A cute film, especially since I’d just finished reading Jane Austen’s “Emma” earlier in the week. My roommate was amazed when I started telling him exactly what was going to happen with all of the characters – it was easy to match them up with their literary counterparts, and know how it was all going to end. Lots of fun!

My son and I went to see this together, and we both LOVED it! I’m a museum geek anyway, so any movie set in a museum (especially natural history) is likely to be of interest. I mostly just wanted to see the T-Rex running around, and was pleased when this movie turned out to be really funny. The whole audience was laughing out loud again and again. Oh yeah, it’s fluff, but good, genuinely funny fluff. I’m really glad we went to see this.

This was an amazing film. I nearly didn’t bother to watch it. To be honest, I wasn’t really interested, and I only got it from Netflix because I thought my roommate wanted to see it. Turns out he’d already seen it, and I almost just sent it back, unwatched (usually, celebrity biographies just aren’t my thing), but then decided, “what the heck” and put it in last night.

What a powerful film! I’m so glad I did decide to watch it. It was really interesting to see all that he went through (and all that he put others through). I found the flashback scenes with his mother (and his brother, OMG) to be very moving – I was in tears more than once. And his triumph at the end – I cried and cried, but it was a really good, cathartic kind of crying. Wow. What an amazing man, an amazing life. Oh, and the music was great, too. I’d forgotten just how many totally kick-ass songs that man wrote. Definitely worth watching.

I didn’t really like this movie much, which is a shame, because it could have been much better. I don’t have any issues with the content – I do believe that there is far more around us than we can see. However, I felt this movie did a poor job of presenting it – it was a bit “airy-fairy” even for me (mostly, perhaps, because of the poor acting and dialogue). It seems that people who are already familiar with this sort of thing won’t really learn anything, and people who aren’t . . . well, this might not be the best introduction to the subject. If you’re interested in something which deals with consciousness and perception, I’d recommend “Way of the Peaceful Warrior,” instead of this film. Yeah, they’re not doing exactly the same thing, but WPW is a far superior film.

This is a beautiful, beautiful book. It was passed along to me by my grandmother (as she often does with books she’s read), and I began reading it at a time when I was going through some rough emotional stuff, and I found Lindbergh’s gentle “voice” to be a great comfort. She talks about life and relationships by using the analogy of shells on a beach, and flows seamlessly from one topic to the next. Her insights are mindful and profound (a word I’m not sure I’ve used in a book review before), and the thing that most amazes me about this book is that it was written more than 50 years ago, and yet is still entirely relevant – personally, socially and politically. This is a beautiful book which I urge everyone to read. Originally, I’d intended to bookcross this copy, but I’ve changed my mind. This gift from my grandmother is going into my personal collection, as I know someday it will be a blessing for me to go back and re-read these inspiring words. 10/10

My copy of this book was signed by the illustrator – and he even drew a sketch of the Cowardly Lion for me! (My mom got this for me when I was a child, as it was a favorite book).

I wanted to enjoy this, but honestly, I thought it was boring. Not a good thing for an “action” film. yawn

I’ll agree with the comment below, though, that “YOU DO NOT REALIZE” was the funniest moment in the film. I laughed out loud at that one. But the rest of it? I actually got bored and turned it off last night. Then, this evening, I ended up watching the rest of it, just because. I can’t recommend it, though. 5/10

I’ve had this book on my shelf for a few years now (it’s the first I’ve completed for my To-Be-Read Challenge), and it’s also the first work I’ve read by Tanith Lee. It’s a book of nine short stories in which Lee takes traditional fairy tales and twists them into new, mostly darker, tales.

By the end, I’ll say that I did enjoy it, although the first couple of stories were dull. Her prose is interesting – very descriptive and full of powerful imagery – but sometimes I felt that prose was wasted on stories which really didn’t go much of anywhere interesting. There was one (the Sleeping Beauty retelling) which left me wondering just what the heck happened, and there was one story whose original I didn’t recognize. (At first, I thought it might have been Aladdin, but on second thought, no).

Those are the negatives. On the plus side, a few of the stories were excellent. My favorites were the Little Red Riding-Hood story (Wolfland), and a science-fiction-y Beauty and the Beast (Beauty). In “Beauty” especially, I found myself engaged with the characters, and hoping for the outcome I wanted. (With many of the earlier stories, I simply didn’t care how they turned out). So, this book has some wonderful moments, although the whole thing isn’t to a consistent standard, IMO. Still, it’s a small volume, and the stories that weren’t great were also not very long. So, I’ll give this 7/10.

Written entirely in Spanish, a cute counting book, numbers one through ten, which follows the adventures of the six fish caught by the child in the story as she finds interesting places in her home to keep them. 7/10

This is a sweet book for children, written in both English and Spanish. We read it in Spanish (although we did peek from time to time at the English, just to make sure). 10/10