1. Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie
2. Contact (audio book), by Carl Sagan
3. Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, edited by Rose Fox and Daniel José Older
4. The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson
5. The Chaos by Nalo Hopkinson
6. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (audio book) by Robert Louis Stevenson
Still reading at the end of the month: The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights, Volume 3, which will probably take me a long while.
Please share what you have been reading in the comments. Nothing better than discussing books!
REVIEWS:
1. Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie
Peter Pan, Wendy Darling, Captain Hook, Smee, Tinker Bell and all other now famous characters make, what I believe to be, their first appearance here. Pan leads Wendy and her brothers off to Neverland and they have many adventures. And the narrator has a lot of opinions about what happens along the way.
All the movie adaptations make the story light and magical and innocent, but this book is actually very creepy in parts. There are some unsettling aspects, such as the idea that mothers flip through our thoughts when we’re asleep and take out the bad ones or that Peter might just forget you after taking you on an adventure, leaving you stuck. There’s the fact that battles are bloody and real and many other things that make this not the nice neat children’s story that I expected it to be.
None of that even addresses the problematic representation of the “Indians,” who are said to be of the “Picaninny” tribe. According to wikipedia, the term was once affectionate, which may be how Barrie thought of it when writing — but it has long been thought of as derogatory at this point, so that part doesn’t hold up well.
That aside, Peter Pan is a great magical, adventure story. The characters are semi-one dimensional, but that suits the fairy tale tone. There’s a reason the story has become a popular classic.
2. Contact (audio book), by Carl Sagan
3. Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, edited by Rose Fox and Daniel José Older
4. The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson
Elisa bears the Godstone, a diamond-like jewel in her belly that marks her as destined to perform some great act of service in the future — if she can survive in the turbulent times ahead with war on the horizon. When she is secretly married on her sixteenth birthday to a king in a neighboring country, she finds herself thrust directly into that turmoil.
I enjoyed seeing Elisa’s personal transition. Her story, as much as it is about war, adventure, love, and magic, is also very much about growing up and meeting the challenges life puts in front of you, something especially difficult when you’re young. In the beginning, she’s struggling. She feels useless and like and outcast, believing her sister hates her and that her family is happy to be rid of her through marriage. She eats to sooth her emotions. She’s a large girl and because she compares herself with her slender, graceful sister, she indulges in further self-loathing. Some readers might find her whiny, but I could sympathize with Elisa. Being a teenager can really suck. I know, I’ve been there. I’ve spend a fair share of my teenage days hating my body and feeling like an horrible, ugly unwanted outcast. Maybe that’s a part of the reason why it was so cool seeing her grow as a person as she faced each new challenge, becoming stronger in confidence, body, and soul.
Something I also really liked was the world-building and setting. The towns and people’s names are inspired by the Spanish language and the people are generally dark skinned. The setting is jungles and the deserts and hills, so not the typical British Isles-style feudal fantasy.
While the religion described in the book seemed a little too simple and too widespread with no competing belief systems, I appreciated that there were variations in how characters approached their belief. In fact, it’s the variations in interpretation that causes much of the overall problems throughout the book.
While far from a perfect read, The Girl of Fire and Thorns was enjoyable. I’ll be picking up the sequel soon.
5. The Chaos by Nalo Hopkinson
Scotch thinks her biggest problems are her over protective parents, facing her ex boyfriend, and pulling together her dance moves before the big competition. But then the Chaos, a worldwide cataclysmic event in which the rules of physics become patchy — a volcano appears in the middle of Toronto, Sasquatches and other strange creatures start appearing on the streets, and people are changing. Her brother goes missing, people are dying, and a black blemish is quickly spreading across Scotch’s body.
The Chaos that plunges into the world is strange, unsettling, and sometimes terrifying, like if Salvidor Dali and Franz Kafka envisioned the apocalypse. This kind of story could have quickly gone off the rails, but Hopkinson handles it deftly with vivid descriptions and an array of compelling and interesting characters. And I really liked that those characters represented a diverse set of backgrounds with none of them coming off as token characters.
There was so much strangeness and so many horrible things that I wasn’t sure how this story could possibly end, but I needn’t have worried; the ending was perfect and left me clutching the book to my chest, not wanting to let it go.
6. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (audio book) by Robert Louis Stevenson
I’m not sure the original Hyde lives up to the figure of threat and evil that pop culture has made him over the years. But this novel is short and fairly suspenseful — or it would be, if I didn’t already know the answer to the mystery of Mr. Hyde and why Dr. Jekyll is protecting him. The story is quick and it’s a classic worth visiting.