Spirit

Archive for August 5th, 2010

If You Could See Me Now

Posted by Heather Manning On August - 5 - 2010

You won’t be, but if you could. I’m scary. Stuffed up nose, sore throat, pressure – oh my dear Lord, the pressure. It’s behind the bridge of my nose. I want to go back to bed but Christiano is not in the mood for a nap. Well, he was, but the girls woke him up. My nose is raw from blowing it. Doesn’t matter what kind of tissue I use – though Angel Soft toilet paper seems to be the best so far. There’s no way I’m posting a picture of how pretty I look right now.

I had things I wanted to do today too.

I wanted to drop off the shirt I bought for my cousin, then I wanted to run the new happy hut thing that I made for my sister in law’s lovebird off at their house, and my sister is having a jewelry party tonight. I am not up to any of it, not to mention I don’t think anyone else wants to catch what I have. Which I know for a fact is contagious because all of my kids woke up with stuffy noses this morning.

Lovely.

My dad came and picked up my cousin’s shirt to take to my aunt and my SIL is coming to pick up the happy hut. At least that is done. My sister said that she had a couple of people tell her that they would be at her party, so all is not lost.

The happy hut thing came out so cute! I made this one for Twinkle when we first got her, but as you can see, it’s long. When I saw the size of the one that came with Woodstock, I decided to make something similar so Twinkle would have even more room.

I was kind of really proud of myself. It’s not perfect, but I made that free hand – no pattern. Just looked at Woodstock’s, which is backless and figured out how to add a back to it. Next sewing task is to make a dress for Kat’s first day of school. She picked out the pattern, the fabric, the ric rac, the buttons, I just don’t know how to work with a pattern. I could probably figure it out, but it’s a pattern that can make 6 dresses in sizes 4 – 8 or something like that. I want to make them for both girls. I need my mom to help me figure out how to do it so I don’t ruin the pattern for Alyce when I’m making something for Kat.

And that my friends is for when I’m not sicker than a dog.

Me thinks my mom doesn’t want to catch what I have.

Tomorrow is the day I get to go up and watch the rodeo at Jordan’s camp, eat lunch with him, and then I can bring him home directly from there. I truly hope this lets up then. I am not missing that for the world.

And now my friends, I have run out of all the energy I mustered up to type this post, so I shall bid you adieu.

Or Adios.

Or just goodbye.

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Spirit

Posted by Heather Manning On August - 5 - 2010

Spirit Spirit by Andrew Feder

Randall Lender was a Wanted Man. He was wanted by the Clergy of the Major Organized Religions, the Governments and the New World Order, but that was the least of his problems. After going out of body (astral projection) Randall Lender suddenly found himself in such a paradox where the surrealism meets dilemma. Within this phenomenon of Looking Through the Hour Glass he unfortunately after leaving his physical body ended up into another’s. This was his paradox. This was his dilemma. This was his surrealism. And regrettably for Lender this was the real quantum problem. Randall Lender found himself on an unexpected journey with its twists and turns until he realizes that he must die to live for his return to his former body. And now the elixir of questions remains: What? How? And Why? Then you’ll ask why me? Why him? And What If?

I started this book so excited because I truly love books like this. And honestly, the story is intriguing. It makes you think. The problem I had was it was hard to read for me. The dialogue, I don’t want to say it felt cheap, but it…I’m trying to figure out how to describe it, it feels like a high school student wrote it. (No disrespect to high school student writers because there are some who are superbly talented and write light years ahead of their age groups.) It felt forced. The descriptions felt as if the writer was trying too hard.

Also throughout the book there was a lot of … and … and … where there really didn’t need to be any. On page 177, there are 21 places where he uses … alone.

Plus there is this habit if italicizing slang terms that I just didn’t get.

“Do you understand your rights?” the cop asked while shoving me into a black and white.

Does every slang term have to be italicized? I’ve never seen that before, or not to the extent that he uses it.

It all distracted from the actual story, which like I said could have been awesome read, if it wasn’t for the forced feeling throughout the book, as if someone tried too hard, the punctuation, and the italicizing of all these random words. I forgot about the words LIGHT and DARK being capitalized throughout the whole book. I guess I understand he was trying to highlight them, make them stand out, but it came off as annoying.

I felt no connection to the characters whatsoever. Usually when I get done reading a book, I want more. I want to know what happens to them after the resolution. With these two, I really didn’t care. I was just happy to have finished.

I also found it odd, that this spiritual soul/spirit that was in this hit man’s body, could speak so eloquently 95% of the time, then come out with some of the crudest things. I would not expect this lightened soul, the good guy, the one that people are looking to to solve all these problems, to have the mouth and mind of a gutter rat every once in awhile. It didn’t jive.

You know what’s weird? The book has great reviews out there. When I looked on Amazon all the reviewers had positive things to say and no one mentioned any of the problems I had with the book, so maybe it’s just me. If it sounds like something you’d like, check it out, read the other reviews, I could be way off base in my own thoughts.

I’ve read a lot of books in my 35 years on this Earth though and never have I seen one with the … behind every few words throughout the whole book and with all of these slang terms italicized. It bugged me.

Some might say I use … too much when I blog, but if I was to write a novel, I would not write that in the same way as I do when I blog. My blog is more informal.

I hate to give a bad review of anything, but I have to tell you how I honestly feel, and I am honestly glad that I am done reading Spirit. If you follow my book reviews, you know how fast I read. This book took me 3 days. It was really hard to bring myself to keep reading, I kept hoping that dialogue would get better, descriptions would be more inviting, anything. It continued on throughout the book, and I was really disappointed, because the idea behind this story could have been awesome.