#Review and #Giveaway of Orpheus and Eurydice

I am absolutely thrilled to be able to share the book Orpheus and Eurydice from Barefoot Books with you. This book was written by Hugh Lupton and Daniel Morden and illustrated by Carole Henaff. I am a big fan of this book, and I think you will be too.

The first thing I did when I received this book was look at the end. It had a happy ending. I said to my husband "WTF, this story doesn't have a happy ending! They messed with it!" he laughed at me. Then I read it from the beginning and wow! They totally made the happy ending work. I LOVE this book. I think I love it more than Demeter and Persephone.

As a Pagan Parent and specifically one of Hellenic leaning, I have always been a big fan of the ancient Greek myths and I share them with my kids at every opportunity. Mostly I tell the stories verbally (a road trip tradition) because there simply aren't a lot of story books suitable for children that stick close enough to the stories to suit my taste. That is why I was so giddy with excitement when I discovered this Greek Mythology series. These are great stories for elementary school aged kids and they maintain the flavor of the original.

It is true that the authors make the stories their own, and who can blame them, I always did. But they do so that is respectful not only of the story but of the story's own personality. (Does this make any sense). While modernizing the language, it is still epic. And the images, while they don't look anything like ancient Greek pottery art, they somehow have the flavor of ancient Greek pottery art. This book is beautiful to the ear when read aloud and also beautiful to the eye.

Parents who are sensitive to scenes of violence should know that there is a little bit in this one. Remember the Eurydice gets bit by a snake and dies (that's how it starts) and Orpheus gets dismembered by Maenads. I hope that wasn't a spoiler for anyone. And there are pictures of all this violence. But it's much less than what your average kid sees on TV.

So, there's my review. Now on to the giveaway!

You should know that this book was provided to me for free.

The giveaway is open to people in the US because I can't afford to ship outside the US (sorry). It will run from tonight to next Wednesday, October 29 at midnight. There is no cost to enter, just a few painless hoops. Observe below:


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Demeter and Persephone #review #giveaway

I was super-excited get my review copy of Demeter and Persephone from Barefoot Books, just in time for Samhain. (I also got a copy of Orpheus and Eurydice, but that will be another post and another giveaway!) Now it is here and I am excited to share it with you!

First, you should know that I am somewhat of a purist when it comes to the myths. I despise most of the modern feminist retellings of this story because so many of them miss the point. And I am irritated with the versions that make Hades into some kind of evil monster randomly kidnapping a maiden for no apparent reason. It drives me crazy that a perfectly good story should be messed with. But, I also understand that when you are adapting a traditional Greek myth for modern children, it will have to be messed with, at least a little bit. After all, I mess with it when I retell it, but I have a very high opinion of my ability to do it properly. As excited as I was to get my hands on this book, I was also really worried that it would be so altered that I would hate it.

Well, it's altered. But I don't hate it.

Hades is grim, but not evil, as it should be. The fact that Persephone is to be Queen of the Underworld and not just some captive, and that Zeus agreed to the match is made clear. Demeter's travels are included; many retellings, including my own, skip that bit. However, the family of Demophon and Metaneira (whose names are not mentioned) is structured completely differently, but I suppose this simplifies things. Also, many important characters are missing: There is no Gaia, Hecate, Helios or Iambe in this story.

What the authors have done is take an ancient story, modernized it a bit and made it accessible to young readers. It is a good story. It is exciting and emotional and it moves along at a good clip (another departure from Homer who does like to dwell on things, like food and flowers). I very much enjoyed this book; even though I am a purist, and the book was written for 8 year olds. It's a short book, 33 pages, not including the end notes.

My 3 year old son did not have the patience to listen to the whole story, but he was fascinated with the pictures. He kept pointing to the pictures of Demeter and Persephone gathering flowers and saying that it looked like our yard. I wish! When I turned to pages without pictures, he wanted to go back to the pictures, narrative be damned. There are pictures on about every third page and they are evocative of ancient Greek art in a way I can't really explain. It doesn't look like ancient Greek pottery painting in the least, but something about it reminds me of it. I don't know a thing about art, I just know that this book is very pretty.


In the back of the book is a map of ancient Greece, some portraits of the Greek Gods and a cute family tree with oh so many Zeuses!

And so, I highly recommend that you get this book for your young Pagan this season. It is an excellent introduction to Greek myth and the story of Persephone in particular. And to help you out, I am giving away my copy. You should know that I got this copy free from Barefoot Books.

Also, if you're interested, Barefoot Books has this book as part of a set along with Theseus and the Minotaur and Orpheus and Eurydice called The Greek Myths Set and another set including the stories of Achilles and Odysseus called the Greek Epic Paperbacks .

All images were scavenged from the Barefoot Books website with permission. (Alas, my camera is no more or I would show you how cute my Sunshine is when he's pointing at pictures.)

And Now, On to the Giveaway!
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Book Review: Curses and Bindings

Today I am reviewing another book from Witchipedia's Read A Long Book Club, Curses & Bindings: How To Do Them, How To Defend Against Them, How To Heal From Them, by Tannita. I would like to say that this isn't normally the type of book that I'd read, but that's not entirely true. Reading about the darker aspects of magick is something of a guilty pleasure of mine so I was pleased when the author requested I add this book to the Book Club roster. However, this book took me much farther outside my comfort zone than I was at all interested in going, in more ways than one.

My very first impression was one of absolute awe that a book so poorly formatted and with such abysmal grammar ever made it to publishing. I suppose it was self-published. But even so, you'd think the author would have had at least one friend read it over before presenting it to the world. It's not just a few typos- I'm talking about major issues. Lots of , , , <-- Yes that. That doesn't belong in any publish work. It's annoying enough in a forum but seeing , , , in nearly every line of a book you paid money for is more than distracting. It makes my eyes bleed. The author also does not seem to have a firm grasp on the difference between they're, their and there, weak and week and loose and lose. (I once broke up with a guy because he wrote me a letter in which he declared that he didn't want to "loose" me. Seriously, that's why. I couldn't get past the "loose".) I know not everyone is as grammar extreme as myself, but for crying out loud; this is a published book that I paid for! There is also quite a lot of weird sentence structure that leads me to believe that English is not the author's first language, but that doesn't excuse the rest of the mess.

That all being said, there is some good information in the book if you can find it within the author's rambling writing style. She does stick to the topics within the headers, but there really are no sub-topics and she seems to bounce around between some here and there. This can be confusing.

It is also important to note that the author makes quite a strong assumption that the reader already has basic magical skills. The spells are not step-by-step, but very general and the reader is obliged to fill in the gaps with previous magical knowledge. I think this is a good approach to a book on such a heavy subject. I frankly find all the repeated basic review so common in books that are supposed to be 102 and above to be annoying and boring.

What else is there to say? The subject matter was uncomfortable. I found myself growing red in the face at the suggestion that I might want to magickally encourage someone to step in front of a moving vehicle or similar. But I do believe it's subject matter that the advanced practitioner should take a look at eventually, if only for informational purposes.

I did not hate this book completely, it had good information, it was interesting, but it was not a pleasure to read.

Review: Practical Prosperity Magick #witchesread

Practical Prosperity Magick; Crafting Success and Abundance by Ellen Dugan was the Read-A-Long book for the Witchipedia for the month of July and I just finished it a few days ago and have been chewing on it since. There is some good information in this book, but I really really do not like the delivery. First I should say that I came to the book a bit prejudiced because I do not like this author. I have read other books by her and been absolutely turned off by her overly dramatic personality, negative attitude and a gossipy, condescending tone. I will explain.
 
Throughout the whole book she writes like she probably talks and she makes a lot of assumptions about the reader, like that we don't know anything at all about magic. She says things like "believe it or not, that's right, I said it, it's true!" (okay, maybe not all those words in one sentence, that would be ridiculous) She also puts in a lot of cutesy words that are entirely unnecessary, particularly adjectives. Saying things like "your witchy fingers". Honestly, there are so many unnecessary words of cuteness and fun that the book could be half its size if you took them out. This sort of cute, conversational writing might make some people smile and feel more at ease, but it just made my brain hurt and my jaw clench and is probably why it took me over a month to read this book. I had to take frequent breaks.

She begins the book with a story of how she cast a prosperity spell, was soon offered a job that she hated, was forced to work with people she did not like and ultimately, through this job, met someone she got along with well who offered her yet another job that matched her skills, which she did not accept. This story is replete with personal details about the people she doesn't like, so that anyone who lives in her town could easily know exactly who the pregnant woman with no sense of humor is talking about. I feel like this is unprofessional and perhaps unethical. She goes on and on about the reason why her prosperity spell didn't work out was because she wasn't in the proper mind-set when she cast the spell. But it did work. It put her into the situation she needed to be in to cross paths with the person she needed to meet to get the job she wanted. But she didn't take it. That's her fault. The universe did the best it could and she gave it the middle finger. And then wrote a book about it.

She goes on to explain some various concepts of higher magic than she usually rights about, Hermetic principals, planetary seals, etc. and she clearly doesn't understand them fully but instead tries to squeeze them into her Goddess-centered Wiccan-esque (I mean by this that her path seems to be Wiccan-like, but not strictly) worldview. This may not be as big an issue for some people as it for me, but it is one of my pet peeves. Of course, it probably all works out fine in the end, so I shouldn't stress it.

Another pet peeve of mine is the random calling of any old God and Goddess to "work with" in magic based solely on sphere of influence, regardless of pantheon or personal relationship. She does this a lot. There are a bunch of completely unrelated Gods and Goddesses in there, some she clearly has no real experience with. (But I did notice a distinct lack of Mercury or Hermes, which  I thought was strange since Hermes is my go-to guy for all things related to money, luck and employment.) I know that these things don't bother everyone. I am probably actually in the minority so, take that for what it's worth.

The spells are okay. They're sound and would probably work out just fine, assuming you actually know the Gods she works with. They aren't Gods I'm overly familiar with either, so I can't tell. I don't like her rhymes. They lack rhythm. And precision. But this isn't a book of poetry. You should come up with your own rhymes anyway, so it doesn't matter too much. She leaves room for customization, which I feel is very important. I don't agree with a lot of her definitions, but there's nothing damaging there, so it's probably not that big a deal.

In short, I did not like the book but I was able to get some good information out of it. If your world view is Wiccan, you'll probably like it better than I did, assuming the author's personality doesn't turn you off. I got a lot more out of Financial Sorcery by Jason Miller.

My Favorite Small Appliances

So I have been without a stove for nearly two months. I have a stove now, a fancy electric thing that I am having a bit of trouble getting used to. Works great, lots of nifty features. I miss my gas stove. But that has nothing to do with this post. This post is about the small appliances that I used while I was waiting in stove limbo. And now that I have had a stove for a couple weeks, the ones I still use are really telling. So, without further ado, here's my list.

The Electric Frying Pan - I love this thing. It is so much easier to use than a pan on the stove. I remember thinking "who needs an electric frying pan when you have stove?" And so I don't actually own the thing. I certainly needed it when I didn't have a stove and now that I have one, I still prefer to use the electric frying pan. It always heats evenly and cleanup is a breeze. What do I make in it? Stir fry, omelettes, hash browns, peirogies, sausages & peppers, fried rice, pancakes, you name it. I used this thing every day when I didn't have a stove and now I have to return it to my mother, from whom it was borrowed (she only uses it at the annual Memorial Day family fish fry.) And I am sad. When I buy one for myself, I will be looking for one without the suspicious coating, but I don't expect I'll have much luck.

The Aroma Steamer - Another thing I figured I'd have no use for that I used almost every day when I didn't have a stove and continue to use daily even though I have one. In the morning you can throw in a handful of oatmeal, some raisins and dried apples and enough water to cover, sprinkle on some cinnamon, set it to steam for 10 minutes and you've got breakfast. You can make any kind of rice or quinoa pilaf in the thing as well as steaming veggies or fish or chicken in the top basket for a complete meal. I also use it to make chili and other soups. You can toss it all in in the morning and schedule it to be ready when you need it. And it cleans up super easy. This also has suspicious coating and that frustrates me a bit because there's not much stickiness that goes into this anyway.

The Crock Pot - The crock pot has always been a favorite tool, but not one I use every day. It is my favorite way to cook beans which might later be turned into hummus or added to chili or a rice or quinoa pilaf. It is also one of my favorite ways to process apples. Just cut them up, add sugar and cinnamon, cook it on low overnight and you have apple butter. Yum. Turn it up to high in the morning and plop on your favorite biscuit recipe, cover and cook another 20 minutes and you have apple cobbler (sort of). Very yummy. Of course it's also useful for potroast and pulled pork- neither of which I make very often. I actually have two different sized Crock Pots and a West Bend slow cooker. The 3 quart Crock Pot gets regular use as a bean cooker, the other two get used much less often.

The George Foreman Grill - I did not use this daily, but I used it often enough for it to make the list. I like it for grilling chicken breasts and I also made salmon in it once.

The Toaster Oven - Mostly I used the toaster oven to bake potatoes and roast beets. I also used it to make cheesy garlic bread out of some sub buns that had gone stale once. It is not big enough to take more than 1 sub bun or 3 potatoes or beets at a time and certainly not big enough to bake a batch of bread in. I am glad I had it, but I didn't use it every day.

Honorable mention must go to my food dehydrator which is hardly a necessary tool in the kitchen but made the abundance my apple tree produced this year into manageable bits, easily tossed into the steamer or crock pot to be used in whatever recipe I wish. (Especially helpful since pies and canning were not an option.) Next year I am going to use it to dry peppers, onions, blueberries and more into nifty bits that can simply be tossed in and simmered.

During my stove-free cooking foray I did not find a good solution for pasta. My pasta maker went un-used entirely because I didn't have any way of cooking pasta. My mother did lend me a hot pot which might have worked, but would have required me to work in several small batches. I didn't try this. I did try using her deep fryer to boil pasta but I couldn't get the taste of old oil out of it and the resulting pasta was pretty gross. It may have worked if it had been brand new. As I have never personally deep fried anything, the deep fryer didn't get used at all after that.

Aside from pasta and fresh baked bread, we did not go without when we went without the stove. And since I have been trying to cut carbs, this worked out perfectly for me. (The boys, not so much.) In reality, I could have gone without a stove indefinitely. If it had come down to buying an appliance (we got our new stove for free from a guy who was moving and didn't need it of I still wouldn't have one), I would have spent the money on a dishwasher before the stove as my cooking needs were pretty much met without it.

That being said, most of these small appliances, with the exception of the toaster oven and the Crock Pot, have suspicious non-stick chemical coatings. The West Bend items are the most suspicious-looking. I feel much safer cooking with my trusty Lodge cast iron pans and for that I need a stove and an oven. Or a fire pit - but I don't have time for that.

You'll notice that there is no microwave on here. I don't have one and haven't in a long time. I use the steamer or the toaster oven for reheating leftovers. I thought I'd get a new microwave eventually when the old one went out in a blaze of sparks and flashing lights but I haven't missed it so I don't think I'll bother. Besides, my husband is convinced it turns food into carcinogens.

Review: Composing Magic: How to Create Magical Spells, Rituals, Blessings, Chants, and Prayers

I'm reviewing Composing Magic for April's Read-a-Long at the Witchipedia.

Honestly, I approached this book with a bit of skepticism. I am a writer after all and I don't remember ever being taught to write. That's not to say I'm any good at it. I wouldn't know, not having earned. So, in my mind, writing is something you either can do or you can't, not something you can learn. Of course you have to practice, but practice is something you have to enjoy doing or that doesn't work either. Despite the fact that my husband insists this isn't true, I feel the same way about music; Something I have never been good at and never enjoyed trying to learn.

And after all of that prologue I don't have much to say about this book except that it is very good. I enjoyed it. It explained the more technical aspects of artistic writing without getting too, well, technical. As someone with some experience writing, I don't like being talked down to and this book didn't talk down at all. The writing style is conversational, but not too casual and very easy to follow. The exercises following each section are very interesting. I read through the book without doing the exercises as time is not on my side these days, but I do plan to go through and do the exercises later, and that's saying a lot.

I particularly enjoyed the section about storytelling in ritual which is such a beautiful addition and the explanation of invocations, evocations and devocations which are so often misused. There is a section about correspondences that I really wish she had just left out. She over simplified them while over complicating the entire subject by adding them. Ick.

That being said, this good book and I highly recommend this book for anyone who ever performs rituals, even if you only perform those written by someone else. It will help you polish your performance, clarify your intent and understand what all the bits are about and when something doesn't work, when the words and rhythm aren't stirring your cauldron, so to speak, how to fix it.

Review of Pagan Generation; A Young Person's Guide to Paganism

This review is part of the Read Along with the Witchipedia event for March 2013


Pagan Generation: A Young Person's Guide to Paganism by Luthaneal Adams is a guide for young Pagan seekers new to Paganism who have not yet found their path. It offers guidance for navigating the Pagan community and an overview of several Pagan paths including Kemetic Paganism, Hellenismos, Druidry, Heathenry and, of course, Wicca. The overviews are pretty good, though they are very British in focus and the magical community in the US are quite different from that in Europe. For instance, the Druidry section had me quite confused, as I have spent some time with Druids myself, until I realized he was talking about the British Druidic organizations, about which I am unfamiliar. He did mention American Druidry in passing and provided contact information for both British and American Druid organizations. I don't fault him for this since if I were writing about Druidry, my writing would most certainly be skewed toward the American version. There are other mildly confusing Britishisms in there too. He keeps telling you to bring a torch. I know he means a flashlight, but I keep imagining teenagers running through the woods with flaming sticks and thinking what a bad idea that is. Again, I can't fault him for this as he's only speaking his native language.

There were some other problems that made me say "hmmm". While most of the book seemed well-written in simple, conversational style, there were whole sections that were grammatical nightmares. It was as if the editor skipped a few pages here and there. This wasn't as annoying as the fact that the "general" information was very skewed toward Wicca. This just annoys me because that is my biggest pet peeve. Every time anyone "generalizes" about Paganism it's skewed toward Wicca... so I it's probably actually a point in this book's favor since it's reflects the way things are.

That all being said, this is a good book that fills a niche that I think really needed filling. I learned something from reading it about Pagan paths I'm not overly familiar with and I have been around a block or two. I would definitely recommend this book to a young person, or any person, who is new to and exploring the Pagan community. This book is useful even if you aren't looking for a new path because it offers information about the various paths within the community and if you're going to be social at all, it is very helpful to know a bit about the other folks as well.

A Spot of Bother

Recently I read a great book called A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon. It's not the usual sort of book for me. It's sort of a family drama with a bit of romance and some British humor. Nothing supernatural, nothing historic, nothing mysterious, fantastic or even exciting and it's certainly not educational. I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by the same author several years ago mainly because it is in the point of view of an autistic child, and I am interested in autistic children since we have autism in the family and several family members work with the autistic population. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime was a mystery, of sorts, and I rather enjoyed it so I thought I'd give the author another go.

One thing that amazes me about this author is his ability to write from the point of view of another person. His characters are full of depth, passion and realism. This man is not autistic (to my knowledge) but he managed to write an autistic boy into being with amazing realism in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Likewise, he was able to create a young gay man, a passionate young woman, a bored elderly housewife and an old man wandering into dementia in A Spot of Bother with amazing clarity and realism. I could not have done it, perhaps that's why I stick to nonfiction.

My husband says it's a girly book, and perhaps it is. I was actually surprise the author wasn't a woman.

A Spot of Bother is the story of a wedding. The daughter (the aforementioned passionate young woman) announces she is going to marry a man nobody in the family really likes (though none of them have a good reason for it). Meanwhile, her father is having a nervous breakdown, her mother is trying to feel like a woman again and her brother is so busy worrying about what everyone else thinks he doesn't notice his own relationship is falling apart. Meanwhile, the bride-to-be and her intended are both having their own second thoughts as the couple loses all control over the wedding plans. Throw in her very small son from a previous marriage just to complicate things further and, well, hilarity ensues. It's definitely a love story three times over. All three couples have challenges to face, every individual makes a fool of him or herself in the process and the reader is entertained throughout.

This is light reading, but not the sort that leaves you feeling like your brain needs a good scrubbing. I highly recommend it and I am looking forward to reading more from this author. He hasn't disappointed me yet (though my husband doesn't agree)

Review: This Witch for Hire by Kim Harrison

I spent last week in bed with the flu; an annoying situation made tolerable by my latest book club delivery. It was a hardcover 2fer, This Witch for Hire (Dead Witch Walking - The Good, the Bad, and the Undead) which is the first two books in the Hollows series by Kim Harrison.

These stories take place in modern day Ohio, in a parallel world where humans and supernatural people live side by side. There is some hostility between the various groups and, of course, there are various law enforcement agencies to deal with their interactions. Our main character, Rachel Morgan, is a Witch (not a human, a different species) and the product of one of these agencies, but she's gone and quit- sure she can do better as an independent bounty hunter/detective- and set up her own agency. And that, boys and girls, is where we our story begins.

While I was thoroughly entertained, I spent a lot of time rolling my eyes while reading these books. They contain all the things that annoy the hell out of me. Supernatural witches annoy me, but the author at least allows humans to be magic-users too, if sub par ones. Friendly vampires are a major turn off, but at least it's not easy for them. Lack of research is my biggest pet peeve, and the character spends half of the first book in the shape of a mink... which the author apparently believes is rodent considerably smaller than a six-inch pixie... a gnawing creature with big incisors... that eats carrots. Come on. Five minutes on Wikipedia could have remedied that. The most annoying thing is the main character. She likes to spend her time whining about her luck and about how she gets no respect while she runs around acting like a fool and treating others like garbage. She is particularly susceptible to vampire charm due to an unusual incident I won't spoil for you. This is an interesting character trait which would have a much bigger impact if she wasn't a total sex pot who seems to view every man she sees as a mindless walking dildo. Even the ones who want to kill her.

I don't like the main character. She's stupid, reckless, disrespectful and way too much of a hardass to feel any sympathy for. Her priorities are also totally twisted. She is so understanding when her friend tries to EAT her, and she finds out she's been lying to her for years, but she's dead set on bringing down the guy who is smuggling drugs that are outlawed because of reasons she herself thinks are stupid and funding (illegal) research that saves peoples' lives??? She causes ridiculous amounts of problems for the people around her and I don't understand why they like her. I wouldn't give her the time of day.

Most books I keep reading because I'm interested to find out what happened to the character. I make a personal connection. These books are like a train wreck. I can't turn away because I have to find out the details I have to know more. I want to know what happened and how it happened and if there are any body parts scattered about. It's morbid, I know, but I'm going to keep reading this series just because. At least when I have nothing better to read. Assuming I can get them cheap.

This isn't literature- it's total fluff. It's like the Harlequin novels I used to snitch from my mom's headboard, except not quite as smutty. (There is some gratuitous sex, just not as much.) It's not quality but it is entertainment. And bonus: it's got funny bits.

Enjoy!

What's All the Fuss About Twilight

"It's a fat book" My son said defensively when discovered reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&amp;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fs%3Fie%3DUTF8%26x%3D0%26ref%255F%3Dnb%255Fss%255Fgw%26y%3D0%26field-keywords%3DTwilight%26url%3Dsearch-alias%253Daps&amp;tag=thehearth-20&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957">Twilight</a>, "So it sucks. I like fat books." I told him I wanted to read it and he looked at me incredulously "Why?"

My son brought home Twilight from the library two weeks ago. Since then we've all read it, with the exception of my husband who values his time much more than the rest of us. My daughter read it because all her friends had. I read it to see the fuss was about. Frankly, I still don't know what the fuss was about.

I haven't read the rest of the series (I probably will because I am told it is better and I'm just the sort of cat that curiosity kills) so I can only discuss Twilight and, frankly, I feel a migraine coming on at the thought. Fat book or no, I read it in two evenings. I tried not to skip too much but, frankly, some of it was just too painful to wallow through. I remember reading <a href="http://www.tvguide.com/News/Stephen-King-Twilight-1002468.aspx">comments by Stephen King</a> about this book, he said that while it was entertaining for young folks, the author just "can't write worth a darn." I thought, "Yea, coming from the guy who stuffs 90% of his books with descriptions of Main and 10% with plot." Well, he was right. She can't.

I'm not an editor, so I won't talk too much about grammar, but it would have been nice if someone had edited that book. The characters were shallow and you didn't care one bit what happened to them. About halfway through the book I turned to my daughter (she was reading by day and I was reading by night so we were roughly around the same spot) and said, "You know, she could save this plot if Bella kills Edward in the end." "She won't." she replied sadly. And I knew it was true. It was totally predictable. Every inch of it. Alas.

Many people have compared the Twilight series with the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&amp;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fs%3Fie%3DUTF8%26x%3D0%26ref%255F%3Dnb%255Fss%255Fb%26y%3D0%26field-keywords%3DHarry%2520Potter%26url%3Dsearch-alias%253Dstripbooks&amp;tag=thehearth-20&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957">Harry Potter</a> series, <a href="http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1590892/story.jhtml">including Robert Pattinson</a> who played Edward on Twilight and Cedrick Diggory in the Harry Potter movies (and you can hardly blame him considering). Sorry, no comparison. JK Rowling is brilliant, her stories are creative and her characters are very well developed. This is evident by the fact that so many reviews of her work are emotionally charged based on what happened to the characters rather than on the quality of her work. Think about it, her skill is so developed, that it has ceased to matter in critiquing her work. Meanwhile, Stephanie Meyers is so lacking in skill that it's hard to get past that and figure out exactly what she's trying to say. I suspect she's not really saying anything but instead living out her own white horse fantasies in the written word.

The Twilight character Edward, while shallow, is annoying as hell. If I knew this guy personally, I would have staked him the first day. Bella is pathetic. Not a heroine, a stupid little girl with a martyr complex who needs rescuing every two seconds.

The plot is the most annoying thing about this book. It is not an original plot. It is the same plot of every Victorian romance novel and the hundreds of Harlequin romances my mother used to hide in the headboard of her bed, and I used to steal- till I realized they all had the same plot.

It goes like this:
Girl meets boy. They are irresistibly drawn to each other for no apparent reason except maybe hormones. Boy fights it because of some issue and ends up treating girl like crap. She's miserable. Then, she's in danger and he has to save her life. They get along for awhile, but he still has issues, so he acts like an ass some more. Ultimately, he confesses his issues, she shows him it's not a big deal, he is delighted he's found someone who can accept him even though he sucks, he ceases to be an asshole and they live happily ever after.

I remember in my younger days talking to my mother about these books and trying to explain just what a terrible message they were sending to women and girls who read them.
1. If a man needs to save you, he'll realize how much you mean to him. 2. A man who is a jerk will stop being a jerk once he realizes how much you mean to him. And
3. All you have to do is wait it out, take the abuse, accept whatever issues he has with grace and you will eventually be rewarded with blissful love.
She told me that some women needed that message to stay in their marriages. I was mind boggled. "Maybe," I replied, "those women shouldn't stay in their marriages."

But Twilight's message is even worse. Now, granted Edward is a vampire and vampires don't have to follow human laws of decency, but why exactly is it okay that he snuck into her house and spied on her while she slept? How is that romantic and not just creepy and disgusting? I mean, are there no stalking laws in Forks?

Another thing that really needs to be addressed by society at large is the fact that physical attraction does not equal love. Now I understand that a whirlwind romance is in fact that, romantic and whirlwind-y, but it's not love. Love comes knowing someone and appreciating the good things about them as well as the bad things. Despite Edward's 4000 question game, these two characters don't know each other at all. Hell, we the readers barely know them and we know stuff they don't. And yet they are both willing to throw their lives away for each other? That's not love, that's co-dependency. Both of these manic depressive characters also use threats of suicide and other harm to themselves to control the other; that is not appropriate in a relationship. At all. Ever.

What Twilight does is romanticize a relationship that far too many giant red flag <a href="http://www.turningpointservices.org/Domestic%20Violence%20-%20Warning%20Signs.htm">warning signs of future abuse</a> for comfort. He is controlling, he is jealous, he uses threats of suicide and leaving to control her, he spies on her, follows her around without her knowledge or permission and does his very best to convince her that if he didn't, something terrible would happen to her. Likewise he is a big whiny, manipulative baby who coerces her repeatedly into doing things she doesn't want to do and is obviously working very hard to convince her that not only does she need him to keep her from hurting herself, he needs her to keep from killing himself. Oh my.

And doesn't it strike anyone as a little creepy that a 100 year old guy is getting busy with a 17 year old girl? Okay, I know he <i>looks</i> 17, but he's not. It's just gross.

My daughter wondered aloud yesterday why why all of her friends like this book so much with its unoriginal plot, unlikeable characters and uninteresting writing style. I replied "Well, most kids didn't cut their teeth on Shakespeare and Homer." And it's true. We are a family of nerds. Most kids don't know bad literature when they see it and are afraid of good literature. I suspect the popularity of such a crappy book is indicative of the state of our public schools.

I have frequently been amazed at the impact early exposure to good literature has had on my children. I wasn't exposed to it a great deal till I was in college, which happened to be when they were little and that's why they heard classic novels at bedtime instead of storybooks and our puppet shows were based on classic theatre. But I really think this has increased their enjoyment of many things. For example Oh Brother Where Art Thou is much more amusing if you've read the Odyssey. People who are familiar with classical literature have a much more developed sense of symbolism and experience greater enjoyment of visual arts, music, poetry and modern films that utilize it.

But as usual, I digress.

Curiosity sent me to the Christian websites to see their take on Twilight and the jury is mixed. Some, like <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/teens/special/web/twilight.html">Ignite your Faith reviewer Stacy Lingle</a> find value in the themes of selfless love, sacrifice, resisting temptation and good triumphing over evil. Others, like <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/teens/special/web/twilight.html">the author of this blog</a> see Edward Cullen as an anti-Christ figure, and agree with me that the message it contains is a poor one for today's young girls.

As a Pagan, I find Twilight irritating in many ways and I'm frankly relieved my children hated it and the characters in it. It tells me I must've done <i>something</i> right in raising them (certainly not everything!) I would be interested to hear what other members of the Pagan and magical community think of this series. Please leave comments, even disparaging ones. I am really interested in hearing from people who like the book because as open as I like to think my mind is, I just can't get my brain around it.

Meanwhile, I am going to horrify my son by requesting he check the rest of the series out of the middle school library, because I'm a masochist like that. Not enough of a masochist to pay for them... but they can't be much worse now that they've got the predefined romance plot out of the way... can they?

Roses Love Garlic - A Book Review

I bought this book because I was looking for resources on companion planting to help me decide what plants to use to create guilds. Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed. While this book does contain information about companion planting, it's only a very small section in a much larger text that is organized into sections of related gardening terms followed by alphabetical listings encyclopedia style. Each heading only has a very small blurb and doesn't go into much detail. While it's a nice reference to have on hand, it is not at all what I was looking for or need and I felt the title was somewhat misleading. Instead of being called Roses Love Garlic: Companion Planting and Other Secrets of Flowers , it should have been called A Laundry List of Gardening Tips with Brief Mention of Companion Planting. In fact, since it didn't have much more mention of companion planting than most other gardening books, I don't see why it was mentioned in the title at all.

Gaia's Garden a Book Review

Gaia's Garden presents ideas for creating a garden space that looks, feels and behaves as if it happened naturally, instead of being planned and groomed by civilized folk. This doesn't mean it looks unkempt, but that each plant within a garden group exists in a relationship with others in a mini ecosystem. This type of planting produces healthier plants and greater yeilds while preserving or improving the health of the soil and reducing the amount of work it takes to maintain established beds. (Though the amount of work it takes to establish them in the first place is not reduced by any means.)

Although I think that the book could have been simpler in its execution (although it promises it won't read like a text book it does in some places) and it digressed a little too often for me (examples are nice, but I got tired of them) I was very pleased with it. It was both informative and inspiring.

The Real Witches Craft

I just finished reading The Real Witches Craft by Kate West. I tell you, I did not have high hopes for this book. I thought "Real Witches" eh, what an arrogant title. Probably a bunch of Wicca-fluff. And yes, there is fluff. She tells you to research Gods and Goddesses and to look for triple Goddesses in various Pantheons. I hate that. HUGE pet peeve. She also encourages rewriting myths with a feminist bent, insisting that they were rewritten by Christians (I don't think Homer was Christian, but whatever) and presents a decidedly fluffy interpretation of the story of Persephone (You can see my version at http://www.sacredhearth.com/bos/stories/persephone. I'm not saying it's better, but I did try to keep it slightly unfluffy). BUT the rest of the book is absolutely fabulous. I gave it to my daughter. I highly recommend it. It does assume you know a few things and it is decidedly Wiccan (which I am decidedly not, if you hadn't noticed) but if you ignore the dogma and the history, it has good solid information and is definately worth checking out.

Happy Feet

So Happy Feet (Full Screen Edition) was recently released on DVD and I pre-ordered it, so it came right away. I hadn't seen it in theatres, but my sister had and she recommended it. The funny thing about Happy Feet is that it's really not that entertaining and it doesn't make alot of sense. And yet, we love it. It's strange. Robin Williams is fantastic in it. He plays a number of characters. Steve Irwin is in it too.

Anyway.

So I wanted to see Happy Feet because there was a controversy. For one thing, the Christian Right had had a brief rant about what a terrible thing it was. Check out the Rooftop Blog and True Believers out of Kansas for some of these views. I had also read on another blog that it had too many heavy issues for kids to deal with, (but alas, I forgot where) that kids should be kids and not have to worry about things like global warming and over fishing. So I watched it, to see why it was so bad. And, let me tell you. Happy Feet is all about Pagan family values. There were some rants about sexual inuendos out there too, and, while there was definately flirting... the whole point was to find a mate and make an egg... the idea of penguins trying to get laid just doesn't offend me that much. Isn't that what penguins do, after all?

It's about accepting people for who they are, about not blindly following the crowd, about seeking truth for yourself and following your own path and it's about the inter-connectedness of things. It illustrates in a somewhat silly way how the actions of humans can affect the lives of other living things. It's very Anthropomorphic, and alot of people don't like that, but I do. I want my kids to see animals as people, because they are our brothers and sisters, all children of Gaia and should be respected as such. Humans are no less animals than penguins. They are no better, no worse and because we feel things differently and so can't understand how penguins feel does not mean that they DON'T feel. The same is true for all living things, even plants.

Last night I went and got my hair cut (all off totally short. Somehow I felt like it was the thing to do since I'm about to embark on a new phase of my life. Going to meet the future in-laws next week, going to sign a joint lease with the boyfriend soon. I like to mark these major changes, and getting my hair cut all off seemed like the right way to do it)

Anyway.

So I went to get my hair cut and the hairdresser asked me if I had only two children (they got their hair cut too) and I said, yes, just these two, and my son corrected me and said, "We have a dog and a cat too." and I said "Oh yes, just these two human children." I like that my children understand that animals have feelings and emotions and are an important part of our family. They will extend that beyond our family into the world at large so that they will care about our eco-system, our food chain, and all those things that are going to be so important to the future of our Earth.

Someone had also commented in a blog that they didn't agree with the way the skua and the leapard seal were portrayed- as villians. But I don't agree that they were portrayed as villians. Certainly not the killer whales ("What are they doing?" asked my daughter "They play with their food, like cats." I replied, and when the penguins got away she said, "That's why Fidget doesn't get to keep her mice very often.") who had boat scars on their backs. They were just animals being animals and animals have to eat. Of course, if they had the fish screaming "No, please don't eat me!" when the penguins caught them it would perhaps have been more balanced!

In the end, the humans weren't really villians either. They were simply ignorant. They didn't understand. And it was a little child who was first able to open the lines of communication. And that is the gift of little children, that they can see things that grown ups have learned to ignore. They anthropomorphise naturally, and that is a gift to a Pagan, since the root of so many Pagan beliefs is animism.

One another note, if you saw March of the Penguins (Widescreen Edition), Happy feet pretty much parallels it for the first half of the movie, except, of course, the Penguins are talking (singing) instead of just making penguin noises. And the narrator mimics the March of the Penguins' narrator through the whole movie. I loved March of the Penguins. But it's the kind of thing you can only watch once.

The end of Happy Feet was very anti-climactic and they all lived happily ever after. I was disappointed there. But what can you do?