The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Read this before you die.
Seriously.
It's that good.

The Help is set in Jacksonville Mississippi, in the early 1960s. it reveals the tenuous and murkey relationship that often existed between white women and the black women who were hired as their help.

Told from the perspective of three women, Stockett effectively draws the reader into the loves, worries, fears and hopes of each. Each woman is unique in her voice, personality and outlook on the life that they lead. Skeeter, fresh home from college with a shiny degree in journalism, is ready to write her way to fame.
Abileen tells us right off that she's raised seventeen white children--however, ever since her own son, Treelore, was killed in an accident several years ago, a seed of bitterness has begun to grow in her. Minny has a tongue that has gotten her fired from more jobs than she can count. The two women are close friends and when Skeeter asks to interview them about their work lives, they each react in fear, disbelief, and finally--in a need to tell their stories. Through the process of writing the book, Skeeter and Abileen grow closer together; Skeeter begins to see the blaring inconsistencies between her own life and the life of the colored women living alongside her--this new awareness is not lost on Skeeter's friends.

In Miss Hilly, Stockett creates a woman you love to hate. President of the Jr. League, and Skeeter's best friend since childhood, her active racism manifests itself in a seemingly silly initiative, the "Home Sanitation Initiative" but is revealed more and more to Skeeter as the stories of Abileen and Minny unravel and as Skeeter finds herself more and more disturbed by the unchallenged and blatant racism rampant in her hometown.

Tied firmly together through her leading characters and the  many and strange kinds of relationships women hold between each other, The Help looks at how those relationships are affected by love, by hate, and can either be shaped by or re-shape the society that surrounds them.

The Book of Lost Things--John Connolly

This is a book I love. It's eerie, magical, familiar, wonderful, woodsy, lyrically beautiful, full of language that sounds familiar but is completely new--you know, a book to gush over. While it's been two years since I read this wonderful fairy tale, and I'd have to read it again to do it justice, I want you to know about it. Set in England durring World War I, the story centers around a young boy, David. He knows that stories are special--alive even. His mother, who taught him to love stories, dies early in his story and, in many ways, David blames himself. His father marries quickly, and while David's new step mother is good to him, in David's child mind, it sets him up for his own fairy tale.

When a fighter plane crashes into his backyard, David finds himself catapulted into a very real and very dangerous fairy-tale world where the souls of lost children manifest themselves as flowers that bear the faces of children, the woodsman of Red Riding Hood is the fierce protector of the forest, and the wolf is the leader of the wolves-who-would-be-men.

As David struggles to survive in his new surroundings, he discovers that he must go forward on a quest of his own before he can leave this strange land. He quickly discovers that this world of fairy tales is no friend to children. Time and again, he must flee from those who would trick him, hunt him, eat him--while the huntress terrified me to no end, no one is more set on David than the Crooked Man--the Trickster who so cleverly found his way into David's own world. In the Crooked Man, Connolly creates a terrifying incarnation of Rumpelstiltskin, as he tries time and again to trick, tempt, and terrify David into revealing the name of his baby brother.

In this twisted tale, Connolly creates a savage world based on folk tales and fairy tales that have become tame over years of telling. He calls to mind the darker side of these tales--the terror a child might have felt to actually be in the situation of Hansel and Gretel or Snow White. Connolly also adds an explanation/glossary for many of the myths, folk and fairy tales he uses in his story--his thoughts here and the history he adds to each story here is fascinating and adds much to his own tale. While I love this story though, I cannot recommend it without cautioning that it is definitely for mature readers. Adult content comes in the form of a lot of violence and elements of sexuality.

While the world Connolly's created is one I'd never ever want to get to--even in my dreams--I love the window he opened for the curious to peek into.