Anna Dressed in Blood

Anna Dressed in Blood is the first book in Kendare Blake's Anna series (although there are only two books so far, so it may remain a duology, I'm not sure).  

Theseus Cassio (Cas for short) is not a typical teenage boy, by any definition of the word "typical."  He has taken over the family business - dispatching murderous ghosts from off this earthly plane.  This work has the family move frequently from place to place, all over the world, wherever the latest legitimate tip sends them; this time, they've followed a tip to Thunder Bay, Ontario, where Cas intends to find and "kill" the ghost known as Anna Dressed in Blood, a teenage girl who was found murdered in the 1950s, and whose ghost has been busy literally ripping apart  anyone unfortunate enough to set foot in her house since.

For Cas, this case feels different from the start, and his instinct proves true when Anna turns out to be unlike any ghost he's yet encountered.  Will he be able to finish the job he came here to do?

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I got this book back when it was new and making its initial rounds in the book blog community, but I only just got around to reading it; the premise and the cover art really drew me in.  I enjoy paranormal fiction and ghosts, so this seemed right up my alley.  For the most part, it didn't totally disappoint.

The Devil's Arithmetic

The Devil's Arithmetic, by Jane Yolen, is an historical fiction novel about the Holocaust, geared toward younger readers.  Thirteen-year-old Hannah is on her way to celebrate Passover with her family, but she'd much rather stay with her friend Rosemary, eating Easter candy.  She feels like every year, the Seder is the same - they do the Seder ritual with dinner and the adults talk about the past, and how important it is to remember.  Hannah doesn't want to talk about things that happened so long ago, and she gets bored of her family's stories.  

When her Grandpa Will declares that she will be the one to open the front door for the prophet Elijah this year, Hannah feels silly, but she goes along with the tradition.  Upon opening the door, however, she doesn't see the apartment building's hallway and the doors to the neighbors' apartments - instead, she finds herself transported to another time and place.  She has, in fact, been transported to Poland of the 1940s, where she will come to experience for herself the horror of the stories she used to dismiss.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J.K. Rowling, takes us into Harry's fourth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  And I think you know by now that Harry and his friends will never have a normal school year.  The book starts us off at the end of the summer, when Harry is invited to go with Ron's family to see the Quidditch World Cup, the biggest sporting event of the wizarding world.  I mean, he plays on one of the school teams, so he can't NOT go.  The game is very exciting, but nothing compared to the events occurring during the night after the game is over:  although rather than a joyful excitement, it is the kind of excitement which involves a lot of screaming in terror and running for your life.  It seems some of Lord Voldemort's old supporters have decided to use this mass gathering of witches and wizards as an opportunity to have their own kind of fun, which is the opposite of fun for everyone who is not a total asshole.

By the time the kids are all back at school, shit has already been on a slippery slope to getting Real, but no one seems too concerned about it yet because everyone is all kinds of busy with the resurrection of the Triwizard Tournament, an international competition between students of various schools of magic that unfortunately resulted in the deaths of many of its competitors.  And although the ministry has claimed to do its best to keep the mortal danger to a minimum for this one, it seems someone is hoping against that, because someone has put Harry's name into the Goblet of Fire, the magical item responsible for selecting the champion who will be representing each school in the tournament.  I don't know why the idea of someone actively wanting Harry dead should come as any kind of a surprise for him or his friends or anyone who knows him, really, since he has been the victim of conspiracy and attempted murder in all his previous years at this school, too.  But anyway, having your name come out of this goblet is a magical and binding contract, so Harry has no choice but to compete, and the professors and government officials have no choice but to allow it.  

Mockingjay

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, as I am sure at least most of you know, is the final installment of the widely popular Hunger Games trilogy.  It picks up a little bit after the final events in Catching Fire, so we've got a little catching up to do with Katniss as to what the heck is going on.  Probably you already had a clue, though, because it's not entirely difficult to figure at least most of that business out.  She's managed to survive the arena again, but the reality of what is going on in the districts and in the Capitol is overwhelming at best.  The pattern continues that every decision she makes, thought-out or not, seems to result in torture or loss of life, but the rebels want her to become the public face and voice of the revolution.  Do the potential benefits of this outweigh the certain consequences it will have on the prisoners of the Capitol?  Or will she just end up doing more damage than actual good?  Will the districts succeed in overthrowing the Capitol, or will things just end up worse for everyone than before?

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I was originally reading something else for my non-school book, but I got kind of bored with that, what with its Wall Street-central plot, so when Mockingjay finally came in the mail, I decided to go ahead and read this one instead (although I did re-read the first two in the trilogy before starting on it...you know you would have done the same).  Anyway, I got through this book very quickly, as I did the others.  Collins has a true talent for writing a hell of a page-turner, and I think it is to her credit that she manages to write a story that appeals so deeply to so many people, without having any sex in the plot.  I mean, okay, there is some pretty obvious sexual tension, but I'm talking about some sexytimes action scenes.  I'm pretty grateful for that, actually, because I'm sure that would have made Katniss about a million times more confused about her conflicted feelings for Gale and Peeta, and I had enough vicarious anxiety to deal with, without all that nonsense.

As for regular ol' action, though, there is plenty of that to go around, especially toward the end.  This kind of book is difficult to write a review of partly for that reason - I would hate to be less vague and inadvertently include spoilers, but trust me when I say that shit is going down all over the place here.  Having read the book finally, I'm more excited to see how they'll present it all in the film adaptation - it is sure to be pretty visually dynamic.  

I am also NOT looking forward to the film adaptation, though, because I spent the entire last third of the book yelling OHMYGOD and weeping like a small, emotionally disturbed child.  I finished the book late last night (early this morning?) and I am still not entirely sure how I feel about how it all ended.  I appreciate that Collins provided a more realistic end to things, since it is not what I'd call the Happiest Ever After, but it's still satisfying on some level, albeit a smidge unsettling in a way.  See?  Still not 100% how I feel about it all, except to say that it was a hell of a way to wrap things up.  

Mockingjay ended up being my least favorite of the trilogy, but that in no way means I didn't like it.  I still think they're all phenomenal, and a great contribution to the dystopian sub-genre.  Just, you know, if you're a total sap like me, maybe read it with a box of tissues handy or something, and not in the middle of the night if you live with someone who is a light sleeper, since you might wake them up with all the crying-out in shock and disbelief.

ISBN:

9781407109374

ASIN:
B003XF1XOQ

Publisher:
Scholastic Press

Series Info:  What came before this book?  What's next?

The Hunger Games

- The Hunger Games (Book 1)

- Catching Fire (Book 2)

* Mockingjay (Book 3)

Film Adaptations:
Mockingjay:  Part 1
Mockingjay: Part 2

See what others are saying about it, or buy it now:

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Better World Books

Glory Alley and the Star Riders

Glory Alley and the Star Riders, by C. Deanna Verhoff, is a young adult sci-fi/fantasy about fourteen-year-old Glory Alley, amateur spelunker and geologist.  She lives on Tullah, a planet very much like Earth.  Glory's life isn't what you'd call "ideal" - it's anything but.  Her mother died after giving birth to her youngest brother, and things have been going rapidly downhill since then.  Her father is a drunk, and alternates between being Mean Dad or Nice Dad, but with their family's financial situation being what it now is, coupled with her father's abusive behavior when drunk, the authorities have been a presence looming over the family.  Despite his drunken meanness, and the fact that the Alley family is pretty much the town joke, Glory would do or give anything to keep them all together.  

Little does she know that one solo trip into the caverns at Queen's Mesa will put into motion a chain of events that will change her and her world forever.  

Everyone has heard the stories about the Elboni, but to the people of Tullah, the stories are just myth.  Glory isn't sure what to believe anymore when she barely escapes from the Mesa with her life after picking up a beautiful stone, unlike anything she's seen before either in books or with her own eyes.  Could all the stories be true?  Everyone except her grandfather thinks she's gone crazy.  When three strange-looking men come looking for something, though, she realizes that the stories may indeed be true, the stone she found is much more than what it seems, and there is much more to the universe than the science of her world has been capable of uncovering so far.

Catching Fire

I know that at this point, it is probably unnecessary to explain anything about Suzanne Collins' amazing dystopian Hunger Games series.  I reviewed the first book earlier this year, so that I would have read it before seeing the movie.  I knew before I had even finished the first chapter that I was hooked and needed to start trying to get my hands on a copy of the second in the trilogy, Catching Fire.  I had received my copy of The Hunger Games in a giveaway, and I needed to get the UK edition of the sequels, so that they would match on my bookshelf.  Yeah, yeah...picky, I know, but so what?  I like the covers better anyway.  It was sold out on The Book Depository, but I couldn't wait any longer for them to email me about it being restocked, so I ended up finding it on Better World Books.  It came in the mail last week, and I could not wait to read it - I know those of you who have read it already understand.

I stayed up almost all night rereading the first book, and I started reading Catching Fire earlier today.  And I did not stop until just a little while ago, when I had finished.

Even those of you who have not read the books or seen the movie of the first book likely know that Katniss survived the Games, since you know...there are two books after that first one.  It's no secret anyway, since anyone can pick up the sequels and figure that out from the cover blurbs.  Their final act in the Games which secured their co-victory - something without precedent - has been seen as one of open defiance.  The Girl on Fire may have ignited a spirit of rebellion in the districts and become the symbol of a coming revolution.  But the smoking patch of rubble that was once District 13 makes it very clear what lengths the Capitol is willing to go to, to put a stop to things, and the game they must now play against President Snow may prove to be much more dangerous than the Hunger Games itself ever was.

Catching Fire, just like its predecessor, is absolutely amazing.  The entire series so far is thrilling; Collins writes in such a way that it is very easy to become immersed in the world she has created in Panem:  to visualize the surroundings as if you were there yourself, to find yourself crying with and for characters at emotional moments, to find yourself holding your breath for several pages before finally sighing with relief or gasping and/or yelling out of something else entirely, be it anger, disbelief, or surprise.  There is every bit as much suspense and action as in The Hunger Games - arguably more, even, and the stakes are much higher now that the citizens of all the districts are potentially involved, affected by whatever move is made.  This time, it isn't just about killing or out-living 23 other people.  It's about Prim.  Rue's family.  Gale.  Peeta. Her mother.  Everyone.

Puppet

Puppet by Eva Wiseman is a young adult novel based on actual events and a real trial.  In a small Hungarian village in 1882, 14-year-old Julie's friend Esther goes missing.  She was last seen when on an errand for her cruel mistress, and blame is quick to be placed on the community's Jewish population.  Fear and hatred run wild as accusations are made:  it is believed that some of the Jewish men lured Esther into the synagogue and murdered her, slitting her throat and collecting her blood to be used in a Passover ritual.  This awful lie was firmly believed, and is known as the Blood Libel.  The accusations are taken very seriously, and some of the Jews are arrested.  Among them, two children, the Scharf brothers.  Sam is too young to be taken seriously as a material witness in court, so pressure is placed on his older brother Morris to confess (I'm sure you can guess the physical nature of this pressure) and he is coached to testify against the accused.

Julie is swept up in the arrests and the trial when she is sent by her abusive father to work as housekeeper at the jail, then is given a position as the scullery maid at the prison in the city.  She used to play with Morris as a child, and she isn't so sure the Jews are as evil and murderous as everyone says they are; but if they didn't kill her friend, what did happen to Esther?  As the trial progresses, Julie is pulled in deeper, and must make a choice between doing what she feels is right and doing what is safe.

When I read The Last Song by Wiseman, I was impressed with her ability to fictionalize such awful and tragic historical events in a way that is engrossing without trivializing them.  I was just as captivated with Puppet.  This book won multiple awards, and it's not hard to see why; I read the majority of this book in one night.  I've always had a sort of morbid fascination with the historical persecution of the Jewish people (you can probably blame my fifth grade teacher for assigning Lois Lowry's Number the Stars, which quickly became one of my all-time favorite books).  So for me, knowing that the events and the people in this book are very real (with the exception, I believe, of Julie and her family) really made Puppet that much more interesting, and that much more impossible to put down once I'd gotten into it.

The Last Song

The Last Song by Eva Wiseman is a gripping juvenile fiction novel set in Toledo, Spain during the infamous Spanish Inquisition.  The Inquisitor General has come to the city, and while the Jews themselves are not exactly treated with kindness, it's the "Conversos" who are being persecuted here - the people who only recently converted to Christianity.  If any of them are caught or suspected to still be practicing the Jewish faith while pretending to be Christian, they are arrested for heresy and tortured into a confession, whereupon they are burned at the stake.

Fourteen-year-old Isabel has seen the grim procession of prisoners through the city, and though a devout Catholic herself, questions the humanity of it all.  She is quickly hushed, though, because to even doubt the Inquisition is to mark yourself as either a heretic or a traitor.  Isabel is from a fairly well-off and respected family - her father is physician to the royal court - and inside the walls of her home and with the comfort of her personal shrine to the Virgin Mother, the world feels safe and normal.  Her world is turned upside down, though, when she is betrothed to the son of Don Alfonso, a Cavalier.  Luis is cruel and disrespectful, but her parents ignore her pleas not to marry him.  They insist it is to ensure her safety from the Inquisition, as Don Alfonso's family has a long history in the Catholic church; Isabel is confused why she should need any protection from the Inquisition, but her parents then tell her the impossible truth - they are Conversos.  Their grandparents were forced to convert, but their family continued to practice their Jewish faith in secret.

The news breaks everything Isabel thought she knew about herself - she feels she is as devout a Catholic as ever, but is she truly also a Jew?  Can she be both, or must she choose?  Whatever she does, however, she is sworn to secrecy, for all their lives depend on no one discovering the truth of their heritage.  Isabel wants to learn all she can about this new part of her identity, but can she satisfy her mounting curiosity without giving away her family's secret?  The Inquisitor General's men are everywhere, and it is impossible to know who can be trusted.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling is the third installment of the widely popular Harry Potter series.  Harry and his friends Ron and Hermione are in their third year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and as per usual, their year does not exactly go smoothly.  Harry is not doing so well to begin with, though; his Uncle Vernon's sister comes to visit toward the end of the summer vacation, and things get a little out of hand.  Harry storms out of the Dursleys' house, set to run away and resigned to being expelled from school and living as a fugitive.  While wondering what to do first, though, he gets picked up by The Knight Bus, which gives rides to stranded witches and wizards, and he goes to London, thinking he may as well start off at The Leaky Cauldron pub.  He's met at the pub by none other but the Minister of Magic himself,  however, and thinks he's in for it.  Rather than be arrested, though, he's set up with a room and told to stick to Diagon Alley, and not to go wandering about in Muggle London.  He doesn't have too much time to ponder the strangeness of the leniency, though, as he's quickly caught up with being back in the wizard world, and soon enough he is joined by his friends, since everyone goes to Diagon Alley to get their back-to-school shopping done.

Just before getting back on the train to Hogwarts, Harry learns some startling news about a mass murderer - Sirius Black - who  has broken out of Azkaban, the wizard prison; the man is considered to be such a danger that even the Muggle law enforcement has been notified to be on the lookout for him and to exercise caution.  Extra security measures have been placed at school, and everyone is worried for Harry's safety especially.  This is probably for the best, since he and his friends seem to have a real knack for getting into life-threatening situations.  Despite all these precautions, however, events continue to unfold which lead Harry, Ron, and Hermione right into Black's path.

The Subtle Knife

Let me just start things off by saying that this cover kind of terrifies me a little.  I know that monkey-dogface creature in the background is likely meant to be Mrs Coulter's daemon, but it looks more like the stuff of nightmares.  So it's a good thing I finished The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman in one night, straight.  This is the second book in the His Dark Materials trilogy.  

We start off first thing with a new character, twelve-year-old Will Parry, who lives in the England of our world.  Some men are after something in his house, and it's tormenting his mother, so he stashes her with his old piano teacher and takes off with the thing he suspects the men are after.  He makes it to Oxford and finds what looks like a window, but in the middle of the air.  Not a regular window, though...you can only see into it from a certain angle.  Well, he's basically on the run and trying to disappear for a while, so obviously he goes on through this thing and finds himself in another world entirely.

Now I know what you're maybe thinking, but this isn't Lyra's world from The Golden Compass, either.  If you recall from the end of that book, Lord Asriel was looking into the matter of Dust, and all kinds of crazy shit happened, and Lyra decided to try and follow him through the portal or whatever it was that he'd managed to open.  Anyway, so this place Will stumbled into isn't Lyra's world because she's found her way into it, too.  This is where they meet each other and sort of team up.

It's almost serendipity that the two have found each other, because she wandered into this world trying to follow her father, and Will is hoping to find out about his own father, who went missing when he was just a baby.  John Parry was an ex-Marine-turned-professional-explorer, and it's possible there is a connection between his father and the men who have been harassing his mother.

So Will and Lyra kind of go back and forth an awful lot between Will's Oxford and the almost-deserted city in the world they came into.  Lyra of course gets them mixed up in all kinds of trouble when a man notices her with the alethiometer in a museum and she meets with a physicist to discuss Dust.  All the while, though, there are great changes happening in all worlds, and Will is about to find out that it may be more than mere chance that brought him through that astral window and into the path of Lyra and Pan.  He may have a much bigger role to play in what's about to come than he would ever have imagined.

New Moon

So I've finally gotten around to reading New Moon by Stephenie Meyer.  I'd seen the movie more than a few times, but hadn't really got the chance to read it - once I started, though, it only took me two nights to finish.  The same as Twilight, I know this book doesn't really need an introduction, but here is a refresher anyway.

We are, of course, still in the tiny town of Forks, Washington.  It's been about a year, and Bella and Edward are still together, which is probably a surprise to no one.  It's Bella's birthday, and she's all kinds of moody about it since now she is, for all intents and purposes, now one year older than Edward, and she is not thrilled at the fact that she's aging.  You might recall from the end of the first book that Bella wants Edward to turn her into a vampire so they can truly be together forever, but Edward isn't so keen on the idea, so she's still human (so far).  Anyway, against her wishes, Edward's "sister" Alice has put together a party for Bella at the Cullen house.  Bella, accident-prone as ever, can't get through the thing without a little blood being inadvertently shed, which as you can guess did not go well in a house full of vampires.  Jasper has the hardest time, if you remember, with the whole "vegetarian" lifestyle, and he reacts pretty quickly.  Edward reacts quickly to Jasper reacting quickly, and the party is basically ruined.

There are no hard feelings from Bella since hey, Jasper can't help it, but Edward convinces himself that he really is too much of a danger for her, and the Cullens pack up and leave town in kind of a hurry.  

Bella becomes deeply, deeply depressed and stays this way mostly for the rest of the book, and all of her friends except Jacob Black give up on her.  Bella becomes an adrenaline junkie, and then shit just starts hitting one fan after another.

The Hunger Games

So I went out of town this past week for Spring Break, and decided to bring along a book for the flight and my three hour layover in Chicago.  Since I wouldn't have been able to really do the exercises in Transforming Body Image, I decided to take The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.  I won this in a giveaway hosted by Dani at Pen to Paper back in November and really wanted to go ahead and read it before seeing the movie.

The Hunger Games is a sort of dystopian/post-apocalyptic story set in what was once North America, but after the war, is now the nation of Panem - a central capitol surrounded by twelve (previously thirteen) districts.  Each district is responsible for one duty in Panem, and the Capitol is in complete control of the citizens.  Each year, the Capitol hosts The Hunger Games, a televised battle royale reminiscent of the gladiators of ancient Rome, wherein twenty-four tributes - one boy and one girl - from each district is chosen at random to compete to the death in a chosen arena.  Katniss Everdeen wasn't chosen, but volunteered as tribute in place of her younger sister, Prim.  She has some potential advantage due to her experience hunting illegally in the forest outside her district, but the other tributes have their own talents as well, and conditions in the arena are carefully monitored and controlled, to keep the tributes on edge and to maintain some level of entertainment value for those watching from home.  Wits and strength are matched as one by one, tributes are eliminated.  Katniss will need to survive to win and return home to her mother and sister, but to do so will mean killing if necessary.  The winner of the Hunger Games is the last man standing, which means taking the life of her fellow District 12 tribute is a very real possibility.  Peeta is not only a boy she knows, but he and Katniss also have a history of sorts; will Katniss be able to make it through the bloody tradition with minimal blood shed?  Will district loyalty have to be compromised?  Will she even make it out alive?

The Darkening Dream

Andy Gavin's debut novel, The Darkening Dream, takes place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1913.  If you think this is a book about puritans and witches, however, think again.  It is so much more, although the location's infamous history does figure into the story in interesting ways.

Sarah Engelmann, the teenage daughter of a rabbi, begins to have unsettling dreams and also hears the sound of a horn being blown, even when awake.  These strange dreams take on new and even more unsettling meaning when Sarah and her friends - twins Anne and Sam Williams, and their new Greek classmate, Alex - discover the body of a young man, whose corpse bears what appear to be what Sarah discerns as evidence of some kind of ritual.  She turns out to be correct, when they see the dead boy again after his funeral.  Alex reveals himself to have quite a knowledge of the undead, and the foursome become determined to find and destroy the vampire who turned him (after dealing with him first, of course).  

The plot thickens and faith is tested as they find that they have gotten themselves involved in something much more complicated than simply the arrival of a centuries-old vampire:  he is in league with gods of the Egyptian pantheon, who want the Archangel Gabriel's trumpet, and a powerful warlock with a demon lover who has the ability to travel between celestial realms.  Deep secrets are unveiled and Sarah becomes attuned to her faith in ways she never knew possible, and with the help of her father, she uses what she's learned to help her friends in the battle they are now desperate to fight.  The stakes have become very high, and Sarah's dreams are becoming more and more disturbing.  Will they be able to stop the forces they have pitted themselves against?  Are they even ready to pay what it might cost them to win?

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling is the second book in her wildly popular series about boy wizard, Harry Potter.  Harry and his friends, Ron and Hermione, are in their second year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and I hope none of them thought this year would be more normal after all the danger and shenanigans of their first year, because if they did - well, they were sadly mistaken.

The book starts out, like the first, at Harry's aunt and uncle's house on Privet Drive.  They are still horrible people, but since they're afraid Harry will do magic on them, it is perhaps not quite as unbearable as before; and this summer, he had his friends from school to keep in touch with.  Or so he thought.  He hasn't actually heard from any of them all summer, and Harry's uncle never lets him send his owl out, so he hasn't been able to write either.  He also can't study, since all his school stuff is locked up in the cupboard that used to be his bedroom.  Being that he is around twelve years old, though, I seriously doubt he would have been spending his time actually studying, but I guess you never know.

Anyway, so one evening, the Dursleys (that is, his aunt and uncle) have Harry shut up in his room while they have company over, when a house elf shows up and gives Harry some cryptic warnings about how he shouldn't go back to school, because bad things are going to happen there.  Obviously, this house elf was not aware of the events of the previous year, or he would have realized that Harry has been there and done that as far as "bad things" are concerned.

The Golden Compass

For my first full read of 2012, I decided on The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, the captivating first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy.  The original published title for this book is Northern Lights - The Golden Compass is the US title, and since that is the version I have, that is what I will be calling it here.

Lyra Belacqua has grown up at Jordan College in Oxford under the care of the scholars and their servants; she is the ward of her uncle, Lord Asriel, who is only rarely present because he travels most of the time for research and exploration.  Her life is mostly carefree, as she spends much of her time playing war with other children from around the city (as well as the gyptian children, when their people are passing through) and exploring every bit of the College with her best friend, Roger.

She finds herself on a real adventure and on the brink of a real war, though, when one day she spies on the scholars and Lord Asriel during a meeting about important - and heretical - discoveries in the North:  Dust, and the apparent existence of another world.  Not long after, children begin disappearing from cities all across England, mostly from the lower-class neighborhoods and from the gyptian families.  Rumors spread about the child-stealers - the Gobblers - and soon Roger is also taken.  She is determined to find her way North to rescue him, and her opportunity comes up when the charming and endlessly fascinating Mrs Coulter visits Jordan College and requests for Lyra to live with her and be her assistant.  Before leaving, the master of the college meets with Lyra in secret, to present her with a mysterious object - the alethiometer, a kind of compass that will tell you the truth, if you know how to read the symbols - and he has her promise to keep the device a secret from Mrs Coulter.

Lyra soon finds out that Mrs Coulter is also vastly interested in Dust, and the more she hears about it, the more dangerous the whole business seems to be, as she finds herself not only in the midst of the conflict, but playing a key role.

Twilight

Much like Harry Potter, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer is likely not a book that really NEEDS a review at this point.  Everyone has either read it or heard about it, and even those who have not read it have an opinion on it.  The first time I read this, it was because a girl I worked with at the time told me I reminded her of Bella.  Naturally, I was curious to find out what she meant by that, but she also absolutely raved about the book, so I wanted to see if I would like it just as much.  As for me being like Bella - I guess we do have similarities, if you are looking at the awkward clumsiness, the fact that we are both somewhat more introverted and very pale.  I cannot, however, cook, and I do not have multiple boys fawning all over me at every turn. lol.  That was absolutely not my own high school experience, and even though I definitely look better now than I did back then, it is still not the case.

But I digress.

For those of you who haven't read (or...sigh...seen) Twilight - and for those of you who claim to, but actually haven't - here is a little summary.  Bella Swan is a teenage girl whose mother has remarried; her new stepfather is a minor league baseball player, so he is on the move a lot during the season.  Her mother stays in Phoenix with her, but Bella knows she'd like to be traveling with Phil; so she decides to move, to live with her father in Forks, a small town in Washington.  At first, she hates it - the constantly overcast sky, the seemingly constant precipitation, the way everything is too green.  And then she sees him.  Impossibly beautiful, irresistibly mysterious Edward Cullen.

He ends up being her lab partner in biology, and as with many stories of romance, he appears to really hate her at first, though he doesn't actually speak to her.  Then, after not showing up to school for a while, he returns and is unerringly charming.  Anyone with any experience in romantic fiction can see where this is going, even without reading further in the book - obviously, they are going to end up together.  The twist here is that Edward and his family are vampires.  They don't, however, swoop around at night, preying on the townspeople of Forks - as Edward explains it, they consider themselves "vegetarians" - they only feed on the blood of animals.

So, Bella starts spending pretty much all her time with Edward,  ignoring him when he tells her how dangerous it is to be with him.  Then, the first time she officially meets his family, a trio of nomadic vampires comes through the area; they recognize that she's a human, and after seeing the way Edward and his family move to defend her from attack, one of them makes it his singular ambition to kill her (he likes a challenge).

Obviously, since there are other books, you know she doesn't die.  But I won't give away details; for one, if you've only seen the movie, you should know that the events in the book unfold very differently from the film, and there are quite a lot of things that were left out.

Tempest

Tempest by Julie Cross is the first book in what will be a trilogy about a young man, Jackson, who can time-travel.  It is an innate ability he has, and the only people who know about it - or so he thinks at first - are himself and his science-geek friend, Adam.  He and Adam do "experiments" to try and learn as much about the physics and the concept of time-travel as they can, and Adam encourages Jackson to keep a journal of notes about each "jump."  One thing they have noticed from these experiments is that nothing Jackson does when he goes into the past ever changes the future - their present.  But when two men burst in on Jackson and his girlfriend, Holly, in her dorm room, everything changes.  They seem to know who he is and what he can do, and Holly is shot.

Jackson jumps, but something's different, because this time he can't get back.  All he can think about is trying to get back to 2009 to save Holly, but not knowing how, he is determined to learn all he can about his abilities.  What he ends up learning is that there is much more going on than he ever could have imagined - and much more is at stake than just Holly's life.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Today I finished re-reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling, the first in the Harry Potter fame train. I know very few people who have not yet read these books, so I'm not entirely sure what to say about it, but I'm going to try very hard not to accidentally give away any spoilers!

Harry is a ten-year-old boy who has lived almost his whole life with his relatives - the Dursleys - who treat him like a second-class citizen. His bedroom is a cupboard underneath the stairs. He only has his cousin Dudley's old clothes to wear (even though they are much too large for him). And his aunt and uncle are constantly punishing him for strange things that he couldn't possibly be responsible for. On his eleventh birthday, however, his whole life changes. On his eleventh birthday, Harry finds out he's a wizard.

In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, we follow Harry through his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry makes his first real friends (back home, kids were too scared of Dudley's bullying to hang around with him), and their experience is anything but ordinary, even for a wizard school. Shit is about to go down, but none of the teachers Harry and his friends have told believe them. Time is running out, so they take matters into their own hands. The Sorting Hat clearly didn't put these three in Gryffindor House for nothing.