Book Review: Dream Weaver, Jane Yolen

Dream Weaver by Jane Yolen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book changed me. Huddled low in a library, trying to avoid the helpful gaze of a librarian and bored beyond all hope of salvation while my dad was busy talking to someone else, I plucked this slim volume off the shelf and decided to go ahead and read it. Don't misconstrue me and suppose that I didn't enjoy reading, I did. However, reading hadn't yet blossomed into a full-fledged hobby for me. I was pretty young and still reading mid-grade chapter books, at best, and teachers were still telling us that a lack of pictures and book length were some of the most important characteristics of any given text. This felt naughty. Some ten full page illustrations ornamented it's meager eighty pages of transporting storytelling.
I remember the first time I looked at the copyright page and saw that Dream Weaver was published in 1979. It was like Jane Yolen had written it just for me because she knew I'd been born. I know she didn't, but it felt that way, nonetheless.
The Tree's Wife particularly resonated with me at the time, and since then dryads have come to hold the foremost place in my heart with regards to mythic creatures. I keep a copy of this book near my bed, beside Faery Flag, just in case I need a good short bedtime story for one of my kids.
I love this book.

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Book Review: Wicked as They Come by Delilah S Dawson

Wicked as They Come by Delilah S. Dawson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When it comes to Dark Romance, Delilah S. Dawson knows what she's doing. With engaging, concise, and lively prose, as well as careful world building, Dawson impressed me. I have recently found myself complaining that I don't like it when my leading characters are both helpless and in the dark, which seems more and more often to be the case in novels with a paranormal edge. In Wicked as They Come, while the main character has to have a good many things explained, she is never both helpless and uninformed at the same time, and she is always armed with wit, logic, and the scientific method to help her get through the toughest of problems.
With the sequel, Wicked as She Wants launching right now, I'm anxious to get my hands on it. I want to see what happens next because although the loose ends are tied well enough for this to be a stand alone novel, I care enough about the characters to want to know more about them.
Hat's off to you, Ms. Dawson.

Sustainability Book Review- Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter by Lloyd Kahn

Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter by Lloyd Kahn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Written as a collaborative work featuring the homes and space, written by the people who built them, Tiny Homes is a great source of inspiration for smaller more sustainable living. Many of the homes and spaces (studios, saunas, offices) were built using salvaged materials, opening up the readers options, not only in size, but also in economy.
Covering a great number of less-than-conventional but earth and pocketbook friendly construction methods, like straw bale, cobb, and palate, and including an article on the basic municipal planning and building approval process, Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter is a valuable resource for people dreaming tiny.
After reading this book, I look around my ridiculously oversized spaces filled with too much stuff and feel compelled to pare down the clutter and live with more of the things I use and less of the things that just take up space.
What makes this book special, beyond the valuable information, is the peak into the lives of the diverse people who have decided to live somewhere tiny and sometimes hand built for very different reasons and in very different places. I also like that tiny home builders featured throughout the book are easy to find and contact because the inclusion of website information from the contributors. All in all, it's a great resource filled with beautiful pictures sure to plant the seeds of a plan in readers' minds.

Book Review: Endless by Amanda Gray

Endless by Amanda Gray
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Juxtaposing recurring fire and ice, warmth and cold throughout her accessible prose, Amanda Gray mesmerizes the reader in her tale of reincarnation, dreams, friendship, loss, and yet another round at the Ouija board gone queer. From her gloves that hide a secret to the photo of her long dead mother, Jenny is a parfait of mystery. When a deeper mystery paints itself into her picture, she and her friends pull together to unravel it before it unravels everything that matters to her.

Endless was a pleasant bedtime read, with solid characters and a plot that keeps going right through the last page. With just enough closure for a stand alone, but even more to recommend future visits into Jenny's future, I'd be shocked if a second book isn't on it's way soon, and I look forward to finding out how the story continues.

Although the cast is a pretty homogeneous group of white folk, they all come alive as independent strings on the same violin- each resonating with a different tension. I would have liked to have a little more insight into Jenny's dad and her best friend Tiffany's characters, but the story isn't over just yet.

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