Excellent Reads: The Uglies Series

 

So I’m still on a kick of enjoying reading Young Adult novels with dystopian themes. I still haven’t read anything that kicked my butt the way Divergent did, or that I enjoyed nearly as much as the Matched Series. But I have read some good and some bad….and then there is The Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld. Now this is a series to enjoy!

From Amazon: 

“Tally Youngblood is almost 16 and breathlessly eager: On her birthday, like everyone else, she'll undergo extensive surgery to become a Pretty. She's only known life as an Ugly (everyone's considered hideous before surgery), whereas after she "turns," she'll have the huge eyes, perfect skin, and new bone structure that biology and evolution have determined to be objectively beautiful. New Pretties party all day long. But when friend Shay escapes to join a possibly mythical band of outsiders avoiding surgery, Tally follows--not from choice but because the secret police force her….(Kirkus Reviews)”

The series continues into the second book, Pretties, and the third book, Specials. Westerfeld even followed up with a post-trilogy sequel (apparently after much clamoring by fans) called Extras. I very much enjoyed the second and third books but could have done without the fourth.

The premise and world-building of this story are thrillingly unique, and very timely given our culture’s obsession with beauty. Westerfeld has some brilliant things to say about the worship of “prettiness”.

Like most of the YA fare out there currently, this series does feature a love triangle, although a rather limp one at that. Interestingly, the romance and the triangle are not the focus of the story or its action at all. In fact, I would argue that throughout the series the author spent more time and exposition developing Tally’s best-frenemy relationship with Shay than he did her relationships with the two love interests. I think this made the series all the more interesting, particularly since here we have a guy, writing about girl best friendships. He captures the love-hate and competition dynamic well. Who among us hasn’t had a Shay to our Tally?

I also very much enjoyed Westerfeld’s take on pre-Pretty society, the “Rusties”, which is….us. His end-of-the-world scenario is entirely realistic, and his descriptions of our “Rusty Ruins” are spooky, because they feel so real.

All in all, this was a great series—the first three books anyway, skip the fourth—and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys this genre.

Donating Hair: Locks of Love versus Beautiful Lengths

So not on purpose, but more through passive neglect, my hair got monstrously long. I didn’t originally start out growing it long to donate but one day recently I realized that it WAS actually long enough to give to someone in need, and I was sick of it anyway. So, I was ready to lop off that ponytail and send it off to Locks of Love, which of course we’ve all heard about.

Then I started doing a little bit of research and found out some surprising things about Locks of Love. First of all, they don’t actually use most of the hair they receive to make wigs for children in need. Whatever can’t go into a wig they sell (for other people to make vanity extensions). I understand their need to have a source of income, as a nonprofit organization, but it oogs me out a little that my hair might be sold for extensions on a Paris Hilton-wannabe.

Secondly, Locks of Love charges their recipients (mostly children who have alopecia--genetic baldness--rather than life-threatening illnesses) for their wigs. It’s a sliding scale of course, but none of the wigs are free. Which was also a little unsettling to me.

Further research shows that Locks of Love has only sold “given” about 3,000 wigs to children since their creation.

On the other hand, Pantene shampoo sponsors a program in conjunction with the American Cancer Society called Beautiful Lengths. All of their wigs are given for free to women who have suffered hair loss after cancer treatment. They have given out over 24,000 wigs to date.

Beautiful Lengths also never sells hair that is unusable—instead, they donate it to an environmental program that uses the hair to make giant “hair mats” that absorb oil spills in the ocean. Apparently human hair is the most efficient way to clean up oil spills (who knew!). I really like the idea that if my ponytail should be unusable in a wig for some reason, it would go to an environmental cause rather than someone’s vanity hair extensions.

And lastly, Beautiful Lengths only requires an 8-inch minimum ponytail, while Locks of Love’s minimum is 10 inches. My ponytail ended up measuring 11 inches total so this didn’t matter, but it might to someone who is growing for donation purposes!

As you can probably guess, my choice was Beautiful Lengths. And here’s the end result!

Happy Birthday to Kirk!

Once again, it’s been awhile since I’ve updated the blog…I guess that’s what having a one-year old will do to you! He keeps me very busy. I realized recently I hadn’t even posted pictures of his first birthday party! Here ya go!

Kirk's cake:

 Snickers cake for everyone else (yummmm):

 Decorations

 Pinata filled with goodies for all the guests:

 

Time for candle blow-out!

 He did NOT like the feeling of cake on his hands....

Until his sister showed him how YUMMY cake is!

 

 

Happy Birthday sweet Kirk! We love you!