The Ramblings of a Mental Meanderthal

I first read this in 2017 for the PopSugar reading challenge. I needed a book with a family word in the title. I reread it in 2018. Summary from Goodreads : "A modern-day expansion of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid , this unforgettable debut novel weaves a spellbinding tale of magic and the power of love as a descendent of the original mermaid fights the terrible price of saving herself from a curse that has affected generations of women in her family. "Kathleen has always been dramatic. She suffers from the bizarre malady of experiencing stabbing pain in her feet. On her sixteenth birthday, she woke screaming from the sensation that her tongue had been cut out. No doctor can find a medical explanation for her pain, and even the most powerful drugs have proven useless. Only the touch of seawater can ease her pain, and just temporarily at that. "Now Kathleen is a twenty-five-year-old opera student in Boston and shows immense promise as a sopr...

I talk about this book to everyone. It is freaking AMAZING, and I will talk about this book until I die. Imagine Jane Austen's England. An England at war with France/Napoleon. An England with a mad king, George III, and the Prince of Wales acting as Regent. Now shift its history so the king is only King of Southern England. He acts as a steward in the North, but he does not rule it. The Raven King ruled the North for three hundred years and vanished a couple of centuries ago, but he will return, so the North has no other king. And since the Raven King vanished, he took English magic with him. Magicians nowadays discuss magic. They study magic. They write lengthy and useless essays about magic. Anyone who claims to be a "practical magician" sooner or later proves to be nothing more than a trickster or con artist. Occasionally, a magician will try to perform magic and encourage others to do the same, but he fails in both endeavors. Until one cold winter morning, a magi...

So, yeah, a man writes a book and describes a woman, and yes, you can tell sometimes that the writer was definitely a dude. Having said that, Carl Sagan still treats Ellie Arroway as a fully-realized character. I have adored her and this book since I was a teenager, and every time I come back to it, I enjoy and understand it a little more. (I haven't the mathematical knowledge to understand astrophysics, but I understand a lot of the concepts.) Here's my review at Goodreads, which pretty much sums it up: I first read this when I was a teenager -- maybe four years after it was first published -- and Ellie's story has always resonated with me. Not just being a stargazer and science fan (though she's a pro, while I'm a self-taught amateur), but also being puzzled by the contradictions in science and religion. I certainly don't have the answers, and the book gets a tiny bit saccharine towards the end, ...

I started reading this last night and finished it while I was at work. (Don't give me any grief; I work the Circulation counter at my library every day, and I sit and wait for people to need help. I'm allowed to read.) My friend P.C. mentioned this when I was looking for books for the 2015 reading challenge. She simply mentioned the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede, and I put the first book on my to-read list, but if you've been to my Goodreads page, you may have noticed that my to-read list there is 641 books long. (And that's just the books I've heard of while I had access to a computer or paper and pen!) So the series got lost in the shuffle until someone mentioned it recently, and I requested the first book from the local public library. (I've read Patricia C. Wrede before; I found her Snow White and Rose Red when I was in junior high, and I absolutely loved it. I still read it about once every two years.) Back to Dealing with Dragons...

So a website called Pop Sugar put forth a reading challenge this year: http://www.popsugar.com/love/Reading-Challenge-2015-36071458?crlt.pid=camp.RTlcdYOWNcmE Fifty ticky boxes, fifty-two books, one year.  I'm in!  So far, I've read four: A book with a color in the title: Watson and Holmes: A Study in Black .  Written by Karl Bollers, art by Rick Leonardi (Chapters One through Four) and Larry Stroman (Epilogue). New Paradigm Studios, 2013.  My first graphic novel that I actually finished (one eighth of a zombie comic that made me sick to my stomach doesn't count), and I really liked it.  Give me all the Sherlock Holmeses and John Watsons in the world, thank you very much. A book with antonyms in the title: Lynn Front to Back . Written by Lynn Kohlman, forward by Donna Karan. Assouline Publishing, 2005.  I chose this because it fit the category, and I was intrigued by the subject matter: a fashion model from the 60s and 70s whose passion was bein...

I was kind of surprised that I finished the first Twilight book, but I've refused to read any more in the series. Friends have said that the other books are better than the first, but I've already lost five hours of my life to that misogynistic book. (If I EVER see a family member with any of Meyer's drivel in their hands, I shall steal it, burn it, jump gleefully on the ashes, and replace it with something by Tamora Pierce.) There's an over-the-counter medication called NyQuil. I take it when I have a cold. It's a green syrup that tastes bitter and sickly sweet all at the same time. Difficult to drink, but I do it because it suppresses my coughs and makes me drowsy enough to sleep at night. Last night, I noticed that the new bottle said NyQuil had an improved taste. I raised an eyebrow, because there's a lot of room for improvement. I drank it, and their strategy was to make it even more sickly sweet than before. Proof positive that better-than-awful can...

The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley One of the preparation exercises for NaNoWriMo is to write a list of things that I love about books I've read. I love adventures, magic, characters who transcend expectations, a good romance, moral dilemmas, gender reversals or disguises, vibrant and original worlds, true friendships, pets, and a juicy misunderstanding or three. The Blue Sword has all of these and more. The story takes place in a world where an empire reaches into lands and cultures its people don't quite understand. Newly-orphaned Angharad, nicknamed Harry, is brought to a desert outpost by her brother to live with relatives. She looks toward the distant mountains and wonders what's out there, but she lives a quiet life among those of her own culture until the day the king of the Free Hillfolk -- the native inhabitants of the desert -- comes to the outpost to warn the army of an impending invasion from the north. Corlath, the king, rides away from the meeting disguste...