Hex Education by Emily Gould and Zareen Jaffery

Written on May 11, 2008 by Holly · Filed under Entertainment

I recently read this book on a whim and to tame the inner fifteen year old girl in me with a love for young adult books. I am a firm believer that while you can read any subject of book that interests you, sometimes you just need a little ‘cute;’ and that is exactly what this book brings to the table.

Hex Education is about a young teenage girl, Sophie Stone, who is reluctant (to say the least) to leave her home in LA and move to her father’s home town of Mythic, Massachusetts in order to save the town from odd . Mythic, most likely inspired by Salem, Massachusetts, is a city whose history is based on the occult and witchcraft. She is a shoe in to not fit in, her parents being horror filmmakers and her spending her entire existence trying to be just another normal teenager rid of anything witchcraft-oriented.

While at first Sophie comes off as spoiled and has a personality that would immediately turn people away from wanting to be around her, we see her personality evolve as she comes to terms with being in Mythic and settles in with her new friends. But her friends, who have the power to turn something into anything they please, see a quality in Sophie that she didn’t know she had herself.

Hex Education is a very lightweight read, it’s resolution feels a bit rushed and I would have liked a little more story towards the end, but overall it is very cute and witty and is a must read if you’ve ever been interested in witchcraft of any kind.

Rating: ★★½☆☆

A Little Mother’s Day History

Written on May 5, 2008 by Holly · Filed under Entertainment

Mother's Day With Mother’s Day coming up, I thought some people may be a little interested in the history of Mother’s Day and how we all came to rush around and sign cards, buy flowers and jewelry and give mothers tokens of appreciation for raising us into the people we have become.

So where did this holiday originate from? How do people from other cultures and places of origin go about telling their mothers how much they are appreciated?

In the year 1906, a woman by the name of Anna Jarvis began campaigning to start a day where all Americans would celebrate their mothers. She began spreading her idea to other people through church meetings and letters to representatives in government as well as businessmen. Within 3 years, 46 states were celebrating Mother’s Day and in the year 1914, it was regarded as a national holiday.

Through the years, Americans have fallen into the old routine of commercializing and not only going above and beyond with this holiday, but using it purely for promotional and commercial purposes, which is the same thing that Christmas has also evolved into. Because of this, through the years, Jarvis has spent her years trying to decommercialize Mother’s Day, feeling that the original meaning of the day she worked so hard to get Americans to celebrate, had lost its original meaning.

In Jarvis’ own words, Mother’s Day is “To let (mothers) know we appreciate them, though we do not show it as often as we ought.”

Here are ways other cultures celebrate Mother’s Day:

In ancient Greece, which accounts for the earliest Mother’s Day celebration, people paid tribute to the mother of the gods, Rhea, with with honey cakes, fine drinks and flowers at dawn.

In Serbia, Mother’s Day, known as Materice in Serbia, is celebrated on the second Sunday before Christmas. This is perhaps the funniest way of celebrating Mother’s Day I have ever heard. On this day, children sneak into their mother’s rooms and tie her feet with either ribbon or string. If that wasn’t funny enough, in order for the mothers to be released, they must negotiate with their children, presenting them with small gifts. I believe that in Serbia they got it a little mixed up, maybe it should be called Children’s Day.

During the Middle Ages in Britain, the wealthy people gave their servants the day off so they could travel, usually far away, to see their mothers.

So there’s some history on Mother’s Day for everyone. So tell me now, what are you planning for your mother?

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Written on May 3, 2008 by Holly · Filed under Entertainment

I had never heard of Joe Hill, the offspring of Stephen King who wrote this novel under a pen name because he did not want to gain attention to his work for the sole reason that he is Stephen King’s son, until my grandmother, a Stephen King fanatic, told me a little about the book when she was a quarter of the way through it. After she had finished she lent me the book and I wearily took it and began my journey into the life of Judas Coyne, an ex-rocker with a wicked taste for paranormal items and much younger women.

Heart-Shaped Box opens with a run of the mill, usual day of a retired rock star, Judas Coyne, his clerk and annoying friend by business-association and his goth fan-girl girlfriend whom he refers to as Georgia, that being the state in which he picked her up in while on tour with his band. The only thing remotely intriguing about this washed up rocker living in a desolate section of the United States in a farm house is his collection of occult and otherwise eerie knick knacks that fans had sent him over the years.

Judas’ attraction to so-called haunted objects has over the years evolved into an entire room full of random junk that most likely isn’t worth keeping around, but who he had built himself into being over the years on the road with his band is a man in which the goth lifestyle flocked to–And it had obviously stuck with him years after the other members of his band died off and disappeared. When his clerk sees a haunted suit online, Judas doesn’t think twice before telling him to get it. Days later, the suit arrives in a heart-shaped box and the horror, ghost-chasing story unravels.

Heart-Shaped Box is not the great horror story in which people have been claiming; it is however, a horror story that is about the same caliber of a Stephen King novel–And not his early work, which was what had built King to be known as a great horror story teller. This novel, while interesting and captivating at first, begins to drag on by the time you reach the middle of the story. While Hill is describing light, smells, temperature and feelings, you start to think to yourself “Yeah, I get it, now on with it!” This feeling is nothing short of what is felt while reading a recently published King novel.

Hill’s attention to detail is either an attribute beloved by readers or an attribute that can be seen as nothing but a writer wanting to write a novel instead of a novella. While his detailed explanations and back story of the characters is thorough, I found myself more interested in the story of Coyne’s girlfriend, Georgia; or Marybeth as we later begin to refer to her as, while my interest in the main character simply went stale, leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

While I can respect that Hill used a pen name in order to separate himself from his father and publish his novel by himself, this story runs dry way too early in order to be called a great horror story and it can easily be seen that the majority of Hill’s interest in horror stories and writing them came from his father. This novel reads as if Hill simply read Stephen King’s instructional writing book, On Writing, and decided to try on the novelist’s suit for a while.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

The Ultimate Blog Party 2008

Written on March 1, 2008 by Holly · Filed under Entertainment

Ultimate Blog Party I was recently told about the perfect place for women bloggers to get together, promote their blogs to a targeted and interested audience and add other sites to their expanding list of daily reads. For one week out of the entire year, 5 Minutes for Mom is hosting the annual Ultimate Blog Party!

From March 7 to March 14, women bloggers can share their websites, discover new ones and win a variety of different prizes. Last year there were nearly 1,000 women participating and since then, the party has only grown. This is most definitely the blogging event of the year for women bloggers.

So head on over and read all about it and I hope to see you there!

All Candidates Like the Idea of Change

Written on January 26, 2008 by Holly · Filed under Entertainment

I love a good political funny! However, when you dig a little deeper, I realized that the candidates, as usual and as we could expect, are telling us what we want to hear–We want change, but what changes do these candidates have in store?



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