Review: Good Luck Bear by Greg Foley ★★

Another disappointing children's book. I'm beginning to wonder: Are books for children more about the pictures than the story?

Let's consider:
This book is about a bear who randomly comes across a three-leaf clover one day. His friend, Mouse, says "Hey, I heard that if you find one with FOUR leaves, you'll be lucky!" So, Bear goes in search of a four-leafer. He encounters a couple other unhelpful anthropomorphs: A monkey who says they don't exist, a turtle who says it'll take forever to find one if they do, an elephant who says he found one once, but doesn't remember where, a gopher who wonders aloud whether Bear will be unlucky if he never finds one...

And then Bear gives up.

But never fear! Mouse has stuck through the search with him, and while Mouse didn't find what Bear was looking for, exactly, he found something better: a FIVE leaf clover. I'm extrapolating here in the assumption that was in fact better, because that is literally the end of the story.

So, the moral to this story is that if you give up on something, someone will just... give it to you.

The artwork again is the saving grace for this one. It was adorably cute. Story? Not so much.

Review: You Can't Go To School Naked by Dianne Billstrom ★★

I've set myself a goal of reading 150 books this year. I am not even close to being on target. I'm like 12 books behind.

It's quite sad, really.

So, when I remembered WeGiveBooks.org, I was like "Oooh! I can feel as though I've accomplished something almost like reading!" AND, even better, I have done something to tip the Karmic scales a little more toward the positive, since my spending 5 minutes to read this book has resulted in a book being donated to the Overbrook School for the Blind, in Philadelphia.

I picked this book almost at random. I am not much of a children's book reader, to be honest. I don't have kids, so I don't really have much reason to, other than to do a good deed. I have come across some cute ones, though, really enjoyable books with fantastic artwork and a really fun reading experience.

Unfortunately, this one wasn't one of those.

I think it tried to be, but my first, and lingering, thought as I read this was that it reminded me of Dr. Seuss's rhyming structure. The first few lines in the book were:

"I must wear clothes? That's what you say?
I don't LIKE clothes! I say -- NO WAY!"

Sounds like Green Eggs & Ham, doesn't it?

So the actual story is about a couple parents telling their little boy about all these horrible things that could happen if he went to school in ze buff. He could get dirty, or sunburned, he could freeze, he could get slime all over him in Show & Tell when he has to hold the frogs and snails, he wouldn't have any pockets for cool things that little boys pick up off the ground, etc.

But the whole time I was reading this, (I mean, when I wasn't also repeating "I do not like them, Sam I Am") I was thinking:  "That's not really a good way to get a little boy to want to wear clothes. Boys like to get dirty, they like gross things, they don't really care about sunburns or cold as long as they are having fun. These things sound like Little Boy Adventures, not 'consequences'."

In the end, spoiler alert, the little boy doesn't go to school naked, because his parents traumatized him with all of their dire warnings of awful consequences of doing so.

Me, I'd have just said, "If you go to school naked, all the little boys and girls will be able to see your noodle, and they won't want to play with you!  *cough* ...Until they're older anyway.

*distraction technique, engage!*
Cookie? "

I'm gonna be a great mom. :D

Anyway, it was OK, if a little wishfully idealistic. The drawings were cute, but I think the story could have been better.

I Done Got Me A New 'Do!

I was a little tired of the old look of the blog, and it was really starting to get on my nerves with some of the column width issues I was having. Adjusting the widths wasn't really doing much to improve matters either, so I said to myself, "Self, let's just do something different!"

I agreed, naturally, and so... yeah. Here we are.

What'cha think?

Review: The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera ★

13% and I'm done.

I have had a run of books that have bored me, or annoyed me, or just did nothing for me. This one is... You know, I don't even know how to describe this one.

I pretty much hated it from the first page. I do not understand the high rating on Goodreads for this book. I can barely stand the thought of picking it up again and reading more of the words telling me things about characters that I could not possibly care less about.

We have Tomas, whom we meet standing on his balcony and vacillating between whether he should ask a woman that he's "in love with" (read: met in a chance encounter and became infatuated with) to move in with him. He's saved from making any kind of fucking decision by her showing up on his doorstep (literally) with her bags packed and ready to move in. Which she does. And then she clings to him (literally) every night - to the point that he controls her sleep patterns. He even, charmer that he is, fucks with her partially-asleep mind and tells her that he's leaving her forever, so that she'll chase him and drag him back home.

Tereza (that's the woman - I had to look up her name) begins to have nightmares that he's cheating on her and forcing her to watch after finding a letter from a woman in Tomas's drawer describing that very thing. So then, in the course of a sentence, we learn that Tomas has never stopped womanizing, then that he lied to Tereza about it, then tried to justify it, and now just tries to hide it from her, but won't stop.

And she stays. He gets her a dog, because the dog will hopefully "develop lesbian tendencies" and love Tereza, because Tomas can't cope with her and needs help.

So yes, Tereza not only stays, but marries him.

Why? *shrug* The book said so.

So then war comes, and they relocate... but after a while Tereza leaves Tomas (taking the female dog that they named Karenin and now refer to using male pronouns... Maybe to make Tomas feel as though Tereza has a lover as well? Who knows. This book is so stupid...).

She leaves him, and I think, "About frigging time." There's no reason for her having decided to leave him NOW, as opposed to any day of the 7 previous years of dreading him coming home smelling of another woman, of fearing that every single woman she sees will be her husband's next conquest. She decided to leave now... because the book said so.

And then he realizes that he can't be without her, and goes to her, and she takes him back, and then he realizes he feels nothing for her but mild indigestion and "pressure in his stomach and the despair of having returned".



I am a character reader. I need characters that I can identify with, that I can understand, maybe like... but these were none of those things. I don't know them, I don't understand them, I don't identify with them in any way... and I don't want to.

I just want to stop reading about them.

And so I did.

Obligatory Lamentation; or "WHY GOODREADS, WHY?!"

By now, I'm sure you've heard. It's old news, for the interwebz, anyway. Amazon bought Goodreads.

*sigh* It's not that I have anything against Amazon... other than their predatory market practices, censorship policies, review approval requirements, proprietary attitudes, user content ownership claims... I mean, I use Amazon-owned Audible and love it, even more now that they'll refund me a credit if I dislike an audiobook, no questions asked. I was a member of Audible when Amazon took it over, and to be honest, the transition was virtually seamless for me. One day there was an Amazon sign-in, which I used (because I do have an Amazon account), and that was it. I can't say I noticed anything at all otherwise. Is the refund process their doing? Perhaps. If so, credit where it's due and all that: I love it. Thanks.

But I don't review books for, or on, Audible.com or Amazon, except in the rarest of cases where I was asked specifically to do so. I've only ever reviewed consistently on Goodreads. Much more consistently there than even here - my very own blog.

Because I consider Goodreads my online Book Home. It's where I go for everything book related. I find and discuss books there, I review books there, I catalog books there. But more than that, I made many book-loving friends there, people who are more than just "online friends" to me, but real friends that I love and would hate to lose.

I love Goodreads. I love the community, the friends I've made, the groups I've created and moderate and helped to grow. I feel like I contribute to a whole there, as a participating member and a librarian. I loved their independence, and how Goodreads was neutral among booklovers - anyone was welcome, there was no bias, no perception of preference for a particular bookseller... And in fact, as little as a year ago, there was a distinctly anti-Amazon attitude there. Goodreads would not be dictated to by Amazon; they'll get their data elsewhere, thank you very much.

I saved quite a few books during that time, and now it was all for nothing, it seems. But I'm not actually upset about that. I volunteered to help save books after Goodreads banned Amazon data sourcing because I wanted to, because I'm part of the community, and because the time I put in benefited everyone, not because I'm anti-Amazon. I can't say that, because I'm not. I buy from them (though generally not books), and technically I am an Amazon affiliate, though I've done exactly zero with that since signing up. I just don't think that Amazon is right for Goodreads, and I'm worried that Goodreads will lose everything that makes it... Good.

I'm worried that the independence I loved about Goodreads is now gone, and that reviews and site content will now be perceived as biased toward Amazon because of this alliance. I'm just concerned about what this will actually mean for Goodreads reviewers. I am concerned how data will be used now that Amazon has access to it. I'm concerned with how policy may change. I'm concerned with how the site may change. Goodreads founder Otis Chandler has said that they have no plans to make significant changes to review policy or ownership rights, etc. And, probably naively, I want to trust that that's true, but Amazon didn't get to be the megacorp it is by letting the little guy run the show. So time will tell.

I'm in Wait & See mode right now, and I have exported all of my books and reviews as a back up. Until I know more about how my reviews will be used by Amazon, I won't be posting them on Goodreads - I'll be posting them here.

That's right, Goodreads and Amazon have teamed up in a conspiracy to ensure I start living up to my New Years Resolution to update this blog more frequently.

It's quite devious, really.