The Looking Glass Wars

The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


After reading "The Looking Glass Wars - Book 1" - I was really disappointed that Tim Burton didn't use this story for the new "Alice and Wonderland" movie. I was really hoping Tim Burton would have been a little bit more creative with the "Alice and Wonderland" story and that is EXACTLY what "The Looking Glass Wars" does. This book/series is a mix between Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, all of the musicals (Oliver and Annie), etc. It starts out with Alice being mad that her friend wrote her version of the story completely different... Alice didn't like the new version of the story... but I did.



This book is extremely creative and fun to read. It teaches you to never stop using your imagination and to never stop believing in the unbelievable. I highly recommend this book.



Favorite quotes:

"He was the least sullen, the least prone to depression... the one who, with his lively, confident attitude kept everyone's spirits up when there weren't enough crusts to go around, when it was cold and wet and they'd been chased out of too many sheltered doorways to count. In other words, Quigly Gaffer gave them hope when life seemed particularly hopeless. And he had suffered as much as anybody."



"The more time Alyss spent in this wet dreary city, the less she believed in her imagination. ---{it's not as strong as Mother thought, Probably never was...}---"



"He offered to take her in the carriage, but Alice said that she'd prefer to walk. 'You see so much more of the town when you walk - a little curiosity shop or a snatch of garden where you wouldn't think it possible to have a garden, choked as it is by city things. In a carriage, you hurry past these treasures without noticing them.' She didn't take the slightest quirk of mankind for granted, but viewed it as a small miracle and cause for celebration."



"Black Imagination feeds on anger, Alyss. Give in to your anger and you merely become a pawn of Black Imagination, which may triumph for a time but never for eternity."



Can't wait to read the second book in the series.





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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: And Other Tales of Terror by Robert Louis Stevenson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Short and sweet... as a Gemini I can obviously relate to man and man's duplicity. Although everyone assumes that only Gemini's have duplicity - I think Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde helps us understand that all men have duplicity within them. The moral of the story is... try as much as possible to embrace the good parts of yourself (even though we all know there is a dark side too). If you embrace the dark parts of yourself too much - you make get lost in the darkness.



"Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of me. Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them an almost morbid sense of shame. It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations that any particular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was, and, with even a deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compounds man's dual nature."



"That man is not truly one, but truly two... It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man. I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both...."



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Eat. Pray. Love.

Best book of all time, best movie of all time. I loved the movie, (and as you are all aware) that's rare when you read the book first. For all of you who see this movie and love it, I highly recommend you read the book because the book delves through a much deeper journey.

The movie and book are about finding yourself - being okay with change and finding balance (in love, life, spirituality, etc.). Liz meets many friends in her path to enlightment - all of which become part of her life "family". I've been through a lot of the same journeys and have been touched by "family" much the same way... so it was easy to relate to Liz.

I think we are all on a beautiful, yet tough, path and it's nice when you meet people who remind you that "Ruin is a gift... that ruin is a road to transformation... that if you can't master your own thoughts, your in trouble... that you DO have the capicity in you to love everyone/the whole world... that you will meet many friends/many connections/enjoy many learnings outside of a scope that you thought you would... that waiting for people to forgive you is a damn waste of time, that you must FORGIVE YOURSELF... that we must take care of our families wherever we find them (and we find them everywhere)... that sometimes to lose balance in love is to live a balanced live... that we should ACCEPT EVERYONE we meet as a teacher."

And last but not least... my favorite quote from the book (and favorite quote of all time) -
"On happiness: ...people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descent upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, you strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight in its good attainments." - Eat. Pray. Love.

The Road

The Road

Attention: Beware of the Ephraim-Manti La Sal Forest Mountains…

I’m mainly kidding, but seriously – have I got the story for you…

So last weekend I decided to go on a camping trip with my two best friends - Scotty and Jordan Beckstead. We decided to go camping with a group of our friends for my dear friend Lindsey’s birthday. The directions we received were to head to Manti and turn at 500 South when we hit the “Manti La Sal Forest” sign. So, we headed to Manti with the GPS’ help and when we were in Ephraim, on 500 South we saw the sign that said “Manti La Sal Forest” – so we thought – “hey we better turn here.” Not only did we think that, the GPS was telling us to turn.

So, like the electronically addicted people that we are – we listened to the GPS. We started up the canyon and still had cell phone service. After 20 minutes, we decided to call the people we were meeting up with and make sure that we were supposed to be on a dirt road. They said, “yes” so we figured we were on the right path. Good thing, because cell phone service went out about 10 minutes later on all of our phones. When we were on the phone with our friends they told us to turn right at the reservoir and they were in campsite 1 so we figured we would be there in about 10 minutes.

About 30 minutes later…no cell phone service… we are literally on THE TOP of the mountain. We haven’t seen human life/camp sites in about 40 minutes. We finally come upon a sign at the top of the mountain that was very small… it said “to Manti and ‘Snow Lake.’” We were elated… celebrating that we hadn’t headed an hour in the wrong direction. So, even though we were on the top of a mountain with no one in site – we thought – “hey! Our friends are outdoorsy… they MUST be up here.” Man were we wrong…

While in celebration, we continue on the dirt road and after about 20 minutes we see a very, very small lake called “Snow Lake” with a glacier (nooo freaking joke) – a glacier next to it. This is when our instincts came in and we really started to think we were in trouble (the top of a mountain…glaciers…snow on July 31??)… BUT, instead of listening to our instincts, we decided to continue on the dirt road *why waste an hour and a half driving to the top of a mountain? There had to be SOME way out – riiight?* ; ) So… we continue on the dirt road and pass about three more lakes and five more glaciers.

At this point, I started to get nervous… and what better thing to do then joke around when you are nervous right? So I start to tease Jordan about horror movies (we both love them)… I started saying “Jordan… I think I just saw the Texas Chainsaw Massacre guy over there and I think he had skin on his face.” And… “wow… this is turning out to be a Hills Have Eyes” night. It was really scaring him : )

We actually found out that the thing that I thought looked like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre guy was a tree… haha… so … after that we keep going for another 45 minutes on this dirt road. The road kept getting skinnier and skinnier. We had turned the GPS off an hour ago because we figured that the roads wouldn’t be updated, but we started to get scared so we turned it back on. Luckily it did have a path highlighted so we decided to follow the highlighted path. (We were pretty desperate at this point). The GPS took us to the sign we were hoping for – it said… “Manti Canyon – 17 miles this way…” – we celebrated again!!! We started heading back down the road and followed the GPS track – we had to trust it because it basically just saved our lives right??... so we follow the path, but we start getting to skinnier and skinnier roads… we were pretty sure we were on ATV trails, but the GPS hadn’t failed us up to this point, so we kept following it.

Pretty soon – the road started getting REALLY bumpy and skinny and the GPS was taking us off cliffs *literally* so we had to keep following this shady skinny path. We ended up going down a pretty big hill and at the bottom of the hill there as a huge lake-like puddle. We had hit a dead end… AGAIN… Again, our faith was torn down. So after Scott said “should we take it!!” and I said… “noooooo” (sometimes you have to bring men back to reality right??) we turned around and started going back up the hill.

The hill wasn’t as easy as we thought it was. Scott’s right tire got stuck in the mud/ditch on the way up and we thought the axle was going to break… we kept backing up and the ditch kept getting deeper. (Keep in mind that it had been two and a half hours before we have seen people at this point and it was pitch black outside [10:30 p.m.] – we were freaking out…) So finally Jordan pushed him out and Scott decided to try the hill one more time. We were scared because we didn’t want to have to get towed out of the mountains (plus – who would we contact? We didn’t have service). So he tried it again and we got up the hill.

Jordan just so happened to be flashing his flash light out of the car and we saw a glowing stick in the distance. We followed the glow-stick and ran into some hill-billy’s who finally lead us to the path out of the crazy mountains. We ended up at our friend’s campsite five minutes after being on the right road and had a great time on the rest of the camping trip,

But really….
Thank the lord we got out of there. It was scary.
Beware the Ephraim/Manti La Sal Mountains.


The funny thing is – I gave Jordan “The Road” movie for his birthday that day before we started driving up. Little did we know we would be ON “The Road” for the next five hours lost as can be….

This story is dedicated to my dearest Scotty and Jordan… We are lucky to be alive boys, but I am happy to have shared that adventure with you : ) <3