Tag Archives: real world

Book Review: Beauty by Robin McKinley

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Hello again, Fluffsters! Happy Friday! I hope you had a wonderful Fourth of July.

Today, I’m once again going to be reviewing a book. I’m even repeating an author from earlier this week…

Beauty, by Robin McKinley (Spoiler Alert)

I really enjoyed Beauty. I’d give it probably a 17/20. It’s more of a young adult book, similar to Spindle’s End. It’s not nearly as long as Spindle’s End, though; it’s only about 250 pages. (Spindle’s End was a bit more than 400.)

As you may have guessed from the name, this is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. It’s in the more traditional vein with a few twists, though, rather than the Disnified version.

Setting.

Beauty, whose real name is Honour, has a family: Her father and two sisters. Beauty gets her nickname when she’s a lot younger. She considers it an unfortunate nickname, since she is not considered a great beauty of the land. Her sisters are lovely; she isn’t, per say. They start off as a wealthy merchant family. Within the first chapter, the oldest daughter and the love of her life are engaged, but the entire family loses its wealth. They all decide move to where the two lovebirds will be living: a small town bordered by a magical forest.

The father goes away on a trip. On his way back home, he stops by a mysterious castle. He is waited on by the invisible servants and shown every courtesy. Only when he tries to pick a single rose for Beauty, as she requested he bring her, does the Beast first appear. The Beast then offers a trade: The perpetual companionship of one of the father’s daughters in exchange for his life. The father has a week. Beauty learns of this deal, and takes it. This transfers the setting to the castle.

The castle itself is a wonderfully imaginative location. It too is full of magic. Servants cannot be seen, and a library has every book ever written (in the past and in the future) in the castle.

Characters

Beauty. Beauty is a stubborn girl who loves reading and horses. She is also absolutely devoted to her family.

The Beast. The Beast is simultaneously a beast and a gentleman. He shows Beauty every courtesy, but he does require her to stay with him, as they agreed. He does have a softer side. After the Beast sent the father on his way, he magically filled the father’s saddlebags with all sorts of valuable objects the daughters jokingly asked for. The Beast also uses his magic to help a garden grow.

The family. The family are all very nice, very likeable people.

Villagers. The villagers are also likeable. There is no “Gaston” element. Granted, the villagers are all wary of the monster in the woods, but there aren’t any over-the-top egocentric xenophobes like Disney’s Gaston.

You actually used the words “Egocentric” and “Xenophobe”? I’m impressed, Webmaster!

… Uh, thanks, Fluffy!

As I was saying. All the characters are well written and interesting people. The invisible servants in the palace even have their own personalities.

Overall

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It’s a typical plot, but in a different setting. I like the common use of magic, and I really like the library with Every Book Written in it. The characters are also very real.

Overall, I highly recommend this retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

Fourth of July Book Review: American Fairy Tales by Baum

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Hello, Fluffsters! Happy Thursday! And happy Fourth of July, to all my fellow Americans!

In honor of the day, and the theme of the week, I’m going to be reviewing a slightly older book:

American Fairy Tales by L. Frank Baum (Spoiler Alert)

(Yes, the same L. Frank Baum who wrote Wizard of Oz, etc. )

American Fairy Tales is a collection, well, fairy tales located in America, with a very American feel to them.

One of the best parts of the stories are the morals. But the stories themselves are also quite charming.

The first one tells the tale of a girl who meddles in affairs that do not concern her. She therefore accidentally releases a band of thieves her uncle had kept locked in a chest in the family attic. Through quick thinking, the little girl makes the situation. But the moral of the story is “not to interfere with matters that do not concern us.” After all, if the little girl had refrained from opening the chest, she wouldn’t need to return all the items the thieves stole from her own house.

One of my favorite “morals” occurs after a story with lots of trickery and generic not-good-moral-character-stuff. (All G-rated if it were a movie, though.) The author writes “I suppose [one of the characters] is there yet, and am rather sorry, for I should like to consult the wizard about the moral to this story.” Clearly, the author just wrote a fun little story, but at the time all short stories “needed to have a moral.” It’s charming little turns of phrases like this that make American Fairy Tales so much fun to read.

There are about a dozen stories in this collection. Some of them are a bit politically incorrect, but then, they were written in a different time. I don’t remember anything truly offensive in them. I recommend reading them. They’re a fun collection of American-style short stories, and very child friendly. Except maybe for the last two stories. But I digress.

I hope you enjoy them! They’re a fun way to procrastinate, and the collection is out of copyright, and so is therefore available from Project Gutenberg. (Free reading! Yay!)

Happy Fourth of July! I hope to see(?) you tomorrow!

Book Review: Snow White and Rose Red by Wrede

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Hello, Fluffsters! Happy Wednesday!

Today’s book review is on

Snow White and Rose Red by Patricia C. Wrede. (Spoiler alert.)

As I’ve mentioned, Patricia C. Wrede is one of my favorite authors. She writes in an amazingly compelling way that’s very well done.

Her book “Snow White and Rose Red” is a retelling of a Grimm fairy tale of the same name. It is not the tale of “Snow White.” Instead, it’s a tale of two sisters and their mother.

Unlike most fairy tales, the mother actually lives for the entirety of the fairy tale, and they have a good relationship with each other. The original is relatively nice, and not actually as gruesome as many original fairy tales.

Wrede takes the fairy tale, and expands it beautifully. She sets the story in old England. The language use is beautiful, and the dialogue is written with “thees”, “thous”, and other flowery things that just sound pretty.

The human main characters are devout Christians who live on the edge of Faerie, and so also do a bit of magic. (So, very different universe.) They’re not witches, they’re not evil, and they mostly restrict themselves to using herbs for healing. Later in the book they learn how to do a bit of magic, but again it’s for healing purposes. Mostly. It’s slightly complicated.

Wrede did an amazing job. The fairy tale is fairly straightforward. Wrede takes the tale and adds about 3 subplots that interact with each other, and still fit the fairy tale. I can’t describe it well enough to do it justice. So pick up a copy for yourself and read it, ok?

And have a great rest of your week!

Book Review: Spindle’s End

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Hello, Fluffsters! Happy Tuesday!

I hope your week is going well, and just continues to get better! I’m continuing the Book Review series. Today’s is

Spindle’s End, by Robin McKinley (spoiler alert)

I really liked the first 5/6ths of this book. The setting is great, the characters are compelling, and it’s a fun retelling of the classic story of Sleeping Beauty.

It starts off with a description of the land. It’s a land that is thick with magic. Like, literally thick. It “settled over the land like chalk-dust.” It would also do random things like spontaneously transform loaves of bread into ivory thimbles that stayed around for a few days, before crumbling away to dust. Fairies are relatively commonplace, sort of. And the provide a very useful role in society: They help keep the magic manageable.

The first few chapters examine the life of the royalty, before switching over to one of the main characters of the story: A fairy named Katriona, who kidnaps young princess Briar-Rose for her own safety, and raises her as her own niece. For another interesting twist, McKinley gives the young princess the ability to talk with animals.

Most of the book is about the princess’s first 16 years. Then the last bit of the book is about what happens after she finds out she’s the princess. And that’s where it gets confusing. I’ve read the book several times, and I’ve yet to fully understand the last sixth of the book, or so.

This book is written for the young adult crowd, rather than the younger crowd. I recommend it, but not as strongly as the other books. McKinley’s ideas are creative and fun, but come across as really confusing in certain areas.

Have a great week, Fluffsters! Talk with you soon!

Book Review: The Ordinary Princess

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Hello, Fluffsters! As I’m sure you remember from yesterday’s post, I’m going to be doing a book review each day this week.

Today’s is another twist-on-fairy-tales story:

The Ordinary Princess, by M. M. Kaye (spoiler alert.)

I love this book. It was one of the first twisted fairy tales I came into contact with, and it was wonderful. It’s just over 100 pages, but the book is slightly larger than the Princess Tales. So I think it might have a higher word count, but I’m not sure. (If anyone can tell me where to find the wordcount on any of these things, I’d love it.)

This book is not a spoof of a particular fairy tale. Rather, it’s a spoof on all fairy tales. What would happen if a princess in the realm were not the most beautiful creature in all the land, but was, instead, ordinary? That is the premise of this book.

Princess “Amethyst Alexandra Augusta Araminta Adelaide Aurelia Anne” starts off as a “normal” princess; blond haired, blue eyed, exquisite, well tempered, etc. At her christening, however, one of her fairy godmothers arrives and grants her a gift- the gift of ordinariness. From that point on, she behaves exactly like ordinary children, and is known as Amy.

A number of events cause her to leave her home, work as a drudgery-maid in another castle (just like Carrie Woodengown!), meets her prince, falls in love, gets married, and lives happily ever after. (Spoiler alert.)

As I’ve mentioned, I love that book. It’s charming, well written, well illustrated, and absolutely wonderful fluff. So, I highly recommend it. I hope you get it and enjoy it!

Book(s) Review(s)! The Princess Tales

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You know one of the best things about summer? Time. Time to read. And do other stuff, but time to read is a wonderful thing.

As I’ve said, I’ve read a lot of fantasy. So I think that this week, I’m going to try to do a book review each day on some of my favorite books.

Today, I’m going to talk about one of my favorite Fluff collections:

The Princess Tales, by Gail Carson Levine (spoiler alert)

The Princess Tales books are basically re-told fairy tales for younger children, but anyone who still enjoys fairy tales will enjoy these.

They’re small books, the sort that can fit in your pocket. The age range is about 8 and up, but I could see anyone who’s starting to read chapter books loving these. There’s pretty much nothing scary in any of them. Alright, so you have a couple of traditional fairy tale elements, such as an evil fairy cursing Sleeping Beauty, but that’s mostly it.

In general, the tone of the books are very lighthearted and truly fluffy. Levine does an excellent job of taking traditional tales and tweaking them in a charming way.

Sleeping beauty, for example, is the smartest person in the world, doesn’t sleep before she pricks her finger, and researched “dwindling unicorn habitats” before the age of 6. The Prince and the Frog is combined delightfully with Rapunzel. Sortof. Not quite. (It’s called “For Biddle’s Sake.” You should read it.) And the tale of the Princess and the Pea? That’s just the “final exam” in a long serious of tests for whether someone’s truly a princess.

Levine writes in a charming, easy to read, funny manner. I highly recommend her books, and The Princess Tales especially, for anyone who has ever enjoyed fairy tales.

What Ice Cream Sandwiches Should Taste Like

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I had one of the most perfect ice cream sandwich experiences recently. And it demonstrated to me what ice cream sandwiches should taste like.

Uh, like bread and ice cream?

…Oh, have you never had an ice cream sandwich before?

Uh… no. Most of us don’t have ice cream. I’ve had it a few times, when we performed exceptionally well for wizards who have their magic freezing boxes. But none of us would put ice cream between bread!

Haha, no. that’s not an ice cream sandwich. There is no bread in one. No, a normal ice cream sandwich is made of two cookies sandwiched around a nice serving of ice cream.

That does sound a lot better than what I thought.

It is. And then I made it even better.

So, I recently baked some home-made graham crackers-

-Graham cracker?

They’re sort of a crunchy cookie-ish thing. They’re normally bought from local stores; fairly cheap, too. Quite a common snack for younger children. I’d never actually had a home-made graham cracker before!

So you decided to make some for… fun?

Bit of a funny story there, actually. I wanted a graham cracker, but we didn’t have any where I live. So I decided to try to bake some to make up for it. And then I realized we didn’t have an ingredient. So I bought that ingredient, and didn’t bother buying the graham crackers themselves.

But I digress.

So, I home-baked some graham crackers. And they started off crunchy, but sort of went a little softer over time. In fact, they made the perfect “sandwich” part of a home-made ice cream sandwich. Especially with gourmet coffee ice cream in between! It was amazing.

It tasted… like happiness. And thunderstorms. With a touch of fairy-dust and dancing unicorns thrown in for good measure.

You’ve tasted dancing unicorns?

What? Of course not! That’s hyperbole!

…ah. I take it you haven’t actually eaten fairy-dust either, right? Or a thunder storm?

Of course not! That would be impossible.

Right… Different worlds. Don’t mind me.

We never do.

Anyways, Fluffsters, happy Saturday! I hope you have a great weekend.

5 ways to defeat boredom

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Hello, Fluffsters!

Yesterday’s post was… interesting, wasn’t it?

Anyways, Today I’m going to try to rectify the situation.

Some ways to relieve boredom

1) Plot to take over a world. Not necessarily this world, of course. That would be bad. Probably. But plot to take over a world. I hear there’s nobody on Neptune, yet!

2) Write about a world you could take over. And then find some way to teleport yourself into the story, as Dictator of the World. Then you could really take over the world! And you never hear of any world dictators complaining of boredom, do you?

Uh… Does any world actually have a world dictator?

I’m sure there’s one somewhere. But moving on.

3) Learn woodworking. Create a musical desk.

I mean, isn’t that just fantastic? How can you possibly be bored when making something like that?

4) Waste too much time on YouTube. On the other hand, if you’re bored, I guess you’re not really wasting too much time.

5) Read a good book. Not on “advanced empirical methods for statistical studies on the eating habits of the fruit-fly.” (whatever that would even be.) No, instead I’d read something like The Enchanted Forest Chronicles.

Well, there you go! Five ways to defeat boredom!

Happy Friday! I hope you have a great weekend.

How to thoroughly bore yourself

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Greetings, Readers!

From what I understand, your world is currently experiencing Summer.

One of the staples of Summer, from what I can gather, is perpetual boredom. After you are bored, solutions can be considered. But until you are bored, what point is there to any of the solutions? After all, if something isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

Huh. I’d always remembered it as “if it isn’t broken, fix it until it is!”

…

But I digress. Today, I am here to give you a list of ways to try to live your Summer to its fullest: By becoming bored.

5 Ways to Achieve Boredom

1) Sit in a very crowded room, with nothing to do. Especially if you cannot communicate with anyone. I’m sure you were thinking my first recommendation would be to find someplace quiet and sit. That is a bad solution. If there’s nothing else going on, you can think. If that fails, you can take a nap. With a crowded room, however, you cannot concentrate on anything. You cannot even concentrate on your own thoughts! Believe me, this is one of the best methods for achieving boredom.

2) Try to read a textbook on advanced empirical methods for statistical studies on the eating habits of the fruit-fly. Or something equally esoteric. If you’re a statistics nerd, try reading James Joyce.

3) Do 2… in Hebrew. Greek, if you already know Hebrew. That way you have even less chance of understanding what’s going on. That confusion will inevitably lead to boredom.

Wait a second… I don’t think it’s possible to have less of a chance of understanding what’s going on. You can’t have less than a zero-percent chance of something, right?

Ah, I can tell that you haven’t read “Advanced Empirical Methods for Statistical Studies on the Eating Habits of the Fruit-Fly.” The statistics would explain that possibility to you.

4) Put the fluffiest piece of music you can find on perpetual loop, and lock yourself in a room with it for a week. This is actually very similar to 1. But this has the added bonus of killing 7 days!

5) Paint some ebony black, an emerald green, a ruby red, or ivory white. Do your best to match the colors. Please note, this will be a slightly more expensive option.

I hope, dear readers, that this helps you attain the full Boredom that is promised with Summer! Have a fantastic Thursday!

Projectile Paint Ruined my Pants.

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Yup. True story.

I was doing a mini project while waiting for some dough to chill so that I could roll it out. I needed paint. Just a small, tiny, miniscule drop of paint. So I got my paintbrush primed, and pressed on the paint-bottle, and a dab of paint went flying. It wasn’t until at least an hour later I realized that it landed on the knee of my pants. Rather, just above the knee. I blame the Rainbows.

…Of course you do.

They were comfortable jeans, too!

And the paint is designed to work on fabric, so I probably won’t be able to get the stain out.

On the bright side, the project ended up turning out fairly well! (It’s a gift-ish-thing for a friend, so I’ll be posting pics after a while.)

But how about your day, Fluffsters? Do anything interesting? (Anything interesting happen to you?)