Obert Skye

I love Obert Skye. He combines humor, adventure, imagination into excellent stories.

I finally finished reading the Pillagy or the Pillage Trilogy in which Beck Phillips moves to the small town of Kingsplot to live with a strange relative. In Pillage (which I read a few years ago), Beck discovers he has a gift for making things grow, and this includes dragons. Beck's family is both gifted and cursed much to the detriment of the people and buildings of Kingsplot. In Choke, not having learned his lesson, Beck grows a dragon queen, whom he names Lizzy. It's amazing at first, but once Lizzy gets a taste for pillaging, there is only one way to stop her. In Ambush, the plants around Kingsplot appear to be in open rebellion against Beck. Between pressure from them and his father, who is locked up in a mental hospital, Beck decides to plant the last stone which he knows will hatch a dragon king. Beck lies to his friends and is gradually descending into the madness that afflicts all the men in his family. Can Beck overcome the family curse? Can he save his father, his friends and himself?

These are fun books. Skye is good at mixing intensity with humor. It's enjoyable to see how Beck's character changes over the course of this series. These books involve a lot of pillaging and dragon death, so beware.

Beyond Foo

These books pick up where the Leven Thumps series (which was awesome) left off. You don't really need to have read Leven Thumps to enjoy these books, but you'll appreciate the characters more if you do. The first is Geth and the Return of the Lithens. Geth (a lithen) and Clover (a Sycophant whose job it is to ease the transition of humans who've been snatched into Foo) are kidnapped and taken across the hidden border from Foo to Zendor. And evil human named Payt has taken over and terrorized Zendor by controlling its inhabitants (mostly dreams that have come to life) with the sound of his voice. Geth and Clover are trying to help the people of Zendor fight the tyranny of Payt, even though the people have given up hope. Along the way they save Geth's brother Zale and Clover tames a Tangle. The second book is Geth and the Deception of Dreams. Geth and Clover and their new allies in Zendor search for the wise man Lars who is supposed to be able to help them defeat Payt. As usual, things don't work out like they're supposed to. Among other amusing things in the books is that Geth is really good looking and all the women are constantly trying to get close to him. It made me chuckle a few times.

I guess this series is a trilogy, and book three isn't out yet. Bummer. I enjoyed the stories, but they really felt like parts of one book rather than separate books in a series. I was really annoyed at where the first book ended, but I was much more satisfied at the cliffhanger ending the second. And it looks like were're going to see Leven and Winter and Lilly and Phoebe from the Leven Thumps books. I'm looking forward to it.

Unbroken, Dragons, African Tales, and The Five People You Meet in Heaven

I haven't updated in a while so I will do two posts. One for the books and the other for the movies.  I recently finished reading Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand and I loved it!  It is a biography of Louis Zamperini who was an American runner in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.  When World War 2 started, he joined the air force.  This book tells Louis' story from his childhood, to his service in World War 2, his life in Japanese POW camps and then his adjustment to life after the war.  It is a fascinating read.  I was captivated from page one.  I must say there are some very disturbing accounts in here (as you can imagine from a man who survived World War 2) and it is a tear-jerker but it is so worth it.

I also read a Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons  by Cressida Cowell.  This is another book in the How to Train Your Dragon series.  They are a fun and easy read!

I read The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa by Alexander McCall Smith.  Some things I learned about the African culture from these tales is that hares are cunning animals and that hares and lions are enemies.  Gratitude is important and don't cast out a person from your village who has saved the life of the town.  Be loyal to your friends and family. Don't be selfish because one day it will come back and bite you in the patootie. The hyena and the elephant live far away from people because they could not control themselves when it came to eating farmers' crops and they were ashamed of their lack of control and decided to willingly move far away from everyone else. It was interesting, a little odd, but I liked it!

I read The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom.  I liked this book.  It made me think about how we are all connected and how we all influence each others lives whether great or small, but we may not know it until we pass on to the next life.  It is an interesting read and it's a pretty easy read but I am not a big fan of his style of writing in this book.  

Dragons, Oklahoma and Without a Clue

Guess who is up too late trying to get in another post before the contest is over?! :)  I've been slackin' a little on the reading.  But I did finish another How to Train Your Dragon series book.  I read How to Twist a Dragon's Tail by Cressida Cowell.  Once again, these are fun and easy books to read!

I watched Oklahoma for the first time ever. (I even lived in Oklahoma for 4 years and never saw it, although I did hear music from it;) I saw the Hugh Jackman movie version of it.  And can I just say that I love Hugh Jackman?!  He is so good in this play! I had never heard him sing before and when he sang in the movie, he just melted my heart :)  And the music in general in the play is awesome and the story line funny!

I also watched Without a Clue, which was recommended to me by pricklypear. It has Ben Kingsley and Michael Caine in it. It is a funny version of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.  It is a good one! 

The People of Sparks, The Hiding Place, The Guernsey Literary Society..., Prince Caspian etc.

I haven't updated in a while so I have a lot to catch up on.

I read The People of Sparks by Jeanne DuPrau. It is the second book in the City of Ember series.  I read the first book a few years ago and I think I liked that one better than this second one.

The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. This book is amazing! It is a true story.  The author of the book was a Christian during World War II who hid Jews in her home and then her and her family were caught and put into a concentration camp.  This story tells of her experiences during the war and is a tearjerker.  It is  definitely worth the read! 

How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse by Cressida Cowell is the fourth book in the How to Train Your Dragon series.  I loved it!  It was fun and easy to read. 

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.  This is a fiction book that takes place during World War II.  The book is written in the form of letters and I really liked it. 

Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis is the second book in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe series.  I liked it although I think I liked the first one better. 

Edenbrooke by Julianne Donaldson is a clean chick flick book.  I liked it! 

I will talk about the movies I've seen later.

Searching for Dragons, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Midnight in Paris, Whisper of the Heart

I've finished Searching for Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede, the second book in the Enchanted Forest Chronicles.  It is written from the vantage point of the King of the Enchanted Forest, Mendanbar. It is the adventures of Mendanbar and how his life becomes intertwined with Princess Cimorene from the first book.  It's a fun and easy book to read.

On Thursday I flew from Virginia to Utah to visit my parents and started and finished The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare while on the plane rides.  I really liked this book.  The book is about a 16-year old girl named Kit who grew up in Barbados in the 1600s.  Her grandfather, who raised her, passed away and her only other family was in New England.  She found passage on a ship to Connecticut.  She arrived in Connecticut and soon realized how completely different it was from her life in Barbados.  She had a hard time adjusting to her new life but was strong and worked hard.  Kit eventually met Hannah Tupper and quickly became friends with her.  But everyone believed Hannah was a witch. This book tells of the trials and triumphs of Kit adjusting to her new life in Connecticut and dispelling the rumors that she is a witch.  It is a really good book.  I liked it a lot.

I watched the movie Midnight in Paris with Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams.  I was honestly a little surprised by how much I liked it.  I wasn't exactly sure what it was about when I first started watching it, but it was a good movie.  And I think it had a good lesson at the end.  Wherever you are, whatever time period you are in, be grateful for that which you have and be happy.  (At least that is what I got out of it.) 

I also watched Whisper of the Heart in Japanese with English subtitles.  It is a Studio Ghibli Japanese Anime film. I really really liked it. It is funny and cute and a little odd, but I liked it.  If you've never seen Japanese anime, you should.  I haven't seen a lot but some of the ones that I've seen and liked are Kiki's Delivery Service, Castle in the Sky, Ponyo, and Grave of the Fireflies.

A Girl Named Disaster and Dealing With Dragons

While we were at the Green Valley book fair a few weeks ago I bought a book called A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer.  I had never heard of it before but decided to buy it after reading the back cover.  A Girl Named Disaster is about a 12 year-old girl who lives in a traditional village in Mozambique. Her mother was killed by a leopard when Nhamo was a toddler and her father was a drunk and ran away.  She was left to live with her aunt and uncle who didn't like her very much.  They tried to force her to marry a cruel man with two wives, but at the encouragement of her grandmother she ran away. Her plan was to paddle a stolen boat upstream to Zimbabwe, which should only take a few days, to find her father's family. But it "turns into an adventure filled with challenges and danger that spans a year."  I really liked this book. I learned a lot about the culture in traditional Mozambique.

Some other books I bought at the book fair were the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede recommended to me by pricklypear.  I finished the first one.  I really liked it.  The first book is Dealing With Dragons.  It's the story of a young princess named Cimorene who doesn't want to be a proper princess and runs away to live with the dragons.  As you can imagine many adventures follow the princess as she learns to deal with the dragons.  These are an easy read.

Life of Pi, How to Speak Dragonese, and Pretty in Pink

I recently finished listening to Life of Pi by Yann Martel.  I really liked it! Pi is a teenage boy from India and the main character of the book. Pi is a religious boy who practices Hinduism, Christianity and Islam. Pi's family owns a zoo and they decide to sell the animals from their zoo and move to Canada to make a better life for themselves.  As they embark on their journey to Canada via boat, the boat sinks. The only survivors are the boy, a Bengal tiger, a spotted hyena, an injured zebra and an orangutan.  The book tells about the adventures of the boy and the animals on the lifeboat.  I must say that the book does get a bit graphic about the boy's survival on the boat and it is a little disturbing at times, but I think it adds to the book and it almost feels like you're there a long with Pi and the animals on the life boat.  I liked the book so much that I decided to buy it and add it to my collection.

I also finished the third book of the How to Train Your Dragon series, How to Speak Dragonese. It is more adventures of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third.  These are fun and easy reads! 

I watched "Pretty in Pink" with Molly Ringwald, Andrew McCarthy, Jon Cryer, Harry Dean Stanton etc.  It was okay.  It's a film from the 80's.  It's about a poor girl who likes a rich boy (which was socially unacceptable at the time). The girl and the boy must overcome some obstacles as their relationship blossoms.  I found the movie a little awkward and I don't think I would watch it again. 

Adventures, Fashion, Mystery, and Shame

Watched:

The Peacemaker – This is an older movie about terrorists getting their hands on nuclear weapons, with Nicole Kidman and George Clooney chasing them. Lots of cliché action scenes, you know, the car exploding in the background as they run away (jump!), the inevitable fist fight with the bad guy at the edge of a cliff, and of course, attempting to disarm the bomb while the time runs down. I’m married to someone who studies and works with issues of weapons of mass distruction, so when he finds another movie about nukes, we generally watch it. I didn’t love the movie, but it wasn’t terrible, and other than the F word several times, there wasn’t anything inappropriate.

Bill Cunningham New York – This is a nice documentary about Bill Cunningham, a fashion photographer for the “On the Street” column of the New York Times. I’ve seen people recommend this, people who are into clothes, and I figured that I would not watch it because I figured it would make me depressed about my whole sense of style and fashion, but I had a cold this week and while resting and watching endless TV, this came up on my Netflix, so I watched it, and it had quite the opposite effect on me. The thing about Bill Cunningham is that he seems very authentic, true to himself, and very respectful to people of all walks of life, and he would never make fun of anyone for what they were wearing, he just wanted to document it all. It was overall enjoyable, and not depressing. In fact, it made me feel even less like being a slave to fashion than I already do, but in a happy way, not in a rebellious, angry at the industry way, just like: well, I can wear whatever I want and if someone is judging me for it, it’s their problem, and I’m fine even if Bill Cunningham wouldn’t take my picture.

Read:

Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage (Alfred Lansing) – Pretty amazing story about an attempted Antarctic expedition, Shackleton and his crew were going to do the first transcontinental exploration. This is right around WWI, so they have no particularly advanced technological gear for dealing with the extreme conditions they would encounter. They didn’t make it across the continent, they didn’t even make a landing on Antarctica, but they all survived, sometimes because of luck, sometimes because of skill, sometimes because of sheer determination. There were a lot of things that I didn’t understand when the author talks about navigation and maneuvering through the sea, because I’ve never sailed on a ship and I don’t know anything about these things, but that doesn't detract from it, and it was a riveting story.

How to Be a Pirate (Cressida Cowell) – The second book from the "How to Train Your Dragon" series. Hiccup has a grand adventure looking for pirate treasure, he's learning bit by bit how to be a hero, because it doesn't come easy for him. Another fun, quick read, and no techno-babble about how to actually sail and navigate a ship.

The Red House Mystery (AA Milne) – This was a fluffy, fun mystery from the author of Winnie the Pooh. It had lots of Sherlock Holmes references and a secret passage. I’m a sucker for secret passages. I actually listened to this book, I found a website where you can download free podcasts of books, they are mostly older and not under copyright. The ones I’ve listened to so far are all very well done. If there’s a book you want to read but you don’t want to spend money on it and the library doesn’t have it, and it’s a classic, I recommend looking on this website.

I Thought It Was Just Me: Women reclaiming power and courage in a culture of shame (Brene Brown) – This book is so, so good. Brene Brown researches shame and its effects on women and this book is all about how to build resilience to shame. Here is a good video of here explaining some of her research and it is a good introduction to the book. The book goes into more detail about how to identify when what you feel is shame instead of something else, like embarrassment or anger or guilt, and how empathy is the opposite of shame. She shares a lot of stories from the women that she interviewed, as well as some from her own life. Some of these stories hit me right in the gut, and some of them didn’t seem as applicable to me, but I could definitely understand why they were painful experiences. I would recommend this book to everyone that I know. If you have ever felt in some way that you are not enough, and it worries you because you think you're the only one (I’m raising my hand over here), read this book! I would be interested to see what my husband thinks of all of the topics in it, but he probably won’t read it because of the title, he seems to be under the impression that it is weird feminist stuff, and it isn’t.

Agatha Christie,The Help, War Horse etc.

I've been meaning to blog for a while now and here I am finally writing about what I've read and seen so far this year.

I read Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie.  I've never read any of her books before and I really liked it.  It was a page turner and the end was not what I expected, but it was good.   I will be reading more Agatha Christie books this year.

I also read How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell, which pricklypear talked about in an earlier post. It was an easy book and I found it quite enjoyable. 

The last book I've read so far is The Continuous Atonement by Brad Wilcox.  I really liked this book.  I liked how the author told stories to go along with the principles he was talking about. It helped me remember and understand what he was talking about.

Now onto the new movies I've seen this year.  Well I saw The Help, which I enjoyed! And it really got me thinking about American history and racism and slavery and servitude.  I would recommend this movie.

I watched Just My Luck with Chris Pine and Lindsay Lohan.  It was okay.  It is a chick flick but it was a little too cheesy for me.  (Although I must say that Chris Pine has really beautiful blue eyes:)

The last new movie I've seen so far is War Horse. It was also only okay for me. Some of my friends really liked it, but it was a little too much for me.  Too much of what, I'm not sure.  Just something.

Well those are all of my reviews for now.

How to Train Your Dragon and Real Steel

Book: How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell

Recommended to me by Annalisa, and I LOVE the movie. I liked the book a lot, and it was different than the movie, and since it is a kid’s book it’s an easy read. Looking forward to more of the series. Whenever I read a book about dragons, I compare it to my longtime favorite dragon book, Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C Wrede. What do you think dragons would be like? Are they ferocious creatures that will destroy anything in their path? Are they nice, misunderstood creatures that just need to eat a lot? Are they intelligent? Can they talk to people? Another dragon book that I’ve liked is Dragonhaven by Robin McKinley, and I know there are others and I just can’t remember all of them. Do you like dragon stories? What are your favorites?

Movie: Real Steel

My husband figured I would watch this movie with him because it has Hugh Jackman and he might take off his shirt. So I did, and he did, and that was all good. As for the rest of the movie: Futuristic boxing robots, Human trafficking, Typical sports movie plot template, Special father-son and robot bonding. It was okay.