lory_enterenchanted's reviews
537 reviews

More wonderful stories, focusing on the magic of women as drawn from folk and fairy tales, but often given a modern twist -- "a shop girl who can sell you a pinch of weather, a lonely spinster piano teacher who can confront the devil and his pop group in a dark alley," as Lizza Aiken says in her introduction. Thus she "can call up the voices of the past to pass on the wisdom of a previous generation" in a time where evil is as present as ever.

The story of the Logan family continues with a nail-biting episode that begins with the unjust execution of one boy and ends with the search for another who has run away, not fleeing his family but looking for a job to support it. The horrors of racist persecution are countered in these books by the anchor of a warm, loving family that owns their own land -- but that ownership is constantly under threat by the rapacious white neighbor, and in this book even the security of familial love is shaken under the stress of trauma. It is hard to read about, but how much harder was it to live through? Situations such as these, as well as a mixed-race child choosing to pass as white when she can, are given an individual  human face. Though Taylor is using such characters to call readers' attention to the cruelty and injustice of the world they live in, they never feel like cardboard characters for her to hang a lesson on, but have their own life that pulls us in emotionally. I'm sorry it took me so long to start this series, which was all the rage when I was a child (Roll of Thunder won the Newbery as I entered grade school), but glad I'm encountering it now, when we need its message so desperately. It still holds up today.

I read this in a day (while stuck in bed with a migraine). Affecting story of trauma and (partial) recovery -- Zachary has come through his suffering with a lot of insight and wisdom and compassion that can benefit others. He's had to face the fact that his wish for a quick fix (like a four-week retreat, that he stopped after only three weeks because he got an acting job!) is not realistic -- he's in for a marathon, with all he's gone through! And he also needs to know that "thoughts and prayers" are not enough, that faith also involves using our own initiative and other tools for change. But he's working on it.

I don't really know his work (except in Tangled!) but I appreciate that he wants to do something to change the messed-up Hollywood system as well as improve his own mental health and I wish him all the best with both. 

I think the language might come across better in the audiobook version read by the author. His delivery probably would make it more heartfelt and charming. In written form it was somewhat pedestrian and cliched.

Powerful novel of Jim Crow Mississippi through a child’s eyes. The Logan family is unforgettable and real (based on the authors own). Racial prejudice, discrimination and violence is a cancer eating at America, an evil that must be faced. Stories like this put a human face on the problems and move our hearts to work for change. 

Joan Aiken has a story to suit almost any mood -- her relentless invention is endlessly surprising, her stories little gems of character, setting, and incident. These collections from Gateway are a bargain for e-readers -- only a few bucks each. Get them if you love fantastic tales!

I got some chapters into this but it just wasn't grabbing me. I want to try her mystery about the sheep instead.

I can't believe it, but I am starting to get tired of the Oz books. I adored them as a child, but I mostly focused on my four or five favorites of them and never read through them all in order. So this one had some inventive parts ) but it sort of fizzles at the end. It's a good idea to have all the powerful magic in Oz get stolen, including Ozma, but there remains the powerful Magic Belt to step in again as Deus Ex Machina, once Dorothy overcomes her amnesia about how to use it. (The fact that she could use it perfectly well in Ozma of Oz is never explained.) The satire on the puffed-up Frogman doesn't go anywhere -- he goes through some nice moral quandaries, but no one else pays much attention. Button-Bright is annoying. The repentance of Ugu at the end is unconvincing.

Supposedly Ozma and Glinda are good rulers who care about their people, but then there are things like a town full of people who enslave others (giants) and treat them cruelly, throwing them out the window with their super strength ... and the travelers who are looking for the stolen Ozma don't bat an eye at this.

Three more to go. I think Glinda, the last book, was my favorite of these. Let's see if it holds up at all.

I was blown away by the raw, emotional, honest, courageous, and touching essays in this book. Each one was beautifully written and made me want to read more by the respective authors. In fact I think I"m going to make that a reading project for next year -- it will get me to read more contemporary writing. 

A relatively short book because so much of it was taken up by left-hand spreads of greek and hebrew text (unreadable except by those who have a basis in those languages), with the translation on the right side. There was some fascinating information about how grammar affects the meaning of texts and some alternative renderings that did open up new paths into the Bible. I just wanted more! I would like to seek out the German original because I am not sure I can trust the English translation. It seemed odd at some points and that knocked off a star. A translation of a translation is always risky. 

When I picked Savor as my book for the "Food" category of the Nonfiction Reader challenge, I thought I'd be reading mostly about food. I knew the author, a talented young chef, died far too early, but somehow I thought that before that point, the focus would be on more cheerful and tasty things. 

I was wrong. Yes, this is a book with some fantastic descriptions of food, and of one woman's journey toward becoming a great chef, but it's much more a book about life and death and love and family and trauma and healing. It's about the quandary of being caught between two cultures, and the excruciating pain of being betrayed by the people who should have been protecting you. It's about ignoring things you don't want to see, until it's too late, and dealing with the consequences. It's about the cruel callousness of our modern medical system, and about the human connections that can still heal in the midst of evil conditions. And in the end, it's about going through the dark night of the soul, feeling abandoned by God, and the spiritual awakening to divine love, which enables us to forgive and be forgiven, trusting in whatever may come after the apparent end of life. 

Not quite what I expected, but I felt humbled by Fatima's courage, vulnerability, and honesty in sharing her story. She had wanted to write a different kind of book, one about traveling the world in her last year of life and sampling all the incredible food she had not yet tasted, but her body derailed that dream. Instead, she typed and dictated her story for another writer to assemble, also incorporating articles she'd written for Bon Appetit on learning her diagnosis. The two worked together for just one week before Fatima's death. Her mother (who should really be credited as a co-author) then filled in more of the history from her point of view. This required courage and vulnerability on her part, as well, and although it was sometimes a bit jarring, and I wished for more of Fatima's dynamic, authentic voice, the collaborative effort gives another flavor to the project -- in some ways more fitting than if Fatima had been able to write it all herself. No one survives alone, no one is alone, even in death. The creation of our lives takes place in relationship, as cooking is also a creative engagement with many elements in relationship with each other. 

So many things in Fatima's story went against the expectations of her Pakistani heritage, and her mother and her family had to struggle toward acceptance, sometimes causing her and each other even greater pain. It was not usual for a woman to want to become a chef, a restaurant owner, a TV personality. It was not acceptable to resist the expectation of conventional marriage with a Pakistani man, still less to openly embrace romantic relationships with people of any gender. It was taboo for girls to speak up about experiencing sexual abuse. She did most of those things, and many more, a living challenge to the voices saying "you can't do that." And those around her were changed by the encounter, in ways that will continue to reverberate, her legacy living on. 

Fatima had huge dreams about helping the hungry, supporting people marginalized by gender and culture, changing the image of Pakistan, sharing the food she loved. She didn't get to do those things in the way she'd expected, but she did create this book. I think she has done her part in changing the world, by being herself, by speaking up, embracing life and entering death with a whole heart. Any of us can only aspire to do the same.