Under the Skin

“Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought.”  I can't be the only person that has been told that they "HAVE" to read The Help with about as much urgency that one would be told that they are in the midst of a pulmonary embolism and they must get to the hospital immediately.  So, I read it.  But not quick enough that if I did have a pulmonary embolism it would have mattered. The Help follows the story of three point of view characters, Aibileen, Minny and Skeeter (actually named Eugenia), who live in Jackson, Mississippi in the mid 1960s.  Aibileen and Minny are both black domestics, and Skeeter is a white, society girl.  However, after college, Skeeter has started to not be so keen on the way that blacks are treated.  She wants to be a writer, and starts to write a book about the life of black domestics.  She especially starts to analyze that crazy di

I am back in Utah!  That deserves both a smiley and a frowny face.  It was hard leaving home knowing that it was the last time I would be home as a little girl, and knowing that I might not see Caleb again before he leaves on his mission and a lot of other things.  But I'm moving with my life, I get to start with my internship and I get to see my fiance again! However, getting to Utah was a big deal.  Because we were a ship without a captain.  I got up very early to get to my 6am flight in Rochester.  The flight was a bit late with the take-off and such, but it wasn't a huge problem.  Then, I got to Chicago.  The flight was on-time in Chicago, and we even got on the plane.  But, we had been sitting on the plane for about ten minutes when they tell us, "Ladies and Gentlemen, we are about ready to get underway here.  Our captain is arriving a different gate and he will be with us shortly." We all thought, "Okay, we're good to go."  About twenty minutes l

“Life is the most spectacular show on earth." Water for Elephants is one of those books that I would hear about occasionally, but the occasionally kept on coming.  To me, that signals a good book that isn't just hype.  Also, it was written as a National Novel Writing Month novel.  Since I participate yearly in NaNoWriMo, I figured I needed to support my fellow Nano-ers.  So I gave it a read.   Water for Elephants follows the story of almost-Cornell-graduated-veterinarian Jacob Jankowski who ends up as a circus vet during the Depression-era.  The circus doesn't really care that he's not actually a vet.  He just had final exams before he was a real one and, as they put it, it's not like the tatooed man was actually held captive in Borneo and the fat lady only weighs about 375, not 800. There he learns that circus life is not simple, as well as falling in love with Marlena, the horse trainer/rider.  Unfortunately, Marlena's married to the mentally-ill

So, my family visited Fort Ticonderoga!  We left New York right after Sarah's Early-Birthday party on Friday.  We then traveled to the great state of Vermont, which knocked another state off my list.  One of my goals in life is to visit all fifty states at least once, and to meet at least one person who considers themselves a native of each state.  We stayed the night in the college town of Middlebury, VT.  At a Courtyard!  That's really classy for my family. Then, the next morning, we went to Sharon, VT and visited the Joseph Smith birthplace memorial.  It was fun and I'm glad we went.  It's not really something I'd feel the need to do again.  It was kind of just a granite monument, but it was good to do once. Then, we headed back to New York to Fort Ticonderoga.  Since or old GPS, Fran the Magellan, is getting old and she loses her wits about her too often, we used our new GPS, Carmen the Garmin.  We told Carmen the Garmin to take us to the ferry that goes acr

Firstly, it is true.  My blog had a makeover. I never did like that pink color scheme.  I don't like pink, and it was too dark and somber for my personality.  This is much more me, and I've always liked yellows and oranges. Now, for the post. Disney likes to take classic stories and turn them into a new story.  Sometimes this makes them fresh, but sometimes I'm not a fan.  The reason I'm not a fan is because it destroys culture sometimes.  Ask anybody out there that grew up with Disney the story of The Little Mermaid , and you will most likely get a happy story about a mermaid who wanted to be a part of that other world. She just wanted to be part of their world.  And then she fell in love and her bad choices and dealings with...well, the devil...all work out in the end.  Right?  Wrong.  The Little Mermaid is a Danish story, as recorded by Hans Christian Andersen.  People like to bring this one up and say that it actually has a sad ending.  It doesn't really, b

  “Sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.” My Sister's Keeper was kind of the Inception of the book world for awhile.  Everyone who read it said that their mind was blown.  I haven't seen all the brains all over the place from all the apparent minds that have been blown by these two things, but I will take their words for it.  So, I wanted my mind likewise blown and decided to read My Sister's Keeper . My Sister's Keeper is a story about Anna.  Anna's older sister, Kate, has had Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia since the age of three.  Their older brother, Jesse, is not a perfect match for transplantation, so their parents genetically engineered a perfect, 6-point HLA antigen match (through Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis), Anna.  Anna has donated cord blood, granulocytes, lymphocytes, bone marrow, stem cells, and more to Kate.  Now, at age thirteen, Anna is done.  She does not want to give the next thing up, a kid

Since it is time for people to graduate from things, here are the Top Ten Cliche Graduation Songs.  I don't know why everyone feels they have to play these songs, but for some reason they do. 1.  Graduation (Friends Forever)   by Vitamin C This song could also be called the most obnoxious song of all time.  I didn't know that you could make the Pachelbel's Canon chord progression any worse.  But, kudos, they did.  And yet, everyone always thinks it is important to include in any high school graduation experience. 2. Seasons of Love from Rent This song is very good at getting stuck in your head, except the exact number never sticks in your head.  So, you sing this obnoxious song, but you just spout out random numbers instead of what it actually says. 3. I Will Remember You by Sarah McLachlan The really special part of this one is that it doubles as a cliche one for funerals.  I guess graduations and funerals are similar in lots of ways.  It is

I take my book reviews aside for a moment to speak concerning someone who made a difference in my life.  His name was Danny.  It probably still is, unless as an adult he uses Dan or Daniel.  I don't know.  When I was at East Ridge Elementary, it was a rough time for me.  The school was new to me, and the kids lived a different life than any kids I'd met before.  When we are children, we tend to be very accepting.  As much as we like to pretend that social status doesn't matter, as adults, we do care.  We judge based on appearance and social status.  Most kids don't. But at East Ridge, they did.  I think that is because it was a very affluent neighborhood that it served, for the most part.  It had both Saybrook and Aspenwood, both of which consisted of mostly million-dollar houses.  I just checked on zillow to make sure I wasn't saying anything incorrect.  The cheapest of them I found was $675K.  I assume because of this, social status and economic appearance matte

“You gotta face the hand you're dealt with and deal with it, and make your problems be the smallest part of who you are.”  A series of children's books (there are four of them) that I recently read were the Joey Pigza books. Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key was one of those books that I'd seen, but I always kind of figured was a bit like...I don't know the Bailey School Kids books that were so popular when I was in older-Elementary school.  You know the ones that always had some teacher or something that was probably a mythical creature?  Like Leprechauns Don't Play Basketball , or whatever they were called.  The assumption was that maybe I would have enjoyed them when I was little, but they were not children's literature of any lasting consequence and just pumped out to make "at least they're reading" books.  However, I kept seeing them on more and more recommendation lists, and some Newbery Honors went to them, so I thought that there must be m