A Sea of Ink

It's National Book Lovers Day!!! and y'all know that I'm one of them. What better way to celebrate than by sharing a couple of titles from my [very long] list of favorite books with all of you?! (Ordered alphabetically by author's last name.) As you can see, I tend to enjoy historical and fantasy. Enjoy! The Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo The Six of Crows Duology by Leigh Bardugo River of Time series by Lisa T. Bergren The Infernal Devices trilogy by Cassandra Clare A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens Entwined by Heather Dixon Edenbrooke by Julianne Donaldson These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier Scarlet series by A. C. Gaughen The Princesses of Westfalin Trilogy  by Jessica Day George Ruby Red trilogy by Kerstin Gier Cotillion by Georgette Heyer Les Misérables by Victor Hugo The Agency series by Y. S. Lee Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer The Nigh...

First of all: you just should. Don't even think twice about it. Just start reading. The Night Circus is basically my favorite contemporary novel of all time. Which is saying a lot, considering my favorite book list is 72 items long.  Reasons why you should pick it up: It is a standalone, no series commitment required. It's got magic. It's got both a boy main character and a girl main character, and they share the limelight pretty equally. The prose is, like, F. Scott Fitzgerald-level gorgeous. My writing style is the descriptive kind, and so is Erin Morgenstern's. It's about the circus of your wildest dreams. It is a fantastic, beautiful, provocative circus. Literally the circus of dreams. Nothing is explained in simple terms. There is a level of analysis required if you want to understand how the pieces of the story fit. Every time I read it, I realize something new. It is profound. There are moments of witty banter, moments of tragedy, and moments of...

So...I'm a bit of a sucker for a good re-imagining of a classic story. Here are a few of my top picks: The  Scarlet series by A. C. Gaughen [Robin Hood...and Maid Marian *wink*] The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer [Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Snow White] The Healer's Apprentice by Melanie Dickerson* [Sleeping Beauty] *And this author has a whole slew of lovely fairytale retellings set in medieval times with a Christian-centered spin! The  Princesses of Westfalin series by Jessica Day George [The Twelve Dancing Princesses, Cinderella, Red Riding Hood] Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine* [Cinderella] *Levine is another very successful fairytale re-teller. The  Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan [Greek mythology exported to modern day] The Grimm Legacy series by Polly Shulman [Grimm Brothers, H. G. Wells, Edgar Allan Poe, and other literary masters' artifacts stored in a modern-day repository...yes!] Bella at Midnight by Dian...

Shoes and Stereotypes: How Feminism Has Reorganized the Twelve Dancing Princesses “There was once upon a time a King who had twelve daughters, each one more beautiful than the other” (Grimm 596). Drugging those who endeavored to help them, lying to their king father and holding their own desires above the good of others, the princesses of the Grimm brothers’ “The Shoes That Were Danced to Pieces” took the role of antagonists in the original story. However, in more recent retellings of the beloved narrative, the princesses are given virtues of bravery, compassion, and fierce integrity, along with noble motivations for their previously negative actions. The twelve princesses of the Grimms’ story have evolved from the villains of their tale into the heroines we know today due to the change over time in the expectations placed upon women in the real world. In the Grimm brothers’ original story “The Shoes That Were Danced to Pieces,” the twelve princesses are selfish, cruel,...

Disney Presenting Pro-Feminist Females: What Do People Think of This Shift in Pop Culture? Disney’s princesses are not usually known for their strength of character. In the Disney movie Sleeping Beauty , title character Princess Aurora has only 18 lines of dialogue, and other early princesses spent the majority of their films doing housework, singing for the entertainment of passing suitors, and marrying whatever man had the inclination to rescue them from ill-meaning older women. Over the past few years, however, Disney has begun a new trend: the company has been incorporating more and more contemporary values into their so-called “princess movies.” “I think that it's admirable of the Disney company to be revisiting their former ideas of how women should act and how women should think,” said long-time Disney fan Abigail Chamb ers. Since the first Disney princess movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarves premiered in 1939, the princesses have slowly evolved from secondary c...