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Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

This has been my favorite book since I was about eight or nine. I unashamedly recommend it as the best Cinderella adaption (...adaptation?), ever. I read it at least once a year and I never get tired of it. Everyone should read this book, even though it's completely girly, and a little cheesy.

I promise to stop reading teen-girl novels soon. 

Just Finished Reading...

Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block

Reading Tithe really made me want to read Weetzie Bat, which is one of my all-time favorite books. Although this book does not contain any faeries, it is a lot like a fairy tale, and it does have a genie. It even has a Happily-Ever-After ending. The book is about finding wonder in the ordinary, about losing things and people you love, the search for security in an unstable world and the beautiful and terrible nature of love. 

As far as girly teen novels go, this is probably one of the best ever written, and I'm not just saying that because I recently finished a less admirable teen novel. Francesca Lia Block is really an extraordinary writer. Weetzie Bat reads like a fairy tale about a glorious, rich world. But the world is our ordinary one and it's filled with pain and heartbreak the way the real world is. I feel like every time I read this book I take something new and different from it, which is a rare find in teen novels.

It's hard to explain the plot, but since it's only about 100 pages, double spaced, size 18pt. font; I recommend you just read it for yourself. It can be finished easily in a few hours while laying in the grass on a sunny afternoon, like today… what I'm trying to say here is: get out there and read something!

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Tithe by Holly Black

Apparently I am on a girly book binge...

 Last night I was reading A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson and I was feeling deeply unsatisfied with his wise observations and scientific statistics about how nature is disappearing rapidly at the hands of humanity. It was thunderstorming outside and I decided I needed to read something distinctly less thought provoking. I chose this one because I remember reading it when I was fourteen or so, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was about... except that it had fairies in it. I would like to mention as a side-note here that I fully support the reading of cheesy-young-adult-fiction, no matter what your age. Just because the font is embarrassingly huge, the language lacks a certain... sophistication and the plot generally includes a lot of teen angst, doesn't mean it isn't a valid read. I love teen books. I read this one in a couple of hours and thoroughly enjoyed it.

It is about a misfit girl who moves from Philadelphia where her mother sings in a band and spends most of her time drunk and with dead-beats, back to her home town somewhere in New Jersey. Here she gets caught up in the politics of faeries and the struggle between the Seelie Court, the Unseelie Court and the free Faeries, who all have a different agenda and she is caught in the middle. She obviously meets a handsome faerie knight and true love follows, etc. 

Honestly I can understand how I forgot the plot the first time I read it... it isn't really anything remarkable. In fact I think my fourteen-year-old self was pretty confused about what happened in the book at all... the reveal of important information is completely vague and you're left thinking: so I guess that was all part of the evil plot, I think? Maybe? This book is wonderful for some solid, all-in-good-fun entertainment, which is sometimes exactly what one needs out of a book.

Just Finished Listening to/Reading...

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre is the story of an ordinary looking young woman with an extraordinary mind. She is orphaned at an early age, brought up by her apathetic, bordering on cruel relations until they decide to send her to school. After eight years spent at school, she realizes there is nothing left for her there and advertises herself as a governess. It is this point that her story truly begins, involving love, tragedy, hardships and eventually happiness.

Having simultaneously just returned home from college and started a new job, I've had a lot to do. So I spent two days (last weekend) listening to a free online recording of Jane Eyre by LibriVox while doing some intense spring cleaning on my room. I had to somehow make all the things that usually live at school with me and all the things that live at home, all fit in the same place. This endeavor was made much easier with a book to keep me company. I didn't quite finish listening to the book over the weekend, so I read the last quarter in the past week.

Jane Eyre is one of those books that every female between the age of 16 and 100 should read at least once, possibly twice. I recommend this book for guys, also, but mostly I think guys will hate it. I enjoyed it quite a bit, even though the descriptions do tend to go on unnecessarily. The bantering humor between the characters is really endearing and as a classic it definitely warrants a read. It would be especially good for summer reading while soaking up some sunshine and drinking tea and napping at intervals...

Just Finished Reading...

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Brideshead Revisited is a nostalgic novel about an artistic, observant man looking back on his life. It takes place, for the most part, in the time before the second World War and tells the life story of Charles Ryder, beginning in his school days at Oxford. It is the story of his close relationship with the Marchmains, a very wealthy family who live in a time where their world of privilege is rapidly shrinking. Charles Ryder is enchanted, first, by the middle son of the family and spends many happy, youthful days with him. Later he is attracted by other members but in the end, he comes to realize that he is spiritually and socially too distant from them. 

I've been wanting to read this book for a while because I liked the (2008) movie version so much. If you are interested in reading it for the same reason, DON'T. It's not much like the movie. Oddly enough, my favorite part of the movie was the beginning which was all about Charles Ryder's youth. In the book, I couldn't really get into the story until Book II "A Twitch Upon the Thread," …basically the last third, about Ryder's adult life. This book is definitely NOT for everyone. The language is challenging and convoluted. Also, let's face it, it was very ENGLISH. For me as an American it was hard to grasp it all, especially the deep nostalgia for a psat English high society. Religion is omnipresent, and may alienate non-Catholic readers. However, I did like the theme of memory and of lost innocence. The book was also very beautifully written.

All in all, I can't recommend reading this book to the faint of heart. It was tough to get through, the descriptions go on for paragraphs and the language isn't easy. in the end I am left feeling like I missed something, and need to reread it in order to grasp the full meaning.  

Graduation Has Come and Gone

Saturday May 7th was my thesis show, the final project for my Bachelor of Fine arts degree that I have been working toward all year. The week since then has been a whirlwind of things to do before leaving college. Yesterday I started my new job and the beginning of my life out in the real world. I'm very tired from all of the overwhelming things going on right now, but I really wanted to post pictures of the show for which this blog was made:

Show cards

My show partner and her sister, me with my back to the camera

Some guy taking pictures of my work

Same guy stopping to look at my work

Me, my show partner and her mom in our show space

Bean Stalk, Step Outside and Stacks; all acid etchings

Some digital prints, a stack of showcards, and a copy of the magazine I created.
Also a sign asking people not to steal my magazines because they
aren't free but people seem to think they are.

Wirds and You Are What You Read; both acid etchings

Put Your Feet up, Silhouettes, and Conquer That Mountain; acid etchings

Get Carried Away; monoprint

Conquer the Classics; acid etching

Be the Leader; acid etching

Show space from the inside looking out

Show space from the outside looking in

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101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith, Illustrated by Michael Dooling

So I'm a 22-year-old reading a children's book, don't judge me!

I'm sure you're all pretty familiar with this story from its Disney and movie versions. Pongo and Missus have puppies who get snatched by the evil Cruella DeVil (best name for a villain or what??) and they head off across miles of English countryside to get their puppies back.... and then end up with a few more pups than bargained for.


This book was amazing. It was super charming, with human owners being referred to as "pets" and a brilliantly painted picture of canine communication. Also there was a subtle hat-tipping to the fact that art is better than television, (which we all knew to be true, anyway) and a surprising twist as to who the 101st Dalmatian is. I'm not giving it away, but I will admit that I was most of the way through the end before I added up the math and realized there was someone missing. Hey, it's been a rough semester, that's why I'm reading 101 Dalmatians and not something that requires intense contemplation. Having said that, the language in this book is pretty sophisticated and has a really subtle humor that I love, but I don't actually think small children would get it. I also have one small issue with how the book treats women... or female dogs. Poor Missis is just a dumb, pretty face who can't tell her left from her right or understand very many human words, or count. She does have some shining and uplifting moments, but mostly she's just the Mom and the Trophy Wife, not the clever hero that Pongo is. Maybe I'm reading a little too deeply into this...


Regardless, this was a wonderful book and I absolutely recommend it. 

Just Finished Listening to...

Demian by Hermann Hesse Audio CD

Demian is the story of a man named Emil Sinclair as he is looking back on his childhood and the friend, Max Demian, who did much to shape his thoughts and help him break free of his innocence and social constraints. It is his story of trying to find himself. Read Demian For Free Online

While normally I recommend reading over listening, the amount I am overwhelmed with senior thesis work hasn't allowed me to do much reading lately. My solution is therefore to do my work while listening to books on tape. I chose Demian because it has been my favorite book since it was introduced to me by a friend my Freshmen year of college. It seemed right to end my college career listening to the book that had influenced me so much at the beginning of it. It's really hard for me to explain what it is about this book that appeals so much to me. It is somehow comforting and inspiring. It makes me feel like I am on the right path, that I'm not alone, that whatever I'm facing I can handle. I don't know how it accomplishes all these things, but I know that every time I've hit a rocky patch in the past four years of my college career, Demian has been an excellent security blanket that I keep coming back to. Somehow, despite all the times I have read this book, I always find something new in it that helps me out.

For example, this time around I took note of the scene where Sinclair is asked if his journey to where he has ended up was all bad, he admits that it wasn't. It was difficult for him, just like life is hard sometimes, but the hard times make us who we are just as much as the happy times do. You can't make just become the person you're meant to be overnight. It's a long, hard struggle to find out who you are and what you're meant to be to the world. 


"Each man had only one genuine vocation - to find the way to himself. He might end up as a poet or madman, as prophet or criminal - that was not his affair, ultimately it was of no concern. His task was to discover his own destiny - not an arbitrary one - and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one's own inwardness."