Tag Archives: adventure

Fairy Tale Fails: Hansel and Gretel

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In honor of Halloween, I’m bringing back one of my favorite types of posts: Fairy Tale Fails. The story this time? Hansel and Gretel. I figure if ever there was a story that best accompanies All Hallow’s Eve it is the one that has an actual witch in it.

Reading the Grimm’s Fairy Tale version of the classic tale, not a lot is different about the core story: two kids are idiots and try to eat a house made out of candy and a witch lures them in and tries to eat them. But there are parts of the story that I don’t remember ever reading.

In my mind, the story of Hansel and Gretel goes something like this:

One day a brother and sister were walking through the woods. They were wandering around but didn’t want to get lost so they brought a loaf of bread with them to leave crumbs on their trail so they can find their way home. Once they’re ready to turn back around they find that the crumbs are no longer there, most likely eaten by a bird. Unsure what to do, the siblings keep walking until they find a house made of gingerbread and candy. At this point they have been walking all day and are hungry (plus, candy!) so they decide to go up to the house and start picking off little pieces to eat. Hoping there is more food inside, they break into the house only to find a witch ready willing and able to lock them up and eat them. Once she prepares the oven for the kids to cook in, she lets them out and tells them to look into the oven to see if it’s hot enough. The kids somehow trick her into going over first and they lock her in the oven and leave. The end.

To this day I cannot for the life of me remember if anything happened after that point in the story. Or at least, I didn’t know until recently.

You see, I first started reading all of the original fairy tale stories several years ago. But that was always one of those stories that I honestly didn’t give a rats ass about. I never thought the story was entertaining, I thought the kids were idiots and the idea of a candy house was ludicrous – wouldn’t it melt or disintegrate??? And as for the witch, if you’re a person that genuinely wants to eat children, how did you get suckered into letting these kids run around your house with no ties or anything, and then be stupid enough to say, “you know what, maybe I should check, personally, to see if the oven is ready first. I’m sure the kids will leave me alone while I go near the place that they knew I was going to kill them in.” what??

So no, when I read the Grimm’s Fairy Tales I didn’t read the story. I skipped over the entire chapter and moved along to the next story. But as Halloween was approaching I wanted to get back into the Fairy Tale Fails swing of things and realized that it’s actually kind of the perfect story to tear apart via blog. It appeals to all the creepy things we hate: cannibalism, candy-luring creeps, kids lost in the woods, kids in general (HA! Just kidding, only some kids are creepy and I hate them). So I read the actual story. And it was weird.

The story begins with an explanation, one that I hadn’t actually thought about previously. Why were the kids wandering alone in the woods? According to the Brothers Grimm, the siblings live with their father and stepmother. When a famine strikes and everyone is starving, the stepmother (always berating the children and beating them) tells the father that she is going to take everyone on a walk in the morning and get rid of the two kids so that she and her husband can eat the extra food they’d been giving to the children. He doesn’t like this idea but she wears him down and agrees to the plan. Unbeknownst to them, Hansel has overheard their conversation and sneaks out of his room to pick up some white pebbles to leave a trail back to the house.

The next morning, the whole family goes on the excursion. The father and stepmom leave the kids, but to their surprise they’ve found their way home. Pissed that they survived and used the pebble trick against her, the stepmom talks to the father and says that the plan will work and they will do it again the next morning. In order to make sure they don’t go anywhere in the meantime to get provisions, she locks the children in their room.

On the way out the next morning Hansel grabs a slice of bread for the walk and begins leaving a trail behind. Again the parents leave the children. But when Hansel and Gretel go back to follow the bread crumbs they find that a bird has eaten them and that they are lost. This is when the story is the same:

They wander, find a gingerbread house and eat it’s roof. A witch comes out and lures them into her home with candy and the promise of comfort and sleep. She locks them away. She uses Gretel as her slave and decides to fatten up Hansel so there’s more of him to eat. When she’s finally ready to eat, she lets Hansel out and decides to kill Gretel as well. Still her slave, Gretel is told to go into the opening of the oven to see if the fire is burning well, but pretends that she doesn’t understand the command. Frustrated that the kid isn’t getting it, the witch goes to show her what she should be doing. As she leans forward, Gretel knocks her into the stove and locks it.

She and Hansel find out that theres a large pot of jewels and valuables. They take the jewels and leave. The only problem? Where are they going to go? Well, miraculously, a swan agrees to let the children ride on it’s back and swims them back to their father’s house. Going inside, they realize that the stepmom has died, and that now (with the riches they’ve acquired) they can live happily ever after as a family.

Okay. Where do I begin? Oh, right, I know: the step mom is a total dick and the dad is no better! What the fuck? I can understand the dad being lonely and getting into a relationship with a new lady. I also understand that that lady was a dick to the kids, but the dad is still lonely and maybe doesn’t care much about the kids. But what I don’t understand is how your wife can say, “I don’t want the kids anymore. I’m hungry, let’s drop them off somewhere to starve to death and we’ll live happily again.” and for the husband to say, “you know what, it’s been a tough year, I think you’re right. Let’s drop them off tomorrow.” What??

I don’t know, maybe I’m old fashioned, but I feel like the dad – the biological father – should maybe not want to give up the kids that easy? I know in the story they say that he wasn’t okay with it at first, but that begs the question, what made him change his mind? I just don’t get it.

Second, if Hansel is so smart that he knows to bring small items with him to leave a trail to get home, why is he not smart enough to know he shouldn’t eat a random house in the middle of nowhere made out of candy?

Third, and possibly most importantly, WHERE DID THIS MYSTICAL SWAN COME FROM AND HOW DOES IT KNOW THERE IS A GIANT LAKE GOING FROM THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE TO THEIR PARENTS HOUSE? AND HOW DIDN’T THE KIDS KNOW ABOUT IT? That seems like the perfect landmark to get the kids to know where they are so they don’t need stupid pebbles!

I don’t know, man. This story is just weird and gives me too many things to pick apart (and the majority of the story was the same as what I’ve grown up hearing!)  But thanks to the spirit of Halloween, I can now sleep easy knowing that I understand the original, classic tale of Hansel and Gretel and never have to read it again.

If you like Fairy Tale Fails, or if you have a story you want me to analyze or read, leave me a message in the comments to let me know or send me an e-mail at rachel@booksandcleverness.com. 

Happy Hall-ow-eeeeen! MANIACAL LAUGH, MANIACAL LAUGH…

Rachel

Book vs Movie: The Martian

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I did it! I saw The Martian!

After reading the book by Andy Weir back in July and waiting for a painstaking 3 whole months for the movie to come out, I have finally seen it! And let me tell you….. it was worth it.

For anyone that doesn’t know (because they’ve been living under a rock) The Martian is about an astronaut named Mark Watney who is believed dead on Mars. Only he’s not dead, and he needs to find a way to survive on a lifeless planet for at least four years.

The book was geeky, funny, and excellently written, and the movie was the same. That being said, I liked the book so much more. Here’s why:

  1. There is nothing that can simulate the incredible writing that Andy Weir delivered in his book. The book captivated you into this astronaut’s life to the point where I would go through the day and think, “man, I really need to figure out a way to get the rover to have more room.” …. I’m not even stuck in space and I’m worrying about fixing a rover? WHAT? But it’s things like that that make me realize how great of a writer he is. To be able to get someone (who knows absolutely nothing about math, science or mechanics) to truly start thinking as the main character to the point that they want to work on their non-existent space rover is a wonderful feat.
  2. The jokes!!! In the movie they keep a very good amount of the jokes and little things that Mark Watney says, but not nearly enough. I was sitting in bed laughing and reading parts of jokes to my boyfriend because I just thought it was hilarious. In the movie, there were funny parts, but they weren’t as good as the book.
  3. Matt Damon! I’ve mentioned this enough times, but I love Matt Damon. I love him in everything he’s been in. But I just don’t know if he was the right choice for this movie. While he was excellent in it, and anyone who hasn’t read the book might think that he was the perfect candidate, I just felt that the actor who played Watney should have been geekier and have less of the “I’m Matt Damon and I’m super awesome and funny” attitude.
  4. Lastly, the mishaps. In the book there are things that happen to ruin everything he has worked for in a split second. In the movie, they use one or two of them. I read the book and thought a countless number of times, “how the fuck is he going to live now?” I didn’t really get that same sense of absolute urgency and devastation from the movie. And I think it could’ve done so much better if it kept that in there (and the movie did really well).

All of that said, the movie was really great. The acting was excellent, the art direction was phenomenal, and the story was even better. I just very much advise you to read the book first. It was just so spectacular for people who like all different types of novels: funny, science fiction, character study, action, all of it! It was such a perfect book, and you’ll love it.

My verdict?

TO DATE:    Book: 5, Movie: 4

If you have any suggestions for books I should read or if you just want to say hi, you can comment below or shoot me an e-mail at rachel@booksandcleverness.com

Until next time my lovely blog family!

Rachel

Book vs Movie: Hugo (The Invention of Hugo Cabret)

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I haven’t done one of these in a while and I think it’s about time! A couple days ago my boyfriend and I were searching through Netflix to find something to watch (a process that usually takes about 40 minutes and always ends with us watching Dogs With Jobs) when we came across Hugo. I’d been wanting to watch it for a long time now, but never had, and he had seen it and liked it a lot. So we decided to watch it.

We watched almost exactly half of the movie but then we got tired and just wanted to sleep. However, I was in love with this movie from the start. About ten minutes in, I headed straight over to Amazon and bought the book the movie was based off of, The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick.hugo

Yesterday, I received it in the mail (thank you, Amazon Prime!) and I read the entire book. The book is more than 500 pages long, but it has about 284 pictures, so really I only read about 200 and something pages. Still, it was a lot for me to read in one sitting, but I just couldn’t put it down. The second I finished the book I knew I had to finish the movie, so I watched it today and I wanted to tell you about them.

First, I’d like to just say that director Martin Scorsese did a fantastic job. From what I’ve noticed, it’s incredibly difficult to turn a children’s book into a movie. I have a few children’s/young adult books that I’ve loved that have been turned into movies that I just hated. For example, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. Incredible book, but horrible movie. In this particular case, I thought it was flawless!

A lot of times the line between book and movie is so thick that it’s almost an entirely different story (I’m looking at you, Maze Runner!) but in this case they got everything right. I will say that they added a few things into the movie that weren’t in the book, and they took out a few things that were in the book. However, everything they added or took out was for a purpose. For example, in the book the main character, Hugo Cabret, goes to a Film Library with someone he had met at a bookstore. In the movie, the character still goes to the library, but with the secondary character, Isabelle. Which I thought made a lot more sense when I watched the movie. It’s too confusing to add in a random character that was only mentioned twice in the book into a movie.

I also have to say that they did a phenomenal job casting the characters. In the actual book, there are pictures of the characters – and not just one picture of a character, but tons of pictures of characters. Which meant that they had to find actors that very closely matched the pictures. And they did that perfectly.

They also used a lot of old-time-y cinema references that I only knew one of, and it was the most famous. So it was very obscure with the references, which was pretty cool, too.

I honestly can’t give you any negative feedback. This book was amazing. It was a great book to teach kids the art of persevering, of doing what you love, and teaching kids that it’s okay to be sad if something bad happens. And it’s okay to let your friends in to help you. It was an incredibly cute book, and it was an incredibly cute movie.

10/10! I highly recommend this book-movie combo to anyone who likes cute, imaginative stories, and anyone who likes incredibly well acted movies.

Until next time!

Rachel

e-mail: rachel@booksandcleverness.com

Go Set A Watchman By Harper Lee

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gosetawatchman

Happy Friday, blog family! As July came to an end, I began something new: the recently published Go Set A Watchman by the author of To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee.

I first read To Kill A Mockingbird, like most people, in high school. Maybe I’m the only one, but I really didn’t care for it. My issue with the book is that it’s a great character study, and it has a very interesting, historically accurate plot, but the writing style seemed slow to me. Granted, I haven’t read the book in years but I do remember that I wasn’t crazy about it. My favorite part of the entire book was the trial and that only lasted a little bit.

Nevertheless, I heard that Harper Lee had just gotten a new book published. A sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird set 20 years after the trial. After some research I actually learned that the book was found in Harper Lee’s safety deposit box, and was written as the first draft of a manuscript of To Kill A Mockingbird. Lee decided that she would keep the book in safe keeping, but she began writing the book we’ve all read from the beginning. She made the characters she’d first created younger, and went into a lot of detail about the postbellum South (and particularly the justice system when it came to black people in the south).

Well, after going to Costco and seeing that the usually $30 book was only $15, I decided to read it. I had finished The Martian and wanted to read something shorter that I thought would be an interesting read. I was wrong.

At least for a while, I was wrong. You see the book starts out really really really slow. The first exactly one hundred pages (out of 279, by the way) were slow. No, not slow, boring. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve been reading books that are all excitement from page one, but this book was really boring.

But for a couple days I figured that I might just be feeling this way because I didn’t like the first book. Then it dawned on me that I was really only reading this book because I felt I needed to. I felt obligated to read this book because it was written by somebody incredibly well known, and it was her first published book since the original back in 1960. It was something I had chosen to read, but not because I thought the story sounded interesting. Still, I kept reading. On page 104 the book got somewhat interesting. Or, at least, at page 104 a plot appeared.

Honestly, the second the plot appeared I couldn’t put it down. I’ve mentioned how recently I’ve been reading very slowly. Well, from page 104 to 279, it took me a total of 3 hours, over the span of two days, to read the rest of the book. Which is great considering I’ve been reading about ten pages a night, if that.

So anyway, when the plot began to thicken, I couldn’t put it down. The end of the book was seamless and actually pretty sweet. It was a very nice ending – not necessarily a good ending, by the way, but a nice ending. There was a line I thought was very well written. Lee wrote, “Remember this also: it’s always easy to look back and see what we were, yesterday, ten years ago. It is hard to see what we are. If you can master that trick, you’ll get along.”

I thought that was very well said. It’s quite true that looking back on your life you’ll think of what you should have done and how naïve you were. It’s so easy to think those things. It’s so easy to get lost in the past. But what is in the past is past. It’s much harder to look at yourself and understand who you are now. It’s something that so many people struggle with.

Now, back to Go Set A Watchman. I had a very hard time with this book character-wise. I don’t want to give anything away so I’ll just mention these two characters:

Scout. The beloved Scout, who ran rampant with Jem and Dill and always took Boo Radley’s gifts for granted, is now called Jean Louise. Okay. I can get behind that because I understand that it’s 20 years later and she’s a 26 year old woman. But what I can’t get behind is the fact that she’s 26 years old, called Jean Louise, living in New York City, never sees her family and is a complete brat for the first 170 pages! Come on, Scout. You’re better than this…

This isn’t a spoiler because it’s on the back cover of the book, so don’t blame me: Atticus is super sick! He’s been declining for a long time. In fact, he’s been declining for years. And guess how long it’s been since Jean Louise saw him? TWO YEARS. TWO. Come on, Scout.

Dr. Finch (AKA Uncle Jack). I don’t actually remember if this man was in the first book or not, but oh. my. god. I love him. I wish I could follow Dr. Finch around for 279 pages instead of Jean Louise because this man is so brilliant. He’s such a great character and has so much to contribute. In fact, that quote I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, that was said by Dr. Finch. He was wonderful.

Okay, so last thoughts. The book was alright. In a way I’m glad I read it, but I also wish I hadn’t read it, just because I would have gotten to leave the characters eternally where I left them: as kids. I understand peoples desire to read this book and learn more about the future of the Finch family, but I wasn’t crazy about that.

HOWEVER, had this book not been affiliated with To Kill A Mockingbird at all, and had just been a new book about a girl who visits her hometown for a couple weeks, I think this would’ve been a pretty decent book. But because it had those ties to the characters everyone knew and loved and kept in their memory, it kind of ruined it a little bit for me. Had Harper Lee changed the names of the characters and changed the name of the town, this could’ve taken place anywhere in the South and it would have been an interesting read towards the end.

If you loved the first book, chances are you’ll like this one too. It has a lot of the same things: writing style, characters, message, etc. It just wasn’t for me.

If you’ve read it and liked it, or didn’t like it, let me know in the comments or send me an e-mail at rachel@booksandcleverness.com and we can have a conversation about what we thought!

Until next time!

Rachel

A Very Long Review of The Martian by Andy Weir

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I’d like to tell you a little story about how I never listen to my dad. First, let me start by saying that when I was a kid my dad would always joke, “don’t trust your father.” Obviously he was kidding, but I did end up taking that lesson with me in two aspects: books and movies.

Movies are the easiest for me to explain. For a long time we would watch movies together that he wanted me to see and know of. I would always play it cool and say that they weren’t that great of movies (even though they were pretty fricken awesome). So whenever he recommended a movie to me he’d say, “don’t you trust me?” and I’d always say “No.” Of course this has changed, and if my dad recommends a movie now it goes immediately onto my watch-list…

…Except for Chappie, which he pitched to me as “it was so bad. You really shouldn’t watch it…. Actually, watch it and see how bad it is. It’s so bad.”

But books are different. My dad is an avid reader, albeit an incredibly slow reader, but he loves books. He got me addicted to fantasy and science fiction, and I’m forever grateful for that. However, as I’m sure you’ve figured out, I take books very seriously. I love when people give me recommendations so I can add them to my to-read list, but I don’t like being pushed into reading a book. I’m stubborn like my mom and the more you push me to read a book, the less likely I am to read that book out of sheer principle.

My dad is the King of Pushers. He will recommend a book, and I’ll usually find that book’s concept pretty interesting, but I’ll add it to my list and keep going through the books I already have lined up. This does not satisfy my dad. He will continually say, “You HAVE to read this book. When you’re done with your book, you NEED to read this one.” and when I finish my book, and start reading a different book, he’ll say the same things. Over and over again, until he gives up and reads a new book that I HAVE to read.

But something strange happened. I learned about the upcoming movie, The Martian, starring Matt Damon (and if you read my To See or Not To See post back in February you’ll know that I love Matt Damon. I really do. He’s wonderful. Also, my sister would hate me for saying this but Ben Affleck is not as attractive as everyone thinks. Matt Damon totally wins that contest, hands down), and realized it was a book. The second I found that out, I was hooked. I had to add it to my list.

But then my boyfriend and I went over to my parents house for dinner. I told my mom about this really cool new movie that’s coming out that has Matt Damon in it, about this guy that’s stuck on Mars and has to plant crops on Mars and survive, and it’s even a book! And to my surprise she said, “That sounds like the book that Dad’s reading.”

What?! My dad is reading a book I want to read before I even hear of it?? What alternate universe is this??

It turned out, he was reading The Martian. He recommended it instantly and said, “oh my God, Rae, you HAVE to read this. The writer reminds me so much of your writing style. It’s funny, written well, and you just have to read it.” But this time, I trusted him. (Note: Sorry, Dad, I’m learning how to trust you again. I know this dampens your street cred.)

What happened when I started reading The Martian, written by Andy Weir, was magical. The first page made me laugh, and I entered a world that was completely foreign to me, but I felt completely at ease.

The story is about a man who is believed to be dead on Mars, but he’s not. He needs to figure out a way to survive on Mars indefinitely, using only a small amount of resources. It’s so good.

Andy Weir’s writing style is so sarcastic, but so detailed and rich that it’s not like reading a book where the author just tries to be snarky, instead it’s actually like reading this man’s life, and reading what he’s going through – being Mark Watney’s friend. Weir is an incredible writer, with a ridiculous amount of knowledge when it comes to science and math (something that just went straight over my head), but always finds a way to make the characters relatable even with them being super science and math driven.

If I could give this book 500 stars out of 10, plus 15 high fives, and four thumbs-ups, I would. 18 Quatloo’s for you, sir!

Everyone needs to read this book before the movie comes out. I know I’ve mentioned a hundred times that I don’t necessarily think that seeing the movie first is a bad idea, but in this case: read the book first. The movie comes out October 2015, so you have a few more months to read it, even if you’re as slow of a reader as my dear old dad. Go get it!

All that said, I’d like to give a shoutout to my dad (as if there haven’t been enough in this post) for finally getting me to read one of the books he’s recommended. Good job, Pops. This is a big day for you.

If you’ve read this book, please comment below so we can discuss it because oh. my. god. All I want to do is talk about it right now. If there could be a The Martian chat room, I’d join it right now.

Until next time, blog family!

Rachel

email: rachel@booksandcleverness.com