deborahmarkus7

So flippin' adorable I just can't even. The art alone would be worth buying the book for, but the writing is wonderful, too.

We get lessons on friendship:

Otter, to shark: Let's go collect seashells!

Shark: Okay, but if we run into any of my friends, pretend like I was just about to eat you.

Otter: Yeah, no problem.

Glimpses of what parenthood is like:

Baby dinosaur: Want me to tell you a ghost story? So, um, there's this ghost, and his name is Steve. No, wait, it's Mr. Vampire. And he was gonna go to school, but he had a tummy ache, so he went home. Then there was this other ghost, his name was Superman. No, wait, it was...

Dad dinosaur: Why don't I tell you a ghost story instead.

Baby: Okay.

And a look at a busy but happy marriage:

Note from anteater to anteater spouse: I'll be home late. Dinner is on the table. xo

(Anteater glances over at table to see: an ant farm.)

All of the comics are cute, some are "aw"-inducingly adorable, a few are laugh-out-loud funny. I'm making a new shelf in honor of Little World: "good gift idea." This is a book that would make pretty much anyone happy -- except maybe your great-grandmother, who might scowl at you because you gave her a book where the last cartoon shows Charlotte the spider calling Wilbur a bad word. ("When I was a little girl, Charlotte wrote nice things in her web, like 'Some pig'! E.B. White must be spinning in his grave!" "Sorry, Gram. Um, the rest of the book's cute, right?" "Hmmph.")

Welcome to another episode of Deborah's Library Book Is Overdue! Today's special guest is a YA novel by Elizabeth George Speare, author of the modern classic The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Although Deborah read this book in a couple of hours and her library now allows her to renew books twice provided no one has placed a hold on the title, she still managed to put off reviewing it long enough to rack up some minor but humiliating fees.

Deborah also deserves some public mocking for the fact that, when she noticed the book was due on December 26, she immediately concocted and believed a charming fantasy of lolling around with a cup of eggnog while she typed up a review on the day after Christmas, because of course she'd have nothing better to do that day. Please laugh hard enough at her that she can hear you without even opening her window!

Thanks, folks! And now: the book!

Calico Captive is a YA novel based on the story told in the 1754 memoir Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs. Johnson. I was lucky enough to find a copy of that narrative, and so was able to see how much truth had slipped into the novel.

Quite a bit, as it happens. This review will focus on pointing out the nonfiction that can be found in the fiction. I hope this will be fun for people who've already read the book and, like me, always wondered how much of it was factually accurate.

For readers unfamiliar with the novel: it's a well written historical YA novel that contains a minimum of mushy romance, though there's just enough love-interest to keep things interesting. If you liked Witch of Blackbird Pond, you'll enjoy this, though the main character's loathing of Native Americans is cringe-inducing at times. (It's historically accurate but pretty sad that this character doesn't change her mind any even when a white guy tries to explain some basic "they were here first" morality.)

Speare wisely chooses to make Mrs. Johnson's younger sister Miriam Willard her protagonist. Miriam isn't described in too much detail in the memoir, so Speare has some room to play. Also, Susanna Johnson is an intelligent, deeply pious, extremely narrow-minded New England matron whose abhorrence and distrust of Native Americans is second only to her loathing of the French. (It's a close race, by the way. She makes it clear in her memoir that she doesn't consider either group to be fully human.) Young readers wouldn't find much to relate to in this upright Puritan lady.

But Miriam, while sharing most of her sister's sentiments, is young – only fourteen years old when the story begins – and therefore more sympathetic and interesting to teenage readers. She's in the middle of her very first crush when Abenakis raid her home in Charlestown, New Hampshire. She and Susanna are taken prisoner, along with Susanna's husband and children. They are brought to an Abenaki village the whites called St. Francis, and eventually sent to Canada to wait to be ransomed or exchanged for French prisoners.

All of this really happened. And in both novel and memoir, Susanna is heavily pregnant when their captivity begins. However, there was no debate among their captors as to whether the prisoners would be murdered or taken back with the Abenakis as valuable hostages. Speare invented this for dramatic tension, although it's a fairly accurate representation of the idea whites held that Indians were unpredictably violent "savages."

Susanna does indeed lose her shoe as the family is hurried along, and the captives worry that her inability to travel very quickly will endanger all their lives. Speare sticks close to her source material all through Miriam's journey with her family to St. Francis. One detail I found interesting was that in the novel, Susanna gives birth to a baby during this forced march and names her Captive. In real life, the baby was named Elizabeth Captive.

Both the memoir and the novel mention that the baby nearly drowns while the captives ford a stream. In the novel, Miriam is a crucial participant in a dramatic rescue; in the memoir, it's a male neighbor who'd been taken captive in the same raid who saves the baby's life.

Rather to my surprise, the young Native American man who teases Miriam on their journey is also straight from the memoir. He feels like a character invented solely for a potential love-triangle, and in fact Speare offers a bit of romantic drama from him that's crucial to the plot but entirely fictional. But there really was such a teenaged Abenaki, described by Susanna as "a youth of sixteen, who in our journey discovered [revealed] a very mischievous and troublesome disposition." She adds that "he often delighted himself by tormenting my sister [Miriam], by pulling her hair, treading on her gown, and numerous other boyish pranks." Times change; people don't.

Certainly teenagers don't. In the novel, Miriam doesn't see her sister Susanna's patience and strength; she only feels a bitter frustration that Susanna keeps slowing them down, first when she's heavily pregnant and then as she struggles to recover from giving birth. Apparently, this is an accurate representation of Miriam's feelings, as this line from Susanna's memoir makes clear: "My sister observed, that, if I could have been left behind, our trouble would have been seemingly nothing."

Once the captives reach St. Francis and then white Canada, Speare drifts from her source material in order to introduce the obligatory love triangle and a rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-freedom story based entirely on a single sentence from the captivity narrative: "[Miriam] had supported herself by her needle in the family of the lieutenant governor, where she was treated extremely well."

Susanna Johnson's captivity narrative is available online fer free; so if you read Calico Captive, you can then read the real story for yourself right here:

http://books.google.com/books/about/A_narrative_of_the_captivity_of_Mrs_John.html?id=HBpMAAAAYAAJ

They had intended to name the baby Lucy, if it were a girl; but they hadn't expected her on Christmas morning, and a real Christmas baby was not to be lightly named -- the whole family agreed in that.

They were consulting about it in the nursery. Mr. Bird said that he had assisted in naming the three boys, and that he should leave this matter entirely to Mrs. Bird. ...Uncle Jack said that the first girl should always be named for her mother, no matter how hideous the name happened to be.

Surprisingly adorable, considering its subtitle ought to be "A Tale From Preachytown, by Sermon McGodsalot." I had to ding it a star for having a very long section in the middle consisting of nothing but dialogue supposedly representing how thems thar pore peeple tocks in 19th-century New England. (Think Little Women, only scarier. And don't look at me like that -- I love Little Women. But Hannah's dialogue makes me bleed from both eyeballs.)

Spoiler-laden summary: Angelic white girl is born on Christmas day, sustains a nonspecific crippling illness in her early childhood, is nice to poor people for a day, and dies just in time to ruin the New Year for her family.

Some things I learned from this book:

1. I really should go ahead and binge-watch Breaking Bad the way I've been planning to, so I can get all the references on this cover.

2. Stephan Pastis is the only writer I can think of who never makes you sorry you read the introduction.

3. I'm not the only one who finds it blindly infuriating when guests arrive at my house hours early for dinner or a party. Guard Duck's ideas about what to do to such people are a little extreme, but only a little.

4. I'm also not the only one who thinks our current campaign contribution laws amount to legalized bribery, though I don't express myself on the subject as entertainingly as Stephan Pastis does.

5. Pearls Before Swine can have actual "aw" moments. As in, you're alone in the house and you still have to say "Aw" when you get to the end of the middle comic on page 59, because if you don't the medical authorities have to check to see if you have a functioning heart.

6. Rat's dream religion is just like mine, other than the beer. (I don't drink. I do want to punch bad people and get spiritual credit rather than demerits.)

7. It turns out that defining manners as "the things we use to hide our real intentions" is not only funny but perfectly accurate -- in fact, Miss Manners, who is mentioned by name in this collection, would heartily agree. (She once advised a young woman not to start a fist-fight with someone who didn't invite her to a birthday party, because the definition of a lady is "someone who wants to punch someone else in the nose, but doesn't." True fact.)

8. I haven't crunched the numbers yet, but I think if I conducted a study of "the amount of time I've lost in my life due to people who don't accelerate at green lights because they're too busy doing something on their smartphone," I'd probably get the same amount Rat did: seven million years. ("There were a lot of people.")

9. Pearls Before Swine has been around for over a decade, but it's not one of the comics that you read and shake your head and think, "This guy should have retired years ago." Lord willing, it never will be.

Pardon the half-arsed review, but it's Christmas day and I'm high on chocolate.

This is a great "Oatmeal" book even if you don't run, but it's terrific if you do. It was nice to have independent verification on the fact that running sucks when you first start, and doesn't start to feel good until you've been moving for at least half an hour. After that, the endorphins start kicking in and you can actually start to enjoy yourself.

It also has some great advice for anyone, like:

Don't try to change a bunch of habits at once. "Tomorrow is the start of a new me! I'm going to wake up at 5 a.m. and run ten miles and go on a diet and quit smoking!" Giving up smoking is hard. Waking up early is unnatural. Dieting is frustrating. Running hurts. When you combine these goals into a single four-legged beast, all it takes is one of those legs to buckle and everything crashes down.

And:

If you find yourself debating whether or not you should go exercise, it means you have the time and the means, you're simply talking yourself out of doing something difficult.

And that stings with the ouch of truth.

This isn't a running guide, though. It's a "change your life if it needs changing" story.

Also, there's some awesome creepy info about Japanese giant hornets, a.k.a. "Giant Sparrow Bees."

Good quirky fun, and definitely worth checking out.

True story: I glanced at the Amazon reviews before getting this story. Most of them were favorable, but of course there was a one-star. I had to see who the heck was trash-talking Louisa May Alcott. It was somebody who was really upset because they didn't expect this story to be so religious.

It's a nineteenth-century story. An American one. Written by Louisa May Alcott. About Christmas.

And just for the record, it isn't even all that religious, at least if that's your context. It's pretty much what you'd expect, other than the fact that I subjected my family to a ten-minute rant on the subject of Louisa May Alcott, lifelong feminist who never married or kept house, preaching the virtues of young women settling down and learning some homemaking skills instead of wandering around trying to find "meaningful" lives.

Perfectly cute, but if you really want an Alcott Christmas, I'd recommend reading the first few chapters of Little Women instead.

I can't do anything really crafty, but I can fill in the cross-stitches if you give me a counted-cross-stitch kit. (I like the looks of those better than the printed ones.) I've been working on and off for years on a tree skirt kit. It has dark blue fabric, and the picture is of some beautiful animals and a seriously awesome St. Nicholas, wearing pale blue and looking rather fierce.

I chose this pattern because I've never really liked the traditional Santa Claus – all omni-benevolent and generically sweet. I like the idea of a volatile elemental spirit, a guardian of children who doesn't have any illusions about them.

So I enjoyed Miracle, because this Kris Kringle isn't sweet. Or rather, he isn't just sweet. He's capricious and irritable as well as open-handed, mischievous, and (of course) generous. He can have fits of stubbornness, anger, and despair. He's human, only more so.

This novel was written by a screenwriter named Valentine Davies who came up with the idea and pitched it first to his harshest critic: his wife. Rather to his surprise, she thought it sounded terrific. So he pitched it to Twentieth Century-Fox. They liked it, too.

Interestingly, Davies wrote the novel but not the screenplay – which probably accounts for some differences between the two. The book and the movie were released at the same time, and Davies won an Academy Award for best original story.

I haven't seen the movie in quite a while, because I strongly disagree with the premise. I'm a fiction writer, and I've lived in a constantly shifting world of my own creation for as long as I can remember. (It would probably be more accurate to say "worlds," since this place in my head is as multileveled as Norse mythology, but has more laser weapons.)

This imaginary place is far more precious and interesting to me than the rock-solid real one everyone can see. I don't need to claim that my fantasies are "true" to grant them the significance in my life that they deserve. Some of my most important relationships are with people who don't technically exist.

So I don't understand or agree with the idea that the way to give children imagination is to tell them a story and then insist the characters in that story really exist. How does that teach them creativity? They don't have to use their imaginations. You've already told them everything.

I'm not arguing against playing Santa with kids, although as a parent I treated Santa Claus as just one more fairy-tale character and never gave him credit for the Christmas-morning wonders I worked my butt off to make happen. But I have no quarrel with people who tell their kids Santa is real. After all, most Americans grow up with that story, and they grow up just – well, okay, most Americans grow up to be total fruitcakes. But I don't blame Santa for that.

I'm just saying, I don't see any connection between developing the imagination and being told Santa Claus exists.

But if there were a Santa Claus, I'd like to imagine him as someone just like Valentine Davies' character: kind, impatient, humorous, animal-loving, imperious, and compassionate.

As part of our homeschooling, I used to have my son read a classic Christmas-related work every year. He was fine when we read A Christmas Carol together several years in a row, because I'm sorry but that never gets old. He liked the Sherlock Holmes story "The Blue Carbuncle." And he giggled at the various parodies I found of "The Night Before Christmas."

However, he started making mutinous noises after he read this story the year before last. And he almost literally threw the book at me after I made him read Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory."

"Why do all Christmas stories have to be DEPRESSING???" he yelled through his tears.

We switched to Christmas movies this year. He's doing all right with that.

This lovely story is just as depressing as ever, as I learned on rereading it over a breakfast of oatmeal and tears. Don't read it if you don't feel like crying.

But do get a giggle if you can out of the elaborate stories I had to come up with to cheer my son up, especially the one about how Della and Jim knock over a 7-11 and buy Jim's watch back with the cash from the register and then celebrate over a Christmas dinner of stolen beef jerky.

I saw this on a friend's feed and was curious, so I checked it out. You can see from my books list that this isn't the sort of reading I usually do, but I thought it was very good. I especially liked the sci-fi premise and the developing relationship between the men.

(Not for the kiddies or the squeamish -- the details of the MC's imprisonment are pretty harsh, though I didn't find any of it overdone or egregious.)

Well, all the cool kids on my block were reading this, so I thought I'd better, too.

Wow. Just wow.

I'm a big fat heathen nonbeliever, and I still thought this was awesome. I saw it as more philosophical than spiritual or religious, but that's just me.

Grab five minutes when you can and read it.

Remember the old days when sometimes if you really wanted just one awesome song, you had to buy an entire album by the band in question? And you always thought, "Well, if I like this song by them, maybe some of the other ones are good, too?" And the album always, ALWAYS turned out to consist of that one really good song, one song that turned out to be pretty good, and ten tracks of boringness?

(Someone please explain to my younger readers what an "album" is. Thank you.)

Okay, this book wasn't exactly like that. But I did only buy it for the captivity narrative of Susanna Johnson. Years ago I read the YA novel Calico Captive, and the author included a little afterword about how she based her book on a true story of a woman and her family being captured by Indians. So I looked and looked and finally found a collection of such captivity narratives that included the one I wanted.

And it turns out that her story was really interesting, and one other story in the collection was pretty interesting, and the rest of them were okay but frankly kind of hard to read. Especially the one that was a diary, and some of the entries were just one or two sentences, and some of them were really boring things like, "The Sabbath day. It rained at night," and some of them shouldn't have been boring given what they were describing but still were, like, "Had the news of the Indians killing and taking four of our people." And I'm all, "Dude, I know you're a pioneer and all, but couldn't you show a little more emotion than that, considering what just happened?"

So I wouldn't recommend this to the general reading audience. I'll be reviewing Calico Captive soon, and will try to give more details as to just how closely the author stuck to the truth.

Once upon a time, there was a stupid smart girl. That is, she did really well on all those "Just How Smart Are You, Anyway?" tests; but she often had trouble in school, because she couldn't learn anything unless she was genuinely interested in it.

Eventually, she dropped out and wandered around until she signed with a literary agent, because it turns out that learning about stuff you're really interested in can be a paying proposition if you promise to write a book about it afterwards.

But she felt a little distressed by all the gaps in her education. Her knowledge of American history was especially spotty. She saw no way around this, though, because she simply could not talk herself into being interested in her own country -- not when places like England and Japan were so much cooler.

Meanwhile, a writer named Steve Sheinkin was making a successful writing career for himself. Like our stupid smart girl, he did a lot of research. Unlike her, he thought American history was pretty nifty. So he was hired to write school textbooks on the subject.

There was a catch, though. He had to leave out all the cool stuff he found in the course of his research. All the interesting, very human stories that made history come alive had no place in textbooks. Otherwise kids might get excited and engaged and maybe even learn something.

So Mr. Sheinkin dutifully wrote boring textbooks. But he held on to the fascinating anecdotes he kept finding. They piled up all around him until his family started to complain. (Tripping over an anecdote in the middle of the night can be very painful -- almost as bad as stepping on a Lego brick barefoot.)

He realized he had to do something with his treasures. But what?

Finally, he got the idea of writing history books that people didn't have to read. They just could if they wanted to.

"But why would we want to read about American history?" the stupid-smart girl and others like her demanded.

"Because...coolness?" Mr. Sheinkin suggested.

"Prove it," they said.

"Okay," Mr. Sheinkin said.

And he did. He told stories of female Confederate spies who hid coded messages in their long hair, and slaves with names like Dangerfield Newby who fought for freedom. He told of girls who dashed across battlefields unharmed though their dresses were sliced through by bullets, and men whose ridiculous haircuts made their fellow soldiers laugh even in battle. He told of women leading bread riots in the South, and men leading race riots in the North. He told of white soldiers who pinned their names and home addresses to the backs of their coats before major battles so their families could be notified of their fates, and black soldiers who kept the American flag flying high even when they were wounded by gunfire.

And the stupid-smart girl learned that history, even American history, is only boring when the good bits are left out. And she even managed to learn a little about it, though it would never be her favorite subject.

And they all lived happily ever after. (Except all those Civil War spies and soldiers and civilians, who eventually died.)

How To Tell If Your Boyfriend Is A Vampire (A Handy Guide!)

1. He repeatedly tells you he's bad for you...

"It's better if we're not friends," he explained. "Trust me."

"Wanting to be with me. That's really not in your best interest."

"I'm warning you now that I'm not a good friend for you."

"If you're smart, you'll avoid me."

"Never forget I am more dangerous to you than I am to anyone else."

2. ...but won't leave you alone.

"I said it would be better if we weren't friends, not that I didn't want to be."

"It would be more...prudent for you not to be my friend," he explained. "But I'm tired of trying to stay away from you, Bella. Will you go with me to Seattle?"

"I'm essentially a selfish creature. I crave your company too much to do what I should."

3. You spend a lot of time being afraid he's angry at you...

"Edward Cullen is staring at you," Jessica giggled in my ear.
"He doesn't look angry, does he?" I couldn't help asking.

I stared up at him, afraid that I had crossed the wrong line.

I parked on the narrow shoulder and stepped out, afraid because he was angry with me.

4. ...because it's impossible to predict what will set him off.

He muttered something under his breath, speaking so quickly that I couldn't understand. We were silent for the rest of the drive. I could feel the waves of infuriated disapproval rolling off of him, and I could think of nothing to say.

And he was gone, his hand ripped from mine. In the time it took my eyes to focus, he was twenty feet away, standing at the edge of the small meadow, in the deep shade of a huge fir tree. He stared at me, his eyes dark in the shadows, his expression unreadable.
I could feel the hurt and shock on my face. My empty hands stung.

"Exactly what did I do wrong? I'll have to be on my guard, you see, so I better start learning what I shouldn't do."

5. His behavior is very threatening...

He lowered the automatic window and leaned toward me across the seat. "Get in, Bella."
I didn't answer. I was mentally calculating my chances of reaching the truck before he could catch me. I had to admit, they weren't good.
"I'll just drag you back," he threatened, guessing my plan.

Holy crow!" I shouted. "Slow down!"
"What's wrong?"
"You're going a hundred miles an hour!"
"Relax, Bella." He rolled his eyes, still not slowing.

"Your driving frightens me."
He rolled his eyes. "Of all the things about me that could frighten you, you worry about my driving."

"As it happens, I don't mind being alone with you."
"I know," he sighed, brooding. "You should tell Charlie, though."
"Why in the world would I do that?"
"To give me some small incentive to bring you back."

"As if you could outrun me," he laughed bitterly.
He reached up with one hand and, with a deafening crack, effortlessly ripped a two-foot-thick branch from the trunk of the spruce. He balanced it in that hand for a moment, and then threw it with blinding speed, shattering it against another huge tree, which shook and trembled at the blow.

"I could kill you quite easily, Bella, simply by accident."

"I could reach out, meaning to touch your face, and crush your skull by mistake."

And then he was running.
If I'd ever feared death before in his presence, it was nothing compared to how I felt now.

6. ...and he enjoys it when you're hurt or frightened.

"Did I frighten you?" Yes, there was definitely humor there.

"Be careful," he warned as I struggled. "I think you hit your head pretty hard."
I became aware of a throbbing ache centered above my left ear.
"Ow," I said, surprised.
"That's what I thought." His voice, amazingly, sounded like he was suppressing laughter.

"Just stay put for now."
"But it's cold," I complained. It surprised me when he chuckled under his breath. There was an edge to the sound.

The doctor's cool fingers probed lightly along my skull. He noticed when I winced.
"Tender?" he asked.
"Not really." I'd had worse.
I heard a chuckle, and looked over to see Edward's patronizing smile.

"I think I need help," I admitted.
He laughed quietly.

I whirled, one hand flying to my throat in surprise.
He lay, smiling hugely, across my bed, his hands behind his head, his feet dangling off the end, the picture of ease.
"Oh!" I breathed, sinking unsteadily to the floor.
"I'm sorry." He pressed his lips together, trying to hide his amusement.

"You look awful," he told me, grinning.

7. He constantly monitors your actions, your movements, even conversations with friends. He knows things about you he shouldn't be able to know.

"I followed you to Port Angeles," he admitted.

He reached the door ahead of me and opened it for me. I paused halfway through the frame.
"The door was unlocked?"
"No, I used the key from under the eave."
I stepped inside, flicked on the porch light, and turned to look at him with my eyebrows raised. I was sure I'd never used that key in front of him.
"I was curious about you."
"You spied on me?"
He was unrepentant. "What else is there to do at night?"

"I come here almost every night."
I whirled, stunned. "Why?"
"You're interesting when you sleep." He spoke matter-of-factly. "You talk."

"It was unquestionably a complication that I couldn't simply read your thoughts to know what your reaction was to me. I wasn't used to having to go to such circuitous measures, listening to your words in Jessica's mind...her mind isn't very original, and it was annoying to have to stoop to that."

"All that next day I eavesdropped on the minds of everyone you spoke to."

"Your truck will be here, and the key will be in the ignition – unless you're afraid someone might steal it."
"All right," I agreed, pursing my lips. I was pretty sure my key was in the pocket of a pair of jeans I wore Wednesday, under a pile of clothes in the laundry room. Even if he broke into my house, or whatever he was planning, he'd never find it. [He totally finds it. We never learn how.]

8. He's very possessive.

His eyes shifted their focus slightly, looking over my shoulder and narrowing. I glanced behind me to see Mike's back as he walked away.
"What?" I demanded.
"Newton's getting on my nerves."

"Do you remember the day that Mike asked you to the dance?"
I nodded. "The day you started talking to me again."
"I was surprised by the flare of resentment, almost fury, that I felt."

"I knew that if I continued to ignore you as I should, or if I left for a few years, till you were gone, that someday you would say yes to Mike, or someone like him. It made me angry." [He's talking about going away because he thinks he may not be able to stop himself from killing her. So, translation: I'd rather kill you than see you with someone else. Lovely.]

"I'm sorry if there's been some kind of miscommunication, but Bella is unavailable tonight." Edward's tone changed, and the threat in his voice was suddenly much more evident as he continued. "To be perfectly honest, she'll be unavailable every night, as far as anyone besides myself is concerned." [To a guy who had the nerve to ask Bella out on a date.]

"I'm not mad at Billy," he corrected in a clipped voice. "But his son is irritating me." [His son, Jacob, danced for a few minutes with Bella at the Prom.]

9. He wants to know absolutely everything about you. Not in bits and pieces as your relationship develops, but right away.

It continued like that for the rest of the day. While he walked me to English, when he met me after Spanish, all through the lunch hour, he questioned me relentlessly about every insignificant detail of my existence.

10. He insults you, denigrates you, and treats you like a child.

"Bella, it's not my fault if you are exceptionally unobservant."

"Do you want a ride to Seattle?"
"With who?" I asked, mystified.
"Myself, obviously." He enunciated every syllable, as if he were talking to someone mentally handicapped.

His smile was condescending now.

"You've got a bit of a temper, don't you?"

We were near the parking lot now. I veered left, toward my truck. Something caught my jacket, yanking me back.
"Where do you think you're going?" he asked.

"Don't you have a jacket?" His voice was disapproving.

"Be careful. The child has no idea."
I bridled a little at the word child. "Jacob is not that much younger than I am," I reminded him.
He looked at me then, his anger abruptly fading. "Oh, I know," he assured me with a grin.

"Don't be difficult, Bella."

11. And he always has to have his own way. ALWAYS.

"Honestly, I'm not hungry," I insisted.
"Humor me."
He walked to the door of the restaurant and held it open with an obstinate expression. Obviously, there would be no further discussion.

"Drink," he ordered.

"Tell me," he finally commanded after persuasion failed.

Oh, wait. Vampires aren't real. This list won't help you check if your boyfriend's a vampire.

It'll sure help you figure out if your boyfriend is abusive and/or a stalker, though. And sadly, those do exist.

I'm not here to trash people who enjoy this book. I wrote this review because I'm worried about the girls who buy merch that says "I'M JUST A BELLA WAITING FOR MY EDWARD." Don't ever say or think that about yourself. Don't be that girl.

Be a woman. Be a grownup. Write your own story. Don't depend on a guy to come along and do it for you.

And for Pete's sake, if a moody, brooding guy says, "I'm dangerous. You should stay away from me," say, "You're right! Except actually, you'd better stay away from me. Or I'll drop some dynamite on your sparkly little dangler. Bye!"

And then go have some adventures of your very own, and live happily ever after.

Time to catch up on reviewing books I actually read a few months ago!

I haven't read this since I was a child. I didn't get much out of it then. It's a beautiful book, but seemed frighteningly somber to me. Also, I was (and kind of still am) all about dialogue, and the main character, Karana, spends several years completely alone on an island. So I respected this book, but didn't feel any urge to reread it as a kid.

I reread it as an adult because I've been reading James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me and am feeling a keen interest in popular representations of Native Americans. I'm impressed that this book is the modern classic it is, because it certainly steers clear of the annoying stereotypes one so often sees. Karana's people aren't unrealistically pure, innocent, selfless people, helpless and pitiful in the face of white invaders. They are the sympathetic characters in a conflict sparked by greedy Russian hunters. (When in doubt, blame the Ruskies.)

And Karana kicks arse in terms of being able to take care of herself entirely on her own. She makes a shelter, learns to bow-hunt, and staves off loneliness by cultivating relationships with awesome wild animals.

Given that living all by myself with no one but otters and the occasional friendly wolf for company is a dream come true for me, I think the only reason I didn't cotton more to this book as a child is that Karana has very little personality. She is strong and occasionally humorous, but I couldn't imagine being or befriending her.

My feelings about this book now are very much what they were when I was young: this is a brilliant, interesting but rather remote story to me. There's a reason it's a modern classic, so do pick it up if you haven't already read it. And read it to your kids on cold winter nights. It'll help you appreciate the luxuries of home and hearth and good warm food.

If this book doesn't make you want to curl up with a nice hot cup of arsenic and maybe some razor blades, you read a different edition than I did. Apparently Wilde read Hans Christian Anderson and thought, "Dang nab it, I can write way way depressing fairy tales, too!"

Not saying it's not pretty. Just saying.

Exactly what it ought to be: a good short overview of Dickinson's life, for anyone who wants to read more than the Wikipedia article about her life but doesn't feel like committing to a full-length biography. The prose is smooth and quiet, with occasional glimmers of humor but no intrusive authorial voice.

Brody keeps interpretation to a minimum, and summarizes existing information rather than contributing original research. He's good at offering context for Dickinson's life and work, and a bit of tentative analysis, but bear in mind he doesn't quote any of her poetry. It's probably safe to assume that anyone reading this book has also read at least a little Dickinson, or what the heck are you doing here?

There are a few grammar errors -- the kind of thing that would slip quietly by a spell check. But we're talking maybe half a dozen total, rather than one or two a page. This is obviously a small independent project, but it doesn't scream "amateur." If those few errors were corrected, this would come across as a thoroughly professional short biography.