RIP II Wrap-Up

So it's time to bring Carl's RIP II Challenge to an end and I have to thank him for once again putting together such an incredible challenge and being such an incredible host. This challenge certainly added to my enjoyment of this Halloween season and I've read a few books that I'm sure will become a Halloween tradition. Here's what I read:

1. Dracula by Bram Stoker
2. Renfield: Slave of Dracula by Barbara Hambly
3. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
4. Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
5. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
6. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
7. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
8. The Homecoming by Ray Bradbury
9. Surrender by Sonya Hartnett
10. Edgar & Ellen: Rare Beasts by Charles Ogden
11. Edgar & Ellen: Tourist Trap by Charles Ogden
12. Wizards: Magical Tales From The Masters of Modern Fantasy
13. The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury

Click on any of the above highlighted in blue for my review. I'm sure you'll see a few repeats from the above list on my top books of 2007 list. So it's time for this one to come to a close. I'll spend the rest of my Halloween in bed watching the Halloween marathon on AMC. I've enjoyed reading through this challenge with everyone! Happy Halloween!!

Tomorrow I'll be posting my picks for a new challenge hosted by none other than Annie! It's a great one!

The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury

I decided to close the RIP II challenge with The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury after having it recommended to me by so many people. Like Debi, I can definitely see this one becoming a Halloween tradition. This is my third Bradbury for the RIP challenge and if there was more than just 6 hours left to the challenge I'd read more! There's a certain honesty to Bradbury's writing. The Halloween Tree exudes memories of Halloween as a child. I fell back into my childhood when reading this one and that chill in the air on Halloween night came alive. He did the same thing with Something Wicked This Way Comes. He truly has a gift for capturing the spirit of the fantastic.

The Halloween Tree is the tale of 9 boys and their adventure through the history of Halloween throughout the world. A group of friends gather on Halloween night, dressed in their costumes, to meet their friend Pipkin for trick-or-treating. Pipkin isn't looking right but sends his friends on their way and tells them to meet him at a house at the end of town...he'll be there soon dressed in his costume. They arrive at a house that's shroud in mystery and after knocking on the door things get strange. They discover a tree...a Halloween Tree that is lit up with hundreds of jackolanterns. A man rises from the leaves surrounding the tree...he's the owner of the house, named Mr. Moundshroud.

Pipkin finally comes running to catch up with his friends when he's swept up by a dark cloud and disappears. Mr. Moundshroud leads the remaining 8 friends on a chase through Halloween traditions celebrated the world over. There journey starts in Ancient Egypt where they witness the traditions associated with Osiris and continues all the way through Mexico's Day of the Dead. In between they visit the gargoyles of Notre Dame and the Druid god, Samhain to name a couple. They travel through all these places to find their friend, Pip, while learning about the traditions associated with their costumes along the way.

There's also a wonderful theme of friendship throughout this book and that's a theme that is seen in everything I've read of Bradbury's. He writes such heartwarming stories in the midst of such creepy stories. The ending to this book is quite endearing and well worth the read just for that.

A favorite line: "When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die." I thought that was just beautiful. A bit morbid that it should be my favorite line, but the words are just perfect.

Last but not least, the cover of this book is fantastic! May be my favorite cover of the year. If you enbiggen (stole that word from bookfool ;) the picture, the skull is actually made up of the halloween tree and the 8 boys in the book in their costumes! Genius!

I also finished Wizards, which I'm not going to do a full review on because I'm lazy :p I wasn't overly impressed with it. I loved Neil Gaiman's story, The Witch's Headstone and Orson Scott Card's story, Stonefather, was amazing, but aside from that there were 2 or 3 others that I really enjoyed but nothing else really stood out. My problem with reading anthologies is that I'm thrown off by all of the different styles of writing. If I'm reading one author's anthology, that's fine because I can grow accustomed to their style. But with these anthologies, the style changes from story to story and I lose interest and the stories aren't long enough for me to really gain interest. Unless they're really good, which a few were. With Gaiman and Card, I was familiar with their styles, so those I enjoyed.

Anyway, The Halloween Tree...Read it!

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

I love the feeling of picking up a book, getting lost in its pages, and actually being transported into it's world; smelling it's smells, feeling the weather, seeing the sights, feeling the goosebumps. I felt like a child again when I was reading Something Wicked This Way Comes. Remember the creepiness of October as a child? Can you recall the strange attraction to a house of mirrors? There aren't many freak shows around these days, but as a child the unknown and the bizarre was always a little scary because it was new...We still weren't convinced that monsters didn't exist. And while we grow out of that as we grow older, we remember those feelings which allows for the pleasure of October and allows for a little bit of fear to become fun as an adult. Something Wicked This Way Comes was fun!

This is Ray Bradbury's telling of the tale of two young boys who are the best of friends, Jim and Will. Jim and Will have always done everything together and have shared a wonderful friendship. They are next door neighbors and are known to sneak out together to go on adventures. Will's father is another character that we get to know throughout the book. Will's father is a janitor at the local library and fathered Will at an older age and is bothered by that now that he is an older parent.

One night in October, Jim, Will, and Will's father hear carnival music playing. Carnivals usually come in the summer and it's odd that one should be coming now. But there are pieces of paper that are found that advertise that a carnival is in fact arriving. Jim and Will sneak out to investigate and discover one of the oddest and creepiest carnivals they have seen and it's proprietor is a man called Mr. Dark aka The Illustrated Man, who is covered in tattoos. Jim and Will first witness something strange in the carnival when one of their teachers goes through a bizarre hall of mirrors and comes out of it in a different state. Things really take a turn for the worst when they witness the calliope in the center of the carnival...the source of the strange music that beckoned them to the carnival. What they witness is a horrific scene that catapults them into a game of cat and mouse against the sinister Mr. Dark and his band of carnival freaks.

This was a perfect October read, perfect for the RIP challenge, and my first read for the Seconds Challenge! My first Bradbury was Fahrenheit 451, which I loved, but this one was so much better! There will definitely be a third Bradbury reading for me...thinking about Dandelion Wine as I've heard great things about that one. Bradbury's writing was just beautiful in this book. I thought to myself, you could just turn to any page in this book and find a perfect passage, so I did just that...flipped to a random page and found the first sentence. Here it is: "The night was sweet with the dust of autumn leaves that smelled as if the fine sands of ancient Egypt were drifting to dunes beyond the town." Now come on...how many books can you open to a random page and find a quote like that!

Surrender by Sonya Hartnett

Ok...it was bound to happen after the string of 5 star reviews I've had. Let's talk about Surrender. I've had this book sitting patiently on my shelf for awhile and I've been anxiously awaiting it. It's won numerous awards and I'm not saying that it's not deserving of them. The book is absolutely beautifully written. Hartnett certainly has a gift when it comes to writing, and her story is a smart one. Here's my problem...I can't remember the time that I've read a more depressing story! I don't mind depressing novels at all. In fact, as messed up as it may sound, I usually prefer them. But this is the most dreary, without hope, not a single ray of light novel that I have read in a while.

The book begins with our main character Anwell, who later takes on the name Gabriel (after the archangel), on his deathbed at the age of 20. To show the beauty of her words, I give you the opening passage:

"I am dying: it's a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of a cello: dying. But the sound of it is the only beautiful thing about it."

And from this point, the novel gets progressively MORE dreary as Anwell tells the story of his short 20 years and what led up to his current state. Anwell comes from an abusive home and there is something that he has done in his past that is a constant haunt to him...something that is normally construed as evil, but was done in a moment of panic by a boy who is a good natured soul. Anwell meets a boy named Finnigan one day and forms a friendship based on a pact: Anwell will do only good, Finnigan will do only evil. This is Anwell's chance at redemption for his past. Soon, a string of arson attacks plagues the town that Anwell lives in and he realizes how dangerous his new friend is. Anwell's only other friend is his dog, Surrender, and I have to leave the rest of the plot synopsis here as the tale would be given away to say more.

You can see why I was drawn to this story. I still maintain that it's a well written novel, a powerful and memorable story, a heartbreaking story, and deserving of it's praise. But it left me feeling so down and there was never really a moment in the book where there was any ray of light for this character. As you can probably tell, this novel deals with mental illness and of course I have a special place for characters whose lives are deeply affected by that. I think that's what was most disturbing for me...no redemption was offered. I understand that many people with mental illness do indeed suffer every day, but this was just such a bleak scenario where things just got worse and worse. As a counselor, I'd like to look towards a ray of light and trying to find hope.

So there it is...has anyone else read this one? I'd be curious to hear other people's thoughts on it.

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

What's left to say about Neil Gaiman? There won't be any surprises here. Fragile Things is another masterpiece by the master of modern fantasy. For those who don't know, Fragile Things is another collection of Neil Gaiman's short fiction and poetry. This is my second journey into his short stories this year. My first was with his book, Smoke and Mirrors which I adored. In fact, I'd place Smoke and Mirrors higher on my list of favorite Gaiman books than Fragile Things. This isn't to say that the stories in Fragile Things weren't superb, I just enjoyed the ones in Smoke and Mirrors even more.

But this review is focusing on Fragile Things! Once again, he starts off the book with a wonderful introduction in which he gives some background on each one of the stories and poems in the book which I think is so cool. It adds a special little touch to each story to know why it was written or the inspiration for it..."lagniappe" as we call it in New Orleans. For Smoke and Mirrors I gave detailed descriptions for each story that I enjoyed, and I'm not going to do that for this one, because this review would be ridiculously long. But I really did enjoy every story in this book! Not all of them were favorites, but each one was an enjoyable read.

Gaiman's main gift is that his stories are so unique. They aren't something that you've heard before. Even his retelling of classic tales become brand new. He's a writer who can have the month of October tell a story, can personify an albums worth of Tori Amos songs, can perfectly describe the atmosphere of New Orleans on a muggy night, can create a beautiful poem that you want stenciled onto your walls, tell countless stories that all haunt and remain vivid, and best of all they're all packaged neatly into one beautiful book with a novella at the end that revisits Shadow from my favorite novel of his, American Gods.

I don't do well with short stories usually, but Gaiman makes anything work. I just love reading his short stories and hope that we have more collections to see from him in the future...though of course some more novels would be nice too. I'm anxiously awaiting the Graveyard Book now! So guess what...this actually concludes the RIP challenge for me! Well, it concludes my official reads. I signed up for 6 official reads, so I'm done my obligation. Now, I'm reading just for fun and will continue to read nothing but bonus RIP reads for the rest of the month of October!

I Wait All Year For This

Happy October Everyone! Yes, it's a holiday in my little world. October has always been my favorite month and just the name of the month itself is beautiful. It brings to mind warm colors and a chill in the air, pumpkin spice lattes and old tattered books, Tim Burton movies and Tori Amos. Everything in it's right place. This year has been made extra special by two new additions to the usual mix. The first is the RIP Challenge which I'm truly loving. Not only has my reading been focused on the eerie and gothic, but I've also penned a couple of tiny stories in the horror vein. Secondly, Lisa Snellings-Clark has kicked off her Play In The Dark sale and.....WOW! It's just amazing. Go see for yourself. Keep checking as she has said on her blog that she will continue to add things over the next few days. I definitely won't be able to afford everything that I want, but I did manage to pick up a skeleton poppet already!

So for the rest of the month, I will continue my October traditions of surrounding myself with as many gaudy Halloween decorations as I can find, watching as many cheesy horror movies as I can, being outdoors as much as possible to enjoy the Fall weather (whenever it gets here), drowning in Starbucks' Pumpkin Spice Lattes, and of course...reading as many "October books" as possible. And after this comes Thanksgiving and Christmas! The end of the year is always my favorite...geesh, it's the end of the year!

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

I've read so many wonderful books by first time novelists this year, and The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield will certainly join the ranks of Audrey Niffenegger and Elizabeth Kostova. This is another one of those unread treasures that has been sitting on my shelf and it makes me wonder what other visionary treats lie there in waiting.

The Thirteenth Tale is a prime example of storytelling at it's top form. Margaret Lea is a young woman who works at her father's bookshop which specializes in rare and antiquarian books. She's been surrounded by books throughout her life and has grown comfortable with the classics such as Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, The Woman in White, etc. and has shied away from more contemporary literature. That is, until she is summonsed by Vida Winter, a top selling novelist with a mysterious past who has requested that Margaret record the story of her life. Margaret is a bit leary of the commission, but accepts and finds that she must face her own ghosts while recording the ghosts of Ms. Winter's past - a past that reveals that the truth is often stranger than fiction.

There are so many things that I loved about this book. The characters are wonderful. Vida Winter is someone that I wish truly existed just so that I could sit in her library in front of her fireplace and listen to her tell me her stories. But of course, the wonderful Diane Setterfield, who wrote Vida Winter's character does exist ;) The storytelling aspect of this novel was just perfect. There wasn't a single moment in the novel when I was bored. There's constantly a hook to grab you and the story is always appealing.

I haven't read Daniel Wallace's book, Big Fish, but much of this novel reminded of a gothic version of the film. It's a tale of a past that's truly bizarre, yet grounded in fact. This novel could easily be translated to the big screen and make a beautiful film by the way. Setterfield paints a very vivid picture in her descriptions of the landscapes, her characters appearances, the libraries, etc.

I'm so glad that I've finally joined the other half of the world that's read this book! I've been saying this a lot lately, but here's another author that I really look forward to following throughout her career. Setterfield certainly has a promising future ahead of her if she continues to turn out novels that deliver as well as this one did.

I leave you with a truly devilish passage from the lips of Vida Winter that's not essential to the plot, but I had an evil grin on my face during this particularly RIP-ish scene:

"Picture a conveyor belt, a huge conveyor belt, and at the end of it a massive furnace. And on the conveyor belt are books. Every copy in the world of every book you've ever loved. All lined up. Jane Eyre. Villette. the Woman in White...Middlemarch. And imagine a lever with two labels, On and Off. At the moment the lever is off. And next to it is a human being with his hand on the lever. About to turn it on. And you can stop it. You have a gun in your hand. All you have to do is pull the trigger. What do you do?"


Other Reviews:

Chris (Book A Rama)

Heart -Shaped Box by Joe Hill

So here's my first foray away from vampires for the RIP challenge, and I'd say that overall it was a successful voyage. Heart-Shaped Box will most probably not make it onto the list of favorite books of the year, but it's a hell of a debut novel for Joe Hill. The book didn't start off all that great for me. It centers around a rock star who is a collector of dark and occult-like objects such as sketches of the seven dwarfs drawn by John Wayne Gacy and a smut film; plays death metal music, and dates goth chicks. So it inherently had a few aspects too it that were just a bit too cliche for my taste while the story was being set up. They were mostly too cliche for my taste because I was a part of this culture as a teen and in my early college days and I guess I'm still there at heart...just don't dress the part. It was just a bit overdone. But once Hill got comfortable with his story and the whole goth, shock thing was dropped and we met our real, vulnerable characters, I really enjoyed the rest of the ride.

Heart-Shaped Box is the story of a rock star with a past. Jude Coyne has lived a life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Needless to say he's been with many women throughout his career and has taken to naming some of them after the states that he met them in. His current live-in girlfriend is Georgia and Jude's found more comfort in her than he's found in anyone else in awhile. His only other true relationships are with his two German Shepperds. He hasn't spoken with his father in over 30 years after suffering a horrible childhood with him, two of his best friends and former band mates are dead, and his only other friend is his assistant, but he's more of a secretary than a friend.

So here's the RIP part...As I mentioned before, Jude's a collector of all things macabre and can't turn down an offer of something new to add to his collection. The assistant friend mentioned above one day finds a suit for sale on an eBay-like auction site. Here's the catch - the suit belongs to a dead man who has been haunting the house that it occupies. The auction says that the man never got to wear this suit in his earthly life and will follow the suit wherever it goes. Jude buys the suit for $1000, essentially buying a ghost to add to his collection. Well, Jude gets his ghost. The suit arrives in a black heart-shaped box. Shortly after Jude awakens at night to find a man sitting in his hallway wearing the suit with his eyes scribbled out and swinging a razor blade on a chain. But there's more to the ghost than Jude knows and both his life and Georgia's is at stake...as the cover says "sooner or later the dead catch up..."

I've heard plenty of people say that this novel scared the crap out of them and kept them up all night. I can't say that it did that for me, but that's nothing against the author. I'm rarely truly freaked out by books. This book did have my heart pounding with suspense at certain parts and I was definitely flying through some pages. I tend to not scare easily though. The only things that truly frighten me are "jump out at you" moments, so movies and haunted houses will do the trick! Now there were scenes in this novel that repulsed me (and I guess repulsion is a cousin of fear) and be warned that there are topics that arise in this book that are quite disturbing. But I think that Hill handled everything well, and I have to say that I will be reading Mr. Hill's next novel whenever it is published. I know that he has a collection of short stories coming out soon called 20th Century Ghosts and it is already available in the UK!

*Oh, and a quick note totally unrelated, Lisa Snellings-Clark has Orange Poppets Available!

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

The Historian is one whopper of a book, but it's worth every page and every word. It is the haunting tale of a young woman, a historian, who one day finds a book and some letters on the shelf of her father's library. The book is very old and is blank, except for a woodcut image in the middle of a dragon and the word "Drakulya". She asks her father about the book and the letters and Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian unfolds.

Paul, the narrator's father who is also a historian, one day discovers the previously mentioned book and consults his dissertation adviser, Professor Rossi about it. He learns that his professor has also been "given" one of these mysterious books and has done some extensive research on it. Danger lies in the acquiring of these books. Rossi's research has taught him that Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula, still walks among us as a vampire. Shortly after revealing this to Paul, Rossi disappears. Paul digs deeper and deeper into the Dracula legend and history and begins to learn that there is more truth than myth to vampires. Along the way, he meets Helen, an anthropologist from Romania who is also interested in vampires and Dracula. Paul leaves America to find Rossi as he is convinced that the book leaves a clue as to his whereabouts and Helen joins him in his travels.

The above paragraph has happened in the past, but takes up the majority of the book. It is told through a very long letter that the narrator's father has written her. The narrator herself is on her own hunt. She certainly has her own interest in the hunt for Dracula, but she is hunting for more knowledge on her father's mysterious past, and even more so, she is hunting for the mother that she never knew.

The Historian hits all the right marks. It's written very well and has a very gothic feel to it. It was an extremely creepy book and the atmosphere was just perfect...old books left in dark places, empty libraries at night, old gothic buildings with people lurking in the shadows, and all of the scenes in Turkey, Hungary, and Romania were just perfect. In fact, I've never really considered wanting to visit any of these places until Kostova wrote about them and some of the amazing architecture, churches, cafes, and festivals in these countries.

I loved Kostova's characters...or loved to hate some of them. Either way, she knows how to create an interesting character. The love story between Paul and Helen was remarkable and something that I cherished and enjoyed every time I got a peek at it. I wished that I could've spent a little more time with the narrator of the book, and that is one of my only criticisms of the novel...that I didn't get to know her better. The different characters that Paul and Helen meet along the way that help them in their journey were wonderful -Rossi, Turgut, and Stoichev were all classic old scholars whom I really enjoyed and would love to sit down with and have a cup of tea and study their libraries.

For me, this novel was everything that a horror novel should be. The subject matter is certainly there - vampires, more specifically, the grand-daddy of all vampires, Dracula. There's a constant sense of foreboding, mystery, shadows lurking in the darkness, being a step away from a dark discovery. The best way to describe the book is that it is a modern gothic, mystery novel. Some may say that things fall into place a little too easily in this one...and at times they do, but it's fiction...and in fiction, that's just fine with me. Kostova has created a riveting novel that kept me up many nights because I just couldn't put it down. I can't wait to see what she does with the rest of her career!

Renfield: Slave of Dracula by Barbara Hambly

I went into this book not expecting too much to be honest. I knew that it was a spin-off of Dracula focusing on Renfield, of course, and imagined it to be some sort of horrific, crazed lunatic badly done insult to Bram Stoker that I would read anyway just for fun....at least the cover was really cool! I couldn't have been more wrong! It was a wonderful book!

Renfield: Slave of Dracula is written with the utmost respect for Bram Stoker's original work. Barbara Hambly did a remarkable job with this book. The book's main focus is, of course, the character of Renfield, resident of Dr. Seward's asylum who consumes life in the form of spiders and flies in the hopes of strengthening his own. Renfield comes to have visions and meetings with Dracula and quite literally becomes a slave of the mind to him calling him "Master."

Hambly retells Bram Stoker's tale through the eye's of Renfield with this book and takes absolutely no liberties with Stoker's original story, which made me so happy! She certainly adds things that "weren't seen" in Stoker's original so that she does have her own novel, but when dealing with his own story, she changes nothing. The story is told through journal's written by Renfield from his cell that often start with an insect count, i.e.: "20 May 7 flies, 3 spiders", letters from Renfield to his wife and child, original passages from Stoker's Dracula, and through a third person narrative.

Hambly has also worked in an incredible story involving the three vampire women that live in Dracula's castle that I loved. I'm not going to talk about it too much because I don't want to give much away, but one of the women by the name of Nomie was actually quite a beautiful character and one that I sympathized with quite a bit.

There is one huge twist in the middle of the book that really makes this one her own. She picks up Renfield's story where Stoker ended it and I'm sure you can guess the basics of how she may have been able to do that. But I'll say no more, which really kills me because this is where we find out all kinds of cool stuff about Renfield. But of course it's all stuff that Hambly made up, not Stoker...but she really did a great job with it.

Overall, I really, really enjoyed this book. It was handled perfectly. I was very leary about this one and in the wrong hands it could've been a travesty. But you can tell that Hambly has the utmost respect for Bram Stoker. What she has added to the character of Renfield fits well with what we knew of him from Dracula and the story that she creates is a fascinating one! Highly recommended for fans of this character! If you're interested, the hardcover is available through Amazon at a bargain book price of $4.79. You can get to it by clicking the link above.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Books like Bram Stoker's Dracula become so ingrained into our culture that we often let them slip by without ever reading them, assuming that we know what they're all about. There are many books that I've done this with. I'm guilty of making a comment on Nymeth's recent review of Dr. Jekkyl and Mr. Hyde about most probably not reading it because "I know the story." After reading Dracula, I think I'm going to make a special effort to go out and read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
I did know the basic story of Dracula, but it was so much more detailed than what I knew and told in such a beautiful language. It's a true gothic masterpiece, truly a work of literature. I never knew that it was told in the form of journal entries, telegrams, and letters. I didn't know a few of the characters that are in the book, and I certainly didn't know how gifted Stoker was as a writer.

It's amazing how these works of horror have lived on in our culture and have moved from a work of minor fiction in it's origins into a major piece of mythology today. The character of Dracula has morphed into something that I'm sure Stoker could've never imagined. I only wish that everyone actually knew Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula as well as they know the novel's namesake character. The story of Lucy Westenra is truly one of the most horrific and tragic stories and one that I would've never known had I never read this book. Mina Harker's slow battle with Dracula's bite is one of the most suspenseful plot lines that I've read and I can't even imagine being her husband, Jonathan Harker!

Then there are characters like the delightfully creepy and insane Renfield...the subject of my next RIP book. There is the keeper of the sanitarium where Renfield lives and the doctor who seeks Lucy's hand and treats her, Dr. Seward, and then there is of course the wonderful Dr. Van Helsing.

I'm glad to have finally read this one, and it's the perfect kick off to the RIP Challenge! It will set the mood nicely for the next two months. The next two books will continue the Dracula theme. Next up is Renfield: Slave of Dracula by Barbara Hambly, which focuses on our spider and fly eating friend; and then, of course, is The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova.

The Goings-On Of Life

It's been a few days since I've posted here, so I figured it's time for an update! My weekend with Megan was great :) We made the most of it and managed to make a 2 day trip feel like much more. I think we got a total of about 6 hours of sleep the whole weekend. But I'm all recovered now. The plan is for her to come down for a real trip in a couple of weeks and she'll probably stay for about a week. The bed feels empty again now, and I'll have to adjust to that, but I'm left with a smile on my face from our visit.The 10:4 challenge officially ended a couple of days ago, and unfortunately I did not meet the 10 pound goal, but I'm still proud of myself. I lost 8.6 pounds, which is more than I've done in quite some time! In fact, since Katrina (now a little over 2 years) all I've done is gain weight. So to lose any weight at all is awesome. Carl has given me a chance to redeem myself though the RIP5 Challenge! This one is to lose 5 pounds by October 31st. Weight now is 187.4 pounds. So the goal is 182.4 pounds by October 31st. The 10:4 challenge did lead to some healthy changes for me. I've started drinking a lot more water and juice instead of cokes all the time. I've also cut back on the fast food, though I could definitely cut back some more still :/ In fact, if I just stopped eating fast food all together for these 2 months, I know I'd lose the 5 pounds...but I know I won't, so I'm not going to set unrealistic goals. I'm just going to be more conscientious than I've been!

The RIP Challenge has been so much fun, and it's only day 4! I kicked it off with Rob Zombie's Halloween on Saturday. I absolutely loved it! Halloween is probably my favorite classic slasher flick. Halloween and Halloween II are both excellent in my book. I'm even a big fan of 4 & 5. I'm also a huge fan of Rob Zombie's films. House of 1000 Corpses and The Devils Rejects are some of my favorite horror movies since the 70's and early 80's. When I heard he was doing Halloween, I got so excited and it was better than I expected. Warning! This film is not appropriate for those who are easily offended or do not like gore. I saw plenty of people who brought their children, I guess expecting just another horror movie (not knowing anything about Rob Zombie obviously), and they all walked out after the first 5 minutes of dialogue. Zombie did a great job with this film. The first half explains the origins of Michael Myers...the creation of a serial killer, his home life, his mental illness (some sort of dissociative disorder), and makes the movie believable...instead of just some supernatural horror movie killer, he's human...we actually feel for him, for the horrible childhood he has and for his illness. The second part of the movie is an almost exact replication of the original Halloween, but with a few twists, modernized, and with the more believable background story that we now know. I loved it!Just in time to be the mascot of the RIP challenge, I received my little purple poppet in the mail today :D He (I've decided it's a boy) is very cool and came with one of these little hands that I've been seeing and have been wanting! Here he is posing with Dracula that I have really been enjoying. It's such an atmospheric read, and even though it's hot as hell in New Orleans right now, it's managed to fool my brain into believing that it's Fall.

Tomorrow is a day of all things job related. I have a meeting with my licensure supervisor in the morning. She sounds really sweet over the phone, so I'm looking forward to meeting her. Then I have to start all of the paperwork and do the drug test and all of that fun stuff. My very temporary start date is September 24th, but that's subject to change. It all depends on paperwork going smoothly and my licensure paperwork being filed quickly...which in Louisiana post-Katrina..."quickly" isn't a word that's heard very often.

I missed short story Sunday this past weekend, so I'll be playing catch up next weekend. Regular blogs should now be back on the schedule.

A Couple Of Newbery Reviews

I've been falling behind on a couple of reviews, so here are two quick ones for two books that I loved reading for the Newbery challenge.

The first was Lois Lowry's, The Giver. The Giver is a dystopian novel about a brave new world that cherishes "sameness" There is no color in the world, there are no true feelings, there is no true love. Families are manufactured and every aspect of life is planned from the day you are born, in fact, from the moment you are conceived; seeing as each member of the community is assigned a job at the age of 12, and one of those jobs is "birth mother," a position that is looked poorly upon.

Jonas is assigned the title of Receiver of Memories, a title that is given only once every few generations. The job of the receiver of memories is to be the only person who remembers humanity as we know it today. The receiver of memories is the only person in the community who will ever know what the word "snow" means, what the word "love" means, what the word "war" means. He is given these memories by The Giver, the former receiver of memories. Jonas actually experiences each memory when The Giver lays his hands on his back and transmits the memory. The training is often brutal and painful. Throughout his training, Jonas realizes how animalistic and cold humanity has actually become and he wishes to restore love and compassion back to society.

I absolutely loved The Giver and wish I would've read it earlier in life. I certainly plan on reading more of Lowry's work. My next book of her's may be Gossamer after reading Nicola's wonderful review of that book for the RIP challenge! Sounds like a great one.

I also finished Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson today. I had read this one ages ago when I was much younger, and I remember loving it then. I remember it being such a magical book to me and relating perfectly to Jess and Leslie's kingdom. It reminded me of me and my cousin when we used to build forts outside made out of whatever wood that we could find, and to us, it would be a real battle zone. Or me and my sister would make tents in the house with the kitchen chairs and a sheet and it would be a little magical place.

So, I read this book today, years later, and what do you know, I fell right back into that place. I suspect that this will always be a special book to me. It's a comfort book. A book that I can fall into and relate to. But it's such a tragic book. No matter how many times I read it, this book will always choke me up. I won't talk about why, but for those who have read the book, I'm sure you understand.

I've yet to see the movie, because I wanted to refresh myself on the book first, but now that I've reread it, I think I'm just going to go out and buy it! I've heard nothing but good stuff about it and am really looking forward to seeing this book as a film. And I'm just thinking, this is also my first read for the Cardathon Challenge...cool!

OK, all caught up! Now, on to the RIP Challenge with Dracula!!! Yay!

And guess what?! Megan's coming in town!!! But only for a day :( But that's better than nothing. A friend of hers is coming to pick up another friend and bring him back to Texas, so he asked her if she wanted to take a ride. So I get to see her for a day. So I'll probably disappear from blogging for the next couple of days. Might be here tomorrow, but Sunday will most probably be a no show ;) Enjoy your weekend everyone!

A Winner, Short Story Sunday, And Purple Poppets!

Let's take care of business first! It's time to pick a winner for the book giveaway for The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo. So without further ado, the winner is BECKY of Becky's Book Reviews (one of her many blogs ;). Becky's very cool and I'm happy to send this book her way. She's an Orson Scott Card fan, which automatically makes her one hip chick in my book! Send me the address you want the book sent to, Becky and I'll ship it out to you. My email is chrisa511 at gmail dot com.

I guess today officially kicked off the RIP Challenge for me with Short Story Sunday. I read the first two stories in the Wizards anthology which were Neil Gaiman's The Witch's Headstone and Garth Nix's Holly and Iron. Nix's story was a bit disappointing. It was a high fantasy story told in a short story format which was it's main problem. Pretty cool concept...2 kingdoms battling for a crown, one uses "holly" magic, the other uses "iron" magic, main character can use a bit of both, but the problem was that I really just didn't care about the characters. I think the story was just too big to fit into 30 pages. This story may have worked better as a novel. Two major characters died in the story, and you can tell that it was supposed to be an emotional scene, but it wasn't, because I as a reader wasn't attached...I may have been though if he would've introduced us to the characters a bit more. And I know that Nix is capable of doing this as I LOVED his Abhorsen trilogy. I'd like to see this story told in a longer format, I really think it has potential.

Gaiman's story on the hand was excellent! It's the story of a boy named Bod (short for Nobody) who lives in a graveyard and is raised by the spirits of those who have passed on. He meets the ghost of a witch who was buried in a potter's field with no headstone. Bod feels bad for the witch for not having a headstone and decides to leave the graveyard after finding an item that may be worth some money in the hopes of buying her one. This story is actually the first chapter of Gaiman's future book, The Graveyard Book, and I am super excited about this one now! The latest news from his blog was that he had begun typing it from the written draft...so progress is being made!

And finally, I predicted in a previous post that it was going to happen! If you let the red and blue poppets hang out together, well....purple poppets will eventually come along, and it seems that they have. Lisa Snellings-Clark has some very cool items up on eBay right now including Little Purple Poppets! I've already bought one for myself of course ;) There are 6 left as of this post, but I'm sure she'll post more if those sell out, so keep checking if you want one. They're quite cool!

Stardust, Short Story Sunday, And A Sad Article

I finally made it out to see Stardust tonight and I was so pleased with it! I can't wait for the DVD release of this movie now and I came home wanting to dive right back into the novel for the second time this year. The movie started out a bit rocky for me. It took me a little while to get out of critic mode. My main complaints were with the beginning of the movie in that it was too rushed, the every 9 years fair didn't exist (it was instead just a part of "Stormhold"), and all of Faerie became known as simply Stormhold...but I can overlook that with how wonderful the rest of the movie was done. Sure there were some other parts that weren't exactly like the book, but what movie is?

The casting was absolutely wonderful! Claire Daines as Yvaine was a perfect fit. She played the part wonderfully and I think they did a terrific job with translating her character onto the screen. Michelle Pfeifer deserves a nomination for her portrayal as Lamia. She did such an amazing job and I so looked forward to her screen time. Her final battle was superb. Charlie Cox as Trist(r)an was another great casting decision. This guy did such a great job with the part. Perfectly done. And Deniro...I was so leary about what they were doing with Captain Shakespeare, but it was....well, fabulous.

The ending, which I won't talk about, was totally different from the book...well not totally, but yes totally, you'll just have to see for yourself. But it worked for the movie version. I wish that they would have filmed the book ending as well to put on the DVD, but Neil has already said on his blog that they did not :(

All in all, I was very pleased with the movie, the special effects were amazing, the acting was top notch, and the story...well it's Gaiman! Entertainment at it's best. I loved it. For fans of the book, as hard as it is, go into it realizing that no book is going to translate perfectly to the screen...some changes are going to have to be made for the wider audience and for times sake. Just pretend that Peter Jackson didn't do such a good job with Lord of the Rings :p

Next topic: I've decided that I'm still adding stuff to the RIP Challenge! I'm also going to take up the additional peril of Short Story Sunday. For this peril, I'm going to be imbibing in the Wizards collection, which contains 18 stories by some amazing authors. This will work out nicely with 2 stories per Sunday, so I think I'm going to start that this Sunday! And it begins with the first chapter of Neil Gaiman's forthcoming The Graveyard Book!

And finally, I wanted to point everyone to this very disappointing article on CNN's website that you may have seen floating around on other people's blogs. It's an article about the reading habits of Americans. According to the article, "One in four Americans read no books last year". I couldn't believe that! That's so sad. The whole article is sad really. I sort of surround myself in this little book blogging bubble where everyone reads and forget how small of a chunk of the population we really are. It's unfortunate that more of us don't read. The "typical reader" of America....the person who actually does read, still only reads 4 books a year. Which I'm not complaining about, that's still wonderful! But it's so sad how unpopular reading has become. So I really, honestly want to extend my heartfelt thanks to everyone out there who does sponsor these reading challenges, or works as a librarian, or works in a bookstore, or writes, or reads, or recommends a book to a friend. It's important to keep books out there and to keep those minds working!

OK, I'm off my high horse :p

It's RIP Challenge Time!!!!

I can't tell you how much I've been looking forward to Carl's RIP Challenge!! I'm so psyched about this one. "Halloween time" has always been my favorite time of the year and I have so many books that go along with it. Gothic/Horror/Dark Fantasy is one of my favorite genres as well. It's probably the genre that I've been reading the longest, starting with Clive Barker and Anne Rice, 2 authors that I will be revisiting with old reads in this challenge. I'm looking forward to everyone else's lists and to all of the great conversation that will be going on in blogland about all of these great books :D

I've set aside 20 books for this challenge....I know, yikes! I'm officially signing up for Peril the first, which is to read four books of any length, though I'm also reading two rather chunky books and as far as additional perils go, I have Dracula and Fragile Things on the list too. I seriously doubt that I'll get through 20 books in 2 months, but I'm officially committing to 6 and would REALLY like to read the other 14 during this time of the year. So I'm going to try my damndest. Here they are:

Official Reads
1. Dracula by Bram Stoker
2. Renfield: Slave of Dracula by Barbara Hambly
3. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
4. Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill
5. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
6. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
Bonus Reads
7. Something Wicked This Was Comes by Ray Bradbury
8. The Witching Hour by Anne Rice
9. The Homecoming by Ray Bradbury
10. Whispers by Dean Koontz
11. I'll be Watching You by Charles de Lint
12. Blaze by Richard Bachman AKA Stephen King
13. Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Cherie Priest
14. Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving
15. Currency of Souls by Kealan Patrick Burke
16. A Soul In A Bottle by Tim Powers
17. Thief of Always by Clive Barker
18. Surrender by Sonya Hartnett
19. Tamsin by Peter Beagle
20. Storm Front by Jim Butcher

So there it is. Can't wait til September 1st to get started on these! Until then, I'll try to get caught up on all of my other challenges!

'Tis Mine At Last!

Out of boredom tonight, I decided to go to Barnes and Noble...big surprise there, right? I meandered my way over to the sci-fi/fantasy section (another big surprise there) and what do my eyes fall upon but the new hardcover Stardust! I am in love and I have a new favorite book! I'm going to have to disagree with Carl and Jeff here, but I have my reasons. I do agree that the pages are a bit thin and the quality could've been a bit better. I think the main reason I disagree though is because I've never owned an illustrated version of Stardust! With my B&N discount card, I got $8 off too, so I only paid $32...not much more than the soft cover version. However, I can understand how if you already own the $30 soft cover version you would be disappointed with this one. With that being said, here's why I wasn't disappointed being an illustrated Stardust virgin:

This book is gorgeous. I can't stop looking at it. The cover is beautiful as you can see and the picture doesn't even begin to do it justice. It's presented very well. The end pages are amazing. The detail that Charles Vess puts into his work never ceases to amaze me. I could stare at his work for hours. I can see now that this novel was indeed meant to be read as an illustrated novel and I will always recommend it to be read as one in the future. So beautiful.

I loved the extras in the back of the book. I agree that there could've been a bit more, but I loved what was there. The first is the original proposal that Gaiman and Vess wrote up and it's really neat! Gaiman wrote an updated note at the end commenting on how different the novel ended up being from what he originally perceived it to be and apparently Croup and Vandemar of Neverwhere fame were originally slated to be in Stardust! Interesting fact.

Next up are Vess' original sketches in progress for the four covers of the original comic book form releases of the novel. These were neat, but nothing overly exciting. I recently acquired a print of the cover for the third book from the San Diego Comic Con through eBay and I love it! Plan on getting that one framed.

And the next couple of sections, I absolutely love. There are six newly revealed scenes from Stardust and some more preliminary sketches that Vess did. My favorite new painting that Vess included is one of Yvaine singing with her sisters surrounded by faerie folk. Absolutely beautiful. There are also a couple of sketches for an unwritten Stardust sequel! As Vess says, there is no mention of when and if this will happen, but the idea is out there, and a couple of sketches have been done. And then there are 4 busts and the sculpture of Yvaine that's been shown on his website that should be released around the time of the movie.

I'm so happy with this purchase and I'm sure that I'll be staring at this book for days. Megan will surely be sick of me pointing out every little detail to her while I'm in Texas as I tend to do with things like this ;) Though she's a Gaiman fan too, so she should appreciate it!

I also picked up three other books while I was there! On Carl's recommendation and wonderful review, I had to get Annette Curtis Klause's Freaks: Alive, on the Inside. As he said, the cover is amazing. Looking forward to this one. Sounds like my kind of book. Because of Winn-Dixie should feed my Kate DiCamillo addiction for now as they still didn't have any copies of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. And finally, I picked up Bram Stoker's Dracula for the R.I.P. Challenge. B&N had all of there Classics on sale for 30% off, plus members get the extra 10% off. B&N does a great job with their hardcover editions of classics and I've always thought that they were a steal at $7.95...with the discount, it came out to only $5! Can't beat that.

Anyone else get any good books lately?