Category: reflections on literature

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In the Ravenous Dark by A.M. Strickland

So I messed up and regrettably had to miss this event that I was looking forward to. I had thought that California time was two hours ahead from my time and then found out instead that they are two hours behind. So instead of the event being at 5pm my time, like I had thought, the event was going to be at 9pm my time. Normally, I would have attended anyway and wanted to, but I have to wake up very early this next morning for an entire day long bachelorette party in another state. Knowing that book events get me hyped up, I knew that I would not have been able to fall asleep until hours later.

Instead, I had tried to have discussion/ questionnaire time with my husband about this book because I was sad that I couldn’t discuss it with anyone else because this has turned into one of my favorite books I have read. It had almost everything I could have wanted in a book thanks to the amazing worldbuilding and complexity. Upon trying to discuss it though, I realized that it is too complex of a book to try to explain and discuss the book it in detail with someone who had not read it and doesn’t normally read. So that was very frustrating.

I have decided to post down below my Goodreads review I had done for this book. I am hoping that this coming Tuesday I will get to go to my other event because I desperately need a to attend a book event for my soul.

Warning: There are spoilers below about the book.

I loved In the Ravenous Dark by A.M. Strickland. I felt like it gave me just about everything I needed in a book. It gave me a dark world that was trying to survive, an awesome magick system, some decent vivid scenes of theatric gore, a complex plot, awesome dynamics, a main character that was different and intriguing, and pansexual representation!!!! It also gave representation to other members of the lgbtq+ community which I appreciated fully!

The beginning started with a great opening. In the opening the author was able to show the readers some interesting world building, beliefs that circulated in the book, and the different stances that the characters took on things compared to society.

The world building was great! I enjoyed the magick system tied into it and how they both came together or in some areas were not able to come together. I loved how the dead were forced guardians that drained the lifeforce of the bloodmages. I loved how the author had Rovan’s weaving tie into her magick. I loved the way this world wasn’t bothered by anyone of different sexual orientation as long as it didn’t get in the way of the royal line and that all of them were not scared to just be who they were. And I loved that there was a whole other dead world. The veil to protect against the blight was cool also, especially with how it tied into the plot.

I loved the main character. I loved how unique she was. It was so refreshing reading something with someone who acted the way she did. I also loved just about all the characters, although my favorite was Japha. I loved how flawless I felt they all were woven in their flaws, and I appreciated how they were not ashamed of who they were.

The relationships were such a joyride. I could not get enough of the dynamic between Rovan and her ghost Ivrilos. I also loved Rovan and Japha’s relationship and then how they all came together at the end as a family with once again all different dynamics since so much had changed since the beginning. It left my imaginations running wild in delight at all the possibilities and I cannot express enough how much I appreciated the poly relationship and representation.

The LGBTQ+ representation in this book was heartwarming. All the gender diverse characters all felt natural and not forced at all. It made the world feel more real, made the royal scenes and dynamic of the family more complex and interesting like they normally are in real life. And once again I cannot stress enough how much I loved that they had no fear of being who they were. They accepted themselves, which I feel is very important to young readers to understand and have role models for.

The plotting I thought was complex and terrific. I did not know what to expect and was led into twists and turns layered in hints that I wasn’t able to catch until after the reveals.

The imagery was so satisfying, especially at the end. I loved the vividness of the heart getting pulled out and when Rovan sat on the throne and the walls were melting.

The tension was amazing and kept the pages turning.

Let’s not forget to include how cool adding the dark page in was.

The ending was very satisfying to my heart. I loved the new dynamic between all the characters. I felt like all the loose plot threads got tied up into beautiful bows. I loved how I found if I took a step back it was all a story inside a story. I’m happy that after 400 years Ivrilos got his revenge and happy ending.

The only things I did not care for in the book was how Rovan seemed to care for and love Bethea at the beginning and I felt they had such a strong relationship, but then Bethea was forgotten about for a big chunk of the book. I would have thought it was just in Rovan’s character, except that Rovan kept thinking about her mom. Her mom and Bethea were both brought into the palace at the same time, so I didn’t understand how she could think about one person but not the other. But by the end it didn’t bother me too much since Bethea ended up getting a happy ending. The other thing was that after the dark page, I felt like things were rushed and the pacing was incredibly different than a large part of the beginning of the book almost like the author was running out of space and time. Making it a duology might have fixed that issue, but with how the author tied up the ending, it didn’t bother me too much at all.

I loved this book, and even with the few issues I had with it, I thought the author made up for those issues. The prose were fantastic, I was excited to go from page to page with all the tension, and the plotting was complex enough to keep my interest. I needed this book to take a break from the tropes I have been reading lately. I will be picking up the other book A.M. Strickland has out and cannot wait to read it.

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Not Talent, No.

Pieces of her writing and and words shove me through the page until I am there and have to blink away the vision, shocked that words could grab me so. Not talent, no. But the ability to craft a reader to a writer’s soul.

I actually wrote this about an author whose book I am currently reading. I am not done reading the book yet, but I hope the ending is as beautiful and as grasping as her writing. Let’s give a shoutout to the artists who inspire other artists and keep the magickal flow of passion dancing in us all.

Book I am reading: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

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To Be Read Stack Update for December 2020

Most of these are in the order I plan to read them, but there are two other ones that are in their box set on the shelf that also belong to this stack. I am working hard between E-Learning for a Kindergartener and a 2nd Grader, entertaining and giving the necessary love and attention to our two year old, taking the girls to their three sports throughout the week, all the holiday family things we do, and the work I make sure I put in everyday to my career to decrease the pile, but of course the urge and need for more books always comes calling. Hahaha. I’ve already ran out of room on our shelves, made more room, and now am about to run out again, and personally I can’t wait until I do. Maybe I can convince the husband to buy me another shelf. 😀

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Thoughts on Sulwe by Lupita Nyong’o

I don’t normally review children’s books because I have not studied up entirely on how to write them. But at the bookstore today this book, Sulwe written by Lupita Nyong’o and illustrated by Vashti Harrison, spoke to me on the shelf. I took it down, flipped a couple of pages, looked at the price, decided it was worth it, and brought it home excited to dive in. It is a book that I will always remember and cherish. In college I actually had a friend whose soul you could tell was hurting when she talked about how dark she was compared to her sister. So this book went straight to my heart and pulled a few strings. The first time I read it I cried. Then the second time I read it to my children I had to keep taking breaks to choke back tears. It is a must have and a necessary read, colored with beautiful illustrations that take your breath away with a flip of a page. I am so thankful I came across this and that now I get to keep it on my shelf forever to bring down whenever I need a moment and a reminder of beauty.

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The Show That Surprised Me

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This is going to be an interesting post. I wouldn’t normally write I guess what you could maybe call a “review” on a show, although I do have many opinions on a lot of shows, but this show caught me by surprise. I had just finished New Girl and needed a new comedy to watch on Netflix because I was not yet ready to dive into my usual dramas and deal with being tear jerked around. So, I decided to try to watch a show that I figured I would end up hating and give up on. When I was a senior, a parent of someone I lived with briefly, used to watch The Office all the time. I tried to watch it with her one day,  but did not find it humorous at all and could not get into it. I pretty much found it annoying, useless, and a waste of time. For some reason though, I decided to give it another chance almost ten years later and watch it from the beginning. I was truly blown away with all the lessons that it had embedded into it, especially the most important one it focused on.

So, of course I’m not going to give away any spoilers from this show. Letting that be known now, but for anyone who doesn’t know, it is a show that takes place in a paper company. It is about some pretty unique, yet in some areas, average people all working together in an office together. Sounds pretty boring, right? Yet somehow they made it interesting and a little funny. From the beginning to the end, you get to watch the employees all work together to try to make the most out of their boring jobs and their life. They grow close together like a family, help bring one another up, and share many special moments together. It definitely brightens your mood and makes you see that even in the most boring jobs and places in life that there is a lot more going on if you look hard enough and that those places really aren’t that boring at all.

The thing that grasped my attention throughout the whole show was the message that no matter how many times you get knocked down, you need to get back up and stay positive no matter the situation or circumstance. You find your purpose in life and you keep trying to achieve that no matter what life throws your way because at some point you will most likely get there or even someplace better than you thought you could.

My favorite character in the show that showed me this was surprisingly Dwight. At the beginning, I was like “I’m going to hate this dude”, but he ended up being one of the biggest go getters, respectful, loyal, a good friend, and more caring than most of the people in the show. Throughout most of the entire show he is picked on by Jim tremendously, but somehow he does not let that slow him down or get him down. Every prank and every day he gets himself back up and pursues his goals towards gaining respect from his peers and his career. He was a true inspiration for me.

One of my other favorite characters was Michael. Although his humor was pretty rude, you could tell he had a good heart and no matter how left out or hated he felt he still kept trying to make people happy and laugh. He had said multiple times in the show that his biggest goal in life was to make his “family”, which was the people he worked with, laugh and enjoy their life. Even though most of the time he made them hate their lives, he still worked very hard to show everyone how much he saw them as family, and everyone but one person he worked with, saw and noticed that. His dream was to belong somewhere and have a family and he never gave up on that dream.

Pam’s goal in life was to follow her dreams to become an artist. Many many times she was put down for her work, not supported by the people whose support mattered the most to her, and she failed herself multiple times which only brought her down about herself even more. But even though she kept letting herself be let down and kept putting herself down for periods of time, she always ended up making herself pick herself back up and keep focused on her dream, which did end up paying off more than she could have imagined in the end. Following and staying focused on her dream made her finally feel worthy and important in life, which had been having trouble with since the beginning of the series.

The last person I’m going to talk about, even though there are many I could, is the obvious character in the series who never gave up going after his dream, Jim. Jim’s dream was love. He wanted to love and be loved by somebody and never fully gave up on that vision for his future. Even when things started to go south for a period of time and he was close to losing that dream forever, he gave up one of the things that mattered almost as much to him to focus on getting that dream back. He is an amazing example of ‘if you love something, go after it’.

I could pinpoint every character and talk about how they emphasized in the show to never give up, but I’m not going to. If you really want to know, I would watch it. It may surprise you. The reason why I am writing this is because it surprised me and there may be someone out there not willing to give the show a chance, but who may really need it in their lives to help them keep going.

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What Defines a Fool?

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I just finished The Fool’s Tale by Nicole Galland and it was pretty good, besides trying to get into and understanding the politics of it, but it made me wonder what makes someone defined as a “fool”. In the book the character Gwirion is the “fool” of the story. When I try to pinpoint why exactly he was the “fool” my mind ends up jumping back and forth between one thing and the next that might have made him defined as that. The problem is that I caught myself asking many times, “Ok, I’m sure this is why he was a fool to the society, but does that really make him a fool?” or “Well, I see why he is a fool in a general sense, but with the reasoning behind why he was acting that way is he really a fool?”.

One of the examples that showed me that he was a general fool for the kingdom was that Gwirion was the kingdom’s entertainer. He made crude awful jokes and set up pranks constantly that no one else would have been allowed or dared to do for they would have been sentenced to death. So yes, that made him a fool although in that time era in the book in those parts of the world the “fool” or jester wasn’t a part of society or the kingdom, and when the king was told that there were people who did what Gwirion did as a job title, he thought that very interesting and entertaining. Now, the whole reasoning behind why Gwirion did the things he did is what makes him opposite of a “fool” in my mind. The reason he made horrible pranks and acted ridiculous a majority of the time was because the king who he had grown up with needed him to. The king depended on Gwirion’s sense of humor to help him relax and get through the horrible politics of being a king. So, Gwirion was willing to make a fool of himself for his best friend/his king and live a life in complete servitude with no freedom for his kingdom.

With that being said, after many years of no real freedom and only servitude Gwirion ended up craving freedom and the want to live for himself. In that desire he ended up acting on a very foolish yearning when he fell in love with the queen. Although, the queen’s marriage to the king was only treated as a political gain and the king often mistreated their marriage by straying, falling in love with a married queen is a very foolish thing to do, but as we know as humans a lot of times falling in love can’t be helped. So, looking at it without knowing the full story I don’t think that him falling in love is what made him a fool, but the fact that he acted on it did. Now, the full story is that the queen fell in love with him too and kept advancing on him and as hard as he tried to stay away his desires in the end conquered his conscious.

In my personal opinion a fool would be someone who does something idiotic without thinking which in turn would make life harder than it already was on himself. The problem with that is that we all see idiotic in different ways and we all don’t know the full story behind why someone might have made the choices that they did. Some people think that falling in love with certain people is a foolish and idiotic act. Some people understand that falling in love can’t be helped most of the time. Some people think that doing drugs is idiotic, but others believe that that might have been their only escape from what they were going through. You just don’t fully know unless you are that person if what you are doing is entirely foolish. Even if you are that person making the decisions, you still might not know if what you are doing is entirely foolish because we are all very complex creatures who second-guess ourselves constantly. The only thing that I can think of that makes sense to me in trying to put all of this together is that we are all fools or no one is a fool at all. The author herself made the “fool” of the story’s name, Gwirion, to mean both mean innocent and foolish, meaning that the writer herself knew that he was innocent the entire time while he was doing the foolish things that he did, and although everyone saw him as the “fool” he really wasn’t. So how many people do we see as fools who really aren’t, or are we all just fools because as humans we make mistakes all the time that others view as stupid?

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Tired at the Worst Times? Not Tired When You Need to be?

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I would highly recommend the book The Power Of When by Michael Breus, PhD, if you feel like you are lacking time and energy to do all the things you want and need to do while feeling at your best. Before I read this book I felt like a mess. I was tired when I didn’t want to be. When I finally had time to write I was falling asleep and not doing it to what I believed was the best of my ability. When it was time to turn in for the night I would lay awake for hours not being able to fall asleep. Also, which I’m sure many people could relate to, when my husband and I finally got some time together we were crabby with each other because we were so exhausted from our busy days.

Now, since reading the book and doing what it has said for the last month I feel like a whole new person. I am much happier, feel great about my productivity, and enjoy my time with husband and kids more. The best part for me though is the fact that I can lie down in bed now and literally fall asleep in five to ten minutes instead of wasting hours getting frustrated with myself for not being able to sleep, and my sleep quality has improved so I don’t have to sleep as much!

I can’t follow the advice and scientific evidence given in the book exactly, because I have two kids, but it really has made a difference in my life with just the small changes I have made. If you are looking for something to help you learn to manage your time better and help you become a better you, I would look into it!