I so wanted to like this book. I so wanted this book to be magical. I so wanted this book to transform me. Alas.

GIrls Made of Snow and Glass is a retelling of the Snow White fairy tale. It is cleverly done, with all the characters in place, but with many dimensions to and insights of the characters.

And that's where the story lost me. The story has many words dedicated to the internal beliefs, the internal turmoil, the internal confusion of the two main characters and their limiting beliefs that I read probably three times my already fast clip just to get through yet another sob story about how one can't be loved and the other doesn't want to be her dead mother. We see the agony of the inner turmoil through the actions of the secondary characters, the fears of a father who has lost his wife, the greed of a powerful man who has lost his health, the desire for home and family of a young woman who lost both too young, the yearning to understand of a construct thrust into life and allowed the freedom to grow. Not the two main characters though, we're forced to endure every little "I can't be loved," "My father is cruel, but I can't break free of him," "My father is loving, but I need to breathe," "He's perfect, perfect eyes, perfect teeth, perfect hair." No wait, that last one was the crap Twilight series.

Much of the growth of the characters happens suddenly, just at the right time needed to yield a happy ending. I read too many happy endings. I'm glad for this one, yay happy ending when I need something uplifting, though I'm more likely to move to a technical book next. This one was too much angst. It's a fan rating.

This book wasn't originally on my loose, more-than-a-little-disorganized-not-really-a-true-list, to-read list. I have a number of books that I'm actively looking forward to reading, and while I lurve me a Heinlein, I'm more likely to read a new book these days than one I've already read.

That said, after Rob read Artemis, he started in on The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and suggested I read the Heinlein lunar revolution book before reading Artemis, there being some similarities (I haven't read his review of Artemis yet). Easy enough to do. So I did.

And remembered why I love Heinlein so much. Yes, he has opinions I find offensive. Yes, he has ideas about humans that fundamentally could absolutely never work. But, yes, he has a way with words, a way that draws you in and makes you wish that people were more than our natures, that we could be his idealized version of ourselves.

I love the idea of people being rational. We are not.

I love the idea of a small government that respects the rights of its people. Its people are fragile, irrational beings, capable of incredible cruelty to each other. One cannot respect all the rights of a person when said person cannot respect the rights of another; cannot be rational when irrational acts creates a "might makes right" belief; cannot be fair when a victim cannot speak up or out for fear of retaliation, banishment, exile, or death.

His ideas are lovely on paper, and impossible in life.

When I started reading this book, I became very excited at its potential to teach me about the passions for hockey that The Art of Fielding taught me about baseball. The beginning of the book was about the passion for the sport, how it can overwhelm you, how great players are obsessive and can never really leave. The book whispers about strength and weakness of the athletes, about coaches and how their decisions can make or break a player, about how a team is more than the sum of its players.

While the book is heavy-handedly, overwhelmingly full of quotable parts, beautiful commentaries about human nature and becoming a better person, I was all-in, enthusiastically looking forward to recommending this book to everyone.

And then the act of violence that is the narrative conflict of the book happens.

Suddenly, the book becomes difficult to read. I didn't read it more slowly, I did read it less enthusiastically. And that's fine. The book isn't REALLY about hockey, it is about human nature. It is about who we believe, about being a better person, about becoming more than we were by our actions.

It's a good book, worth reading.

“Never trust people who don’t have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason.”
Page 3

He was the one who saw the makings of a brilliant coach when everyone else saw a failed player.
Page 33

There are two things that are particularly good at reminding us how old we are: children and sports.
Page 37