V’s Tuesday Perspective: House of Night: Marked by P.C. and Kristen Cast
As one of the new resident vampire lore ‘experts’ called in to help with the upsurge in vampire Young Adult fiction, I decided to tackle the first book of the House of Night series: Marked.
Zoey Redbird is a sixteen year old girl who is marked as a vampyre fledgling on page three. From there, she catapults into a school and life that are the opposite of everything she theoretically was before. She is, of course, special, as her mark (a tattoo on her forehead that indicates one is scheduled for vampyrism) is filled in instead of outlined like typical fledglings. This means special treatment and extra drama when she enters her new school life. An assigned twangy roommate leads to a quirky group of friends and together, they must find a way to bring down the bitchy antagonist, Aphrodite, the leader of the Dark Daughters.
I should point out here that my once snobby book tastes have moved more towards ridiculous escapism in the last couple of years (thanks to a bunch of friends who have convinced me to embrace not only my inner geek, but also my inner teenager). That part of me certainly enjoyed this cracktastic book, the same part of me that read The Vampire Diaries with avid fascination.
There are young adult books written in a style that is teenager specific and there are young adult books (particularly nowadays) written in a style that pulls adults as easily as teenagers. This book is the former. Zoey has an insta-mentor, insta-friends, an insta-love interest, and an insta-arch nemesis in true Young Adult fashion. There are a ton of parentheticals that clue us in to Zoey’s snarky, teenaged line of thinking, and there are a ton of go-to quips from clichéd side characters.
There is nothing about Marked that I found particularly original or brilliant in the vampire universe, but it’s a fun and fast read. The characters are also wonderfully fun to snark at if you read it with a friend 
Rating: B-
~This review brought to you by V of V Yarn by Vberry.
Movie Magic Monday: Sherlock Holmes
I don’t think I was the only person who saw the trailer for this movie and whose only coherent thought afterwards was: YUM.
Sherlock Holmes as a character has been portrayed in probably a hundred ways, if not more, but like some characters, the more permutations there are, the more we love them. Holmes is often portrayed as the perfect detective, with a few piquant idiosyncrasies to keep things interesting, but the 2009 film is a little closer to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original portrayal of the man—as an egocentric eccentric who lived almost a bohemian lifestyle, surrounded by the appearance of chaos, but who makes such astute observations that he is able to solve the most puzzling of criminal riddles. The movie hit this directly on the mark.
Okay, I know what you’re thinking… you saw the trailer, and what was with the hyped-up action segments and the Matrix-method fighting? In the film, however, none of the action feels over-hyped, and the Matrix-method fighting actually has a pretty awesome psychological twist to it—which I won’t spoil for those of you who see it.
But let’s get down to the real draw of this film—the always beautiful Robert Downey Jr, and the also-beautiful-though-occasionally-you-have-to-overlook-his-life’s-indiscretions-to-appreciate-his-films Jude Law. (Not that RDJ has led a spotless life, obviously, but that’s a discussion for another day.) O.M.Goodness Gracious me, are they fun to watch in this film. Downey is at his zaniest, smartest, and sexiest, while Mr. Law is the most adorable mench you could possibly imagine. The casting overall was perfection. Rachel McAdams was fun and walked a perfect line between dishonesty and almost-love, and Mark Strong was deliciously creepy.
The story unfolded naturally and beguilingly, and we’re given the clues just as Mr. Holmes is—well, perhaps not just as he is, but pretty well—and yet the stringing together at the end of all the tiny details we probably overlooked a little bit is done just beautifully—and I do mean that literally, as the cinematography in this film is fantastic. The movie as a whole was delightful. Funny, at moments touching, and honestly mind-dazzling, with some heart-stopper moments in there as well. I loved every single moment of it, and am honestly delighted that it was left open-ended for a sequel. It certainly left me wanting more, and it gets an A+ from me.
Fun Friday: Tell Her She’s Beautiful
This is a bit of a serious post for Fun Friday, and a sidestep topic-wise from what we normally write about, but it’s something truly worthy of sharing. I came across something honestly beautiful on Facebook today. A young man, still in high school from the looks of his profile, started an “event” on Facebook called Tell Her She’s Beautiful, where the entire purpose is to tell women and girls—or anyone, really—that they’re beautiful. Maybe especially girls who don’t hear it a lot—none of us hear it enough. The words of this high school senior kind of just knocked me flat this morning:
It has come to my attention that as I grow older, girls get more and more self conscious of themselves. This hurts me, because every girl is beautiful in their own way. They all want to live up to standards that the media has set for them, like being paper thin or double Z breasts. It really breaks my heart to see all of the girls to wallow around and hate who they are and think they aren’t worth something.
The founder of this group is encouraging everyone from February 11th-14th (yes, Valentine’s, my dears) to let the people in their life KNOW that they are beautiful.
Body image is something that has always been an issue with me, as it is with most women… and probably a fair few number of men. I can tell you flat-out that I’m not the normal perception of beauty—in a world where we’re shown a lot of tall, thin, and blonde, I’m a short, maybe overly-curvy brunette, and I’ve had my own issues with weight. In high school I had guy friends who’d get seriously frustrated with me because I thought I was fat—when really I wasn’t. Because of that insecurity, though, I gained a fair amount of weight in college, becoming more or less what I’d been afraid of thinking I was before. It took a long while for me to not only decide to take control over my body again—but to really honestly feel beautiful about myself, and the fact is, I didn’t get there on my own. It really did take that frustration from my guy friends, and being taken by surprise—being treated like I was beautiful, by men in general, being told I had a pretty smile, etc.
It also took some shifting in the way the world sees beauty as a whole. The view of one type of person and one type of figure being beautiful really is changing in the world—albeit slowly. The perfect-face, perfect-body beauty perception is starting to bend and creak in a global world where beauty hasn’t always been defined by Hollywood—where ideals of beauty reach far before Hollywood so much as existed.
I think of the changes I’ve seen, both thanks to celebrities who have never quite fit the “normal” checklist of beauty, or thanks to counter-culture, underground movements like this facebook group. I think of Cindy Crawford—who was originally told that her mole would have to be airbrushed out of pictures, when it ended up becoming her signature, and what made her stand out from the rest. Of Delta Burke, who was one of the first celebrities to design clothes for curvier women. I think of Queen Latifah, an exquisitely beautiful woman in her own right, who promotes a healthy weight—whatever that is for you. I think of The Biggest Loser, which never tears its contestants down for what they’ve done to themselves, but teaches them to love themselves enough to be healthy—in a nation where obesity, and worse, childhood obesity is at staggering levels, healthy really is beautiful, and it’s never an unattainable goal.
I think of Operation Beautiful, another underground movement that I learned about again thanks to a man. This movement encourages people to leave anonymous notes promoting self-esteem and good body image… leaving post-its and saying things like “You’re beautiful the way you are” on fashion magazines, or on bathroom mirrors, thousands of people telling other people—especially women telling women—that they’re beautiful. Women choosing to lift each other up rather than tear each other—or themselves—down. And really that is beautiful.
This is something that’s been on my mind a lot lately, and obviously not just mine. Just yesterday my friend Julie over at shinyshiny linked me to an article about appreciating your scars from 1000 Awesome Things. It’s a really endearing article, and I found myself looking over my scrapes and scars last night… I was a klutz as a kid, so there are a lot of them!
And since I’ve not only been a teenage girl, but also been aware of the young adult audience since before I technically counted as a young adult myself, the fact that body image issues are making their way into YA literature is fantastic, too. A couple of the titles I’m particularly interested in checking out myself are Models Don’t Eat Chocolate Cookies by Erin Dionne about a girl who loses weight to avoid getting sucked into a fashion show (yes, you read that right!) and North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley, about a girl with a large birthmark covering half of her face, both of them focusing on self-acceptance and personal feelings of beauty and worth—forget what the world thinks.
I’m still not the skinniest straw in the pack—far, far from it. In fact I still weigh quite a bit more than my high school “skinny.” But I’ve learned to honestly love myself and my soft, hourglass figure and my stick-straight brown-is-brown hair. Beauty really isn’t a definition—it’s a feeling. It’s one you can choose. And it’s a good one. So from me to you, you—yes you, right there, reading this—YOU are beautiful. Own it.
Thursday Myths & Legends 101: The Menehune
The Menehune people of Hawai’i are one of my favorite legends out there, tracing back to that episode of Full House where the family is on vacation and Michelle keeps seeing a little Menehune girl… do you remember? Ah, well, it was a long time ago…
The Menehune are the Hawaiian version of the brownie—in most legends, they’re dwarfish in size, and master craftsmen, very gifted with tools and known to build houses, roads, and temples. The picture above is a ditch and tunnel that have been attributed to the tiny people.
This small race is known to live in the deep valleys and forests of the islands, far from human civilization and human eyes, thus not much is known about them, but they are a shy and mischievous race, and some say that they were the first inhabitants of Hawai’i, before the Polynesians settled there.
Interestingly, though, the legends of the Menehune started to circulate only after European contact with the islands—it is supposed that the word is actually a mispronunciation of the Tahitian word ‘manahune’ which means “commoners,” as Tahitian settlers in the early 1800s oppressed the lower classes, who then fled into the mountains to escape—an 1820 census of Kauaʻi lists 65 people as Menehune. Folklorist Katherine Luomala believes that the legend of the little people of Hawai’i comes from a combination of this mispronunciation and the European influence of brownie stories.
All I can say is that when I went to Hawai’i with my family when I was a kid, I kept my eyes peeled…
Book Geek Wednesday: Graceling by Kristin Cashore
Reading this book was a test of patience and endurance I did not expect. I barreled through the first fifty pages and put 
it down. I came back and tried again. Another twenty pages. Still, no spark, no magic, no connection. I started getting impatient. It was well written. The characters were at times humorous and poignant. There was good and there was evil. And yet… I was not invested.
Thirty more pages. Now I was losing hope and interest. Really, there had to be something to this book. Why has it gotten such buzz, such acclaim? What am I not seeing? And then, around page 147, it struck so fast, I was blindsided. It was like lightning. All of a sudden, I couldn’t put it down. I thought about it even when I wasn’t reading it. Suddenly, I had to know what was going to happen.
And boy am I glad that I stuck it through until the end. The payoff far exceeded my expectations! What a book! What a fascinating and overwhelmingly lush world, Cashore has created. She took us from the comforts of royal life in the Middluns to the harsh cold mountains of Monsea to the breathtaking beaches and clifftop palaces of Lienid. And I couldn’t get enough.
The protagonist Katsa, while at first somewhat whiny and unsympathetic quickly grew on me, thanks to the addition of Po. He softened her, made her feel much more human, and in turn made her much more likeable. The slow reveal of the true villain, his power, and his history were both disturbing and brilliantly done.
I’ve decided to read Fire, if only to get more history on the man and how he came to be who he was in Graceling. And I have a newfound respect for worldbuilding thanks to Miss Cashore. This book is just as fantastic as everyone said, if not better. She has just earned herself a new fan.
If I have any complaint its in how long it took me to really become invested in the story. If I had given up when I wanted to, back around page 100, I may have missed out on all the magic the rest of the book contained. I know some of it was worldbuilding and history and character development… but I can’t help but wonder if there was a more concise way of doing things. Because of that, I have to give the book a B+ rather than an A. I mean, over 100 pages and still nothing…. that may just be too much.
Lisa’s Tuesday Perspective: Fingerprints: Haunted by Melinda Metz
The second Fingerprints book crosses into the creepy category. We already know someone is out to kill Rae, but in this edition her friend Jesse goes missing, and the more information Rae gathers with her gift, the scarier the situation gets—because whoever has Jesse, it’s all Rae’s fault.
Meanwhile we keep getting little anonymous insights from the bad guy… and they are all kinds of disturbing. We don’t really know who it is… all we know is that they really and truly hate Rae and the “perfect” life that she has.
What I love about this series is that, while Rae is dealing with some life-threatening issues, it’s also very high school. On the one hand she’s dealing with trying to track down Jesse’s abusive father and trying to track down the story of how he really disappeared, and on the other she’s trying to figure out how to take it when she finds out her ex-boyfriend—who dumped her without telling her—said her name while kissing his new girlfriend, and is suddenly seems to be trying to mend bridges with her…
Meanwhile, there is a lot of fantastic misdirection and red herrings going on here. Who are all these creepy insights coming from? Who is it taking pictures of her outside her room and all over town? Is it her group therapy leader? Her overly-concerned (to the point of icky) new English teacher? Someone closer than that? Or someone she doesn’t even know? Is it even only one person?
Rae’s having trouble making sense of any of it, and meanwhile she’s trying to help Anthony in a way that he may or may not be open to accepting… all while trying to keep her friend Yana from finding out her secret, so that she can have one “normal” friend.”
These books have a lot of layers to them for their deceptive shortness. Haunted gets an affectionate A- from me. (Very affectionate, mind… it’s not my favorite in the series, and you may rate it a bit lower.)
Movie Magic Monday: StoryCasting
Today’s Movie Magic Monday is not going to focus on or review a specific movie, rather, we’re going to talk about a fun, addictive little website that helps us make visual sense of our favorite books. What am I referring to? Storycasting.com – tagline: for the story in your mind. Brilliant.
How many of us have read a book and pictured a specific actor playing the role? I know I have. Remember the whole controversy when Robert Pattinson was first cast as Edward in Twilight? The book fandom nearly had a conniption. He was not what everyone had imagined. In fact, many readers argued over which actor fit best, as many had their own preconceptions even with the ‘majority’ favorite floating around. So it seems I’m not alone in this little quirk. Storycasting proves it.
I often visualize my heroes first, as they come in clearer than my heroines. *shrugs* Don’t ask why. I have no clue. I’ve ‘worked’ with:
Ian Sommerhalder
Jason Behr
Erik Eidem
Ok. Not literally, obviously. But I have characters who have definitely taken these shapes. Now, you can cast your favorite books, or even your OWN books on storycasting.com. Try it out! It’s way fun! Compare other people’s visions to yours and see why reading a book can be such an individual experience.
Fun Friday: Reading Technology
So this week’s big tech news is the new Apple iPad. (Ugh, could they have come up with a worse name? Really?)
It’s pretty impressive, in that portable, personal LCD screen kind of way. I’d love to use it to watch movies while on vacation or to play games. But as a personal reader? I’ll stick to the devices with e-ink technology. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? To go easy on the eyes? If I want a portable reader with a large, LCD type screen, that’s what the laptop’s for.
But… the buzz is large and heated. Will the iPad beat out the Amazon Kindle in the ebook war? With their new iBookstore opening… price wars are sure to begin.
How about you, readers. Fess up. How many of you read ebooks? How many of you would purchase the iPad as a reading device? What are your thoughts?
Thursday Myths & Legends 101: Manticore
The Manticore’s name literally comes from “man eater,” in ancient Portugese. Manticores are creatures of India, and are supposed to have the body of a red lion, the head of a man (with blue eyes for some reason) with three rows of teeth, and the tail of a scorpion—which is covered with arrows that can be shot at its prey from long distances. Its voice is compared to trumpets or pipes, and like its cousin the sphinx, the manticore will on occasion ask riddles of its prey before eating them.
The image above comes from a seventeenth-century bestiary, as the manticore was believed by some (including Aristotle and Pliny the Elder) as being a real creature, which lived in the depths of the earth. Because of this, it was tied with the Biblical prophet Jeremiah, who had been thrown into a pit. The manticore became a symbol of tyranny and an embodiment of evil, and was seen as a bad omen. It was also seen as an unholy hybrid of the zodiac characters of Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius.
In fiction, a manticore plays a large role in Piers Anthony’s first Xanth novel, and another plays a role in the third novel of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson novels.
Book Geek Wednesday: Third Time’s the Charm?
So this blog post is more of a follow up than a book review, but I thought it was important to give you all the skinny on what’s been happening in my book life.
I’ve been very frank on this blog about the epicfail that has been my attempt to read Graceling. I won’t lie. I was disappointed because I had really high hopes for that book, what with all the buzz that’s been going on about it. I picked it up and put it down more times than I care to admit. In fact, according to GoodReads, I started the book June 11 2009. *_* Wow.
Now, I know my post a few weeks ago said that it would probably end up in the DNF pile (did not finish) but I’m glad to report that as of a week ago, I picked it up for what would have been the last time, and around page 147 I found a spark of something magical. The story suddenly took flight. It was interesting, dynamic, adventurous and captivating. I read and flipped through pages with lightening speed wanting to know more about where the characters were headed and the mystery behind King Leck.
I’m now about halfway through and believe I will have a review ready for you all next week.
So I guess the moral of the story is, sometimes, you just can’t give up.Some stories start like a gunshot, fast and intense. But some are more like a boiling pot and you gotta just watch and wait until the water bubbles. 
Isabelle
Lisa
