<div align="center"><a href="http://littlebookish.blogspot.com" title="A Little Bookish"><img src="http://a.imageshack.us/img571/3668/littlebookishbutton1.png" alt="A Little Bookish" style="border:none;" /></a></div>
As a child, Grace was brutally attacked by wolves. She only remembers seeing a wolf with mysterious yellow eyes as she lapsed from consciousness. Over the years she watches this same wolf with amber eyes watching her from the woods. She feels drawn to him and has a real connection with him. Sam enters Grace’s life in the waning warm months of the year. He also has amber eyes and Grace immediately knows that there is more to Sam than most people think. I find dialogue like this problematic between teens because as a teenager I frankly would have been too awkward to say something so bold to a boy. I also get uncomfortable reading scenes that include sex between teens (although I know in some books there is a sociological importance to confronting the issue) because frankly it makes me feel like a peeper in a inappropriate private moment between underage people. Can’t teens find something more constructive to do than fall into bed with each other? I know it’s just the reality of things, but I sometimes feel like sex between underage people is encouraged now. I was a teen in the time when it started being normalized, but we were introduced to the perils of it as well including teen pregnancy and STDs (which were both all too common at my high school). I feel like all forms of media now make teen sexuality less taboo than it probably should be. In this respect, I think Shiver is not alone in romanticizing teen sex rather than showing it for what it really usually ends up with—heartbroken young people who often make poor choices and give a part of themselves to someone.
‘That was so sexy,’ she said, voice uneven. ‘I didn’t think you could get any sexier.’
Grace’s pain is tangible and real and is something that many teens deal with. I was glad for this discussion since essentially she was shacking up with Sam for a good deal of the book and her parents were none the wiser. I thought it gave a better understanding to her humanity and her desire to be loved. People might argue that Grace should not find her love and identity in a boy, but I think this is part of the human condition so I actually applauded this portion of the book because it is a situation I could see happening. However, I wonder how teens would deal with a passage like this. Are they mature enough to see that they don’t actually have to find their identity in a boy and that the fairy tale romance is not usually something that occurs?
[Sam] ‘Does it bother you? That your parents are the way they are?’…[Grace] ’Why can’t I make them love me any more than they do?’…[Sam] ‘Grace, they love you. It’s not about you. It’s their problem.’ [Grace] ‘I’ve tried so hard. I never get into trouble. I always do my homework. I cook their damn meals, when they’re home, which is never—‘…”
Samuel Johnson is ready for Halloween—so ready in fact that he and his dog Boswell have gone trick-or-treating a few days early. The first door he knocks on is the Abernathy house and he is rudely sent away. Little does he know that strange things are afoot at the Abernathy house and that all Hell is about to break loose. Literally!
Crocheting
Chief Kamiakin was an important chief of Inland Washington area in the mid-1850s. It was a time of westward expansion and both the fur trade and gold mining were booming. The indigenous people of the Northwest were faced with having their ancestral lands moved in on by the White man and sought to protect their people and their way of life. Chief Kamiakin rose to prominence because he believed in protecting this very thing. He heard about other indigenous peoples’ encounters with White men and was wary about what would happen to his own people and the land they lived off of. Despite these sweeping changes that were about to happen, Kamiakin was an honorable man that welcomed White men, albeit cautiously. When it became evident that U.S. policy was to take the land whether it was agreed upon or not, Kamiakin and some of his fellow Indians took up arms to protect their way of life. The book is written in such a way that although it is non-fiction, I felt myself reacting with true sorrow over statements like these. Scheuerman and Finley write in a mostly clear and powerful manner and quotes like these were placed in a way that make me feel like I was there watching that exchange take place. Chief Kamiakin must have felt despair for his people and for himself at what he knew was inevitable. Rather than allow his people to suffer on reservations that didn’t include things like their traditional fishing grounds, Kamiakin and others took up arms to give their people a chance to have at least some of their way of life preserved. After fighting at Toppenish Creek, Kamiakin had a letter dictated to Father Pandosy that was one of the most powerful things I have ever read. Here is a short excerpt:“It is as I feared,” Pandosy told Kamiakin, “the Whites will take your country as they have taken other countries from the Indians….Where there are only a few here now, others will come with each year until your country will be overrun with them….[Y]our lands will be seized and your people driven from their homes. It has been so with other tribes; it will be so with you. You may fight and delay for a time this invasion, but you cannot avert it. I have lived many summers with you and baptized a great many of your people into the faith. I have learned to love you. I cannot advice or help you. I wish I could.” (p. 31-32 Finding Chief Kamiakin)
I admired his efforts to fight for enough land to sustain his people. Governor Stevens seemed to be a major part of the problem (but I do feel if it weren’t him it would have been someone else that did exactly the same thing) and didn’t understand nor care about the Indians’ differences in culture and tribe. Stevens was of the prevailing thought of the day—that the Indians would assimilate and learn to farm and graze livestock or be eliminated from the earth. This was all too common in westward expansion. Were the leaders of the tribes supposed to sit there and watch their children starve because they couldn’t live off of the land? Reservations were not the choice pieces of land that allowed people to live fruitfully.“If the Governor had said to us, my children, I am asking you a parcel of land in each tribe for the Americans, but the land and your country are always yours, we would then have given with good will what he would have asked us and we would have lived with you as brothers. But he has taken us in small groups and thrown us out of our native country, into a strange land among people who is our enemy (for between us we are enemies) in a place where our people do not even have enough to eat for themselves.” (p. 48, Finding Chief Kamiakin)
Rose Drayton is a resident of the The Edge, the area between the non-magical Broken and the aristocratic magical Weird. The people of the Edge don’t quite fit into either world, but they are usually able to cross over into either realm. Rose works an under the table job in the Broken where magic doesn’t exist, but her astonishing abilities make her attractive to those in the Edge and the Weird. Between working hard for pennies and having people pursuing her for her magic, Rose’s plate is further filled with caring for her two brothers. When a blueblood noble named Declan shows up at her doorstep, Rose believes that he is only after her magical abilities. Little does she know that his appearance is about to turn her life upside down.
I’m just going to admit it right off the bat. I loved Sense and Sensibility starring Emma Thompson. I could watch it OVER and OVER again. Could I read the book over and over?…hmmmm…No. I read it, and maybe someday I’ll read it again, but for now, I’m good snuggling up on the couch with my dogs and watching the movie. I think most Jane Austen fans would think that was blasphemous because the movie does combine some characters and inevitably left things out. Emma Thompson was also older than Eleanor Dashwood was supposed to be. I don’t care. I love her. She’s my favorite actress and I could watch that movie forever!
book, Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella, but it comes pretty close. I mean, that scene with Annie when she is protesting at the school board meeting to ban books is perfect. “You want to step outside you Nazi cow?!!!” Now tell me there is a better line than that?! Atonement is another movie that I thought was just as good as the book. The film was beautiful and stayed very faithful to the story. Even the casting was perfect for the film. 
In television, Band of Brothers is probably one of my all-time favorites. I actually do like it better than the book because I think it captured the essence of brotherhood better. The book was fantastic as well, but the mini-series I watch several times a year. I watch it so often that I know some of the lines in each of the episodes and I even know most of the more minor characters (who aren’t really ‘characters’ since they were real people). 
of non-fiction that I MUST read is The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood by David Simon and Edward Burns which HBO’s The Wire is loosely based on. The Wire is simply the best television series I have ever seen in my life. The book itself actually had a mini-series that was produced before The Wire, and I need to see that as well. It’s an amazing show.
Posts
All Comments
DesignBlog BloggerTheme comes under a Creative Commons License.This template is free of charge to create a personal blog.You can make changes to the templates to suit your needs.But You must keep the footer links Intact.
