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Book Blog
August 31st, 2010
Witch Baby
Rating: 
The family that took her in called her Witch Baby and raised her as their own. But even though she tried to fit in, Witch Baby never felt as though she truly belonged.
So one day she packed her bat-shaped backpack, put her black cowboy-boot roller skates, and went out into the real world to find out who she really was…
In Witch Baby Francesca Lia Block really spreads her wings and finds her pace. Witch Baby is the second book in her Dangerous Angels series and is her sophomore novel. You really need to have read Weetzie Bat for Witch Baby to make any sense.
Witch Baby is my favorite character in the whole crazy Bat family. She is a black sheep, an outsider, a loner. She doesn’t want to stick her head in the sand and forget about the troubles in the world, or pretend they don’t exist. She doesn’t try and use smoke and mirrors in the guise of drugs, alcohol, parties, etc to hide from the ugly truth of the world. She faces it head on. She puts it on display for everyone to see and forces other people to acknowledge the pain and suffering, the poisons and toxins, the ignorance and fear.
No one noticed Witch Baby as she went back inside the cottage, into the room she and Cherokee shared.
Cherokee's side of the room was filled with feathers, crystals, butterfly wings, rocks, shells and dried flowers. there was a small tepee that Coyote had helped Cherokee make. The walls on Witch Baby's side of the room were covered with newspaper clippings - nuclear accidents, violence, poverty and disease. Every night, before she went to bed, Witch Baby cut out three articles or pictures with a pair of toenail scissors and taped them to the wall. they make Cherokee cry.
"Why do you want to have those up there?" Weetzie asked. "You'll both have nightmares."
Between this gruff take on life and her various eccentricities which tend to alienate her from other people she lives a very lonely life for being in such a large family.
I always had a special place for Witch Baby ever since she was introduced in Weetzie Bat. Here we have a child that was dropped on their door stop and this loving/happy/glowing family's first reaction is to kick the baby out. She is an illegitimate love child (so is Cherokee, for all they know) and even her own father doesn't want her around. Then they decide to keep her but because the woman who seduced My Secret Agent Lover Man was an evil witch (he couldn't possibly have just f'd up and made a mistake, amirite? it's the woman's fault) they decided to predetermine this baby to follow in her mother's foot steps and name her Witch Baby. Great.
In just a few paragraphs everyone (even the baby Cherokee) start treating Witch Baby like a horrible witch child and so the child reacts accordingly. She is a monster of their creation, but because she is not cut from the same glowingly love, love, love cloth as everyone else in the family she becomes a more well rounded character. She sees the dark and she is not afraid of it. She wants to help her father create movies that show these dark things and the lessons to be found in them. She wants to acknowledge the times that we live in, but most importantly she wants to find a place to belong.
The book Witch Baby takes us on an adventure with her as we see LA through more realistic eyes and discover more back story on her and several of the other characters (but mainly the lovers Dirk and Duck). Through her camera she sees everything both from an in and outside perspective and is remarkably perceptive for a child her age. They never say it but I would guess she's in her tweens.
Again I think this is a book appropriate for more of a high school audience, but I think it is much better than Weetzie Bat. There is more depth, more rounded characters, more of an overall plot and a strong message. The ending wraps up very quickly into a ridiculously unrealistic bow, but that is the way of the magical books in the Dangerous Angels series. Highly recommended GLBT fiction. Witch Baby delivers hope, understanding, courage and love.
August 30th, 2010
Fullmetal Alchemist Volume 7
Rating:
Where did Alphonse Elric go during the few short minutes he was wiped from existence, body and soul? From a secret lair in the city of Dublith a group of outcasts kidnaps Alphonse to find the alchemical secrets of his creation! It’s up to Ed (and a certain housewife) to go into the Devil’s Nest and rescue his brother. But the criminals of the Devil’s Nest aren’t exactly human either. Now, Al must fight a homunculus – an artificial human being – and the streets of Dublith will run red with blood…
Despite the horror and goriness of the scenes in previous volumes, especially the ones that depicted what really happened to Ed and Al the night they lost so much, this volume is the most gruesome yet. The scenes in the Devil’s Nest are very bloody and for once I am glad that the manga is in black and white. This definitely is a series for teens, not children!
I enjoyed getting to see Teacher fight and also getting to see Ed use his head in a fight and not just brute strength. He may have become the youngest state alchemist because he saw "the Truth" but the kid had some brains before all of that and that intelligence comes through even under pressure to help him and his friends on and off the battle field.
The plot thickens as more pieces of the puzzle fall together and twists reveal surprises in unexpected places requiring us to re-evaluate the series and re-think who is "good" and who is "bad". It is not so black and white as it first seemed.
August 19th, 2010
Weetzie Bat
Rating:
The first time I read Weetzie Bat was at a very young age, and really too young for the subject matter at hand. The writing might lead you to think otherwise as it is really written at a 6th grade or lower level. Publisher’s Weekly says its perfect for 12 and up, the School Library Journal says 10th grade and up. See the disparity?
Weetzie Bat was Francesca Lia Block’s first novel and the first in her Dangerous Angels series. I wanted to re-read it to capture some of the adventure and sparkle and hope I had gotten the first time around when I read it at the young age of 12. I was an outcast, a loner, a reader and a ridiculously creative dreamer (in the crazy sunshine and rainbows way, though if you are here reading this at my blog you probably already knew that). I still got some of that magic, but now I’m older and not all of it managed to keep its hold. As an adult there were some problems, some hitches, some flaws. Mainly my naivete is gone and with it went a lot of my original enjoyment of the book.
Weetzie could see him--it was a man, a little man in a turban, with a jewel in his nose, harem pants, and curly-toed slippers.
"Lanky Lizards!" Weetzie exclaimed.
"Greetings," said the man in an odd voice, a rich, dark purr.
"Oh, shit!" Weetzie said.
"I beg your pardon? Is that your wish?"
In this book we have a cast of characters that kind of float through life in a series of moments, each chapter is almost like a short story, with little conflict and hardly any character development. We have characters with silly nick names who, when faced with life's problems, pretend they don't exist with alcohol, music, food, shopping and when that doesn't work they run away and hide - in bars, in exotic dens - where they smoke, drink and have promiscuous sex with strangers. For the most part though there are no consequences to their actions, no "bad" ones anyway. Seriously bad things are hinted at. Relatives OD and die, friends get AIDs and die, but the main characters live in a bubble where they cruise around and party and make movies and dress up and love each other and while they are affected it's not really given any weight with the reader.
As an adult reading the book I also was bothered at the complete lack of real growing up the characters do. They don't worry about money, about getting an education, about a career, their main concerns are finding love and holding on to it once they have it. An admirable aim to be sure, but not to be gotten at the sacrifice of other people's happiness (even if that is done through short sightedness, not malice). When Weetzie wants a baby she asks her lover and when he turns her down she turns to her gay friends and has a threesome with them behind his back in order to get pregnant. This results in the lover running away when he finds out, of course, because none of these people can handle having adult conversations or making adult decisions. As a child this all made perfect sense to me. I had the same naivete as Weetzie displays and figured that a child is born of love and as long as they all love each other (and they all do in the end, even the additional illegitimate child that the lover had with some random stranger when he ran away) then it is all okay.
I hate to put this book in such a negative light because when I was a young teenager this book, and the series after it, was like a life line to me. I wanted to be loved more than anything and having that be Weetzie's sole pursuit, concern, and end result made perfect sense to me then. I loved reading the flowery prose and the crazy nick names. I loved reading about the wonderful magical place that is Los Angeles, which is written to be even more magical then it is, or ever was. (I went there on a sort of pilgrimage when I was 17 - true story.) But this book doesn't hold up to the hard cold light of adulthood. I think it works for the young and the young at heart if you want to just dive into a world of magic and light and crazy food/clothes/streets/people/experiences. But not too young, I don't think. I'm not so sure it should be read when you're 12, and I was 12 when I first read it!
August 19th, 2010
Fullmetal Alchemist Volume 6
Rating:
The origin of the Elric brothers! Once, Edward and Alphonse Elric were willing to do anything to become alchemists. But when they tried to use their newfound skills to resurrect their dead mother, they broke a taboo and encountered something more terrifying than death itself. Now, hardened by years of military training, Edward and Alphonse have returned to the woman who first taught them alchemy… but can she help them, or even forgive them?
The more this series goes on the more complex it gets, in a very good way. Volume 6 continues the flashback from volume 5 covering the history of the boys and how they learned alchemy. The training was almost unbelievable to read about. I could not understand why some of the unspeakable and terrifying things even happened to them in the first place. This was true in the anime as well. But it really sets the tone for just how brutal and dark the rest of the series gets as things progress. They need to be toughened up in their training for what comes after and I understand that more now. But, the first time I read it? I could barely stomach it.
The rest of the volume doesn't lighten up much either as you see the rest of what you caught a glimpse of in the very first frame of the very first volume (finally!) and get a lot of questions answered. But not all, of course. I really enjoyed having all the blanks filled in concerning the history of the brothers and how they got to where they are. I also enjoyed having some more of the tenets of alchemy spelled out for us and more of a foundation set up so that we can better understand the limitations, and what happens when an alchemist tries to play god (an ongoing theme).
After all the humble pie from volume 5, volume 6 goes straight for your gut. Those poor, poor boys.
August 17th, 2010
Saving CeeCee Honeycutt
Rating:
In her vintage Packard convertible, Tootie whisks CeeCee away to Savannah’s perfumed world of prosperity and Southern eccentricity, a world that seems to be run entirely by women. From the exotic Mix Thelma Rae Goodpepper, who skinny dips in her backyard bathtub and uses garden slugs as her secret weapon, to Tootie’s all-knowing housekeeper, Oletta Jones, Violene Hobbs, who entertains a local police officer in her canary-yellow peignoir, the women of Gaston Street keep CeeCee entertained and enthralled for an entire summer.
Laugh-out-loud funny and deeply touching, Beth Hoffman’s sparkling debut hums with wacky humor and down-home heart. It explores the indomitable strengths of female friendship and gives us the story of a young girl who loses one mother and finds many others. Above all, it is a book full of feminine wisdom – one to cherish, remember, and share.
Reading about CeeCee’s adventures had me by turns laughing out loud and nearly in tears as her life unfolded over the course of this wacky southern summer.
She looked up and smiled. "I'm glad you found some books that interest you. Would you like a glass of lemonade?"
Though I was hoping to thank her for the books and be on my way, I didn't want to seem rude. I nodded and set the stack of books on the counter. While Miz Goodpepper pulled a pitcher from the refrigerator, I asked, "Is the Kama Sutra a volcano?"
She gasped and splashed lemonade across the kitchen counter. The strangest look streaked across her face as she sopped up the mess with a wad of paper towels. "Well, I suppose some might think it's a volcano of sorts, but I can say with absolute assurance you wouldn't enjoy that book."
"That's what I thought," I said, feeling pleased with myself, "so I put it back on the shelf."
She let out a barely audible sigh. "Good."
Her life before coming to Georgia with her insane mother who was still trapped in her days as a beauty queen and absent father who spent long stretches of time away from home "on business" with another woman were heartbreaking to read about. Even as my heart was breaking for CeeCee though the story kept things from getting too dark with the help of CeeCee's young age and resilience as well as the zany humor written throughout.
In a lot of ways reading Saving CeeCee Honeycutt is like being wrapped in a cozy summer blanket. I loved reading the descriptions of Savannah, Georgia and of the over grown gardens of her great-aunt Tootie. I loved reading about all the women that touched CeeCee's life that summer to the point where she thought Savannah was a place that seemed to be, "entirely run by women". And, I loved reading about Southern hospitality and seeing all of the ways that the women of Savannah worked to heal CeeCee's heart.
The plot takes a slow meandering pace that is just perfect for a lazy summer day's read. It's just plain a comfort read. Even when danger shows that Savannah also has its share of trouble, CeeCee learns to brave through it all with the help of strong women, courage and heart.
The language was beautiful to read about, the humor at times laugh out loud funny and the characters wonderfully drawn and realistically rendered. This is a fantastic story of the power of women, the art of healing emotional scars, and the wonder of a southern summer. This is a great summer read, I highly recommend it.
