Setting the Bar

I was so excited to learn that Orson Scott Card had a new book out and so I made sure to read it, because I am a huge fan of the Ender and Shadow books.  This was published in November of 2008.  It is supposed to occur, time -wise, between Ender’s Game and Speaker For the Dead. It takes place one year after the Battle School kids have killed the Formics and all are on their way home, except for Ender. Since Ender could not return home, he was offered and accepted the governorship of the new colony, known as the Shakespeare Colony. Valentine, Ender’s sister, accompanies him in the hopes of reconciling with Ender and escaping their brother Peter. During the two year long flight to the colony, Ender becomes obsessed with the Formics and absorbs all that he can about them during the journey. Valentine begins her prolific writings of the histories that eventually become the seminal works on the wars and the colonies (she’s my hero really!). During their stay in Shakespeare Colony, Ender explores the surrounding areas in the hopes of establishing a new site for a fifth settlement on the planet. During this search, Ender finds a live pupa of a Hive Queen, ready for breeding once she has matured and he returns with her to the ship. As a result of his contact with the new Hive Queen, Ender writes a work of his own on the Hive Queen, which becomes very widely read.

Ender’s growth is the focus of this novel and, for that purpose, it did absolutely fine.  I love Card and how he uses Ender and the rest of his characters to critique society - something that I, as a reader, generally always appreciate, even if I may not always agree with the critiques that are issued. The characters are also really good, strong and well developed characters.  In all of the Ender and Shadow books, Card doesn’t disappoint when he writes his characters. 

For the person that is new to the Ender series, I would read Ender’s Game and the Shadow books (Ender’s Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, etc.) before you delve into this one because there are a lot of references that Ender in Exile has that you just won’t get unless you’ve read those books first. You can find the list of books here.

Great read!

Book 13/100

I am a bad Catholic. There I said it.  I go to church very rarely and I doubt my faith constantly. But I’m enthralled by the history of the Church and The Magdalene Sisters was an important movie for me to watch, in order to get a firmer grasp of the Church’s history.

This is a 2002 film directed by Peter Mullen about four girls that were sent to Magdaelene Asylums in the 1960’s in Ireland. As a background, the Asylums were places where “fallen” women were sent by their families, who had abadoned them or disowned, usually for everything from flirting to out of wedlock birth and everything in between.  In Ireland, they were also known as Magdalen Laundries because that was the work that the girls did there and how these places earned their money. The last one closed in Ireland in 1996 and as many as 30,000 women are estimated to have spent portions of their lives there, often subjected to horrendous sexual, physical and emotional abuse. The nuns strictly enforced a code of silence and often used corporal punishment to enforce their rules. The existence of the asylums wasn’t thought of until some nuns came forward in 1993 and three of the women who had lived their detailed the abuse at the hands of their keepers.

This movie was supposed to take place in the 1960’s in Ireland, where fallen women were sinners regardless of how they got to that position and regardless of the fact that it takes two to tango. The four women in this movie - Crispina, Brenadette, Rose and Margaret - are forced into the asylum against their will by their families. Crispina is already there at the time that the other three arive - she is a developmentally delayed woman who has born a child and her sister brings her son to see her from the gate every week. Rose has also given birth out of wedlock and her baby is ripped cruelly from her hands within hours after his birth and put up for adoption, while she is forced into the asylum.  Bernadette is an orphan who is overly flirtatious with the boys, and still a virgin, but is put in the asylum anyways because she is a temptation to the boys. Margaret is raped by her cousin at a wedding.

Each woman suffers at the hands of Sister Bridget, the Mother Superior, and her minions, who seem to get sexual pleasure out of their torture of the women. In one particularly humiliating scene, the women have jsut finished taking a communal shower and are made to exercise by jumping around in front of two of the nuns.  The nuns then hold an awards ceremony giving out awards for things like “biggest breasts,” “smallest breasts,” “Biggest behind” and “most pubic hair.” Crispina is also sexually assaulted by the resident priest and one of the more poignant scenes is her excoriation of him with the words “You are not a man of God” which she shouts at him as he runs from an outdoor ceremony, ripping off his clothes in an attempt to earn a repreive from a sexually transmitted rash that has spread over his entire buttock region.

This movie is a sad movie and sometimes really difficult to watch. Its purpose was to criticize the asylums and raise the viewer’s anger, which it does quite successfully. There is no sense of triumph in this movie, and leaves one hollow and also as if bearing a tremendous weight. The actors were phenomenal. 

a must watch

I have been on a vampire movie kick lately. After watching Twilight and being less than thrilled, I was hoping that this movie would be better. And I wasn’t disappointed. Tomas Alfredson and John Ajvide Lindqvist adapted Let The Right One In from a novel of the same name and written by Lindqvist. There is no flashy, romanticism, ala Twilight about this movie - it is a cold and hard look at the coming of age of 12 year old boy, who is constantly bullied, and the friendship he develops with a girl that looks twelve but “who has been 12 for a very long time” and who has no qualms about killing people, in her search to quench her thirst. We learn that Oscar, the true 12 year old, is miserable and lives with his divorced mother in a middle class, clean development outside of Stockholm. Oscar is constantly tormented by a band of bullies that makes the vampires from Twilight, if they were combined with the boys from Lord of the Flies, look mild.  They torture poor Oscar and his mother is absolutely useless.  Eli, the vampire, moves next door to Oscar with an older gentleman that appears to be her father, and tells Oscar that they can’t be friends, even though they have a common bond - being outcasts. Oscar begins to realize that things aren’t completely normal with Eli- she doesn’t go to school, he never sees her outside in the light and she is as cold as stone. He also learns that she is a vampire and her “father” is actually charged with bringing her blood to drink.  When she loses her use for her caretaker, she moves on to Oscar, who cannot bear to foresake her because she has helped him in unimaginable ways and so assumes the role of her caretaker.

This movie is decidedly understated and that is its strength.  Its simplicity is its power. The acting of these two young people is also phenomenal. Their friendship and their love for each other develops over time and somehow, these two adolescents get it right.  The seeming calmness of the movie also makes the scenes where death comes all that more violent and disturbing.  You want to look away, but you can’t.  Even though the script itself is simple, the acting, cinematography and backgrounds enhance it beyond the imagination. It’s almost as if you were in the snowy, frigid suburbs of Stockholm yourself, experiencing the action as it occurs. Definitely the best vampire movie I have seen in a while.

I love David Sedaris, especially after I found out that Amy was his sister.  That aside, I have always loved David Sedaris’ short stories, aside from the awesomeness of his sister. And this collection was no exception.

I love how Sedaris wrote in a stream of consciousness. It was like listening to him just talk…and go on about what anyone else would make absolutely boring.  For instance, his last story, about being a smoker and quitting smoking, has generally mundane daily tasks in it, but Sedaris somehow manages to make them astoundingly funny. For those of you who are hardcore NPR listeners, you will definitely recognize these stories as they were the subject of an episode of This American Life.

I simply couldn’t stop laughing at this light hearted description of sometimes serious topics. The book is witty and keeps the reader on his or her toes. The writing style is deceptively simple - don’t let it fool you! There’s really a lot going on behind there! I felt refreshed after reading this and accompanying Sedaris on his path of self-discovery.  This book is a total must read!

Book 12/100

OK, so I am generally wary of books being turned into movies - more often than not, the movie does not do justice to the book (in very rare cases, like To Kill a Mockingbird, it does). So going in, I didn’t have particularly high expectations. I didn’t think that the movie was going to do justice to a decent vampire book.

For those of you who don’t know the story,  17 year old Bella Swan (short for Isabella and played by Kristen Stewart) has to move from Phoenix, Arizona where she had been living with her mother, to Forks, Washington to live with her dad. When she gets to Forks, she garners a coterie of friends and would-be suitors, even though she had been completely anti-social in Phoenix. She quickly becomes obsessessed with Edward Cullen and his family - Alice, a sprite who has hooked up with Emmet, Rosalie - the blond, beautiful prima donna who has hooked up with Jasper, Carlisle (the patriarch, and a doctor, even though he looks really young) and Esme, the matriarch.  Bella claims that he can look into the soul of Edward and see how pained he is. Thus begins their deprived relationship - deprived in the sense that they cannot do more than chastely kiss because Edward can easily be overshelmed by his bloodlust.

In a movie like this, how much we feel about the lovers depends upon how they work together - the tension that they develop between themselves in their acting. That’s what made scenes between Princess Leia and Han Solo (in The Empire Strikes Back) and Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind so fascinating. The actors were able to portray the depth of the tension. These two actors failed to do this msierably, so unless you’re a teenage girl that is familiar with this tension, you’re not going to pick up on this. The movie was also ripe for amazing special effects and it also fell short in that regard as well. The effects were amateur at best and despicable at worst. They were awful. 

This movie leaves much to be desired. 

In this stunning novel, Orson Scott Card introduces us to a society that breeds genius children in order to develop a foolproof defense against the buggers, an alien race.  Andrew “Ender” Wiggin is the young boy slated to be the human race’s savior. When we are introduced to Ender, he is living with his well-meaning and kind, but really distant parents, his really sadistic (almost scarily so) brother Peter and his adoring, protective sister Valentine (who is more of a mother figure to him than his biological mother is). Ender is drafted into the battle training school which rejected his older siblings. Ender’s formidable skills and intelligence are the perfect mix to make him a leader at the school, albeit a hated one amongst some of the students. On earth, Valentine and Peter develop their own skills and compete in the course of changing history on Earth.

This is the second time that I’m reading this book. I read it once before, years ago, I think during my senior year in college and enjoyed it then, as I did now. I really wanted to read it again because I have the newest novel - Ender in Exile - which I intend to start reading and wanted to re-read this one to remind me what was going on in Ender’s life. And I loved it now, as much as I did then. I thought that Card did a good job providing social commentary at the same time as telling a compelling story.  The characters were moderately well done - I liked some of them and didn’t like others.  The book moved at a good pace, which, quite frankly, the language that Card used contributed to. I am definitely glad that I re-read this one because it was masterful.

A must read for any science fiction fan!

Book: 11/100

So, when I learned that I was having a boy, I quite honestly panicked. I had no idea about how to raise a boy. Yes, I married a guy and I’ve always dated guys but I didn’t have to raise them. I just hung out with them.  So I went on a search for books that would give me some insight into boys.  I actually heard about this book from the Manic Mommies, who did a show on The Trouble With Boys, in which they interview Peg Tyre, the author of the book: The Trouble With Boys. And boy, was I so happy to have read this book.

In this book, Ms. Tyre takes the article that she wrote for Newsweek about how boys are falling behind and expands it.  She attempts to explain how and why boys’ educational achievements have so dramatically fallen behind those of girls’.  It was so fascinating for me to read this novel, because quite frankly, I benefitted from education. I have always done well in school - high school, college (a women’s college - no guys) and law school (coed). And it’s almost like I was socialized to think that girls were always the ones that were disadvantaged in school - and maybe we were to some degree - but now it seems like boys are getting the brunt of it.  There were some shocking facts that struck me: Boys get expelled from preschool at nearly five times the rate of girls and get perscribed medications for attention disorders two times more than girls do.  39% of all elementary schoolers get 20 minutes of recess or less (even as a girl, I could not imagine having less than that in elementary school!).

I really enjoyed how Ms. Tyre wrote this book - she attempted to write simply.  This made the book astute and acessible for all parents, educators, legislators, whatever.  The point was poignantly and dramatically made in its simplicity and I truly appreciated that.  The book conveyed a wealth of information but didn’t do it in a way that made the reader feel like they were inadequate or ignorant. I really thought that this book educated me on how important it is to be sensitive to any child’s specific learning needs, but also that sometimes boys are shoved under the carpet and how I will have to be on my guard to ensure that my child gets what he needs. 

This is a book that should be on your shelf, especially if you’re a parent.

Book 10/100

I saw this book and picked it up on a whim. I read The Other Boleyn Girl, about Anne Boleyn and Mary Boleyn, and loved it so I thought I would give Philippa Gregory’s newest novel a shot.

This novel is about the early imprisonment of Mary, Queen of Scots by her rival, Bess, the Dutchess of Hartwick. It alternates between three perspectives - the Queen of Scots herself, Bess and Bess’ fourth husband, George, The Earl of Shrewsbury. George and Bess are charged with the care of the Queen of Scots. Bess is a social climber - she has actually moved from poverty to an insane amount of wealth through each successive marriage (her husbands have left their wealth to her upon their deaths) and hopes that jailing the Queen of Scots will contribute to further wealth. However, it nearly bankrupts her and her husband! George, on the other hand, becomes infatuated with the Queen of Scots and does everything besides become physically intimate with her.  If anyone needed an example of emotional adultery, the relationship that George had with the Queen of Scots would be it. As such, irreparable friction and damage is caused in his marriage. 

The chapters are short and jerky, the characters flat and rather shallow.  The book is a long book and not much happens.  The exciting part of Mary’s life has already happened and, quite frankly, it’s boring and confusing to constantly have to guess or be filled in by other, secondary characters as to what happened in the past, even if it was the tiniest bit salacious. The characters were so boring - Bess only always complained about money, George was always obsessed with loyalty to the “queen” and Mary with being free and getting her throne back.  Yes, those were important goals, but, as in the Other Boleyn Girl, a character’s motivations can still lead to many, many layers being created. Ms. Gregory fails to do so in this case and the short chapters don’t lend themselves well to plot or character development. In fact, they fail miserably.

I do have to say that Ms. Gregory’s research is well done and impeccable.  One cannot fault her on those grounds -she has done her homework, as usual.  One can only hope that if a movie is made, it will be better than this book (and the movie version of The Other Boleyn Girl, which was awful). 

All in all, this is one that you can pass one.

Book 9/100

It took me a while to find a book and actually finish it. Well, actually find the time to finish it is what I should say. I found Sepulchre, a novel by Kate Mosse. The novel is split between the 1890’s and 2007. In 1891, we meet Leonie Vernier, a young girl who lives in Paris with her mother and her brother, Anatole Vernier. An invitation from her aunt, Isolde Lascombe, prompts a visit to Carcassone with her brother.  They visit their aunt at her home - the Domaine de la Cade. In the modern day, we meet Meredith Martin, who has travelled to France to research a biography of Claude Debussy. While there, she takes the opportunity to learn more about her biological mother. In conducting this search, she learns of her connection to Leonie Vernier and the mystery surrounding the Domaine de la Cade.

Rumor has it that this second novel of Mosse’s received lots of harsh criticism - criticism that was perhaps uncalled for. I loved how Mosse set the scenes - both in the modern day and in the past.  It was almost as if I were there - I could see the sights and smell the scents and taste the tastes that her characters did.  Their feelings were mine. The plot was complex and multilayered and sometimes required me to map things out.  But that was part of the richness of the novel. The language is deceptively simple, considering the complexity of the plot and the depth of the character development.

I was also impressed by the use of tarot in the telling of this story. It was obvious that Kate Mosse did her homework when researching and writing and the thoroughness took my breath away.

This book was wonderful. In fact, it was much better than her first book, Labyrinth, and I would highly recommend that you read it.

Book 8/100