The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The title is irresistible, and having received a hearty recommendation from a close friend, I simply had to give this book a go.

It starts off a bit on the precious side; too clever for its own britches, if you know what I mean. Just reading through the Dramatis Personae on page 1 (siblings named “Hello” and “Goodbye”?), I had to wonder what I was getting myself into.

But as the story progresses, Valente guides us through an adventure full of deep friendships, heartless children who aren’t so heartless, mythology, wonder, and of course, plenty of curiosities and oddities. Our protagonist, September, is skillfully written to be both innocent and worldly. By the end, I was thoroughly ready to read about September’s next adventure in Fairyland.

A previous commenter suggested that this is in fact not a children’s book at all, but a book best suited for adult readers. I’ve tried to imagine myself at 12-years-old reading this book, but the truth is I was hip-deep in Frank Herbert‘s Dune Chronicles at the time, so maybe the comparison isn’t particularly helpful. =^_^= I think this book has the rare ability to be two completely different things to two different audiences. Young readers will enjoy the adventure and cast of characters, while adult readers will be able to enjoy the numerous layers of allegory and youthful nostalgia.



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Filed under: Bookworm

How excited was I when Seal Press approached me to review their newest anthology of erotica: Curvy Girls – Erotica for Women?

Very, er….excited. (!!!)

First of all, please observe the cover. What do you see? I’ll tell you what I see: a roll of tummy fat! I couldn’t believe it when I first looked. I knew the book was intended to celebrate and empower the sexuality of fat girls, but honestly I had been expecting a cover more along the lines of a  ”plus-size” model who’s a size 12 modelling clothes for a store that caters to sizes 14-28. But this fat girl can admit when she’s wrong, and I was wrong about my expectations for the cover. It was fantastic to see a hot fat chick in stunning lingerie rockin’ her bod (and tummy roll!) like nobody’s business.

Lesson Learned: Abandon all assumptions about fat girl sex, ye who enter here.

Editor Rachel Kramer Bussel pulls together a fine collection of stories in Curvy Girls that celebrates every ounce of “more to love” and shows us that fat girls have desires that run just as deep as any girl out there. And Bussel doesn’t keep it confined to the vanilla sphere – there’s a little something for everyone in this anthology: voyeurism, anonymous encounters, ass play, D/s, spanking, food play, three-somes, and more. She also keeps all the ladies in mind, offering up not only the more traditional hot dish guys, but a hefty dose (hee hee!) of gorgeous butches and femmes for some Ladies Only action.

More interestingly to me, as a fat girl, was the inclusion of a broad (omg, I’m on a roll!) range of perspectives on body size from the female protagonist’s view.   In a world where it can be so challenging to maintain self-confidence in a larger body, it may have been tempting to create an anthology riddled with feisty women fully in charge of their bodies and sexuality – give us a 250 pages of “Go, Fat Girl! Go!”  But Bussel wisely side-stepped that trap of over-enthusiastic cheerleader-ism. Regardless of size, not every person is the type to stride into a room, bursting (someone stop me!) with confidence and daring anyone in the room to f*ck them silly. The contributing authors in Curvy Girls present us with many different types of women – some bold and brash, others shy and reserved – but in the end each of them finds something to celebrate about their size and the pleasure their bodies can give them.

Reading through this anthology also gave me the opportunity to examine my own definitions of what it means to be “curvy.” For the most part, the stories don’t make explicit references to numbers (dress size, weight, etc.) and I prefer it that way. The authors came up with plenty of ways to describe luscious breasts, thick asses, and soft bellies. The lack of numbers let me more easily put myself in the place of the protagonist and imagine myself in some of those sexy romps. But occasionally there was a reference to a number – size 14, for example – and that is where it became a challenge for me. Immediately my brain wanted to compare, and it tripped me up. I’m sure there are folks that would consider a size 14 curvy, but my brain was telling me that wasn’t nearly curvy enough! This could turn in to another post all on its own, but it raises interesting questions about the way cultures encourage women to compare our bodies and the thought patterns we develop as to who measures up and who simply isn’t enough. Curvy Girls welcomes all the curvy girls, though, and that was good enough for me.

Get comfortable. Pick up Curvy Girls, and prepare to be, ahem….inspired.

Filed under: The FatGrrl Review

When I first began to pursue recovery with the Emily Program, I was encouraged to start keeping food logs. Arguably, this is the most difficult thing that any person struggling with disordered eating must do. Food logs….they are evil. Don’t get me wrong. They are an invaluable tool in recovery. But that doesn’t make them any less evil, so I don’t mind telling my food log on a regular basis: “Food Log, you surely have come to me from the nastiest and most vile level of Hell.” On days when I’m feeling less articulate, it tends to just be, “Fuck you, Food Log!”

What’s that you say? I’m starting this BED Bootcamp with a terrible attitude? I’d agree with you somewhat. But that’s nothing new, as recovery is a daily struggle and I’ll tell you that even on really great days, I still hate the food log. Here’s why:

It is a written and committed record of every bite of food that goes in my mouth. It is permanent. It is a memorial to what I have done to myself. It is an indictment of every misstep. It is documentation of minor successes and major failures. It is a reminder of five years of therapy and BED still running the show. I can’t brush it aside or choose to ‘forget’ because it is all written down: what time I ate, how hungry I was at the time, what food I ate, what the nutritional exchanges were, how full I was afterward. I can’t eat anything without first acknowledging that it will have to be committed to paper at some point. The food log is a running narrative of my daily struggle with food. Would you want that whispering over your shoulder all of the time?

But here’s the problem: if you can step aside from yourself for a moment, the food log becomes a neutral observer of eating. It captures the aspects of intake. It can show you trends in consumption. It charts progress. It can point towards potential behavioral hot-spots. It can encourage mindfulness and engender accountability. It can be a tool of recovery, if you let it. If I let it.

So here I am, back at the beginning, and it makes sense that I take the first step again. I’ve got about a week and a half of food logs under my belt as I start this little exercise. I will admit that food logs are also a means of tracking self-care for me, particularly when I’m running the depression gamut, the time when self-care becomes much less of a priority. (Why brush my teeth when I can lay in bed and be swallowed up by misery, huh?)

What does a food log look like? Something like this. (Disclaimer: the food exchanges listed below are based on work I did with a licensed nutritionist at the Emily Program. Please, for the love of heaven and for the sake of yourself, talk to a nutritionist before you start assigning nutritional values, and then judgment values, to your food.)

April 22, 2012

8:30am: (hungry)
Cocoa shredded wheat cereal with skim milk; 2 pcs. toast with butter and strawberry jam; orange juice
X: 4 grains, 2 milk, 2 fat, 3 fruit

9am: Brush + floss

12:30pm: (less than hungry)
BLT sandwich; noodle soup with pork and corn; diet coke; fudge popsicle
X: 4-5 grains, 2 protein, 1 veg, 3-4 fats, 1 dessert

5:30pm: (hungry)
1 banana
X: 1 fruit

8:30pm (++hungry)
Skillet potatoes topped with cheese, sour cream, crumbled bacon, green onion; sauteed brussel sprouts; diet coke; fudge popsicle
X: 3-4 grains, 1/2 protein, 1 milk, 2 veg, 5-6 fat(?), 1 dessert

11pm: Brush

Don’t get cocky, Food Log. This doesn’t mean we’re friends.

Filed under: BEDhead, Fat(Riot)Grrl

This past academic term threw me for a loop. Not just in terms of workload, although it was certainly enough to kick anyone’s ass, but also emotionally. On the one hand, as the academic work and stress piled up, I was looking for ways to manage that build-up. But on the other hand, continuing to be so far away from my husband and family in Minnesota layered an entirely different kind of stress on me, and that one is much more difficult to diffuse. By the end of March and beginning of April, I had to find some kind of way to survive the end of the term.

I gave myself permission to eat. A lot. I turned the reins over to the Binge Eating Disorder and let it run the show while I did my best to hold on for dear life. In many respects, it felt like I didn’t have a choice. I knew I had to make it to the end of the term. I knew I had one defensive weapon in the my arsenal that had worked in the past to deflect my stress long enough for me to see myself through a difficult situation. I made the choice to use the eating disorder to survive. Strangely, during this time, in giving myself permission to eat whatever I had to in order to survive emotionally, I had also effectively freed my mind from the hailstorm of questions that usually accompanies thoughts of food for me: why are you eating this? why do you need to eat so much? what can’t you just stop. Despite the destructive behavior, the justification of it created an odd silence that I don’t often experience. And it worked. I survived the term.

Cue the guilt. Buckets of guilt! Big, honkin’ dump trucks full of guilt!

Cue the obsessive thoughts. The racing! rampaging! hamster-in-a-wheel illogical thoughts!

If ever there was a girl whose brain was in desperate need of a realignment, that girl is me right now. I have a couple more weeks off before my archival summer internship starts. I want to use that time to do a little BED detoxing – a Binge Eating Disorder Bootcamp, of sorts. I’d like to take some time and re-examine my thinking and identify some ways that I can get back to a better place.

I got an appointment with an on-campus specialist in eating disorders and he recommended a couple of books to me: Overcoming Binge Eating by Dr. Christopher G. Fairburn and The Zen Path Through Depression by Philip Martin. The specialist puts a lot of stock in these books, so I’m going to give them a try.

I’d like to use this site to chart my progress. Care to join me?

Filed under: BEDhead, Fat(Riot)Grrl

I attended the recent exhibition opening of Beyond the Barbed Wire: Italian Canadians During WWII at the Italian Cultural Centre of Vancouver, and I attended in style thanks to a lovely gift from Fat Phrocks. You may be familiar with the founder of Fat Phrocks, as she presented her creation, Wingz, on the UK version of the “Dragon’s Den” television series.

Fat Phrocks caters not just to fatgrrls, but to TALL fatgrrls. Which is a fabulous breath of fresh air, particularly for a girl that has been long-suffering with the short inseams of most fat fashions. There has been plenty of improvement in recent years, but as a teen I was fairly convinced that one must become shorter as one becomes fatter. Fat fashion inseams were a mystery to me.

I wore a stunning dark gray wrap dress and paired it with some teal tights for a pop of fun color:

Big THANK YOU, to Fat Phrocks!

Filed under: Fat(Riot)Grrl

The Search for WondLa by Tony DiTerlizzi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Such a fantastical world to inhabit! And I LOVED that there were so many illustrations.

The characters were engaging, and Eva Nine had just the right amount of 12-year-old brattiness. The friends she makes along the way and the growing up she does throughout made for a very enjoyable story. I’m excited to read the second part of the trilogy.



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Filed under: Bookworm

The Iron Knight by Julie Kagawa

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A big improvement over The Iron Queen, I must say. I was excited to get back to a compelling adventure that was supplemented, rather than bogged down, by the emotional development of the protagonist. Prince Ash is a very different creature from Meagan and it made for an interesting read to see another character’s take on the land of Faerie.



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Eyes Like Stars by Lisa Mantchev

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This story follows our protagonist, Beatrice Shakespeare Smith, in her life at a theater where all the characters of all the world’s plays live. She manages the daily drama of Ophelia; her best friends are fairies from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”; she has a love/hate crush going on with a character from “The Tempest” and a certain sailor from “The Little Mermaid” has a thing for her; and all the while she searches for the truth about how she came to be left at the theater as a baby and raised by the crew and characters there. But she’s also a teen, so she’s brings plenty of sass and well-intentioned mistakes to the story.

The author has a background in theater so it makes sense that she could bring that world to life, and I think it shows in the writing that she knows what she’s talking about. She made the right choice to put her story there. However, I do not have a background, or even a very deep interest, in theater so it felt as though there were parts of the story that should have been more meaningful to me if I had that “in” to the story. That being said, I really did enjoy the idea of finding out who a character is after they finish playing the part written for them and walk off the stage. In this book, they’re likely to head to the green room for a cup of coffee and that’s when the interesting stuff starts to happen.

The only thing I didn’t enjoy was Beatrice’s name – she goes by “Bertie.” It’s terrible. All I could think of was “Bert the Turtle” and “Bertle Turtle” and other uncomplimentary things. Beatrice is a beautiful name and I can understand as a teen wanting something a little more fun and a little less sophisticated. But Bertie? Not to mention that Bertie sounds like a pet name given to your grandmother by her elderly gal pals. Anyway….



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Filed under: Bookworm

The Silver Door by Holly Lisle

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Holly Lisle has tremendous skill in world-building. I love the world of the Moon & Sun books – all the different types of characters and the way she ties it all together with a complex and engaging mythology. I wonder what kind of research it takes to create something like this.

Her protagonist, Genna, faces many difficult challenges and she’s courageous and thoughtful and very self-aware. Genna is a very balanced character – she’s not some over the top “Save the Day Hero” but neither is she a trembling, passive Mary Sue. I think she’s fantastic and a great role model for any 14-year-old.

The only nagging point that stuck with me while reading this was that the book was very obviously a transition from the first book towards some greater conclusion. There are plenty of new developments in this story, but it didn’t feel quite so much of an adventure in its own right, as I think books in a series ought to. But it is a minor criticism, to be sure.

Of course, I can’t find any hint of the continuing Moon & Sun series anywhere and that is VERY distressing! Please don’t keep us waiting much longer, Holly Lisle!



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Filed under: Bookworm

Paranormalcy by Kiersten White

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s not terrible. That being said, it’s not particularly good either.

I love urban fantasy and this book tries to incorporate some of those elements – a paranormal center in Bucharest? Bring it on! It also makes room for all kinds of paranormal creatures, which I also love to see in a good fantasy, and I especially look forward to faerie character that are decidedly anti-Tinkerbell in looks and demeanor. There are even broader themes of social justice, though they are not addressed as well or as deeply as they could have been.

The problem with this book, by and large, is the protagonist, Evie. There’s all this potential in her back story and all this possibility for a complex and multi-layered young woman, but what we end up with is a stereotypical “pink glitter and rhinestones” little girl. Evie does a serious disservice to the notion of strong female characters in YA fantasy literature. It’s a bummer.



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Filed under: Bookworm