Review: Please Stop Laughing at Me, by Jodee Blanco

[othercat]

Please Stop Laughing at Me, is a painful account of the writer's experience with having been bullied from junior high through high school. Blanco's story is that she was very much a misfit in junior high and became a target for bullies due to having the sort of soft, sensitive personality that tends to get ground under a lot in the face of the kinds of practical jokes and casual cruelty that kids have a tendency to engage in. Her situation is generally made worse by a sincere effort on her part to try getting along with everyone, and trying to fit in. (She does not say this in the book, this is my interpretation of the situation.) In addition, a congenital deformity that only appears in puberty results in making her even more of a target of the students of the school she went to.

Her parents attempted to help her by moving her to different schools, but this did not help very much, as Jodee is still soft and sensitive and kids are still basically twits wherever you go. They tried talking to the schools, but this did not work. They try putting her in therapy, but this does not help a great deal either. One of the few bright spots in her school experience is when she is able to make friends with other kids who are also misfits (and who have absolutely no desire to "be accepted" the way Jodee seems to). Another bright spot was that Jodee had the opportunity to visit Greece one summer, and made friends there as well. The book ends on a positive note and the school reunion that Jodee attends.

Please Stop Laughing at Me

Review: Right Hand Magic, by Nancy Collins

[othercat]

Right Hand Magic is a “magic is out in the open” urban fantasy. Our heroine is a young woman named Tate, an aspiring artist in search of a new place to live. (She is a sculptor who works with steel, which does not make her very popular to her yuppie neighbors.) Despite having a trust fund, with rich parents, she is looking for a cheap place to stay. After looking around, she comes across a very cheap room at a boarding house in a part of Manhattan where absolutely no cab or moving company will go: Golgotham.

Golgotham is basically a ghetto in the oldest sense of the word; a segregated section of the city separated by law instead of economic bracket. The inhabitants of Golgotham are various varieties of magical creatures plus a non-human race of magic users called Kymerans. The Kymerans have been living in ghettoes like this for centuries after a “holy war,” that destroyed their country. (This will be the biggest problem I have with the book. It’s like a cross between Harry Potter, a manga and Katherine Kurtz’ Deryni novels, but not in a good way.)

The ghetto environment and accepted segregation of minorities is not the main plot of the story however. Instead, we have a light romance that develops between our heroine and her Kymeran sorcerer landlord. Hexe turns out to be the son of “The Witch-Queen of Golgotham,” and is technically a prince.

Right Hand Magic,