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Girls Tailor Dress Up 3D: Fun Games For Girls
Lifestyle and Games
App
▶▶ Try out our new free app and have fun with the best fashion designer “dress up games”!...
Learning Games 4 Kids Toddlers
Games and Education
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Funny Food consists of 17 various educational games for your children. Funny Food addresses various...
The Secret To Money
Lifestyle and Finance
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The Secret to Money is an app that is designed to change the way you think about money, and to...
Rachel King (13 KP) rated The Penelopiad in Books
Feb 11, 2019
This book was a very easy read and quite interesting, too. I have never read The Odyssey, (though that would be an ideal goal to keep in mind) but I am familiar enough with the plot to keep up with the many subtle references throughout The Penelopiad. This book was told from the point-of-view of Penelope, Odysseus's eternally-loyal wife, with the Chorus of maids chiming in with their opinions every other chapter.
Margaret Atwood does an excellent job of portraying the character of Penelope in a unique way without disrupting what we know of her from the original text. In this book, Penelope tells her story from beyond the grave, interspersed with her interactions with other known characters of that time, such as her self-involved cousin, Helen of Troy. Penelope balances many opposing traits into one body - from the bitter housewife, to the scheming seductress, to the self-sacrificing devotee - and still comes out as an admirable woman and wife that few could emulate so convincingly.
The chorus of maids served as both a comedic interlude in a rather tragic story and as further commentary of Penelope's story and their shared fate. Irony played a large part in the maids' story and final demise. Margaret Atwood's explanation for their cumulative death following the deaths of the numerous suitors made perfect sense according to the arrogance and bravado attributed to Odysseus from Penelope's account.
In many ways, this book bears strong themes of feminism, despite Penelope's loyalty to Odysseus. Though I imagine that The Odyssey portrays Odysseus as a grand hero worthy of respect, Penelope's narrative of him both in life and in death makes him out to be at times a philandering womanizer with immeasurable luck and other times a melodramatic little boy with an overactive imagination and an insatiable appetite for adventure. The ones who seemed to endure the most suffering in this plot were the ones that were shown the least respect and recognition - the women.
Margaret Atwood does an excellent job of portraying the character of Penelope in a unique way without disrupting what we know of her from the original text. In this book, Penelope tells her story from beyond the grave, interspersed with her interactions with other known characters of that time, such as her self-involved cousin, Helen of Troy. Penelope balances many opposing traits into one body - from the bitter housewife, to the scheming seductress, to the self-sacrificing devotee - and still comes out as an admirable woman and wife that few could emulate so convincingly.
The chorus of maids served as both a comedic interlude in a rather tragic story and as further commentary of Penelope's story and their shared fate. Irony played a large part in the maids' story and final demise. Margaret Atwood's explanation for their cumulative death following the deaths of the numerous suitors made perfect sense according to the arrogance and bravado attributed to Odysseus from Penelope's account.
In many ways, this book bears strong themes of feminism, despite Penelope's loyalty to Odysseus. Though I imagine that The Odyssey portrays Odysseus as a grand hero worthy of respect, Penelope's narrative of him both in life and in death makes him out to be at times a philandering womanizer with immeasurable luck and other times a melodramatic little boy with an overactive imagination and an insatiable appetite for adventure. The ones who seemed to endure the most suffering in this plot were the ones that were shown the least respect and recognition - the women.
Rachel King (13 KP) rated Insatiable (Insatiable, #1) in Books
Feb 11, 2019
I normally try to avoid Meg Cabot, simply because I've found some of her writing too teeny-bopper for me, but this book was written for adults and features an all-adult cast list. Now this is a book that could be made into a movie.
The book starts out as an anti-vampire book, and makes fun of the over-saturation in pop culture through Meena Harper's character. I love Meena's character right away, with her writing skills and passion for a decades-old soap opera, she is someone I can relate to. Her ability to predict others' deaths only makes her more intriguing. I also find it fittingly ironic when more and more of the people around Meena turn out to be vampires, as she eventually acknowledges herself.
Even though the book is written for adults, Meg Cabot still keeps the writing clean, skipping through the intimate bedroom scenes with only the smallest of hints at the sordid details. She also leaves many of the gruesome aspects of the plot up to the imagination of the readers, which I prefer.
Because this book is all about tongue-in-cheek irony, it is only fitting that the state of Meena's mind -- the jumbled mess of a writer -- attracts the prince of all vampires, Lucien, who happens to be a Romanian history professor when he isn't attending to his princely duties. I get the feeling that there is more to Lucien and Meena's attraction to each other than what Meg Cabot is telling the reader, but by the end of the book, this is still a mystery. Plus, a good-looking vampire slayer suffering from too much micromanagement and even less communication skills causes some interesting conflicts and obstacles for Meena and Lucien. His attraction to Meena is like water to a sponge, but Meena is less drawn to Alaric.
I wasn't crazy by how the book ended, but it made sense for Meena's independence. Still, I'm hoping Meena's choices will change in the next book, Overbite.
The book starts out as an anti-vampire book, and makes fun of the over-saturation in pop culture through Meena Harper's character. I love Meena's character right away, with her writing skills and passion for a decades-old soap opera, she is someone I can relate to. Her ability to predict others' deaths only makes her more intriguing. I also find it fittingly ironic when more and more of the people around Meena turn out to be vampires, as she eventually acknowledges herself.
Even though the book is written for adults, Meg Cabot still keeps the writing clean, skipping through the intimate bedroom scenes with only the smallest of hints at the sordid details. She also leaves many of the gruesome aspects of the plot up to the imagination of the readers, which I prefer.
Because this book is all about tongue-in-cheek irony, it is only fitting that the state of Meena's mind -- the jumbled mess of a writer -- attracts the prince of all vampires, Lucien, who happens to be a Romanian history professor when he isn't attending to his princely duties. I get the feeling that there is more to Lucien and Meena's attraction to each other than what Meg Cabot is telling the reader, but by the end of the book, this is still a mystery. Plus, a good-looking vampire slayer suffering from too much micromanagement and even less communication skills causes some interesting conflicts and obstacles for Meena and Lucien. His attraction to Meena is like water to a sponge, but Meena is less drawn to Alaric.
I wasn't crazy by how the book ended, but it made sense for Meena's independence. Still, I'm hoping Meena's choices will change in the next book, Overbite.
Merissa (12723 KP) rated The Ghost Garden (The de Chastelaine Chronicles #1) in Books
Apr 23, 2019
Sassy Brit (97 KP) rated The Wife's Shadow in Books
Jun 5, 2019
The Wife’s Shadow by Cath Weeks is one of those reads where a perfect life (or should that be wife?), plunders into chaos and snowballs out of control within a short matter of time. It’s a tense, fulfilling read and I raced through it!
Suzy is being harassed and there is apparently nothing she can do about it. She doesn’t know who it is, or why they are doing it. So, how the hell can anyone stop him then? The police are clueless, and her husband has only so much patience before he starts to lose sympathy. Is someone really out to get her, or is it just down to a vivid imagination and the stress of losing her mother very recently? In her husband’s eyes its a case of ‘come on luv, pull your socks up!’
And yes, I do have quite a lot to say about darling husband and stay-at-home dad, Mike. At first he’s very understanding, and quite rightly so, but there is only so much he can take when his paranoid wife keeps going on and insisting someone is watching her. What he does, during her worst moments, had me practically screaming at the book in anger! (In a good way!) Honestly, I became so involved in this story I felt worn out by the end of it, which I loved.
This is a well-written, tense read, and one I found myself trying to guess who the culprit was all the way through. The final revelation was just as much as a shock to me as it was to Suzy! I did not see THAT coming, and I’m one of those people who always thinks I know who’s done it. lol (Yeah, one of THOSE readers!) But it’s the final act that Suzy puts into action, which really rounds this story off well. Thankfully, I could breathe again when I closed the last page.
Imagine a small dream snowballing into an even bigger nightmare! That’s what Cath Weeks made happen to Suzy Taylor. Big time!
Suzy is being harassed and there is apparently nothing she can do about it. She doesn’t know who it is, or why they are doing it. So, how the hell can anyone stop him then? The police are clueless, and her husband has only so much patience before he starts to lose sympathy. Is someone really out to get her, or is it just down to a vivid imagination and the stress of losing her mother very recently? In her husband’s eyes its a case of ‘come on luv, pull your socks up!’
And yes, I do have quite a lot to say about darling husband and stay-at-home dad, Mike. At first he’s very understanding, and quite rightly so, but there is only so much he can take when his paranoid wife keeps going on and insisting someone is watching her. What he does, during her worst moments, had me practically screaming at the book in anger! (In a good way!) Honestly, I became so involved in this story I felt worn out by the end of it, which I loved.
This is a well-written, tense read, and one I found myself trying to guess who the culprit was all the way through. The final revelation was just as much as a shock to me as it was to Suzy! I did not see THAT coming, and I’m one of those people who always thinks I know who’s done it. lol (Yeah, one of THOSE readers!) But it’s the final act that Suzy puts into action, which really rounds this story off well. Thankfully, I could breathe again when I closed the last page.
Imagine a small dream snowballing into an even bigger nightmare! That’s what Cath Weeks made happen to Suzy Taylor. Big time!
