Howl's Moving Castle

Holy crap I love this book! As much as I love Hayao Miyazaki's films, this book is so much better. It just cracks me up. Sophie gets turned into a 90 year old woman by the Witch of the Waste (bad guy) so instead of freaking out she packs a bag and wanders out into the wild and runs into Howl's moving castle. She bullies her way in, declares herself the cleaning lady and chaos ensues. It's a very entertaining book and a relatively quick read.

Garden Spells

I completely forgot that I had read this. I guess that doesn't say much for the book. It's by Sarah Addison Allen. It's about a weird family that has magic in modern times. Not an immense amount, but some. These two estranged sisters haven't seen each other for over 10 years and then one day the younger sister shows up with a daughter of her own, running away from her extremely abusive husband. The best part of the whole thing is the apple tree in the back yard. It has a mind of it's own and likes to throw apples at people. It's not a bad book, but it isn't that earth shattering. It's a very simple read, with some rather gruesome bits (the abuse had a major ick factor).