Saving Princesses is Hard Work!

736 pages of work, in fact. I found four stories I feel would be easily disney'd up.
1.) Princess Mouseskin(It's better than it sounds)
2.) The True Bride (a not-princess in the theme of Cinderella)
3.) The Twelve Brothers (Interesting tale, easy to disney-itize)
4.) The Glass Coffin (Where Snow White's coffin was stolen from, but it's so different)

An over all review of all of the tales of the Brother's Grimm tales turns up the cute/annoying things. One is that half of the stories ended with a little rhyme or poem that had no relation to the story in general! Ex. on page 418 of my book, after the story "The Iron Stove" which is about how a princess gets saved by a stove, which has a handsome prince locked inside it, and doesn't follow his exact instructions, so she loses him. To regain him, she has to go be a kitchen maid and sell the new bride beautiful dresses that she has so she can sleep in his room and retell him what happened.
ANYWAY it ends with the little poem-y thing "There once was a mouse, but he's gone/ and now my tale is done."
Which is just distracting in general, to me. I don't see the purpose for it. I guess if might have centuries of difference, but there is no help there.
Also, they wrote up a few religious stories and  one anti-Semitic story about an old time popular(and totally stupid and useless) stereotype perpetuated at the time about the Jewish being theives. It's called "The Jew and the Thornbush" and totally worth skipping. The religious ones aren't that bad, just a bit dull at times.
So, I'll be honest, reading all these stories was worth it. Some of them were cute, some of them were interesting, and some of them were funny simply because of the time period difference. So take it as you will. I loved having fun reading it, and it was a silly task, but sometimes that helps you focus the most.

PRINCESS MOUSESKIN
About a page typed, and for all those Shakespeare fans, very King Lear-ish. A page seems to be the max attention span for the Disney executives, so I figure this one might be the easiest to sell them on. It's about a Princess who gets disowned by her father because she says she loves him as much as she loves salt(and before you go all 'That much, eh?' sarcastic eye roll on me, put down your salted popcorn, your salted chips, and your salted french fries. Don't try to hid the salt on your pretzels, either. We love salt. A lot.) So he kicks her out, she goes to work as a maid in the next castle as a boy. They figure out who she is, family gets reunited and it ends Disney Happy.

THE TRUE BRIDE
Because I'm sick of how la-dee-dah they make the princesses these days, who don't fight for their guys. I mean, no offense Cinderella, Ariel and Rapunzel, but could you please say something other than "Let me hid from the one I love" or "Oh no! There is nothing I can do. He no longer loves me." That's stupid. Especially if you don't have any proof. The non-princess in this first gets her prince, but he didn't follow her instructions to not let anyone kiss him on one of his cheeks so he forgot all about her. She finds out where he is and goes to work as a maid. She had three gorgeous dresses designed to woe him back and she discovers that he's engaged to someone else. Well, her heart is broken, but she goes through with her plan and wins him back. Doesn't rely on faith or luck or her animal friends to save the day. She just swoops in, which is good. And new.

THE TWELVES BROTHERS
Another girl to the rescue! But I liked this one because it's about a princess who saves her brothers and her marriage and there's and evil mother-in-law! It's a totally different tale than everything else. It's not about her falling in love, it's about her saving her family. Familial love, that's new. And not for parents, but the bond between siblings. Which is a strong bond.
Story summary. Right. A Queen has twelve sons, but when she's pregnant with her thirteen child, the king says, "If it's a girl we'll just kill off our sons, kay?" So, when the princess is born, a flag is launched and the brothers run off into the woods for safety. The princess, who has heard about her brothers for her entire life decides to go find them.
Everything goes fine once she does until she decides to pick twelve flowers and discovers that she just turned them into ravens and to turn them back she has to keep silent for seven years. So, life goes on and she gets married to a king.
The seven years was almost up when the mother-in-law starts casting doubts about her and the king falls for her lies. So they decide to set  her on fire. She was set on the pyre and just as it was lit on fire, the seven years ended, the ravens came back, turned into her brothers and saved her.

THE GLASS COFFIN
Should be easy enough for them to do, considering that they already have the blue prints for a glass coffin. Well, it starts off with a poor tailor (Disney's had thieves and princes, now they can have someone with a real profession) who needs somewhere to sleep for a night. In the morning he gets whisked off by a stag who takes him to a castle. Where he sees a mini castle and a still breathing princess in a glass coffin. He takes the top off and she wakes up and tells him that she was the daughter of a duke. She was stuck the way she was because a wizard had stayed over at her house, and then gone all Edward Cullen creeper on her. (Not in those words, of course). He'd sent magical music to her, broke into her room and then decided she would say yes to marrying him. So he turned her brother into the stag, locked her in the coffin and made her castle into the miniature he had seen when he come.
So, really, it is probably easy to Disney-itize. They can thank me later.

(with credit)

Saving Princesses Takes a Lot of Work

It does! My book of the Grimm Fairytales is about three and a half inches thick of onion paper! So, even if this is really late to tell you that, I'm going to be even later. I finished the book, but it was 730 pages. A lot to process.
Now, ask yourself this..."Why did it take her five weeks to finish reading a 500+page novel and this one was done in three?
Ponder on that.
Maybe it's because I had a mission.
Maybe it's because it was separate little tales I could pick up, read for ten minutes and not get drawn into a plot line.
Or maybe it's because The Moonstone was awful.

Happy Easter/Day After the Series Six Premier!

But no spoilers. I promised.
Happy Easter though! I'm having a good one, hope you all out there are too! (I got the TSO Night Castle Album, and a Queen album!)
Even if you don't celebrate Easter, I hope you're having a good Sunday: It's almost sunny out over here, and since there really aren't any books that I'd read for this holiday, (Okay there's this one, but I don't own it. Maybe one day) I'll just give you all a random non-book Sunday.
NEXT SUNDAY PREVIEW!
"It is my goal to save Disney. And by save Disney, I mean Disney Princesses. And to do that, I have read The Complete Fairy Tales Of The Brothers Grimm."
See you next week!

First Time For Everything

And for the first time in forever, I haven't had a chance to read much these past two weeks.
Read: At all. No new novels.
Scholarship Season.
If you're really saddened about not getting to read commentary on a different book...sorry. In related news, my friend and fellow blogger over at el Sol de la Noche did discuss Pride and Prejudice, which she just read. She called it "Pride and Prejudice and Men". She's also writing a pretty cool story on her blog, with really awesome drawings to accompany some chapters.
So, I'll take the chance to ramble a bit about 1.) Who, exactly, is on my current Author Crush list(Hint, almost all have been featured on this page) 2.) My life at the moment. 3.)Doctor Who. Sorry. Excited.

AUTHOR CRUSH LIST 4/17/2011
1.) Neil Gaiman
2.) Terry Pratchett
3.) John Green
4.) Jane Austen
5.) Charlotte Bronte
6.) William Shakespeare

They all have writing qualities that I love and want. One, their writing is amazing and brilliant. It flows, gets across a message, and is amazingly moving. Two, their characters are the sort of people you can learn to love and hate and love again in two hours. The sort of people you'd like to know; the sort of people you'd root for. Three, what they had to say in the novels was so right, so true, so perfect...you believe them.
I love reading their novels over and over and over again. And, they're the only ones that I do read fully over and over again. Every word is a gem.

ME!
You can skip this is you like. Unless you don't want to.
I wouldn't, but that's me.
My life the last two months has been way too stressful. One, school. But school I can handle and am handling very, very well. I'm good at school. Two, stories. Finding time to work on them has become a lot harder. I like having the time to do so, but stuff keeps coming up. Like number three, scholarships. I'm applying for four; and I've been turned down for two. One didn't even contact me about not getting it. I was really annoyed. I hope I'm getting the next one, but I suddenly doubt it. None of these scholarship people want to give anything to me.
Which, I'll be honest, I understand. It's not that other people deserve it more than me; it's that I put less work into them. I don't know why, I just do. I like to write and so I can(and do) write a scholarship essay in two hours.
But that's just me. My friends do more than I do. My friends are all very good people. I am glad people do not make me compare myself to my friends, because I would probably walk away feeling like the worst person in the world.
I love my friends don't get me wrong but...look, when you surround yourself with the top actors and actress of the class, the best playwright this side of the universe, and two people who's GPA I only have the first week of school...you feel like you aren't all that special.
And I'm sure I am. But still.
Okay, done with the dull boring me talk.

DOCTOR WHO!
Okay, so this is going to be how I'm spending my Saturday nights until the fourth of June. No Joke. Well, except for one, when I will be going to prom.
It looks epic and amazing. And wonderful.
And I LOVE IT! Oh so, so much.
Personally, I think one of the reasons I'm so in love with this show is the idea of the Doctor just landing somewhere and whisking someone away. So far away. And they can see amazing things and do amazing things. And somewhere inside all of us we want to go off and see something wonderful.
And that's what's so perfect about it. Because there's always the slim hope that maybe, maybe it's real, and maybe one day the Doctor will land and ask me to come with him to see the universe.
That ended with me again. But I'm sure that people will be able sympathize.

The Graveyard Book

There are books--few and far between--that I don't read when I get them immediately.
This was one of them.
I knew that it was getting bad when, last weekend, my nephew caught me reading this book and said, "Oh, you're reading that finally?"
Needless to say, I finished it quickly.
And, here's the thing...AUTHOR CRUSH AUTHOR!
I love Neil Gaiman's books--from Good Omens to American Gods. All of his short stories.
So why did I put off reading this one?
I don't have a good answer for that. Busy, I suppose. Reading other novels.

I really liked this book(It's actually a YA/children novel). It was one of the best things I've read(fully) in a while.
I've got to want you though: The writing(especially in the first few pages) is the a bit dark and creepy.
It's about a boy who is called Nobody Owens, who's family is killed. Nobody is taken in and raised by two ghosts at a graveyard, along with Silas, his guardian. It starts out as an amazing adventure, with different sorts of ghosts and other miraculous non-human beings. Nobody experiences a series of ups and downs, he does the right thing and the wrong thing.
It's the story of a boy who grows up in a grave yard, to put it simply.
And it's amazing.

There's love won and lost, feeling hopeless and hopeful...just, all of the emotions anyone can imagine. If he wanted, I'm sure he could have me in tears. As it is, he scares me to the bone, and his stories keep me up at night.

It's also another reason as to why Neil Gaiman is at the top of my Author Crush List.  He's a wonderful, descriptive writer who, unlike me, can find the perfect balance between dialogue and describing stuff.
He creates bloody amazing characters.
He tells a story in the most wonderful manner.
And he manages to do this all at the same time, over and over again.
Plus, he wrote the fourth episode of Doctor Who, Series Six...(I'll probably keep bring up Series Six until after it airs.)
((On the plus side to this obsession, there's a book series about the Doctor. I shall read one book. I'll probably have to go on a rant about published fanfiction again, if those amuse you.))

FINISHED THE MOONSTONE

And it was really an awesome ending(better than a good part of it. I was overly impressed. (Compared with the rest of the book)).
1.) I got my favorite narrator back!!!!
2.) There was an interesting new narrator! Who wasn't as awesome because he was going to die soon. And, well, he was angsty and mopey about it. But at least he was amusing. Not in an funny amusing way but...well, he wasn't dull.
3.) An almost entirely happy ending! As in, the bad guy died, the good guys found out what happened, and the guy got the girl! And with this novel there is a love triangle, so you don't know who gets the girl unless you read the novel! Yay! Not ruining any endings!
PET PEEVE! Having a random character that has no use what so ever. Thank you very much, authors who do this out there, do not make me feel like I should care about some one I see for about 10 pages. Out of a 547 page novel. That's guilt tripping.
I feel like this is really short.
INTROSPECTION TIME!
Okay, so since I'm really, really bad at introspection unless I read about 100 pages of a novel within six hours(and I obviously didn't do that here) I need to come up with some questions about the novel and life at the same time.
This, folks, is why I would not be a good English teacher.
Q1. "What does not fibbing on who stole the Moonstone say about Rachel? Would you have done the same thing as her?"
A1. It says that she is over devoted to being an honest and upright person. Which isn't a bad thing, until it causes a lot of strife in your family. And makes people in the BIGGEST CITY IN YOUR EMPIRE start rumors about you and what happened. Honor is great, don't get me wrong, but I also think there's a line in the sand that has to be draw where being honorable and being a bit of an idiot start. Also, not yelling at the person when she caught them in her room is kind of idiotic. A house full of people, you'd think saying something, or screaming or just entering the room might help. See, I would not have done the same thing, because I wouldn't put myself in that position. Problem solved.
Q2. "So, this new narrator(I'm not telling you his name), what really bothers you about him?"
A1. What bothers me about him is that he is a really good doctor, who has written a book and actually makes a couple of friends who he helps out. And yeah, he may be dying soon and is addicted to a horrible drug, but I'll be honest, he could be happy. He should be happy. I do not like people who wallow in their own misery all the time. NOTE: If you're my friend and you think you do this, you don't because otherwise I would ignore you so much you could not count yourself among my friends. So there.
Q3. THIS IS HARD WORK!
A3. Yes it is. So I'm gonna call INTROSPECTION TIME done unless one of two things happen.
Thing One! I actually start writing an essay on this in the near future. Which I will have to. I should make a note about that.
Thing Two! After all you've read on this blog, you have a question. So post it in a comment and I will reply to it on Wednesday. A post day I've been ignoring due to bad writer disease. But if there is a question, I will answer it on Wednesday. And it will remind me to post again.

The Moonstone: Parts Two and Three

Okay, so I missed Wednesday, but I don't think that was a big issue for many people. Sorry if those are posts you look forward too.
Also, I didn't keep to the schedule I promised you. But don't worry. I only skipped ahead about 100 pages. One, I wanted to find out more(plot's really picked up!) and then I wanted to get the next narrator over with.
PET PEEVE: Narrators that I can't like. Ever. That includes over religious(in this case) over callous(ooh, again in this case) and anything else that's just over the top too much. I know there are people like that, but I don't want to read them. Please and thank you.
Other than that, I really liked the story. It was basically amazing how well the plot advanced. First, the moonstone was finally stolen. Then we got to go on a search to find out who might have stolen it, introducing an interesting new character--a detective--and then one of the maids dies. We are presented with the owner of the Moonstone as the most likely thief. Stealing her own diamond...devious.
There's an underlying touch of romance here--Rachel, the owner of the diamond, is in love with the man who brought her the diamond, but her cousin is in love with her. He proposes and gets turned down. Then the Moonstone gets stolen and Rachel gets really mad at the man who brought it to her. Then she's accused of stealing the Diamond and they move to London to keep her out of the mess. Where her cousin proposes again. This time she accepts him.
Then her mom dies.
And then Rachel breaks off the engagement and goes to live with her mother's lawyer and his family.
Basically all that happened.
Good read though(once I got past the narrator)!