lory_enterenchanted's reviews
499 reviews

Siren Stories by Joan Aiken

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4.0

These stories are different from the other three volumes in having all been written for Argosy, a "magazine for men" that Joan Aiken worked and wrote for (with an all-female staff, ironically enough.) They generally have a dash of romance, or rather insta-love, which is there not for realism but  for the sake of comic reconciliation. Aiken's boundless imagination gets full play and she somehow manages to make each brief scenario into a vivid, complete world. "It is possible, she seems to say, that just around the corner is an alternative version of the day to day," writes Lizza Aiken -- and that can lighten up our daily burden and take our own leap into a regenerative vision, the true spirit of comedy.

A Ghostly Gallery by Joan Aiken

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4.0

"Ghost stories" is taken loosely in this collection that leans toward the uncanny, but not necessarily scary side of things. Lizza Aiken says in her introduction that her mother had "a gift for sensing odd atmospheres or noticing the unusual in the everyday." Rather than just giving us a fright, these stories are meant to awaken us to a heightened sense of reality, to the layers that lurk behind what we call the real world. This is required if we are to know the fullness of Good as well as encounter Evil. Joan wrote "The world is not a simple place, far from it. The writer's duty is to show that it is an infinitely rich, strange, confusing, mysterious place." 

Weather Witches and Wise Women by Joan Aiken

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4.0

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.

Let the Circle Be Unbroken by Mildred D. Taylor

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4.0

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.

Radical Love: Learning to Accept Yourself and Others by Zachary Levi

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3.5

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.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor

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4.0

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. 

Fantastic Fables by Joan Aiken

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4.0

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!

The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp by Leonie Swann
Did not finish book.

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

The Lost Princess of Oz by L. Frank Baum

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3.0

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.

What My Mother and I Don't Talk about: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence by Michele Filgate

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4.5

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.