janicu's book blog

Giveaway: Shadow of Night (paperback edition)

Wed, 15 May 2013 01:59:23 GMT

To celebrate the publication of Deborah Harkness' Shadow of Night in paperback on May 28th, the publisher Viking/Penguin has offered a copy of the book, along with some alchemical symbol buttons to give away to a reader of this blog.

A Discovery of Witches introduced reluctant witch Diana Bishop, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont, and the battle for a lost, enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782. Harkness’s much-anticipated sequel, Shadow of Night, picks up from A Discovery of Witches’ cliffhanger ending. Diana and Matthew time-travel to Elizabethan London and are plunged into a world of spies, magic, and a coterie of Matthew’s old friends, the School of Night. As the search for Ashmole 782 deepens and Diana searches for a witch to tutor her in magic, the net of Matthew’s past tightens around them, and they embark on a very different—and vastly more dangerous—journey.

To Enter
Please go to this page at the specficromantic blog to enter!

Rules:

Sorry, this contest is just for U.S. addresses this time

One entry per person please

Contest ends Wednesday, May 22nd (midnight EST)

Guest post for FantasyCafe's Women in SF&F Month / Interview for Emma Larkins' Writing Life

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 02:06:38 GMT

Today I'm excited to be at FantasyCafe's Women in SF&F Month for the second year of this awesome event. Last year I talked about some of my favorite female SF&F authors. This year I wax nostalgic about some of my first reads in this genre that were by women writers. Head on over to find out what they were, and please tell me what your firsts were too. I'm curious!

I was also recently interviewed by Emma Larkins, a writer who interviews different people on her blog about their perspectives on the writing and publishing community. She was interested in asking a book blogger's perspective, so I'm over there answering questions about what I like to read, how I blog, issues I run into while reading, and things that don't work when approaching me for a review.

Bookish Gifts III

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 17:19:27 GMT

My mind is so pooped at the end of the day by my new job that I'm not quite there yet with the mental fortitude and discipline I need to write reviews (I really am working on that though). Strangely, I seem to have no problems surfing the web and playing with MS Paint. I've been having a grand ol' time putting together another Bookish Gifts post, where I collect cute reader themed things for your favorite book nerd (or for yourself). Here are the fruits of my labors. (As always, click for bigger versions of these pictures, and check the "bookish gift" tag for my previous Bookish Gifts posts).

1. Bookshelf Bandit Tote in Jane, Caterpillar, Anthony (see also Alice, Scott, Louisa;$17.99) 2. Penguin Drop Caps ($22 ea) 3. Stacked Paper Wallpaper ($198/roll) 4. Demeter fragrance in Paperback (from $6) 5. Vintage Book Vase ($39-$69) 6. The Definition of Darling Wallet ($52.99) 7. Vintage Book iPhone Charger ($68)

8. Libraries - Where Shhh Happens mug (£9.95) 9. Lumio Lamp (available for pre-order for Oct 2013 - $125) 10. Gold Bird Metal Bookmark (£4.00) 11. Customizable Wool Felt eReader Case ($44) 12. Reading Fox Bookends (€39.00 / about $51.70) 13. Bracket Bookends in velvety black (€34.00 / about $44.70) 14. Book Bookend (€19.00 / about $25.19) - many other styles of bookends available 15. Buttons: Second Breakfast and Weasly is our King ($1.70) 16. Chipboard Classic novel bookmarks ($1 each)

17. Bookrest Reading Lamp ($85) 18. Engraved 'Words are for Nerds' pencils (£3.50/ about $5.51, set of 3) 19. Lowercase Scarf ($58. Also available in Uppercase, Numbers, & Helvetica) 20. 2b Or Not 2b Pouch ($20) 21. Egar Allen Poe Art Doll ($120) 22. Bookworm Plush ($6.99) 23. Ring hand carved from a book ($17) 24. Bookworm Statement Socks ($10.99) 25. Novel Tea ($12.50/box or $2.50/pouch) 26. Furst Edition Sweatshirt ($50) 27. Hanging Book Rack ($210 fullsize, $110 MINI. All available in different finishes)

Dark and Stormy Knights anthology

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 17:34:52 GMT

Anthologies are basically perfect reading when you KNOW you're going to be interrupted by relatives. With that thought in mind, I picked this one up while on vacation in Sedona and read it in between all the madness of the Christmas season. (Yes, I know it's been a few months since Christmas.. still working on that review backlog).

Dark and Stormy Knights

edited by P.N. Elrod

Dark and Stormy Nights is an anthology of 9 urban fantasy stories with the theme of "knights" who do some questionable things for the right reasons. So basically urban fantasy heroes doing what they usually do, which is work in the grey area. I liked that the theme is so wide open, and that the anthology had a bunch of authors I have read and liked. Here's a breakdown of what we get, followed by my brief (non-spoiler) impressions of each:

A Questionable Client by Ilona Andrews (also found in a 2-novella ebook here)

Even Hand by Jim Butcher

The Beacon by Shannon K. Butcher

Even a Rabbit Will Bite by Rachel Caine

Dark Lady by P.N. Elrod

Beknighted by Deidre Knight

Shifting Star by Vicki Pettersson

Rookwood & Mrs. King by Lilith Saintcrow

God's Creatures by Carrie Vaughn

A Questionable Client by Ilona Andrews - Kate Daniels, a member of the Atlanta Mercenary Guild is offered a bodyguard job when two of her peers back out. This is a prequel the Kate Daniels series, which means it doesn't require you to know anything, but fans of that series will enjoy learning the back story on how Kate met Saiman, a minor but unique character. I always understood that Saiman creeped Kate out from the beginning, and why that is is explained here. Lives up to what I expect from Ilona Andrews, currently my favorite writing duo. Link to an excerpt

Even Hand by Jim Butcher - A powerful man agrees to protect a woman and child against a supernatural pursuer. This is set in the Harry Dresden universe, except the narrator is John Marcone. I haven't read any of the Harry Dresden books, but I gather this narrator is not Dresden's ally. He's not a good guy, but he does have his own set of rules, and it was refreshing to hear a story from a character on the other side and who is sharp in a scary way. This was another strong story in the anthology and really hit the sweet spot in character development - I just loved the ambiguity in this one.

The Beacon by Shannon K. Butcher - This is a story about a weary hunter named Ryder Ward who kills Beacons - people who (through no fault of their own) attract monsters called Terraphages into our world from another dimension. The latest Beacon is a young girl with a single mother and Ryder feels wretched about his choices. This sounds like an original story though the Terraphages sound like the Synestryn of Butcher's Sentinel Wars series. Although Shannon K. Butcher is known for her paranormal romance, this didn't go there (although it did feel like there was the set up for it). There was something about these characters that I didn't warm to - I think they just felt very standard issue: single mother in a small town, adorable child, tortured hunter, but I felt like there was a spark for something more there if this was a longer story.

Even a Rabbit Will Bite by Rachel Caine - This is another story that didn't feel set in a bigger universe, but I really enjoyed the world building which was nice and comprehensive in such a small space. It's about Lisel, a centuries-old woman warrior who has managed to survive and become the last living Dragonslayer, and she's just been informed that her successor has been chosen (by the pope, as these things are). A young girl knocks on her door the next day. I loved this one for the characterization and dialogue. The grumpy old-school Dragonslayer ("Get your ass inside") viewing the new guard with exasperation ("glowing with youth and vitality and health and a smart-ass attitude") but having to train her anyway and maybe gets proved wrong was a fun concept. One of my favorites.

Dark Lady by P.N. Elrod - The Internet tells me that Dark Lady is part of the Vampire Files universe because its narrator, Jack Fleming is the star of that series. This didn't bother me, all I needed to know was that Jack was a vampire, owns a nightclub, and on occasion helps out people, and this was explained in the first three sentences. This was a very noir-style story with a damsel in distress, a mob boss, missing money, and thugs galore, set in 1930's Chicago. What I liked about this one was that there were surprises and a puzzle which is unexpected for the story length. Link to an excerpt

Beknighted by Deidre Knight - An artist named Anna gains a patron in order to pay for "living gold" which she needs to unlock a man from another world through her artwork, but there's something that makes Anna question her patron's motives for backing the project. This was another story that had more of a paranormal romance tint to the writing than an urban fantasy one. I found the concept of the living gold, Artist Guild and patrons in the context of artists actually "unlocking" things within their paintings interesting in theory, but the execution was confusing. It could be a reading comprehension fail on my part, but I just had trouble connecting some of the dots.

Shifting Star by Vicki Pettersson - Skamar is a woman made flesh by the focus of her creator, and her job is to protect a certain teen girl. This means investigating the abductions of girls around her age, working with a human, and dealing with human emotions. This is just as gritty and violent and a little bit heart rending as the rest of the Signs of the Zodiac series, and it focuses on side characters, but I think it would be a little difficult to follow the concept of the Zodiac, tulpas, and who Zoe Archer is unless you've read other books in this world. One of the darker stories in this collection.

Rookwood & Mrs. King by Lilith Saintcrow - A suburban wife comes to Rookwood, asking him to kill her husband, who is already dead. This is another short story of the pulpy vampire detective variety, except a more modern-day version and a damsel in distress who is a lot faster on the uptake than she might be given credit for. I liked the plot of this one, but I wish the story would have been from Mrs. King's point of view instead of focusing on Rookwood's interpretation of events.

God's Creatures by Carrie Vaughn - Cormac is called to deal with a killer that has gutted some cattle. It is clearly a werewolf losing the battle against bloodlust, and it won't be long before it moves to human prey. This is another story set in a bigger universe (Kitty Norville), but Cormac is a secondary character and on a side trip so you don't need to have knowledge of the series to understand what is going on here. The concept of hunting a werewolf was straightforward, but God's Creatures adds a human element and ambiguity to the whole enterprise that I liked. Link to an excerpt

Overall: As urban fantasy anthologies go, this is probably one of the strongest ones I've read. The reason for that is there seemed to be a concerted effort (for the most part) not to lose the reader with world building details they wouldn't know. I think we've all read stories set in a world related to an author's series and been lost before. It seemed like most of these were written from the point of view of a side character, or set the story before their series begins, or are original stories not related to some bigger world. This made things more accessible, which was refreshing to see. Also keeping things cohesive: no romance and stories that all kept with a theme of doing deeds for the "greater good" that don't always leave our heroes looking entirely pure. A very solid lineup.

Buy: Amazon | Powell's | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
Temporary worlds book reviews - "although there are a few stories that didn't work for me, I feel as if the good content outweighs the bad in this anthology"
Calicoreaction - Worth the Cash: "On the whole, it's a very solid anthology with stories that stand on their own two feet even if they're set in established universes"

Famous I tell you

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 04:19:25 GMT

I think it was sometime in January that Kristen from Fantasy Cafe pointed out to me on twitter that I was quoted in the newest edition of White Horse by Alex Adams. Check it out! It's kind of cool that a lot of book bloggers were blurbed for this one; I recognized a lot of names. This was a first for me though. I'm all kinds of thrilled.

Seeing Me Naked by Liza Palmer

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 18:19:33 GMT

This was a surprise gift from generous fellow blogger Chachic over the winter holidays (thanks Chachic!). Seeing Me Naked is a book I'd been eying for a while and it arrived just in time to fulfill a craving for contemporary story with a bit of romance.

Seeing Me Naked

Liza Palmer

The Premise: Elisabeth Page is the pastry chef for a fancy restaurant in L.A. Her five-year plan was to one day open her own patisserie, but after the five years come and go, and then another five, Elisabeth wonders if that will ever happen. With a father who is world renowned novelist Ben Page, and a brother who is a publishing wunderkind, Elisabeth feels the pressure of unfulfilled expectations of her intellectual family. Her romantic life is no better than her professional one. Her relationship with Will, childhood-friend turned world-traveling journalist consists of a few nights of passion when Will breezes into town, then months of separation while Will is following a story. Then Daniel Sullivan wins the basket of pastries and private baking classes that Elisabeth donated to one of her mother's charity events, and Elisabeth's career begins to go in an unexpected direction. Can Elisabeth let go of her own expectations and try something different?

My Thoughts: I had to think a little bit to put Seeing Me Naked into a category. Even though this story has an obvious romantic arc, Seeing Me Naked is a lot more focused on Elisabeth and her personal growth than it is on the relationship to be a strict Romance. It does focus on a single woman and her career and relationship with her family but it isn't quite lighthearted enough to be put into chick lit (although there is some humor in it). I think the closest term might be "women's fiction", but that feels like it could be too big of an umbrella term. Really, this gave off the vibe of a mix between a literary novel and chick lit.

At first Elisabeth's life was rather bland and lonely. She lives alone in an apartment close to work, follows a set routine every day, and doesn't really socialize. Her life revolves around her stressful job making desserts at a high end L.A. restaurant with a tyrant for a boss. When she goes home to see her parents in wealthy Montecito, the dynamics there are similarly overshadowed by her father, a literary giant with a matching ego. While her high society mother (heiress to the Foster Family Fortune) is supportive of her children, Ben Page is a tougher, more critical parent. Dinner is a battle of wits and intellect with the great Ben Page presiding. As for her relationship with childhood friend Will, Elisabeth hardly sees him and is tired of them leading separate lives.

As we say our goodbyes in the foyer, I look around at all that defines me. The rubric for success in my family has always been about legacy--what imprint will you make on this world. I have tired to live by these standards all my life. Measuring success and love by the teaspoon, always falling short, the goal constantly out of reach. My five-year plan has become an unending road to nowhere, both professionally and personally.

Despite all this, Elisabeth wasn't actively trying to change her life. Instead she continued on while the stress made her stomach hurt. Elisabeth struck me as a steady type of character with a quiet creativity, a love of food, and gently sarcastic voice. But I was worried about a certain amount of ingrained judgementality she had. Maybe judgementality isn't the right word -- it was just that she seemed to have a self-imposed set of restrictions on herself and was trying to adhere to what she thought were her family's unspoken expectations. For example, it felt like there was an assumption of who she should be and who she should be with. Any relationship outside these parameters is assumed to be temporary, like all of her brother Rascal's "giant lollipop head" girlfriends. When regular guy Daniel enters the picture, he seemed to me like the most honest person in her life, but I wasn't sure that SHE saw that. I think that this first impression could turn some readers off. I'm thankful that the back blurb of this book hints that the story is about Elisabeth having "the guts to let others see her naked...and let them love her, warts and all" because that made me trust that this story would go to a better place. That, and the setting of the story which kept me interested by giving me fascinating glimpses into a life that's set in L.A. and revolves around food.

Seeing Me Naked takes its sweet time, but there is satisfaction in reading Seeing Me Naked all the way to the end. It's enjoyable to sit back while the nature of the characters is revealed organically, their dialogue and actions and Elisabeth's own reactions to them deftly sculpting clear personalities. And then there's Elisabeth's own character. She doesn't actively seek change, but Elisabeth is smart enough not to fight it when a good things fall onto her lap. And the best part is she works to keep these good things. If you can handle Elisabeth in her rut, you will be rewarded by a very cathartic last few pages. Where things ultimately go left me quite content.

Overall: I enjoyed this one but I can understand why this is an under-the-radar book. It's not quite literary fiction, not quite chicklit, and not just about self-discovery, but it has elements of all three, so it falls in a difficult to categorize place which can mean you're unsure as a reader what you're going to get. Also, the story doesn't start in the best point of Elisabeth's life and rolls forward quietly, without much fanfare -- so the reward of reading isn't immediate. It's much later in the story that the big gestures happen, so you have to be OK with waiting and watching characters grow, enjoying the way the writing builds the story layer by layer, experiencing food and L.A. through Elisabeth's eyes and trusting that things will get good. They do though.

Buy: Amazon | Powell's | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
Chachic's Book Nook - "I didn’t expect to get emotional over Seeing Me Naked but I’m glad that it surprised me."
Angieville - "The characters are complex and carefully rendered. There is no black and white in the intricate web of family relationships they navigate."
The Book Harbinger - " wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Seeing Me Naked to casual and seasoned readers who like complex, multivalent chick lit."

A Fantasy Calendar and a SFF auction

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 03:58:30 GMT

I've been meaning to post a couple of things that are SFF community related. I always enjoy getting something bookish for myself and supporting worthwhile causes while I do it.

1) There is a cool kickstarter campaign going on (6 days left to back it) for a calendar featuring authors in custom fantasy costumes. The photographer has secured a lot of famous names (Brandon Mull, Christopher Paolini, Gregory Maguire, Brandon Sanderson, Tad Williams, Patrick Rothfuss, Cassandra Clare, Holly Black, Lauren Kate, Lauren Oliver, Maggie Stiefvater, Gail Carriger, Tessa Gratton, and Brenna Yovanoff) for the calendar and needs funds for travel and special props. What the kickstarter page doesn't say is that the calendar will raise money for First Book and Patrick Rothfuss' Worldbuilders. There are a lot of cool gifts for pledging, including signed postcards from the authors of your choice.

2) Con or Bust has auctions on its website for a lot of cool stuff to raise funds to send fans of color to SFF cons. So many books and signed items, but there's also one-of-a-kind handmade items up for auction too. Hurry, looks like the auctions end on Sunday.

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 23:51:42 GMT

The Raven Boys was chosen as December's YAcker read. You can check out our discussion here.

The Raven Boys

Maggie Stiefvater

The Premise: Every psychic Blue Sargent has ever gone to tells her the same thing: if she kisses her true love, he will die. Other people might dismiss such claims, but Blue lives in a house with her mother Maura and a group of women who are in the business of telling fortunes, and she knows how accurate their readings can be. Blue's fate has hung over her head for much of her life, but when her aunt Neeve joins the household, she gives Blue a timeline. This is the year that Blue is going to fall in love.

If that isn't a grave enough portent for the year, Blue also sees the spirit of a boy during St. Mark's Eve, when the soon-to-dead march through the grounds of an abandoned church. The boy whispers that his name is Gansey. Blue has no psychic powers of her own (she only magnifies what others see), so seeing Gansey has one of two meanings: either she is responsible for his death, or he is her true love.

In the meantime, Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey, III (Gansey to his friends) attends the nearby Aglionby Academy. Outwardly he has the ease and confidence of the rich and privileged and he leads a gaggle of Aglionby misfits: Adam, Ronan, and Noah. But inwardly, Gansey is more than he appears. He's a finder of lost things, and he's searching for something in particular, something ancient and magical: Glendower, a sleeping king who will grant a boon to whomever wakes him.

Read an excerpt of The Raven Boys here (pdf)

My Thoughts:

“I should tell you,” Maura always advised her new clients, “that this reading will be accurate, but not specific.”
It was easier that way.
But this was not what Blue was told. Again and again, she had her fingers spread wide, her palm examined, her cards plucked from velvet-edged decks and spread across the fuzz of a family friend’s living room carpet. Thumbs were pressed to the mystical, invisible third eye that was said to lie between everyone’s eyebrows. Runes were cast and dreams interpreted, tea leaves scrutinized and séances conducted.
All the women came to the same conclusion, blunt and inexplicably specific. What they all agreed on, in many different clairvoyant languages, was this:
If Blue was to kiss her true love, he would die.

The Raven Boys begins with a sense of anticipation. The first chapters follow Blue and Gansey separately, but because of fate, Blue's curse, and St. Mark's Eve, the reader knows these two characters are meant to cross paths. Blue sees a boy's spirit whispering the name Gansey, and sitting on a ley line on the other side of town, Gansey picks up the very same conversation on his recorder. Obviously Blue and Gansey are part of a bigger mystery, a mystery that they can only see the edges of from different angles.

Blue was born into the strangeness in Henrietta. She is working class and lives surrounded by women who tell fortunes and are well aware of the ley lines that make her town special. Gansey couldn't be more different. He was born into privilege and has never experienced life without the ease that money brings to it. Despite this, he leads a pack of misfit boys at Algionby academy and has an obsession with mystic phenomena and a king named Glendower. In spite of their differences, Blue and Gansey's lives hold some parallels. Mystery swirls around them and they share their lives with people that hold secrets. While Blue lives with her mother and older women named Calla, Persephone, and Orla (in a set-up that doesn't seem to be unlike what I imagine a coven to be like), Gansey lives in the husk of an old factory with a couple of boys that don't fit anywhere else. Her mother and her surrogate aunts warn Blue about kissing boys and avoid discussing Blue's absent father. Gansey is is leader and support for his friends but there's a line he can't cross that keeps Noah elusive, Ronan surly, and Adam defensive.

I liked the way things were set up in this story: Blue's world about to collide with Gansey's. Wondering what would happen when these two finally meet had me turning the pages eagerly. Unfortunately, somewhere after the initial set up and the actual crossing of paths, something happened. I never felt fully captured by the story in the way I wanted. It took me a long time to parse out what happened there. My reaction was frustratingly in the middle-of-the-road, and I couldn't help comparing it to my fellow YAckers who mostly loved the book. I know that reading is a personal experience, subject to mood and a myriad other factors, but while I knew what I liked, I couldn't pinpoint what kept me from wholeheartedly loving The Raven Boys.

Cut to over a month later, some angst over separating my reading experience from the end of a stressful year, a reread of The Raven Boys, more angst, and I think I have a better idea of what my problem was. Technically, this should have been a winner: the writing is engaging and of good quality; there's a mishmash of eccentric characters; and the main story centers on mysteries that reveal themselves in slow degrees. Individually each character had his or her own fascinating back story. But for me, some of these strengths also translated into weaknesses. Everyone had some personal albatross: Blue with her curse and her unknown father; Gansey and his obsession for which there is no explanation; Ronan's father's death and his subsequent broodiness; Adam with his poverty, pride, and miserable home-life. Even Noah, who is practically a non-entity at the start of the book turns out to be more than meets the eye. On top of that, the antagonist of this story has his crosses to bear. My problem was with so many complex/tragic/secret back stories, the focus felt fragmented. Blue and Gansey took the spotlight the most, but I felt like I was focusing on the other characters through them instead of focusing on them. I'm all for characters having depth, but when there's a mystery or tragedy to everyone, it felt like too much to me. You could argue it all links back to the phenomena surrounding Henrietta, but (for me) it created an imbalance. Every issue I had stemmed from this central one. The pacing in the first 150 to 200 pages feels meandering, and the narration hops between characters for some time before something vaguely plot-like appears. I think Gansey and Blue were the protagonists of this story, but I question if that assumption is correct. Then when the pace picks up and the story gathers focus, I felt like certain things like Blue's acceptance into Gansey's group didn't get the attention I wanted. It took me longer than necessary to finish The Raven Boys because I felt adrift.

On the other hand - did I like these characters? Did I want to know what was happening to them? I did. The characters that I loved most are the ones where veil is pulled back a little more in the narration. When that happened, oohh, that's when I adored this book. That's why I think I have more of a soft spot for Blue, Gansey, and Adam than the rest of this group. We're shown Blue's prickliness towards the raven boys, and Adam's self-consciousness about being poor, and Gansey's good intentions that never seem to go right when he deals with either of them. I was half-irritated with Adam's pride until I came to a realization that his parents failed him when they instilled an us-versus-them mentality in him (which really covers their sins and did Adam no favors), and I was kind of blown away by that epiphany. And then there's this sweet fledgling maybe between Adam and Blue. It made me hope, but also fear a little, because thrown into the mix is Blue's curse that points at Gansey. Everything in this story is so fragile and so breakable, and there is no certainty. I'd very much like to find out what happens next.

Overall: There were things I really liked about The Raven Boys and things I really didn't and they balanced each other out. If you are one who can sit back and enjoy a character-driven story with lovely prose and you don't need to know where it's all going, this will do quite well. I think that I needed more structure though. In the end I enjoyed the characters more than the plot. But now that the set up is done, I think I'll react better to the second book, so I'm planning to continue the series and I'm really looking forward to The Dream Thieves.

Buy: Amazon | Powell's | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
Bunbury in the Stacks
Charlotte's Library
Pirate Penguin Reads
Fantasy Literature
Debbie's World of Books
The Book Nut
Angieville

Other links:
The Raven Boys website

Books on Film: Moonrise Kingdom

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 18:01:53 GMT

Soo.. I just watched Moonrise Kingdom on Friday night. Directed by Wes Anderson, it centers around two loner preteens who decide to run off into the wilderness together. This sets off a hunt by the local community. Quirkiness abounds, and everything is filmed with deliberation and general loveliness.

Perhaps it's because the story's protagonists are twelve, and Moonrise Kingdom is set during a summer in 1965, when kids are at camp or reading books and listening to records at home, but I was stuck by how much this movie evoked a sense of nostalgia. It's a weird sort of nostalgia though. Everything is made up. Essentially, it's a nostalgia for something that never existed.

My favorite props have to be the books that twelve-year-old Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) read. Of course, it would be the fictitious books with titles like Shelly and the Secret Universe and awesome old-style covers that stoked this book nerd's sense of nostalgia.

These are my books. I like stories with magic powers in them. Either in kingdoms on Earth or on foreign planets. Usually I prefer a girl hero, but not always.

Suzy: I always wished I was an orphan. Most of my favorite characters are. I think your lives are more special.
Sam: I love you, but you don't know what you're talking about.

There are six books in this movie, and I took screen caps of them all. But did you know, not only did Wes Anderson have artists make book covers, and wrote passages that are attributed to each book, but there are also animations for each book? According to the Internet, Anderson considered putting the animations in the movie, but instead used them in a promotional short. It is quite awesome and worth a watch.

Sam: These are all library books. In my school you’re only allowed to check-out one at a time. Some of these are going to be overdue.

Sam hesitates. He suddenly realizes something. He asks bluntly:

Sam: Do you steal?

Silence. Suzy nods reluctantly. Sam looks confused.

Sam: Why? You’re not poor.

Suzy stares at the books. She absently brushes some dust off them. She rearranges them slightly. She says finally:

Suzy: I might turn some of them back in one day. I haven’t decided yet. I know it’s bad. I think I just took them to have a secret to keep. Anyway, for some reason, it makes me feel in a better mood sometimes.

An Evening of Awesome @ Carnegie Hall with John & Hank Green

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 03:41:59 GMT

Carnegie Hall - the sound in here is pretty amazing.

I've been avidly following The Lizzie Bennet Diaries for a long time now and I got my husband watching the series too. Through Lizzie Bennet he got hooked on the vlogbrothers, read Looking For Alaska, and then promptly bought us two tickets to An Evening of Awesome on the day they went on sale.

I am very pleased with what I have wrought.

We had some nice seats (row K in the main pavilion), and we both had a lovely time. I took a lot of pictures, but the low light, no flash rule, and distance with my little camera made for a lot of blurry shots. I still got a couple of nice ones though, so I'm going to post them here.

Ashley Clements and Daniel Gordh (who play Lizzie and Darcy in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries), reading from The Fault In Our Stars

Hank Green sings

The Mountain Goats sing

John and Hank Green answering questions rapid-fire from Hannah Hart and NEIL GAIMAN

Kimya Dawson sings

Grace Helbig, John Green, Neil Gaiman and Hannah Hart read from Paper Towns

Good-bye dancing

Yay! So was this evening awesome? Yes. Very geeky in a good way: different, overlapping kinds of geekery in a big fun show. :)

If you missed the show, it's all online on youtube here.

Goals and the end of the year and stuff

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 02:30:03 GMT

Happy 2013 everyone! It's that time again where everyone discusses the best of last year and their goals for the next.

THEN:

Edited this post to add this chart, with *hat tip* to Heidi @ BunburyintheStacks

I had just as many books on my favorites list this year as in previous years, but 2012 wasn't what I'd call a stellar year in reading quantity. I read 52 books, which is low for me Here is a visual aid (click to embiggen):

Upward trajectory halted! But that's OK. Over 50 is pretty good when I think back and remember what 2012 was like.

Here are my excuses:

Rampant TV watching. I know, but I can't help it. Last year Spring-Summer was all cycling and the Olympics, Fall was rediscovering Friends, and Winter involved little Holiday movie addiction I have. I'll try to get some help, but we just bought a snazzier, fancier, bigger TV recently. Wish me luck for 2013.

Job. This is a valid reason and the biggest one - long meetings held at night really did a number on my free time and my reading routines. I was also very busy in general.

A certain ennui brought on by excuses 1 and 2 and by all the drama that went on in the middle of 2012 (I think that took up some head space because it made book blogging less of a "happy place" it used to be for me. I'm beyond that now though).

I still haven't figured out how to be faster at writing reviews. If anything, it takes me longer. Reviewer time management fail. It's a work in progress.

NOW:
Well it's 2013, I have a brand new job. I think the big problem I had last year with work hours and personal time won't be such an issue in this one. So far it is looking good, but we shall see. And I had a really nice long break in December between jobs in which I did NOTHING. I have no regrets about that because it means I feel a lot more invigorated about reading and reviewing now.

The goals for this year are.. well maybe "general idea" rather than goals, but here's what I'm thinking:

Keep going for 100 books read per year
Work on SERIES reading. I have a lot of series I am very behind on but I have all the books. I think I'm going to maybe start getting on reading those things.
Finish up those reviews I'm behind on from last year

Oh, so those reviews I need to do. This is the list below. I have a few to write and I was thinking if people gave me the puppy-dog eyes about certain books, I'll probably work on those first. Anything take your fancy? Let me know!

Heart's Blood by Juliet Marillier
Gunmetal Magic by Ilona Andrews
Ashes of Honor by Seanan McGuire
Polymer by Sally Rogers-Davidson
Yours to Keep by Shannon Stacey
Epic Fail by Claire LaZebnik
The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
Adorkable by Sarra Manning
Dark and Stormy Nights anthology
Seeing Me Naked by Liza Palmer

... I am really behind.

Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm by Philip Pullman

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 20:22:48 GMT

Last year was a busy time work-wise. Over the past couple of weeks it's been a bit quiet over here as I took some time off, but I think things will be better now that things have settled down for the new year and I've had a breather. This is a long overdue review!

Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm

Philip Pullman

My copy of Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm was provided to me for review from the publisher.

The Premise: The Grimm Brothers' Kinder-und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales), which we know today as Grimm's Fairy Tales, is a collection of 210 stories first published in 1812. Now, 200 years later, Phillip Pullman retells a subset of these - 50 fairy tales which he calls "the cream" of the collection.

My Thoughts: Philip Pullman is known for His Dark Materials and other books (like the Sally Lockhart mysteries) so I thought that maybe his retelling of Grimm's Fairy Tales would mean creative reinterpretations of the stories. I was a bit surprised, but also relieved, that these retellings are straightforward and keep the original stories intact. In his introduction, Pullman writes:

"[...] my main interest has always been in how the tales worked as stories. All I set out to do in this book was tell the best and most interesting of them, clearing out of the way anything that would prevent them from running freely. I didn't want to put them in modern settings, or produce personal interpretations or compose poetic variations on the originals; I just wanted to produce a version that was as clear as water. "

So there you have it. Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm is exactly as the subtitle to this book, A New English Version, suggests: 50 stories told in a clear manner. This makes it a little harder for me to review because these stories are true to the originals, and you can't really review a classic fairy tale - they just are. So instead the focus of this review is going to be how they were presented. To tell you the truth, I found very little to complain about.

Pullman's selections are good ones. He chose a lot of old and familiar stories, like Little Red Riding Hood, Rumpelstiltskin, and Hansel and Gretel, but he also selects some that are less well-known like The Girl with No Hands and Hans-my-Hedgehog. There are also stories that I had personally never heard of at all, like The Singing Bone and The Donkey Cabbage. I also felt like there was some thought that went into where the stories were placed in the compilation, with stories that were of a similar sort of type grouped together, but not so much that you had too much of one kind of thing. For example, some of the more pious stories were near one another, at least enough for me to see a theme, but they weren't all in the same place, and The Juniper Tree was close enough to Snow White for me to notice the similarity of children with lips as red as blood and skin as white as snow, even if Pullman doesn't really mention the link.

At the end of each of the stories, Pullman devotes a couple of paragraphs for notes and observations. This is probably my favorite thing about the collection. When I was growing up, I remember going to the library and reading a lot of fairy tales, but I approached them as a reader. Pullman does this too, commenting on whether a story works and his take on holes in the stories (like characters that were mentioned once and then we never find out what happened to them). I could completely relate to this, and had the same reaction to many of the things Pullman points out (it feels very good to be on the same page as Philip Pullman). But Pullman also approaches the stories from a more scholarly standpoint. From his notes, I could gather that he read the original editions of the Grimm books, as well as later ones, commenting on the translation of the German into English, and how a mother in an earlier version became a step-mother in a later one. He also prefaces each note with the ATU number of each of the stories, the source, and a list of similar stories. It was fascinating to learn some tidbits about these stories through those notes, and the people who passed these stories along to the Grimm's. I was also a little fascinated by the glimpse of a system for cataloging these fairy tales (I'd never heard of ATU types before this).

Because of the shortness of the stories, reading is hardly a chore. Anytime I sat down with Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm I would gulp down several stories. This book is perfect for picking up whenever the mood strikes to sink into a story, knowing that you can also set it aside quickly after a story or two.

Here are some of the highlights for me in this collection:

The Mouse, the Bird and the Sausage - A trio of unlikely friends live harmoniously together until one day the seed for discord is planted in their midst. This was equally hilarious (in most part due to the sausage) and horrifying. I greatly enjoyed Pullman's notes where he informs the reader that the sausage was a bratwurst.

The Girl with No Hands - One of the stories where piety is rewarded, a miller makes a deal with the Devil where he signs away his daughter in the bargain. Because his daughter is so Good she escapes the trap and lives happily ever after. My reaction to this story was that it is ridiculous. Pullman calls it "disgusting", and his notes say, "The most repellent aspect is the cowardice of the miller, which goes quite unpunished. The tone of never-shaken piety is nauseating, and the restoration of the poor woman's hands simply preposterous." I agree. The mental image of a despondent girl eating fruit with no hands haunts me somewhat.

Strong Hans - This story starts off telling the tale of a woman and her son (Hans) being kidnapped by bandits, but then ends up being the tale of Hans, who grows up strong, sets out to have adventures and rescues a princess. It struck me as one of those odd stories that begins one way, starts to look like something else, then ends up a third thing entirely. Basically, I agreed with Pullman that this story was all over the place. Things were introduced but then never utilized, which feels typical of fairy tales, but even more so here.

The Juniper Tree - This is a lyrical story about an evil step-mother who does a macabre deed but in return is driven to the point of madness as she gets her just desserts. This story struck me as being particularly well-written, and because of this it was one of my favorites. Pullman notes that it was sent to the Grimm brothers by Philip Otto Runge. I loved The Fisherman and his Wife, which was also sent in by Runge and has a similar well-put-together story style. Again I found myself nodding along with Pullman's notes where he says, "For beauty, for horror, for perfection of form, this story has no equal."

The Three Snake Leaves - This one I liked for its weirdness. It has a princess who has a "strange obsession" - that if she dies before her husband, he must be willing to be buried alive with her. Except this princess turns out not to be as loyal as she wants her husband to be. This was a new-to-me story, and delightfully bizarre. Pullman makes an interesting observation about the number of pieces a snake is cut into in this story that I would have missed without his note.

Overall: This feels like the perfect gift book for someone who likes fairy tales. It is a well-curated subset of the Grimm's stories, and the notes by Pullman at the end of each adds just the right amount of perspective. This felt like it would work equally well as a reference book for someone who collects fairy tales, or as an introduction to folk tales for a young reader. I enjoyed this collection a lot. It's definitely going onto my keeper shelf.

Buy: Amazon | Powell's | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
Charlotte's Library - "Reading Pullman's retellings was like coming home to find the walls of my house repainted--fresh and bright and like new again, with the added bonus of some new rooms that I'd never been in before"
The Book Smugglers - 8 (truly excellent)

Other
Philip Pullman talks about Grimm Fairy Tales at Anglia Ruskin University @ Things Mean A Lot
Phillip Pullman reads The Magicians of Bremen

Guest post, Christmas stye, at Books Take You Places

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 01:02:29 GMT

In case you wondered if I was a giant dork, but you weren't ENTIRELY sure, I reveal the proof in my guest post over at Alyssa's blog, Books Take You Places, with a post entirely devoted to my November-to-December addiction: made-for-TV Christmas movies. They are my ultimate in guilty (but not really that guilty) pleasures.

My post is devoted to 10 holiday movies I've seen so far. Let it be said that I could have easily written about 10 more. Very easily. Something about this time of year makes me positively gleeful about my TV watching options and what's going to be on on Lifetime, ABC Family, and the Hallmark Channel.

Secret Santa: YAcker edition

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 05:00:27 GMT

There was a little YAckers
Secret Santa this year and I just got my package today. I was thrilled
by the thoughtful packaging - double bubblewrap and individually wrapped
presents. This was so much fun to open!

Just look at that presentation.

Here's what was inside:

Scottish Mulled Wine soap (smells AMAZING)
Adorkable by Sarra Manning (this made me very happy!)
CROSS-STITCH pattern of Richard Armitage!!! I could make a little pillow with his face on it. Why hello, best thing ever.
An adorable Hello Kitty card.

Thanks so much Sya!

Smugglivus 2012

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 18:26:46 GMT

It's almost the end of another year, but this means that it is also time for another Smugglivus celebration over at The Book Smugglers. I am guest posting again with my top five reads of 2012 and my most highly anticipated of 2013. Please head on over to check out my picks. On the list are: one urban fantasy, one romantic comedy, and three young adult books (historical, contemporary Gothic, and fantasy). :)

Pictures from the SOHO Teen Launch Party

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 20:01:27 GMT

Last night was the Soho Teen Launch Party. Soho Teen is a new imprint from Soho Press, and it looks like it has some exciting new books coming out. I was invited via my YAcker buddy Nicole from Word for Teens (and I also got to meet her for the first time). The place was packed with people. A little overwhelming, but I still had a nice time. Highlight was seeing Libba Bray rock it with her band Tiger Beat (especially when she sang YA song, accompanied by David Levithan holding up placards with the lyrics on them). I had a hard time getting non-blurry pictures because of the lighting, and I may have been laughing... there are videos of this song on youtube if you want to hear it.

Also picked up a sampler of what's coming out in 2013.

Jepp, Who Defied the Stars by Katherine Marsh

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 05:04:29 GMT

In an unprecedented vote, the YAckers unanimously chose Jepp, Who Defied the Stars for this month's pick. To see how we all eventually reacted once we read Jepp, you can check out our chat here.

Jepp, Who Defied the Stars

Katherine Marsh

The Premise: This is the story of young dwarf Jepp, who grew up in Astraveld, a crossroads between the Spanish Netherlands and the Protestant North. Loved by his mother, who runs a bustling inn, Jepp is treated like a prince and is fiercely protected. It is a good life, but when he is fifteen years old, a man comes by the inn, offering to bring Jepp to the court of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia and her husband, Archduke Albert of Austria. Eager to see the world beyond the narrow one he knows, Jepp agrees. He has always held a dream of one day meeting his father and he believes that the man offering to take him away is part of his fate. This begins Jepp's journey away from childhood and all its innocence and into the big world, where perhaps he can

My Thoughts: Before reading Jepp, Who Defied the Stars, I didn't really know what this book was about or what category of young adult it belonged to. I actually thought Jepp was YA fantasy at first because it begins at a inn at a crossroads (familiar Fantasy territory). I soon figured out that I was reading historical fiction when Jepp says he lives in the Spanish Netherlands and mentions the Infanta Isabella, its sovereign from 1598 to 1621. There's an author's note at the end of the book that explains the real life people and events that inspired Jepp, (which is fascinating and worth reading), and basically Jepp did exist, but little is known about his life. Marsh took the question of who Jepp was and extrapolated that into this story. Jepp is divided into three "Books", and each "Book" seems to correspond to a change in scenery and a new direction in Jepp's life.

Book I begins while Jepp still lives in his mother's domain, but not for long. A man named Don Diego comes to the inn and invites him to he court of the Infanta Isabella, and that's where Jepp stays for this part of the story. Jepp is still rather innocent and unsure of himself so he is mostly an observer, doing what he is bid by the others around him. We get Jepp's impressions of the specially designed rooms for the court dwarfs, the gardens where they arranged themselves in a tableau for the Infanta's pleasure, and the performances where he has to play the fool for a few laughs. As for the people at court, Jepp focus is narrow: Don Diego; the other dwarfs, Sebastian, Lia, and Maria; the court jester Pim, who arranges the entertainment; and Hendrika, the mistress who oversees them. These people are the ones he interacts with most, and everyone else is hazy and not so well-defined.

Despite Jepp's faithful descriptions, there's the sense that there's a certain naivety in what Jepp observes. He sees things that trouble him, but does not fully comprehend them until later. He dislikes his treatment at the palace, but doesn't immediately see the same misery in others. His youth is part of the story, but I found some of this innocent observation and floating along very passive. Basically, Jepp wasn't really doing anything, and this didn't make him easy for me to connect to. The only goal he seemed to have was to one day find out the identity of his father, but there seems no way of doing so away from his mother, and so I felt like there wasn't much of a direction to the story. Sometimes there are other things that saves a story for me in this situation, like a romance I could sink my teeth into, but even here, Jepp disappoints. He thinks he's in love, but he barely knows the girl. When things do finally pick up, it is instigated by a situation someone else is in, and Jepp is pulled into it by his sweet nature and wanting to help. Of course this changes his life, and propels his fate along in a way he doesn't expect.

There's some drama as the story segues into Book II, but the story stalls for a second time as Jepp repeats what he's done before: letting things happen to him, and observing rather than doing. The eccentricities of his surroundings is where the entertainment lies, not in Jepp's own actions. Of course Jepp, Who Defied the Stars gets better - Jepp does start to take his fate into his own hands, if you will, and it's nice that when I think back now, I see how Book I is reflected in Book II, but with an older and wiser Jepp, one who begins to take part in his own life - but reading was a slow process (I'm sorry to report that I kept putting the book down and sighing for at least the first half). The last third of the book (Book III) ended up being the best third for me, but it takes some patience to get there. The change in Jepp from passive to active removes a lot of the issues I had with reading, and with his relationships with other characters.

Jepp, Who Defied the Stars essentially becomes a story about fate versus free will, but this isn't a clear message for me until the author's notes at the end. I liked Marsh's own personal relationship with this theme that she described in the addendum, but I'm not sure if the idea that Jepp was fighting against some fate was really something I picked up on while reading this story. I think the history itself was a little bit more interesting. Despite being set in the past, this story does a good job of keeping the focus on Jepp's personal experiences rather than on History. However, Jepp's voice has a formality to it that is a deliberate reflection of the time (Marsh notes she was careful to choose words in use before 1600 when writing Jepp), and the language contributed to feeling like I couldn't comfortably sink into the story.

Overall: I have a sort of "middle ground" reaction to Jepp. I wasn't wowed while I was reading it, and Jepp's passivity and the formality of his narration made me feel impatient with the story. On the other hand, I can see that these were deliberate choices in the writing because of the theme of "fate versus free will" and because of the time period that Jepp is set. I think my visceral response usually determines how I feel about a story and for much of this book, I felt like I was plodding along, but when I think about it analytically, it comes off much better. So: this may be more for the "thinkers" than it is for the "feelers".

Buy: Amazon | Powell's | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
The Book Smugglers - 7 (Very Good)
The Book Harbinger - positive ("it wasn’t only the engaging history but also the character of Jepp himself which drew me in from the start.")
Word for Teens - DNF
Book Nut - "Overall, it's a bit uneven" but also, "found it to be a wonderful bit of historical fiction"

(Also may I say, this book was BEAUTIFULLY designed? I loved how the inner pages were NAVY with pretty endpages and chapter headings, and the cover had shiny bits on a matte background, silver font, and those stars. Gorgeous.)

Fairytales from the Brothers Grimm Winner

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 15:18:36 GMT

We had a healthy number of entries for this one, but random.org picked lucky entrant #5, and that was Opal. Congratulations, Opal! I've sent along your information to the publisher. Enjoy your book.

Giveaway: Fairytales from the Brothers Grimm by Philip Pullman

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 14:13:31 GMT

Fairytales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version (out since November 12th) is an enjoyable, straight retelling of 50 fairytales. There will be a review from me soon. In the meantime, the publisher has kindly offered a copy for one of the readers of this blog.

Here's how to enter:

Fill out this google form with your name and an email address (please make it one you check often)
Enter by Sunday, November 25th.
This giveaway is for U.S./Canada only

Psych Major Syndrome by Alicia Thompson

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 16:43:25 GMT

A few weeks ago I went to the Greenburgh Library Book Sale and picked up several books, including this one. Isn't the cover adorable? I think the wistful, fresh-faced look of the cover model is a perfect representation for what's inside.

Psych Major Syndrome

Alicia Thompson

The Premise: Leigh Nolan is a freshman psychology major at Stiles College - a progressive school where students aren't graded and are expected to take charge of their own education. In a small school like Stiles, this means quite a few over achievers, "freaking out about their entire academic career" a couple of months into their first year. It's a trying time, but on top of trying to decide on a topic for her senior thesis, mentoring cynical middle school students, and dealing with other competitive psych majors, Leigh is also questioning her relationship with Andrew, her high school boyfriend and fellow Stiles underclassman. Lately their relationship has lost it's luster, and Leigh is confused by how much she's noticing Nathan, Andrew's roommate who never seems happy to be around her.

My Thoughts: Well this was as cute a story as I was hoping for. I think it has the right amount of the expected love story, but it's balanced by writing that gives Leigh a faceted and likable character. Her psychology major fits nicely with delving into her psyche. Leigh is constantly self-evaluating and acknowledges her own quirks, which include (but are not limited to): refusing to buy a parking pass, waiting until the last minute with her assignments, and a fear of being stranded in the desert. To add to the theme, each chapter begins with a psychological term and its definition, which foreshadows what's to come.

Ask her some psychology related thing, and Leigh can dredge up what she learned in AP Psychology and class. But for all her book smarts, Leigh is a bit naive. She still has NO clue that her relationship with her boyfriend is in trouble. When you forget a date, and so does he, it doesn't really say you're feverishly in love. Leigh's roommate (and best friend) Ami isn't enthusiastic about Andrew, but Leigh defends him:

"Ami doesn't have the benefit of all these great memories, so she continues to think that he doesn't treat me as well as I deserve. Which, in a way, is totally loyal and cool of her-- but completely unfounded. Well, mostly. If anything, his main problem is just that he's too smart. He has so much going on in his brain at any given moment that it's no wonder he's a little absentminded sometimes."

Leigh rationalizes Andrew's non-attentiveness and the distancing that has happened between them since school started. To be honest, from Leigh's workload, I can understand why it's easy for her to do so. She's quite busy with college herself. Her day-to-day life involves going to class, meeting with her academic adviser, long talks with her roommate, and waiting till the last minute to do her work. (As an aside, Psych Major Syndrome captures the college experience really well -- when Leigh stays up till 5am writing a 20-page essay, the details of falling asleep and waking up with barely enough time to hand it in, felt eerily familiar). But schoolwork only goes so far as an excuse, and eventually Leigh has to face what's really going on between herself and Andrew.

In the meantime, all that schoolwork and the social life of college means that Leigh has a pretty full life, and it's not all about her romantic relationships in this book. The interactions between Leigh and Ami, the other psychology students, her mentee, and Nathan are all natural extensions of her life and nothing ever feels forced about them. Even if I could predict exactly where the story was going to go, Psych Major Syndrome adds enough humor and color to make the predictability pleasant and comforting instead of dull. Also (and here I go back to the romance), Leigh's happy ending is one of the sweetest ones I've read in a while. I ended up really liking the guy she is paired with, even if I thought he was a bit of a fantasy boy. I can overlook how Leigh acted before she figured out what she wanted because of how well this guy suited her - it all ended on just the right note.

Overall: A sweet and fast comfort read. It has a good balance between an expected plot and a unique approach to that plot. Leigh is an endearing narrator, and I enjoyed this reminder of college life.

Buy: Amazon | Powell's | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
One More Page - " a very entertaining contemporary YA read, even if there’s really nothing surprising about it"
A Room With Books - "Psych Major Syndrome was an okay read. Leigh was much too blind to everything around her for me really connect."

Other:

Ghost Planet by Sharon Lynn Fisher

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 04:09:40 GMT

This review is based on an eARC sent to me by the publisher.

Ghost Planet

Sharon Lynn Fisher

The Premise: Elizabeth Cole was starting a new job as a psychologist on the newly discovered world of Ardagh 1, also known as "the ghost planet". This is a place with a remarkable phenomenon - everyone who goes there starts being followed around by a manifestation of a deceased person they once knew. Why the local aliens have chosen to do this is a great mystery, but to cope, settlers have set up the Ghost Protocol. The protocol is not to acknowledge the ghosts whatsoever. Interaction has had adverse effects and colonists find that ghosts weaken if ignored for long enough. When Elizabeth lands on the planet she is apprehensive about what will attach herself to her, and when she meets with her supervisor Dr. Grayson Murphy, her first thought is to wonder if he's human. He is, but Elizabeth is in for a shock - she's the one that's the 'ghost'! Her transport to the planet crashed, killing all aboard. Now Elizabeth is faced with the alarming prospect of knowing she's 'real' but being treated as if she's not. She has to fight for herself and against the Ghost Protocol, while being tethered to the man responsible for it.

Read an excerpt of Ghost Planet here

My Thoughts: I'm not sure how long Ghost Planet has been on my radar, but I've been following the author's blog since sometime last year. Its premise just got me aflutter: a planet where everyone has ghost following them around? And the heroine is surprised to discover she's a ghost too? And there's chemistry with the guy she's linked with? AND Linnea Sinclair calls it a "fresh and fascinating take on the human-alien problem"? Uh, yeah, needless to say, I had pre-ordered this long before I was contacted about a review.

The tarmac was deserted. Foggy and disoriented, I wondered how long I’d been standing there, listening to the evergreens groan in the wind and dreading my first encounter on this new world. Would it be human or alien?
I breathed in the crisp, impossibly clean air, trying to clear my head. My gaze traveled around the landing pad hemmed in by towering conifers, and came to rest on the transport terminal, oblong and silent under a slate-gray sky.
What now?
I had the unsettling feeling I was the only person on the planet—Ardagh 1, more commonly referred to as “the ghost planet” by people on Earth. Inexplicable things happened here. The planet itself was a study in the impossible.
Finally the terminal doors slid open, and a figure stepped out onto the tarmac. Half a dozen others spilled out behind him, and a transport whined into view, landing about thirty meters away.
The presence of the other passengers eased my sense of isolation. But that first man out of the building—he was headed right for me. My heart beat out a warning, and my mind snapped back to the original question: Human or alien?
“Elizabeth?” He raised his dark eyebrows, and my gaze locked on his startling eyes. Piercing, round, and the lightest shade of blue, like sky behind a veil of cloud—clean cloud, not the brown smudges that passed for clouds back on Earth. Something about him tugged at my memory, but I found this the opposite of reassuring.
“Yes?” I answered, uneasy. If he wasn’t human, I was minutes on the planet and already breaking the rules. It was dangerous to talk to them. There were institutions back on Earth devoted to caring for people who’d done so. I’d met some of those people.

I think my instinct for what I like served me well with this one. I loved the concept that promised some interesting world-building, but because this is also Romance, there's a burgeoning relationship for me to enjoy too. I like a balance between these two things, and Ghost Planet does a good job of it. I especially liked this early on, when Elizabeth has to adjust to her new reality. What first struck me was that although she was on a new planet, far from Earth, her work as a psychologist was something relatable and not high-tech or military. She was a middle-class woman, without any special combat skills, just her degree. And because this was told from her point of view, having the 'ghost' tell the her side of story was a nice spin on the extra-terrestrial encounter trope: no one knows exactly what she is, but then, neither does she. Until she's told she's a ghost, Elizabeth doesn't realize anything is wrong, and her shock and confusion at having her most basic identity questioned is good stuff. The irony is that the human Elizabeth was interested in the 'ghosts' from an academic standpoint before traveling to Ardagh 1. Now her experience with the Ghost Protocol is much more personal and her questions about her existence much more pressing.

At first it seems like Elizabeth's unlucky to be attached to her would-be-supervisor Murphy. He's the psychologist responsible for helping the settlers cope and he's told them rejecting their ghosts is the best thing to do. But before he realized what she was, they were enjoying each other's company. When Elizabeth turns out to be a ghost, it's a surprise for both of them. So Murphy is kind to her and conflicted about his own protocol. Their relationship mirrors the people on both sides of the equation. On one side, there are the humans, wary of a phenomenon that has no explanation, on the other, there's the 'ghosts', struggling to be acknowledged.

Because any interaction with Elizabeth is verboten, the relationship took some time to develop, and I enjoyed seeing how it happened despite the rules against it. Elizabeth's persistence and Murphy's empathy were characteristics that brought them closer, but the connection they forged from quiet proximity had it's own power. The romance takes a natural path there that I liked, and Elizabeth and Murphy make a compatible couple. The one quibble I had, was that once they hit a turning point in their relationship, something went away. I think that that suddenly the discord came from sources external to the relationship, and these two were very harmonious. I suppose at that point they had enough to deal with.

Anyway, this is a story with a healthy amount of romance but has a plot that doesn't just evolve around that. There are some suspenseful, action-adventure aspects to the story and Elizabeth and Murphy have to face several threats to their lives. I can't really go into these without spoiling the story, but I was impressed by how thoughtfully Ghost Planet explores the the 'ghost' concept in its storytelling. It's a concept that's also a mystery, and thankfully the author doesn't leave the reader with a lot of hanging questions. It explores a lot of the questions I had and organically integrated the answers into the plot. For example, I'd wondered about other 'ghosts' and what they were like, what Elizabeth could do and not do as a ghost, what would happen if she was strengthened by Murphy rather than weakened, what happened if she tired to separate from him, and so on. I even felt like I got something of a satisfactory explanation for why the 'ghosts' were there in the first place, or at least a working theory that made sense to me, by the end of the story.

Overall: I'm excited about other people discovering this author. I thought Ghost Planet was very enjoyable science fiction romance with a heroine who is more regular girl than action hero, and a setting that feels very unique (and not just for not being on a spaceship). I really liked the thoughtful way in which the 'ghost' concept was explored in this story, and I also liked how I was engaged by scenes that weren't all about action. Fisher made relationship dynamics and the fight for dominance (or just acknowledgement) between personalities just as important as physical fights for control. I'd recommend Ghost Planet for fans of Sara Creasy and Linnea Sinclair.

P.S. As far as I can tell, this is a standalone (!)

Buy: Amazon | Powell's | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
Not yet

NYC Library Way (picture post)

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 03:41:30 GMT

I had so many pictures of the Library Hotel Weekend that I had to break it up into two posts. This part is about the free celebration of literature on the sidewalk of East 41st Street, called Library Way. I took a lot of pictures, on both sides of the street (FYI some of these repeat, so walking a block should yield most of the quotes to see).

This is what the Library Way is (taken from Grand Central Partnership's website):

"In 1996, GCP, along with the New York Public Library and New Yorker Magazine, convened a distinguished panel of literary experts and librarians to select the quotations from prominent works of literature.
These quotes have been brought to life by urban sculptural artist Gregg LeFevre in beautiful bronze plaques installed in regular intervals in the sidewalks along 41st Street leading to and from the Humanities and Social Sciences Library. The Library Way bronze plaque initiative was subsequently honored with an “Excellence in Design” award by the New York City Arts Commission in 1998."

This is a image heavy post (there are 45 images of the plaques on the library way here), so here's a preview. Clicking it should theoretically send you to my wordpress blog which has a gallery with bigger pictures.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 16:09:45 GMT

I won an ARC of this book last year but didn't get around to reading it until: a) I heard so many good things about it from my fellow readers, b) I heard Cat Valente speak at a NYPL event and, most importantly c) it was chosen by my readalong buddies Holly and Chachic.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated

Fairyland in a Ship

of Her Own Making

Catherynne M. Valente

The Premise: September is a twelve-year old girl, tired of the same thing at home while her father is away at war and her mother works in a factory. Then one day while she stands over the dishes, the Green Wind sweeps in through her window and asks her if she'd like to come away with him to the great sea that borders Fairyland. Of course she says yes, and pretty soon she is stepping through the closet between worlds in a green smoking jacket and meeting witches and a Wyvern. September would like to enjoy Fairyland, but ever since Good Queen Mallow disappeared and the Marquess took over all is not well.

My Thoughts: There are layers to The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland. On the surface, it's a story of a girl who escapes her humdrum life and has lovely adventures in Fairyland. I think young children would enjoy the descriptions and the lush language (it has the sort of omnipresent narrative with dashes of whimsy and color that would be perfect for being read aloud, one short chapter at a time). On a deeper level, there's poignancy and gems of insight in September's adventure that makes this a book that will resonate with mature readers too.

The surface story reminded me of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but more of The Phantom Tollbooth (a book I grew up adoring), in which a bored boy is transported to the Kingdom of Wisdom via magic tollbooth and has to rescue two princesses whose banishment has caused disharmony.. With Queen Mallow's disappearance and her replacement by the Marquess, and the playful of storytelling and its characters, I saw a lot of parallels, but as I read further on, they fell away. The Girl Who is a lot more complex. The prose is full of lush vocabulary and description. Fairyland manages to be both a wonderful dream, but it also holds reminders of life's realities.

So September is whisked away to Fairyland. As can be expected, it is a place of magic, with its own strange rules. September is flown there on a flying leopard with the Green Wind and has to put together a puzzle and get through immigrations in order to enter. Once there she meets three witches (one a wairwulf) who tell her that the Marquess has stolen their Spoon, which September offers to retrieve. Along the way, she meets a wyvern, A-Through-L, who is the son of a Library, and whose wings are all chained up on account of the Marquess's new rules. Not liking this Marquess the more she hears about her, especially when compared to the Good Queen Mallow, September goes to Pandemonium (the capital of Fairyland) to meet her, and picks up another traveling companion - a boy named Saturday that grants wishes. That, in a nutshell, is the start of September's adventures, but it doesn't really describe the experience. Maybe this tidbit will help show you:

September let go a long-held breath. She stared into the roiling black-violet soup, thinking furiously. The trouble was, September didn’t know what sort of story she was in. Was it a merry one or a serious one? How ought she to act? If it were merry, she might dash after a Spoon, and it would all be a marvelous adventure, with funny rhymes and somersaults and a grand party with red lanterns at the end. But if it were a serious tale, she might have to do something important, something involving, with snow and arrows and enemies. Of course, we would like to tell her which. But no one may know the shape of the tale in which they move. And, perhaps, we do not truly know which sort of beast it is, either. Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. This is why we must close them up into thick, solid books, so they cannot get out and cause trouble.

As you can see, the narration seems well aware of the traditional stories of children who go to have adventures, and September, a reader herself, is aware as well. There's a consciousness that comes with the creative madness - as if the story is quite cognizant under its merry storytelling of all the other stories in which children are taken to Fairyland, and of all kinds of other things. This made me feel like I had to pay attention to the details so I wouldn't miss anything. At the same time there was a lot of playfulness that comes out in the words and descriptions, and the setting itself is like another character. I think that feeling of having to pay attention while the story was also so lush in describing the wonder of Fairyland hurt my reading speed initially. I had to slow it down to a crawl so I could digest the story in manageable bites. Things hit their stride when the story, previously innocent and fairly light, took a turn for the more serious.

When I say it became more serious, I think it depends on the reader how things will affect them. It remains, as always, light on the surface. I can see children reading this and seeing a straightforward adventure that they could enjoy, and they may not wonder too much about things like whether September's flight to Fairyland represents her escaping her own reality (in which her father is fighting in foreign lands and her mother works in a factory leaving September alone by herself), and whether the wyvern has created a father he can more easily accept than one that abandoned his family. When September begins to face the work of the Marquess, I saw a lot of underlying themes packaged in a fairly harmless manner. It's Good (September) versus Evil (the Marquess), but look closer and there are shades of grey, commentary on childhood, fear, growing up, and death. All of these things aren't in your face - just gently touched on so that you can contemplate them later at your own leisure, long after the pages are closed and that lovely ending has faded.

Overall: This is a fairytale that works for many ages. If you are looking for depth you will find it, but if you are looking for straightforward adventure, you will find that too. The writing itself is colorful and odd and really rich in substance. It's the sort of writing you can read aloud, but not meant for fast flipping. I enjoyed the experience once I realized that this was one I had to consume at my own pace.

To see what my readalong buddies thought of this one, take a look at their reviews posted today: Chachic / Holly.

Buy: Amazon | Powell's | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
A Room with Books - "a book that deserves to be read by anyone"
Calico Reaction (has spoilers) - 8 – Excellent and "an easy book to recommend to anyone who has a soft spot for classic fantasy literature, for stories where fairylands are equally magical and dangerous, for beautiful, imaginative prose and ideas"
The Book Smugglers - top 10 of 2011

Other Links:

The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland - For a Little While, short story prequel up on Tor.com

Guest post at Word for Teens

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 12:31:45 GMT

My guest post highlighting an emotionally strong character in YA is up at Word for Teens today. Choosing what character I wanted to discuss was tougher than I thought it would be, but I finally did it. Head on over to see who I picked, and why.

The Library Hotel (picture post)

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 03:36:58 GMT

A couple of years ago I stayed at the Library Hotel in New York City. I waited for a deal on room prices and stayed one weekend while visiting the city. I took a bunch of pictures, and then somehow never posted them! So here they are.

front door

The front desk has a card catalog behind it

Our room number! Sixth floor, room 6 (or: 600.006 Health & Beauty)

The best "please clean my room/do not disturb" sign!

Junior suite - nice big bed with bookshelves on the side - unfortunately they were all non-fiction about health & beauty. I wasn't excited.

Health & Beauty.. eh.

Suite sitting area

View from the window - Madison Avenue

guest lounge on the 2nd floor. Loved this place - snacks and coffee and tea whenever you want, plus books (fiction this time)

better picture of the bookshelves in the lounge

The hotel is about a block away from Grand Central, and in the other direction, a block away from the NYPL (Stephen A. Schwarzman building) and Bryant park

There's also a really cool library walk on 41st street and I took a ton of pictures of that. But I think I'll leave that for a second post.

I would stay here again mainly because it's a really nice hotel in a VERY good location, but I didn't think the library theme added much. The concept was a little gimmicky and not a reason to stay there by itself.