Once Upon a Bookshelf

Hildy Biddle is a high school reporter trying to prove that she is ready to bring the truth to the world. And her community is definitely a place where the truth needs to be brought forth - the local newspaper has been covering very little other than the haunted house in town, there are mysterious signs appearing on the fence of the haunted house constantly, and there was a staged robbery at the same house recently. Not to mention that there’s something fishy going on with the psychic who has recently moved to town, and the real estate agents from out of town trying to buy a good number of the town residents’ properties. But will Hildy and the rest of the high school newspaper be able to get to the bottom of this story before it’s too late?

This book left a lot to be desired. There characters were extremely one dimensional. Especially the main character, but it was hard to empathize with any of them. I didn’t like any of the characters; I didn’t dislike any of them. I was just completely indifferent.

The plot? Predictable at best. At worst, it felt like it had all been done before. It wasn’t exciting until the last quarter of the book, and even then it was only exciting because things were finally happening. I still knew how the book was going to end, I was still indifferent towards the characters, but gosh darn it something was finally happening!

Show his eyes, and grieve his heart;
Come like shadows, so depart!

I first read this book around the time I was first introduced to the Stratford Festival. Since then my love for the Festival has grown greatly, but I haven’t visited this book in years. In fact, I had gotten rid of my own copy and didn’t get a new one until I mooched it off someone a couple of months ago.

Kinny, a high school student from Montreal, has managed to score a summer job at the Stratford Festival, working as the assistant to a director of one of the Festival’s plays. The director, Jeneva, is taking on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, a play known to have bad luck go hand-in-hand with it. But it’s not just bad luck that is causing the deaths of actors involved in this play this time around - two of the witches from the play are not only real, but have appeared in Stratford and are very interested in a mirror that Kinny has found to be used as a prop in the play. This is no ordinary mirror - when Kinny looks into it, she has her wishes granted. When Luke, one of the actors in the play, looks into it he sees one of Macbeth’s (the real Macbeth, that is) memories. And Jeneva sees something, but no one is quite sure what.

It was definitely interesting to read this now that I have such a great love for Shakespeare’s Macbeth - I didn’t know too much Shakespeare when I first read it, so I had a better appreciation for parts of it this time around. I enjoyed Katz’s interpretation of the three witches in the play (some of my favourite characters in all of Shakespeare’s plays), but at the same time it was so different than how I picture them in the play. And I enjoyed being able to picture some of the story that takes place in Stratford (a positively lovely place!) when I read about them.

I wish this book focused a little bit less on the English Canadian vs French Canadian dynamics, and focused a bit more on the play, or the story of the mirror and the three witches… Overall, it seemed rather unnecessary to the rest of the story.

The last chapters of the book left a little to be desired. Some characters seemed inconsistent when it came to the part of the book; at the end, one of the witches looses her powers as a witch and suddenly comes across as a harmless and friendly old woman. Kinny suddenly seems to be on good terms with the witch, who she had been avoiding and disliked for the rest of the book.

I can see why I enjoyed this so much when I was younger… as it is now, if the ending had been slightly different, I would have enjoyed it much more, but found it a somewhat disappointing re-read. This was my eleventh book for the Canadian Book Challenge.

I won’t read Michelle Moran’s Nefertiti. I really did want to - I loved stories about Egypt growing up, and I loved stories about Nefertiti - but now I refuse to read it.

Moran e-mailed me at the end of April, offering to send me a copy to review on my blog - the paperback comes out in about a weeks time. I agreed - as I said, I used to love stories about Nefertiti, and thought it would be fun to delve back into it. Then I proceeded to get two of the exact same e-mail within days:

Dear Courtney,

I’m the author of a novel entitled Nefertiti, which debuted in hardcover July 10th and is scheduled to be released in paperback on May 28th with Crown Publishers. I am a huge fan of your site (I loved your review of [various post titles], btw!), and was wondering if you’d be interested in reviewing Nefertiti. If so, I would be delighted to have my editor send you an early paperback copy.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you!
Michelle Moran

At that point I’m a little annoyed. Yes, I know what kind of power bloggers can have for a product. I work for a company that has considered using bloggers to promote products. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising these days. Much better than traditional forms of advertising. I understand that. But is it too much to keep track of WHO you have contacted? Even I know how to use a spreadsheet, and I avoid those kinds of programs like the plague. Keep track of what bloggers you have been in touch with from what blogs - it’s not that hard.

Even through all that, however, I was still going to read it and review it. Give it a chance, and all that.

Until today when I heard from FedEx that I needed to pay $20.25 in order to actually get the book from them… Let me think about that for a minute. Remembering that people often are charged brokerage fees when the product crosses the border, and remembering that I’ve had numerous ARCs sent to me from the USA before where I’ve never had to pay brokerage fees… Well, should I pay $20.25 for brokerage fees and whatever else I am being charged for, when if I really want to read it (which at this point that is highly unlikely) I could buy it from Chapters for a lot less than that. What would you do?

Needless to say, I refused the package and had it sent back to the sender.

Edited Wednesday morning to add: Since posting this, I have heard from Moran a couple of times (the first e-mail she has sent me was also posted in my comments, and can be read here). The second e-mail states that Random House had sent the book via payment on delivery for some reason. I have to say that I am very impressed with how this is being dealt with, and feel badly about making my post sound as harsh as it does.

This is the fourth (and most likely last) book in Swendson’s Enchanted, Inc series. While Swendson has mentioned that she had originally planned it as a five-book series, the publisher apparently hasn’t bought the fifth book. Very sad, because I love this series - it’s definitely one of my favourites, and I’ve reread the previous books numerous times.

Don’t Hex with Texas takes place outside of New York, in a small town in (surprise, surprise) Texas. Katie’s returned home in hopes that if she is away from New York, her lovely boyfriend Owen Palmer won’t be distracted from vanquishing the evil Phelan Idris. However, things in Cobb, Texas aren’t as quiet as she had been expecting - it seems like Cobb, Texas has suddenly gotten a rogue wizard of it’s own, and it’s up to Katie to figure out what’s going on. She soon starts unveiling Idris’s plan to teach people who are magical, but have no magical training, all kinds of spells that can create all sorts of havoc. Of course, if Idris is behind this, then Katie needs help from her magical friends in New York, and soon Sam and Owen appear in Texas.

First thing I noticed when I got my hands on this book is that the cover was not quite the same as the rest of the books in the series. This may not seem like a lot to some people, but as a graphic designer, the fact that the colour of the title in this installment (a bright reddish-pink) is so different than the other books in this series (various shades of purple) really bothers me. It sticks out like a sore thumb, and it’s going to really annoy me when they’re sitting next to each other on my bookshelf, even if all I can see is the spine.

The story itself, though… I loved it. It definitely stood up to the standards set by the previous books in the series - not my favourite one (Once Upon Stilettos still manages to be that), but definitely wonderful. The only thing that bothered me with the actual story is that so much it seemed to be spent explaining who different people were, or different events that happened during the previous books.

I miss some of the characters from previous books that didn’t make it down to Texas for the book, but most of my favourites all managed to make an appearance - Owen, Merlin and Rod were all there, though I think we could’ve used some more time with Rod that we actually got. And I wish we had gotten to see Trix. There were so many great new characters in this book, though. It turns out that some of Katie’s family are magical, and others are immune to magic like she is (we found out about Katie’s mother previously, but one of her brothers is too).

And then Phelan Idris is obviously back, who is a wonderful bad guy. Insane in the most amusing sorts of ways. When first confronted with Owen and Katie, what does he do? Start whining and complaining about how hard it is to be a criminal mastermind. It definitely was one of the best parts of the book, and had me in a giggling fit. Only thing I wish we knew more about was the people that Idris is working for… I suppose that’s what would happen in the fifth book, if it gets published. Oh, one can only hope.

Saw Prince Caspian last - I had been looking forward to this movie for a long time. I loved The Lion, The Witch & the Wardrobe - the cast, the score, the cg animals, it was just as I had always imagined Narnia to be. And it’s unusual that I’m not angry at first by a movie adaptation of a book that I hold so dearly. Needless to say, I had high expectation for Caspian.

And coming away from the movie, I have to say that I loved it. Loved it. There were parts that made me angry, but overall, it was wonderful, and beautiful, and everything that I expected. Read the rest of this entry »