“The Battle for Tomorrow” by Dr. Stuart Jeanne Bramhall is narrated by Angela (Ange), who has had to deal with lots of adult-level responsibilities in her sixteen years. In her thirteenth year, her mom had a stroke on her right side and lost speech and most mobility. Also at thirteen, Ange had her first abortion. Now, at sixteen, she is getting her second abortion, and while she accepts that her relationship with the 23-year-old political activist is over, Ange is totally convinced of the need for activism.
In fact, Ange is willing to give up her goth-personality for a more responsible looking personality, and move to Washington, D.C. so that she can attend more rallies, particularly a large one later in the fall. Ange, at only sixteen, has some problems on her own, but manages living in a hostel, working at a grocery.
As she attends civil disobedience trainings and starts to lead trainings herself, Ange struggles to lead and interact with adults when they know she’s underage. Additionally, the protocol for dealing with a minor in the event of arrest is problematic and bureaucratic for a minor without a guardian to call upon.
Throughout the book, Ange learns to personally handle her own (temporary) “age-deficiency” and learns how to interact with adults in a mature and responsible way. She also challenges societies’ methods for handling minors, fighting for her right to live independently, without a legal guardian.
Dr. Bramhall’s writing flowed well. Written in first-person narrative, almost stream-of-consciousness style, “The Battle for Tomorrow” used the technique well. Ange’s voice was well-defined and clear. Dr. Bramhall captured the voice of a scared teenager who is still figuring herself out very well.
Although I didn’t agree with some of Ange’s political leanings (e.g., socialism), I admired the passion Ange exhibited, and the resolve she had to act on her beliefs and to see change happen. This inspired me to strive harder to stand up for my beliefs, even in ways that might not be comfortable.
I was also fascinated by the lifestyles I might not normally be exposed to – of living in a hostel, of marching and blockading roads – and I thought the book well-exposed the personal rationales behind any extremist movement.
Although I really enjoyed this book, I would only recommend this book to older readers, as it dealt with mature themes. That said, I would highly recommend “The Battle for Tomorrow” – it was an inspiring and insightful look at political change and the struggle for minors.
“The Dragonfly Prophecy” by Jacquelyn Castle is narrated by Lexi, a 17-year-old with a perfect life. Lexi is highly intelligent, has loving, caring parents who (mostly) don’t smother her, and she is dating handsome, rich, British William who is taking Lexi and her parents on a surprise getaway to a tropical island. Well, Lexi’s life is perfect apart from her frequent – and worsening – fainting spells, her horrendous dreams of dragonflies, and now she’s hearing voices.
Then, perfect turns on its end. She gets stuck in a fainting spell. While coming in and out of her coma, she hears William and her mom and dad discussing “finding the right person” and yelling, with worry in their voices. Next thing she knows, she’s awake and nobody remembers William and she supposedly doesn’t remember the accident.
“The Dragonfly Prophecy” involves super powers (yes, super powers as in flying, and shooting lasers, and invisibility, and teleportation, and fighting), dual worlds (not parallel exactly, but co-existent), romance, and mystery. Castle has crafted a believable and creative universe for her story to take place in.
The plot was entirely unpredictable. The only thing I successfully predicted was the happy ending, but I had no idea, throughout the entire novel how that would happen, or, for a large part, what it would look like. The plot was intricate, well-crafted, and compelling. Castle kept twists coming that kept me reading far too late into the night. The ending was maybe a little quick, and I didn’t feel that the Evangeline subplot was fleshed out, but these are minor irritants in a largely well-done book. The largest fault I found was that the romance often irritated me – particularly with William – as the plot progressed. However, I am often cynical and unromantic, so that dig might just be me.
Overall, “The Dragonfly Prophecy” was a well-written book with good characters, a multi-layered world and plot, and good writing. I would recommend “The Dragonfly Prophecy” to anyone looking for an original and well-done fantasy novel.
I don’t care what you call it, cause it doesn’t matter what you call it; it matters how you live it.
– Matt R
I thought this was a good summary of some of what is wrong with the mindset behind SOPA. Of course, none of this even mentions other problems with SOPA, such as a lack of due process, but I think it well explains the illogical attack on “pirating”.
But first, a VERY IMPORTANT NOTE. I am not advocating illegal behavior. I am not advocating pirating. I am not advocating illegal downloading of videos.
However, I do believe that copyrights on digital media are a little silly and ineffective and that something will change in the industry. Ask me about that in real life for a somewhat rough and unformed spiel on what I think could be the future of media industries.
In the meantime, if you’re interested in arguments for a change in copyrights, go read just about anything Seth Godin’s written on copyrights and any of Cory Doctorow’s essays on copyright, particularly this one.
And, finally, here is the Pirate Bay’s SOPA Press Release:
INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012.
PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would “do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear”. He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.
Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them – like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.
So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: “stole”) other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they’re all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations – it’s all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules.
The reason they are always complainting about “pirates” today is simple. We’ve done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them).
It’s all based on the fact that we’re competition. We’ve proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We’re just better than they are.
And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.
The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe – but we’ve stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this: The word SOPA means “trash” in Swedish. The word PIPA means “a pipe” in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence. They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the
rest of us obedient consumers.
The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you’ll learn that noone wants to be fed with trash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown.
SOPA can’t do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we’ll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really.
To fix the “problem of piracy” one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they’re creating “culture” but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they’re fat.
In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he’s complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world – because he’s jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you’d get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.
Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can’t access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We’re sorry for that.
THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012
Article first published on Blogcritics, via.
“Edge of Ready” by L.B. Tillit follows the story of Dani. Dani, a high school senior, wants to graduate, but that prospect keeps looking less and less likely to happen. Dani manages to juggle school with watching her baby brother while her mom works overtime; she is, after all, strong. But the odds are stacked against her, and a terrible tragedy befalls her. Is Dani strong enough?
I enjoyed “Edge of Ready.” I found the story pleasantly unpredictable and dramatic, with enough of twists and turns and ups and downs, while still maintaining a reasonable and believable flow of events which powerfully depicted human truths. Although “Edge of Ready” was full of many layers and turns of plot, it was a beautiful illustration of the power of brevity. Although only a small paperback — only 192 pages, with three-page chapters — it had remarkable depth, flow, and progression. Because of the smaller size, L.B. Tillit’s ideas in the book are compact and more powerful for it. Each word, phrase, and sentence has bucket loads of meaning packed in — the word to thought ratio is small, and this makes it more memorable and meaningful.
Not only was it well crafted, but the narrative voice was powerful. I could really hear Dani’s thoughts and ideas as she processed the events. She is a believable teenager, dealing with hardship, who is in the process of figuring out how to cope and be a strong person. We watch Dani struggle with ideas throughout the book. As she narrated, “I just wanted to move on, but there was something about Mrs. Grady that made me think I was missing something, I just couldn’t figure it out.” She is dealing with difficult events, and she does receive some guidance as to what to do, but the main point is Dani’s conclusions and thought processes as she herself deals with things.
The title was well chosen, perfectly describing the crux of the book. Dani is “on the edge of ready,” and we see her practice the ready better and better. One of the characters advises her, “Dani, whatever happens, life will go on. She paused, taking my queen off the boars. She looked at me and said, and you can handle it. I promise.” “Edge of Ready” by L.B. Tillit is an excellently written reminder that we are all practicing. No matter what happens, we must just continue pretending as if we had it all together, and as we practice, we get closer and closer to the edge of ready, until we, like Dani, will find ourselves no longer on the edge, but truly ready.
I would recommend “Edge of Ready” to older students looking for a meaningful, enjoyable portrayal of the power of living.
“Yellow Mini” by Lori Weber follows the story of five teenagers: Mark, Stacey, Annabelle, Christopher, and Mary. They are each struggling with issues of identity and voice. When the story starts, Mark’s dad has just died and Mark bought a yellow mini with the money he inherited. Stacey likes driving with popular Mark in his cool car, but sometimes Mark acts just too strange. Annabelle is betrayed when Stacey joins the cool crowd, and turns her energy to anti-consumer activism. Christopher likes Annabelle, but isn’t sure how to get her love while keeping true to himself. Mary is an amazing pianist, but freezes in front of a crowd.
The story is told in short chapters of free form poetry, from thirteen different narrators (the kids, and some parents and teachers).
One of the first things I noticed upon opening the book was the uneven lines of poetry. The lines are sometimes short, sometimes long, and rarely rhyme, but the words of a beautiful rhythm and cadence.
For example, Mark writes:
“Driving out, getting away,
ribbons of highway
beneath my wheels,
is the only way I feel
real these days.” (p66)
Not only are the words put together well, but each of the characters has a distinct voice. Towards the beginning of the book, I had to make a note of which narrator was speaking, but by the middle, I barely had to glance at the name because their voices and stories (while intertwined) were so unique. I have seen even three narrators done awkwardly, with characters undistinguishable from one another; or heavy-handedly, with characters who were made different to extremes, but Mark, Stacey, Annabelle, Christopher, and Mary were not absurdly different, or hum-drumily similar.
“Yellow Mini” might sound at first like an angsty, emo-poem of teenage struggles, but it’s really much more. It is about finding a voice, a voice that says your own thoughts in your own way. It is about communicating new ideas with old people, old ideas with new people, and learning how to stay silent.
“Yellow Mini” is about growing into who you are, something we all do, more and more every day.
My mom produced a play at our church, based on the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth. During the play, an angel visits Zechariah and Mary, and my mom commissioned myself and a couple friends to create some wings for the angel.
These are the wings, which we have now submitted in the church’s co-forging art exhibit.
They are made of dowel rods (support at the back), white duck tape, white paper, and newspaper, and were created by Audrey, Hannah, and myself, with collaborative help from our girls’ bible study, including Elizabeth, Abbey, and Mandy.
“Epic Fail” by Claire LaZebnik follows the lives of four sisters – Kaitlyn, Layla, Elise, and Juliana – who have just moved from Massachusetts because their parents have gotten jobs at an expensive high school in Los Angeles — their mom is principal, and their dad is a science teacher. Told from Elise’s perspective, the book is based on “Pride and Prejudice,” as Elise struggles with judging the children of Hollywood’s elite.
Elise and her older sister Juliana are close, and when Juliana catches the attention of one Chase, Elise ends up spending a lot of time with Derek Edwards, son of award-winning actress and avant-garde director. She finds him standoffish, rude, and judgmental, and prefers the company of somewhat oddball Webster Grant. The question is “who needs to learn about pride and prejudices?”
I often find romances, particularly young-adult romances, cheesy, and somewhat unbearable, but I enjoyed “Epic Fail.” Most of the characters had many layers of depth, which I didn’t predict from the get-go. A few minor characters and sub-plots, particularly the parents and sub-plots involving them, were underdeveloped and unresolved, but by brushing over lesser matters, LaZebnik kept the book the perfect length.
I additionally enjoyed LaZebnik’s detailed and clear descriptions. Throughout the book, phrases such as “his thin face lit up” or “he curled his body toward me” or “the two girls’ long, choppy manes and skinny bodies had been cast from the same basic mold” gave me a picture of what was going on. In fact, I rarely “see” things described in books, but throughout “Epic Fail,”I had vivid pictures of what was going on flashing through my head.
Not only was this book visual for me, but I really enjoyed Elise’s voice. She was a perfect mix of light sarcasm, and sweet naivety. She enjoyed and regularly engaged in just watching the action, describing what she saw, but certainly played a role in the plot of the book. Elise is a good balance of passive and active character, keeping the pace of the book varied and neither too slow or too fast.
“Epic Fail” was an enjoyable modern take on a classic story. The book was well written with clear descriptions, good pacing, excellent character and plot depth and development, and will be enjoyed by avid fans of Jane Austen’s book and readers who have not yet picked up the original story.
“Bright Young Things” by Anna Godbersen is a young-adult novel set in the Jazz Age. The book follows the lives of three young girls in (and around) New York City, where love, secrets, fame and adventures are just around the corner.
Cordelia and Letty are from Ohio. They go to New York City together, although they part ways over an argument. For these two girls, New York City is a place of dreams and new wonders; “New York was more extraordinary than a girl from Ohio could possibly have imagined, that it was a place of wonders where the citizens used the sky as their tablet and airplanes for pens.”
Cordelia grew up with her aunt and uncle, and, although her mother is dead, she is not certain of who her father is and is determined to find him. Letty has a beautiful voice and wants to be on the stage, although she discovers some people expect more than just talent. Astrid lives with her mother (who’s had more than a few husbands) on Long Island, home of rich parties.
Although — and I will admit this — I have never loved historical fictions, I found this book engaging and fun to read. First, my grandparents were children in the Jazz Age and it’s interesting to look at a piece of history not so far back. Additionally, Godbersen really paints a picture of 1929, making it easy to visualize the characters in an older, different New York City. Not only is the period set, but words make “Bright Young Things” feels as if it were truly from another time, fully placing the reader in another era.
Although fellow readers may assume that this old English is the functionally unintelligible ‘olde englishe’ of Chaucer, “Bright young Things” is easy to read and flows well.
In fact, throughout the book, Godbersen’s prose carries the reader forward. Her descriptions are clear and beautiful, and the cadence of her words is almost poetic. I found one of my favorite passages early on. Cordelia is filled with the excitement of her future in New York City and can’t sleep. “But her eyes were wild, and there was so much electricity in every corner of her head and heart — she was too alive with awake dreams to try to have any of the other variety.”
Although “Bright Young Things” is no deep, moral, thought-provoking novel, it is a fun read, with engaging characters, a fascinating historical era, and delicious phrases and passages. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a good, light book, and who doesn’t mind a large dose of romance.
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