'A part of that discomfort was her relentless sense of herself as wrong, as alien -- stiff and clumsy, a grotesque unnatural shape and freakishly unbalanced posture (how ridiculous to spend all your life rearing!). And bald. And wingless....She felt her arms -- her forelegs -- flapping foolishly at her sides; how bizarre human shoulders were, pulling the forelegs apart and forcing them to dangle.' (McKinley, Pegasus 266)
In this book, there is an Alliance between humans and pegasi, an Alliance that is strengthed by the binding of each king's children to the children of the other. Sylvi and Ebon have a better binding than most -- they can actually talk to each other. For her sixteenth birthday, Ebon decides to take Sylvi to his homeland of Rhiandomeer, where she is the only human in a land of pegasi. In all the time Sylvi spends in the pegasus lands, she is constantly reminded of how ungraceful humans are. She's different, and you get that same feeling whenever you go somewhere where you are obviously a foreigner -- even just to Quebec. When everyone around you is speaking French (which always seems to sound so much smoother than English) and you're speaking English, you feel like you stick out like a sore thumb. That's one thing reading this book reminds me of.
(Picture from http://lamiastellina.altervista.org/pegasus/pegasus.html)
'"I'm dyslexic," he said. "Not just a mild case - severly dyslexic. I have to have computers and special programs just to do my schoolwork. And I have this really clever - and beautiful - girlfriend who's going to go to university and be a top lawer. And . . . I'm terrified of losing her," he finished simply.' (Mary Hoffman City of Secrets page 67)
Matt is dyslexic. He's seventeen, and hates that he has such a hard time with words. He's dating a girl called Ayesha, and he's worried she might dump him. She's a genius - and she used to date someone really smart, so Matt thinks she might not want to be stuck going out with a guy who just plays rugby. He underestimates himeself.
I think that as the plot goes on, Matt's going to realize that he really is special in a way - he's not just a jock. Maybe there's a reason Ayesha likes him. As well, I think he might decide to try harder to work around his dyslexia, instead of just giving up on reading.
I picked this song because it's kind of about being suddenly able to let go of your problems and fly away from everything, and that's exactly what Matt is able to do once he comes to terms with his dyslexia and realizes it's not as big a deal as he thought. I picked this video specifically because I really like the style of it.
In City of Bones (by Cassandra Clare) (picture from http://www.amazon.ca/City-Bones-Cassandra-Clare/dp/1416914285) fifteen-year-old Clary Fray goes home one night to discover that her apartment has been ransacked and her mother has disappeared. To top it all off, she's attacked by a demon and then rescued by Jace Wayland, a boy she met hours ago. Before she knows it, Clary is whirled in world of Shadowhunters, demons, vampires, werewolves, and secrets where she is fighting not only for her own life, but for the lives of everyone she loves.
This book is impossible to put down. You're on the edge of your seat the whole way. The only problem is that Clary seems to be digging herself into a deeper and deeper hole by keeping secrets and generally annoying her closest frinds, but I guess that makes you all the more eager to find out how it ends. It's really well written - the author reveals secrets at just the right time to keep you reading. And just the right amount of romance makes the book both exciting and frustrating at the same time. You're left desperately waiting for more by the end.
