lory_enterenchanted's reviews
501 reviews

Whoa, that was quite a roller coaster. Stephen Fry has some amazing smarts and linguistic craft, but is (or was) a hot mess emotionally. I could not stop reading, even though at times it was more than I really wanted to know. Something of a therapeutic info-dump, it is undoubtedly energetic, but could have used some pruning perhaps. Though I appreciate how candid and open he is.

I'm glad he turned out OK and able to accept himself, but though he insists it is not to blame for his troubles, really one can't help thinking the English class/school system is seriously messed up. Not that America has much to brag about there.

One also has to imagine that his fate -- after being caught stealing credit cards and going on a spending spree -- would have been quite different if he'd not been white and from an upper class family. Let off on probation, he could go on to Cambridge and an acting career. If he'd been a different color and class I do not believe that would have been so easy.

The process of releasing a book or other creative work is not always easy, comfortable, or unmixed celebration and fulfillment. As I've experienced myself, there are feelings of anxiety, insecurity, conflict, and disappointment when a book or other creative work is released to the public. And there can also be difficult feelings surrounding work that can’t be released for some reason. What to do with these emotions, in a healthy creative process?

Andrew invites us to reframe writing as a gift and to consider ways the gift needs to move — whether it’s out into the world, or into and through the soul of the writer. She asserts that creativity does not end when the writing is done, but enters a new phase that can nourish and stimulate us just as much as the process of generating and revising work does. And she offers a wealth of practical suggestions as to how to encourage that to happen. This book has already made a difference in my own writing process, and I look forward to revisiting its principles with every new project, to help re-orient me in the direction of gratitude, abundance, and joy. 

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

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

More wonderful stories, focusing on the magic of women as drawn from folk and fairy tales, but often given a modern twist -- "a shop girl who can sell you a pinch of weather, a lonely spinster piano teacher who can confront the devil and his pop group in a dark alley," as Lizza Aiken says in her introduction. Thus she "can call up the voices of the past to pass on the wisdom of a previous generation" in a time where evil is as present as ever.

The story of the Logan family continues with a nail-biting episode that begins with the unjust execution of one boy and ends with the search for another who has run away, not fleeing his family but looking for a job to support it. The horrors of racist persecution are countered in these books by the anchor of a warm, loving family that owns their own land -- but that ownership is constantly under threat by the rapacious white neighbor, and in this book even the security of familial love is shaken under the stress of trauma. It is hard to read about, but how much harder was it to live through? Situations such as these, as well as a mixed-race child choosing to pass as white when she can, are given an individual  human face. Though Taylor is using such characters to call readers' attention to the cruelty and injustice of the world they live in, they never feel like cardboard characters for her to hang a lesson on, but have their own life that pulls us in emotionally. I'm sorry it took me so long to start this series, which was all the rage when I was a child (Roll of Thunder won the Newbery as I entered grade school), but glad I'm encountering it now, when we need its message so desperately. It still holds up today.

I read this in a day (while stuck in bed with a migraine). Affecting story of trauma and (partial) recovery -- Zachary has come through his suffering with a lot of insight and wisdom and compassion that can benefit others. He's had to face the fact that his wish for a quick fix (like a four-week retreat, that he stopped after only three weeks because he got an acting job!) is not realistic -- he's in for a marathon, with all he's gone through! And he also needs to know that "thoughts and prayers" are not enough, that faith also involves using our own initiative and other tools for change. But he's working on it.

I don't really know his work (except in Tangled!) but I appreciate that he wants to do something to change the messed-up Hollywood system as well as improve his own mental health and I wish him all the best with both. 

I think the language might come across better in the audiobook version read by the author. His delivery probably would make it more heartfelt and charming. In written form it was somewhat pedestrian and cliched.

Powerful novel of Jim Crow Mississippi through a child’s eyes. The Logan family is unforgettable and real (based on the authors own). Racial prejudice, discrimination and violence is a cancer eating at America, an evil that must be faced. Stories like this put a human face on the problems and move our hearts to work for change. 

Joan Aiken has a story to suit almost any mood -- her relentless invention is endlessly surprising, her stories little gems of character, setting, and incident. These collections from Gateway are a bargain for e-readers -- only a few bucks each. Get them if you love fantastic tales!

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