Ficticious Friday: Bargain Books for Charity

Hello all! This is going to be a quick post today.

I just wanted to let you know that from the makers of Humble Indie Bundle (a great way to get some sweet PC games) currently the Humble eBook Bundle 2 is being offered here. You can name your own price for the four books offered, but if you pay a little higher than the average price you get two bonus books making six the magic number.

There is Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, this one I've heard outstanding reviews for but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. It's full of hackers and cyber terrorism and teens kicking ass so you can expect an article in the next several weeks. Boneshaker by Cherie Priest is one that I've read a little bit of and I enjoyed but unfortunately it had to be returned to the library before I finished it. It's a great steampunk/zombie/apocalypse/AU story that shows a lot of creativity. I know nothing about Spin by Robert Charles Wilson other than that it's a Sci-Fi story where the stars disappear. Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold is another one I'm not familiar with. It's a Sci-Fi love story so I have my doubts about it but I will definitely give it a chance. The two bonus novels are Just a Geek by Wil Wheton (one of my favorite people so I'm excited to see what he has to say) and the classic The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle. I have read The Last Unicorn before and I can tell you, it's infinity times better than the awful 80's cartoon, give it a chance.

Buy this bundle is great for multiple reasons. You get to name your price so if you've already gone over your literary budget for the month maybe you can squeeze in a few extra dollars that will go a long way. Also, a portion of the proceeds (I believe you get to determine how much) will go to charity. For this particular bundle it is Electronic Frontier Foundation, Child's Play, and Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. However, it's only available for another 12 days and 6 hours according to the count down clock right now. So make your decision soon and get busy reading. I'll be reading all of these in the next couple of months so look out for my reviews and let's see how well they correspond to yours.

Chapter 12: In Which You Never Want to Leave the Enchanted Garden

How do you write a review of your favorite book? I have a hard enough time talking about it. You know when it's one of those books that you want to tell the world about but when you start your words get all jumbled, you can see their eyes kind of glossing over as they nod at you, and you keep interjecting words like "awesome" and "fantastic" in the hopes that they will understand. In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente is that book for me.

I started reading it because of how much I loved the album For the Girl in the Garden by S. J. Tucker who does readings of bits of the stories with songs based on them. Sab got both of the books in the Orphan Tale's Series (this one and In the Cities of Coin and Spice which I will definitely be reading soon) for me as a surprise present and once I picked up In the Night Garden, I had the hardest time in the world putting it down.

The basic story is that there is a girl who was banished to live in the gardens outside the royal palace. When she was a child a curse was put on her where stories were written in such tiny text across her eyelids it looks like a continuous streak of black at first glance. The people of the land see her as a demon child but she cannot be released from her curse until she has someone to listen to the tales. This is hard when everyone is forbidden to come near her. However, when one of the princes finds his way to her he becomes enchanted by her tales and begs her to share them. The best way I have of describing this book is like a nesting doll (we called them Matroyoshka dolls when I was little but that is neither here nor there). One story will begin and then a character in that story will start a tale of their own so you will listen to them for a while, then go back to the frame story, then another person will go. It seems like it could be confusing but everything is interconnected. It's really quite brilliantly done. Going in this fashion it takes about 200 pages for the first story hear to come to its conclusion.

These stories are brilliant new fairy tales full of all your typical tropes: princes, princesses, witches, satyrs, gryphons, pirates but all with different perspectives (that they are happy to share) and mixed in with a generous helping of new creatures like Beast (my personal favorite), skin traders, star gods, body thieves, dog headed monks, and so much more. The world is lush and beautifully explored, it feels so real you don't want to leave when the story is done. This book garners my highest recommendations and I hope some of you will read it so I'll have people to talk to about how awesome it is!

In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente (483 pages)

Judgement: Darkly Enthralling (10 out of 10)

Ficticious Fridays: Pixie Pirate Mythpunk Folk Rock

Today's article is going to be a little preview of the next book review you will be getting. Stay tuned!

S. J. Tucker is one of my very favorite musicians. Everything about her is eclectic. The style of her music ranges from folk to rock to celtic and back again. The subjects of her songs can run the gambit. There's The Wendy Trilogy which is a trio of songs that explores what would have happened if Wendy had chosen to join Captain Hook as a Pirate. There's songs which will move you close to tears like The Dryad's Promise, a story of lost loves and the desire to let go. Then there's the just plain silly like Tough Titty Cupcakes, the raccoon mama who will do anything for her babies or Playing D&D which you will just have to listen to yourself!

She has two albums specifically which are story telling pieces. For the Girl in the Garden and Solace & Sorrow are inspired by The Orphan's Tales books by Catherynne Valente. Half of the tracks are readings from the books themselves and they are followed by songs S. J. has written for them. All of her albums are free to listen to on her website and you can listen to my favorite album here. I highly recommend listening to Eshkol and Seafaring Satyr, that's my favorite story. You should also check out Mischief, that's my favorite non-story album.

I hope listening to this fantastic music entertains you long enough for me to finish reading my current book. Just as a spoiler, I will let you know that it's already become my new favorite book.

As an extra bonus, to any of my friends in St. Louis, S. J. is going to be here this weekend for the St. Lou Fringe Festival! I will be there Saturday but she's performing all weekend <3

Chapter 11: What it means to be Good

The comments have spoken and so graphic novels will be allowed to count towards pages read! Huzzah! In the words of my favorite comment, "Equality for Graphic Novels club anyone?" Yes. I totally agree.

Koko Be Good by Jen Wang tells the story of two people who meet by accident and irreversibly change each others lives. Jon is a pretty normal guy with a pretty normal job. His girlfriend has moved to Peru to do good works there and he's packing up his life with the intent to join her. Koko is a bit of a wild child. She makes money where she can, sleeps where people will let her, and is always working on some new adventure. However, she's starting to think that maybe she's not doing the right thing and she needs to change, to find out what being good really means. The two of them hang out, offer each other perspective, and both start seeing the world a little differently.

I loved this story so much, it's probably one of my favorite graphic novels I've ever read. The art is so beautiful and I found myself spending more time than usual admiring the pages. The characters are so detailed and fleshed out, they feel very realistic. I feel like I could walk down the street and meet Koko. The story is simple enough to allow them to really shine but profound enough to make you think. It's entertaining and well put together and definitely makes me want to explore more of Jen Wang's work. Go read it now!

Koko Be Good by Jen Wang (304 pages)

Judgement: Beautiful Characters (10 out of 10)

Domestic Dimanche: Post-College Dreams and Everything Changes

For a movie about Moms and Daughters, her Dad is pretty freaking awesome!

First of all, Happy Father's Day! To my Dad, my brothers, my grandpas, and all the awesome Dads that I know, I love you and send you all my best wishes!

So I figured I'd give you guys an update on what's been happening with me lately. First big news is that I graduated in May! (Whooo, yeah! Go Sorcha! I knew you could do it!) I now have a degree in English (Well, I will when they mail it to me. I have no idea when that happens...) which is pretty nice. I don't have any pictures for you since I decided not to walk. Sabrael and I went to Renaissance Festival instead which was infinitely more fun than sitting through a bunch of people's names being called.

Since then I've been quasi-unemployed? My job is tied to the university so I can't work if I'm not a student. I get a grace period until August when the next semester starts up again. I was planning to work with my Dad over the summer so I told my job I wouldn't really be around. Except there's all kinds of craziness going on in Hannibal (The river's flooding which always drives away tourist though does practically nothing to us, there's intense construction going on which blocks our building, and there was a large tornado a few weeks ago which people are still trying to clean up after though thankfully none of our buildings were harmed) so he's postponed opening until July. Which means by the time I got this information, schedules had already been made at work and I wasn't on them. So I've had a nice break from working for like a month now.

It's not as nice as you might think. A lot of stuff has happened in that time. I moved for instance. "Moved" though is a word that connotes completion which has not happened. There's still a small mountain of boxes in the middle of the room which I just cannot conceive of places to set their contents. It's slightly maddening. Also, Sab and I have gotten a kitten. We rescued him from a friend of mine who was going to have to give him away. He's fluffy and adorably and occasionally cuddly but he's developed quite a bad biting habit (He's in his carrier at the moment for biting me particularly hard on the face because I was writing this article and not playing with him) which can be difficult to deal with. We've tried almost all advice we've been able to find to get him to stop but nothing works. Spray bottle is next on the list.

Everyone, meet Vashta Nerada: Count the Shadows, or just Vash for short

 So in my time period of joblessness I've had a lot of time for contemplating my future. I've gone back and forth on a lot of future careers I want to have: teacher, librarian, museum educator, etc, but I had an epiphany yesterday. I've always seen these jobs as a means to an end, a way to save up money to do what it is I *really* want to do. I've always wanted to own my own bookshop. I can hear you already (because I've heard it a thousand times before), "In this economy?" "No one buys books any more." "You'll never be able to beat out Barnes and Noble!" But hear me out! I've got some good ideas. I want it to be a bookstore so that I can drag in the type of clientele that would be interested in the other things I will offer. I want to have an auditorium type area where local bands can play, small theater groups can perform, authors can do speaking events, classes on a variety of topics could be offered, movie nights and marathons could happen, and businesses could rent the space for meetings. I'd also want to support local artists and crafters, bring in gaming groups, and establish active book clubs. I think it could work really well as a kind of community space  and a safe space for other book nerds like me to meet people (which is often hard for us) and to have a good time inside of their interests.

So this is what I've decided to start working on. Instead of making this some far off in the future plan that may or may not happen, I want to start studying up, making decisions, learning the trade, and deciding that this will happen. I don't think anything could be more fulfilling than that.

So how about you guys! What's been going on in your lives lately? What have you been working on? What's your big dream either that you're working towards or that you've kind of forgot about? I'd love to hear it!

Whining Wednesday: Why I Find Grown-Up Books Distressing

This is actually a point of contention between my mother and I. I can't tell you how many times we've had conversations about why I don't "grow up" and read "adult" books. She finds my interest in young adult literature and fantasy jeuvenile which I feel is probably a widespread opinion. It's getting better, with books like Harry Potter, Hunger Games, and The Fault in Our Stars getting more main stream attention but still there is a stereotype, one which I like to call The Twilight Effect.

From this stack I heavily recommend Uglies, Hunger Games, Graceling, and The Book Thief. I greatly discourage Incarceron and Twilight.

The Twilight series symbolizes all the negative stereotypes associated with Young Adult Fiction. The characters are shallow teenagers (sort of), the fantasy aspects are cliche the only creativity is in extraneous aspects, and the plot revolves around little more than a teen love story which the average person doesn't really care about. However, good YA is so much more than this. Take Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, for example. It forces the reader to contemplate their ideas of beauty and whether it's more important to be safe or to be an individual. Looking for Alaska by John Green explores the meaning of life and how we handle grief. Graceling by Kristin Cashore teaches us to define what a monster truly is and how you should never let another's opinions define you. How could you begin to call these stories shallow?

Setting aside the fact that I love YA so much, here's why I don't like "adult" books a majority of the time. I'm not interested in sex. Yes, I realize that when you are an adult, it's something that you do and that's fine, that's normal. However there's some weird, unvoiced definition that adult fiction is all stories with sex in them, if they're no sex it's YA. More than once I have been reading through a book, enjoying it just fine, and then a sex scene is inserted out of nowhere just for titillation factor. Maybe sex sells but I'm not buying it. When it's plot relevant for your characters to jump each other's bones, go for it. But when you just throw it in there hoping that more housewives will read your story, that's just sad and frankly distracting.

So I just prefer my YA, all the same meaning and all the same impact but with none of the unnecessary, uncomfortable genitalia related euphemisms. So here's my questions for the week. What do you think about sex in novels? Do you appreciate it or are you distracted like me? Also, what are your thoughts on YA as a genre? Are you one of those that thinks it's only a medium for children or are you a die hard fan? Bonus question: what is your favorite ridiculous sex scene euphamism. Mine is where a man part was referenced as a "quivering mutton." If that just doesn't set the mood, I don't know what does! :)

Chapter 10: I Dream of Djinni

The premise of this book didn't really excite me. It's about a young magician who wants to get back at those who have wronged him, this is pretty standard fantasy fare. What really got me to pick up the book was the fact that the story is not told by the boy (though he does get ample time to whine and make himself look immature and dumb). It's told by the Djinni he summons, Bartimaeus.

I like this picture because Nathaniel is pretty beat up, just like I wanted him to be through the whole story.

The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud is the first book of a trilogy. It takes place in a modern London where magicians hold all the power. They hold all the government positions, retain a majority of the wealth, and generally feel superior to the common folk. However, their greatest secret from the outside is that the power is not technically their own. All of their abilities come from the summoning of other creatures like imps, afrits, and djinni. The higher powered the entity, the more difficult they are to summon.

Bartimaeus is dismayed when he discovers that he has been summoned by a 12 year-old boy, one who has not even come close to completing his magical training yet the Djinni is quite high up on the totem pole (at least, that's what he tells us). As he guides us through the story his expertise on matters, knowledge of history, and excess of snark provide a great voice and narrative. My favorite stylistic element is the use of footnotes. Most of Bartimaeus's asides appear in this form and can be anything from a paragraph on his own relevant experiences to a one word warning on the feasibility of kissing dolphins. It makes for a very enjoyable read. I would recommend it for any fantasy fans who are looking for something a little different and a great, creative setting to explore. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the books in the series.

The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud (462 pages)

Judgement: Spectacular Snark (7 out of 10)