Koyen's wife was also in education. There is a wonderful article of remembrance available online about Mrs. Virginia Koyen: www.weac.org/professional_resources/great...and.../tribute.aspx This even includes a photo of Mr. and Mrs. Koyen. Mrs. Koyen died in 2006!

I am into genealogy and have found all sorts of things online, but I never imagined that I would find as much as I did with this search for Mr. Koyen!

Anyway . . . back to the book itself. Perhaps it is not quite as interesting.

Chapter XV: The Use and Abuse of Food
This is a fascinating chapter. Probably much of it rings true today - but for the "old fashioned" sound of the text. I do not know if current health books would discuss fermentation: "Eating too much starch or sugar food is especially likely to produce fermentation. This is one of the objections to eating more than a very moderate amount of candy. Nearly all fruits are apt to ferment, unless eaten in moderation. An excessive diet of rice or other cereals, potatoes, bread, or pancakes is sure is to cause this fermentation" (131).

(More of this post to come soon!)

Favorite Reads of 2009

Early this year, I read what I would consider THE best read of the year - An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: a memoir by Elizabeth McCracken (2008). The author recounts her first pregnancy with her baby boy that was born still beyond full term alongside the experience of her subsequent pregnancy with her second son. It is very powerfully written, in my opinion. Soon after, I finally read The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (2004) after a friend had asked a couple of times if I had read it. I have tried FOUR times to read it over the years. This time I stuck with it – it took until around page 40, and then I couldn’t put it down. I refuse to see the movie, however!

This summer, as I exercised in the fitness room (yes, I can read and use the treadmill at the same time!), I read some interesting books. I met the author of The Dust of 100 Dogs, a YA (young adult) book by A.S. King (2009), this past March at the Tucson Festival of Books. The premise of the book is quite interesting: A teenage girl becomes a pirate in the 17^th century, and she is eventually cursed to live 100 lives as dogs. When she finally returns in the 20^th century as a human, her full focus is to recover the treasure she had buried three hundred years before. I also read, while exercising, The Memoir Club, ‘adult’ (as opposed to YA) fiction by Laura Kalpakian (2003) – a group of unlikely people attend a class to learn how to write their memoirs, and instead it becomes a group merged in friendship (while, meanwhile, working through their varied and many personal issues).

As antidotes to Twilight, I would recommend two of the vampire-themed books I’ve read this year: The Reformed Vampires Support Group by Catherine Jinks (2009) and Sucks to be Me by Kimberly Pauley (2009). Both YA novels have a different take on vampires. The first is about a group of outcast vampires who are trying to lie low and deal with the changes, or the lack thereof, in their lives. The second is about a girl who has grown up with vampire parents, but now she has to make the decision for herself if she is going to become one as well, or not.

I have read some more fascinating nonfiction this year (not YA) such as the following: Storm Warning: The Story of a Killer Tornado by Nancy Mathis (2007) – about tornadoes and the development of the science of meteorology and tornado warning systems-, Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer’s Life – new literary criticism that says that LIW’s daughter Rose wasn’t as involved in writing the Little House books as others claim and the reasons why - by Pamela Smith Hill (2007), Waiter Rant by Steve Dublanica (2008) – about being a waiter and how tipping is very important, Stitches: a memoir by David Small (this is in graphic novel style) – about the author’s years growing up in a dysfunctional family and his cancer as a teen, Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading by Lizzie Skurnick (2009) – discusses humorously many favorite YA books mainly of the 1970s and 80s, and Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy (first published in 1973, republished in 2000) – a collection of rather morbid articles, reports and photos from 19^th century Black River Falls as well as other Wisconsin locales.

This fall, I discovered several of the old “Career Romances for Young Moderns” in the University of Arizona library. The most entertaining one for me was Miss Library Lady by Ann McLelland Pfaender (1954). Jean has just completed ‘Library School’ and has been guaranteed a position immediately. Many things mentioned in this book are still true in public libraries today (except for the ease of acquiring a job): “As a horrible example she [Jean] added a tattered book that plainly showed wear and tear, plus the greasy imprint of a limp strip of bacon she had discovered tucked into its pages, used by some child as a bookmark" (53).

PS: If you haven’t read The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (2008), I highly recommend it! It won the Newbery Medal earlier this year! A live, human boy is raised by ghosts in a cemetery in this story.

Haven't Posted in Nearly Two Months. . . oof

I will be posting my "Favorite Reads" of 2009 within two weeks or so. . .

I also want to write about/revisit some books I read first as a kid/tween/teen.