Book Review!!!!!!! Echo of a Song

This image was gotten out of Amazon, which is why it is not so good. 

Echo of a Song is about a business woman who throws herself into her work at the cost of her relationship with her husband. She has an underlying need to be successful and that really drives her life. Her philosophy is "when life gives you lemons, fight to get your fair share, do your damnedest to make a buck, and don’t let anyone get in your way.” But when she has a terrible day that includes losing her job and being told that her husband is cheating on her, she flees out of town to the house of her deceased aunt where she just wants to be left alone. While there she encounters some quirky neighbors who are determined to draw her out of her shell.

My favorite part of the book, to be honest, was the prologue. It was the greatest way to start the book. I had a friend read the prologue shortly after I got the book and read it and she agreed: it's very intense and draws you in like no one's business. If you are someone who likes to skip prologues (shame on you) and you read this book, you're really missing out on a very interesting and very important part of the story.

The story, in my opinion, is a little slow at the start when it talks about her career, but that is just because it's business-y. It's really cool though too, because the main character is a writer and she starts out with the business aspect of her writing and then throughout the book rediscovers her artistic writing side. I think the fact that business shtuff is not everyone's cup-o-tea is well acknowledged though because she intersperses it with other non-business related segments.

The book does focus on emotions and emotional turmoil, but it focuses are more underlying emotion rather than dramatic outward emotion. The nice part about it was that I wasn't ever reduced to a teary blubbering mess, which was good because sometimes I find that really tiring. If you don't like crying when you read, I don't think you have to worry about that too much here and I think that is because the character often turns her negative emotions into sassy-ness. So the heavier emotions are more palatable.

So for me, the ending of the book is the most important. If I don't like the ending, I probably won't like the book just in general either. At the end of this book I was very happy that I read it. And I spent the next week or so thinking a lot about it, but in a pleasant manner. (Not like the movie Dancer in the Dark (<3) where you think about it for months after and feel terrible whenever you do.)

I definitely recommend this book. It was sweet and sassy and thought worthy and really funny. I actually was reading the book in class (instead of paying attention of course) and I burst out laughing out loud in a very quiet classroom. I think it's hard to make people actually laugh out loud in books but I don't see why you wouldn't with this book.

If you are interested in this book, you can get it here.

I hope you all have been reading sassy books and are having a good day! <3

Book Review: The Descent of Alette

I've been mulling over these past months on this blog and I realized that there are more things I want to add to the blog in terms of what I write about. I was really into posting in January but quite frankly I ran out of ideas for posts. So I'm going to be expanding topics to other areas I'm passionate about.
But for now, a book review!

Source

The Descent of Alette, by Alice Notley
I was introduced to this book in my literary arts class. My teacher assigned it as homework, but honestly I couldn't wait to read the next section at the end of each assigned chunk. The Descent of Alette is an epic, which means it's a long poetic piece of writing that focuses on a main hero. It is separated into books and sections rather than chapters. It has a very unique style where every "Few words" "Are marked with" "Quotations." Which is supposed to cause people to slow down and appreciate the words and sentence structure. It takes a bit of getting use to, but it really does make you pay attention more and it's a perfect book for it. It's a book that I recommend reading out loud because it really is beautiful. I read every page out loud to myself, which I found helped me accept the punctuation and begin to read it as sentences.

Content-wise, the book is feminist/transformation story about a woman who lives in a surreal underground world which is ruled by the Tyrant who doesn't let the citizens go above ground. The woman goes on a journey to discover herself and to defeat the Tyrant. I don't want to give anything away, so I'm going to stay vague. The best part about this book is that it is basically one huge metaphor, but at the same time really concrete. The metaphors are definitely metaphors, but you also have to take them as what actually happens in the story. The story has tons of twists and turns, I was often very surprised at what was happening (and I'm usually pretty good at guessing what happens next in books) and best of all, I had no idea how it was going to end.

I cannot recommend this book enough, it is one of my favorite books. I plan on buying myself a copy since I had to return the copy that my teacher gave out. At the time I read it I was having trouble writing and this book inspired me. It's one of those books that makes you think about it weeks after you've finished it. What I really liked about it was that it was fantastical-not-so-sweet-fairy-tale-ish. Reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland almost. It's very abstract, so if you're an abstract person you'll love this. If you're not abstract you'll still love it. It's one of those pieces of writings that goes beyond mere story and to art.

So that's what's been going on with me, sort of. I hope all of you are doing well and reading inspiring books. <3

Graphic Novel Giveaway!

Sary over at The Walrus Room is graciously having a giveaway of the graphic novel Will o' the Wisp. She wrote a lovely review of the book here. It's got great art. If you are interested in joining the giveaway, (which I would recommend because giveaways are more fun when they are successful) you can find it here.

A Book and a Rant

 School has been keeping me very busy lately, we were doing homework for the next semester before we had even finished finals. However I am going to try to get a post in once a week. Probably a 'middle-of-the-night post'' like this one. However, this post has two parts to it, as the title suggests, so onto the first!

Apropos... Horses and Riders by Hans Senn (edited by Nell Kromhout)
This book is short, 50 or so pages if you include the introduction. It's filled with a bunch of small phrases and tips that is not only immensely useful for your skills as a rider, but also applicable to your everyday life. I read this book before my riding lesson and choose a few of the tips to work on as I ride. I am not sure how it'd translate for western riders, since I believe it is targeted towards English. The only downside to my tired midnight rave about this book is that I have heard it is getting increasingly harder to find. I  love this little black book. I highly highly recommend that you track down this book if you are an equestrian. In fact, I am so fond of this book that I am going to start putting quotes from it at the bottom of posts if any corresponds.

The second part of my post is more of a rant. Horses are constantly learning every single time we ride them or work with them. They don't speak our language, they have to figure out what we want them to do. Not only do they learn of what they are suppose to do, but also what their rider will allow them to get away with. So it bothers me to no end when I see a rider get lectured about a bad habit that forms quickly and is difficult to fix but then allow their horse to form this bad habit outside of their lesson. Horses do not know the difference between a lesson and playing around; especially when you are doing the same exercise, in the same arena, only in your lesson you don't let them do the bad habit and outside of the lesson you do. It is most definitely not fair to the horse. I can already picture the rider who is getting frustrated at their horse for having this horrid habit when it the rider who taught it to the horse in the first place.
Which brings me to my first quote of Hans Senn's book:

"If you don't train your horse, he will train you."