Bibliovangelism

My soul was weary and downtrodden. The books I'd been reading, and the ugliness of the world, and the lack of sunlight (dark at 4pm? REALLY WORLD?) all got to me. I was depressed and even my old standby pick-me-up authors, Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Terry Pratchett, weren't quite boosting my mood. Then I read this article by one of my favorite romance bloggers, Sarah Wendell (of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.) In the article she mentions a series called "The Sharing Knife" by Lois McMasters Bujold. My interest was piqued. New author! New Series! Fantastical Romance=New Genre for me. (I've had my fill of the paranormal stuff thank you very much.)

Lo and behold! All four books of the series were checked in and on the shelf in my Library. I ran and scooped them up and checked them all out. And then I opened "Beguilment" and all of the badness, the existential crisis, the depression melted away. I've since finished the whole series and want to spread the word of The Sharing Knife. These books are methodical and clear voiced, but still funny and fantastical. There are sexy bits, especially in book one when the main romantical characters are first getting together, but they made me laugh and smile, not cringe and quickly turn the page. The best part for me was the way the books dealt with a giant set of problems, tangled-up messy problems.The problems weren't solved by the end, but headway was made and the characters were realistically optomistic about the future.

I feel better now, and now you've been properly proselytized about The Sharing Knife.

Merry Festivus everyone.

A small rant about "Fire" by Kristen Cashore

As you all can see with your own eyes, I loved "Graceling." It was the perfect YA novel, especially for a girl, but really for anyone.

Fire, oh Fire, how you disappointed me. I'm fine with a book that mentions menstruation. I'm fine with menstruation as a plot device. I'm annoyed when it is used to facilitate giant swaths of necessary plot and is mentioned every other sentence or so. Unnecessary!Also, small detail, Please use different words than "monthly bleeding!" Because there are other words, but mostly just cut about 1/2 to 2/3 of the mentions out of the book and we'll be okay.

This brings me to my second point: This is not a YA novel. I don't care that Fire is seventeen to eighteen years old through the course of the novel. For instance, one of the main issues she grapples with is the decision of whether or not to have children and therefore pass on what is basically a hereditary condition that is guaranteed to be passed on if she has a child. Other issues include her becoming a stepmother-type character, and how to be ethical while still maneuvering to win what you believe is a just war. Oh, and finally a major problem addressed how to deal with the fact that you are just so beautiful that everyone either is so struck by your beauty they instantly love you or instantly hate you. Actually, for the most part that isn't such an invalid point about the values society places on beauty, especially female beauty, but she way over-emphasizes the point. Much like everything in this book is drawn out and rehashed a million ways.


SPOILER ALERT:



The book literally ends with the main character crying to her lover about how she's not just another pretty face and she has all these crazy FEELINGS AND THOUGHTS. Which her current lover tells her he understands. Then makeouts. He's spent the entire book showing her how well he knows her and how little he cares about her outer beauty, but for some reason we needed this last chapter just to over-drive home the point again. AGRGH!



END SPOILER ALERT.

Do you see where I'm going here? Fire doesn't deal with issues teenagers deal with, she doesn't even deal with issues that MOST PEOPLE deal with, but those that do are typically older and in odd places of power. I just thought this book shouldn't have been marketed as YA despite the success of Graceling as YA novel. I might have liked it more if I'd picked it up in the adult fiction section with that framework functioning in my head.

Oh, but the one thing I will say is that I made it through the audiobook because the narrator Xanthe Elbrick is amazing and could have read me the phone book and I would be riveted for quite a long spell.

NaNoWriMo

I'm writing a novel in a month.

Other people like Abby (The) Librarian can do that and post blogs, but I don't have the energy. I really respect Abby's commitment to posting and writing her novel. Good work!

Needless to say, I haven't gotten a lot of actual physical reading done, but I have listened to one fantastic audibook.

Graceling by Kristin Cashore


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
It took me a few discs to get into this story, but once I was in, I was hooked and didn't want to get out of my car to go into the Library...or into my house. The full cast audio recording of "Graceling" is wonderful.
Katsa is graced--she has two different colored eyes and special powers--she is rare, a girl graced with killing. Her uncle Randa, king of the Midlands, uses her as his own personal attack dog. She hurts people so they obey him. She hates him, and herself for doing his bidding and so together with her cousin and some guards of Randa's, she starts a council to do good around the seven kingdoms. When she rescues the father of the king of one of the far away peaceful kingdoms she doesn't know what a can of worms she is opening. Nor does she realize she'll be opening her heart to the old man's grandson.

View all my reviews >>


I'm currently listening to the companion novel "Fire" which is not full cast audio, but is still awesome.

Not so cozy mysteries.

Don't you really hate it when people post just to tell you they are sorry about their recent lack of posts? But you know, life is really busy what with the kids cats,conventions,commuting, and...all.

Yeah. I hate that too. *looks about shiftily*

So, as a special treat I'm going to spout off for a moment on something that has been occupying my thoughts ever since I got back from Bouchercon: Misogynistic violence against women in crime novels. At one of the panels I attended at Bouchercon someone randomly through out the fact that women are actually LESS LIKELY to be the victims of violent crime in real life, but in crime fiction the victims are almost always female. I decided to check this out and found a tidbit, at least for American crime: According to the 2008 Bureau of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey "Females were more likely than males to be victims of rape or sexual assault. Males experienced higher rates of victimization than females in all other violent crimes measured by the NCVS."

Of course, these statistics have one major flaw, they only include reported crime (well, how would they include the unreported stuff, now really?) One of the things that I remember from back in the days of getting my degree in Criminal Justice is that most crime goes unreported, and most men who are raped never tell anyone. So, maybe the reported crime statistics can be extrapolated to all crime statistics, but maybe not. Either way, I do believe that crime fiction is really really still skewed inappropriately to violence against women (and, children too.) The question is, why? Why do so many books feature horrible horrible crimes against women?

I'll admit that this question didn't even occur to me until that panel at Bouchercon, but once it was asked I couldn't stop thinking about it, but I don't have any good answers for you. All I've got is a link to an article focusing mostly on Steig Larsson's supposed "feminism" that was originally brought to my attention via Twitter by Barbara Fister, one of the women on the panel that opened my eyes.

Vampire Weekend.

No, not "Vampire Weekend" the band, who I sort of like and sort of want to punch in the face. I'm having an undead moment and everything I want to read right now, maybe for the foreseeable future, is about those who returned from the grave. Maybe my own fear of dying is acting up, maybe my inherently gothish nature is trying to resurface through my earth-toned wardrobe. Maybe it is just the beginning of Fall, the perfect time to think about death and reaping and the possibility of rebirth/new life. You might have noticed from the EPIC review that this kick has already been going on for a while, ever since my obsessive reading of all the entries on the blog Vampirely.
Uninvited by Amanda Marrone


My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Jordan is a smart kid, she makes good grades even though her school attendance is sporadic at best. Her attendance problems and social anxiety were bad and are now terrible, because her ex-boyfriend, Michael, is a vampire whose haunting her every night. The vampire in this book follows very Dracula/folkloric traditional rules. Crosses and holy water, stakes through the heart are all going to hurt, he can turn into mist and bats. And he has to be invited in order to enter a building.

Gorgeous Michael, despite telling Jordan that he still loves her and begging her to let him come in, is no Edward Cullen. He's a monster, and Jordan determines that quite likely he always was. The day she broke up with him because of her social anxiety he hooked up with a cheerleader later that day. He hung out with jerks, he thought he was god's gift to everyone. This book, as much as it seems like it might about paranormal love paradoxes is really and truly about issues. Jordan has social anxiety, a completely unstructured life with parents so laid-back it is hard to tell if they even care, and to top it off she self-medicates with any substance she can get ahold of...booze, coke, etc. Her friends Jordan's life has gotten so bad that she's starting to wonder if maybe she shouldn't just let Michael in. One of her three friends in the world is actually someone she truly likes, but they all feed her dysfunctions. I like the way Jordan goes from letting her issues get the best of her to getting the best of them, and her blood-sucking ex-boyfriend.

I love the way that the creepy manipulations of Michael and his overuse of the word "Love" actually comes off as creepy and horrible, instead of Twilight-esque sparkly vampire love manipulations. Really I was a little pleased and surprised by the directions this book took, and even though it was slow in parts (how many examples of vomiting from excessive substance abuse do you really need?), I'm glad I stuck it through.

View all my reviews >>

Later I will probably update you all about the second Generation Dead novel "Kiss of Life" which corrected what I didn't like about book one and was actually really a great sequel! Hooray! And, tonight I've got Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and The Silver Kiss and Vampire Academy and so much other paranormal stuff to read that I could cry in relief that is going to be all vampires all the time on my days off of work. Now if Rachel at Vampirely would just update, my vampire weekend will be complete.

What I read on my summer vacation.

Days off mostly mean "BRING HOME THE ENTIRE LIBRARY" and read it all at once. There are some other books like John Wray's Lowboy and China Miéville's The City and The City that I'm taking my time reading. Savoring so much that I may never get around to actually reviewing. On the other hand I brought home several books that I had been absolutely chomping at the bits to read and tell other people about. All of these books I read in one, one and one half, or two sittings at the most...and all except one I read just this past weekend.

Rampant by Diana Peterfreund


My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Astrid hates unicorns. She's grown up with her mom's fanatical stories of conquering ancestors. All those ancestors were women, virgins, and they were all descended from Alexander The Great who rode an elephant-sized unicorn into battle. Astrid shies away from her mom's stories and the legacy she wants for Astrid, and since all the unicorns are supposed to have been killed by one of Astrid's ancestors a few hundred years ago. When Astrid's boyfriend gets gored by a goat-sized unicorn, and her entire world flips upside down as she realizes that her mom's crazy stories aren't just stories after all. The unicorns are back and it is up to Astrid and other unicorn hunters, all virginal female decedents of Alexander, to save the world from the six kinds of bloodthirsty mythical beasts...and the evil people trying to bring them back at all costs.
While there are some places where this story falls apart and becomes hard to follow (mainly I think it just needed to be pared down some, but I'm hoping some of the extra means Sequel!), there are a lot more places where bad-ass teen girls fight like hell and barely escape with their lives. Best of all it isn't Astrid and her backup dancers fighting, these girls have personalities, some of them very strong, all of them developed more than you'd expect. A must read for fans of Buffy, Gemma Doyle, and even Katniss Everdeen.

View all my reviews >>

Did I say Katniss Everdeen? I guess that means my next review is of Catching Fire! I'm still a little, just a tiny bit, sad that I had to wait for the book to come out and could not get an ARC to save my soul. But, sometimes that is life. Last year before the Hunger Games was the Hunger Games I was able to get a signed copy and spend a day at Anderson's YA Lit Conference with Suzanne Collins, so I feel like I'm actually ahead of the Hunger Games...game.

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Katniss, oh Katniss, we rooted and cheered for you in the Reality TV Gladiator battle "The Hunger Games" and were awed by your courage and humanity. Now, only months later we realize along with you the horror of knowing that your trials only just started with the Hunger Games. Katniss's friends and family are threatened personally by the blood-thirsty tyrannical President Snow, who seems to be the only one who doesn't realize that uprisings are going to happen no matter what Katniss does, and his threats are only going to add fuel to the fire. And *spoiler alert*
everything does boil over when they decide to send all the past victors back to the Hunger Games...one year later and Katniss and Peeta are back in the arena. But this year, the competitors have a common enemy, and it isn't anyone in the arena. Oh and Peeta and she are still trying to figure out their relationship(s) each wants desperately to keep the other one alive.*/spoiler alert*
Suzanne Collins has this way of putting you in the middle of the action empathizing with Katniss on such a level that it is somehow both impossible to stop turning the pages because you NEED TO KNOW, but you are afraid to turn the pages too, because you don't want anything bad to happen to anyone you and Katniss care about. This book never fails to deliver on everything the Hunger Games promised...but I did kind of want more action in the beginning. I know, I know, there was a lot of tension, but it wasn't until Katniss felt free to fight back that anything really HAPPENED.
Still, wonderful, beautiful, evocative book that reminds me why I hate reality TV.

View all my reviews >>

Speaking of things I hate...that brings me to ZOMBIES.

Now if you know me you know I'm a card-carrying member of the Zombie Squad and that I prepare every day for the possibility of the Zombiepocalypse. Recently I read two Zombie books that are both amazing social commentaries and yet are two of the most different books I could ever tell you about. I read each in a single night. The first is the more traditional of the Zombie novels: The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
It is so far into the future after the Zombie-pocalypse that everyone in Mary's village is acclimated to unquestioningly following the rules that the Sisterhood sets forth. Well, follwoing the rules has kept them relatively safe and alive from the Unconsecrated hoard just outside of the fense so far, right? But, as her future becomes more tenous, mary grows more defiant of the edicts and the sisterhood. On top of all that, Mary's got boy troubles, family troubles, best friend troubles, and of course, Zombie troubles.
The book has all the interesting mysterious parts of the M. Night Shyamalan movie "the Village" but instead of a boring backstory about the evils of the "Modern World", we get ZOMBIES. Scary, flesh-eating, mindless, zombies. Zombies with the rotting faces of Mary's mother, father, sister-in-law, and friends. Did you ever notice that zombies are an interesting metaphor for the evils of the "Modern World"?
Mary's world has been shaped so much by living under the constant fear of horrifying death that every moment and every choice she makes is so very important.
Mary could be you, she has the same sorts of desires and daydreams as anyone. The first half is so atmospheric, creepy, and tense with the human side of living in a undead world that when it flows into the second action-packed (and a little violent) half you won't be able to put the book down. Don't let the "Teen Book" label fool you either. Carrie Ryan's story is not JUST for the young, it is for everyone who ever wondered what happens to humanity hundreds of years after the Dawn of the Dead.

View all my reviews >>

And then there is Generation Dead, the Anti-Zombie novel, in which the zombies don't want to eat your brains, they'd rather just be your friend.

Generation Dead by Daniel Waters


My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Generation Dead by Daniel Waters is so far beyond my realm of Zombimagination that I can't even tell you why I love it so much. But, I'll try. The basic premise is that for some unknown reason US teens (and only US teens) have started coming back to life after they die (as long as their brains aren't destroyed, a nice traditional zombie-story touch.) Is it because the fear and revulsion that living people feel for the living impaired or differently biotic seems so familiar? Bioism is just another kind of -ism after all. So yeah, the social commentary is great. Awesome.
But the love story is even better. The main character, Phoebe, is so well drawn that I kind of wish she'd been one of my besties in high school. The competitors for her affection are her best friend and typically atypical jockish next door neighbor Adam; and Tommy, who died in a car wreck a few years before and moved with his mom to Oakvale because the high school has a good living impaired program. Tommy is an activist zombie, he's got a blog, joins the football team, and takes Phoebe to a dance all of which are incendiary to those who think that the differently biotic are signs of the apocalypse, or that they must have been so bad that they were rejected from the afterlife. But does Tommy really feel anything for Phoebe, or just for the fact that she is a Trad willing to make the same radical statements about Bioism that he is.
Zombie horror flicks lovers beware, this book is more Guess who's coming to dinner?" than Night of the living dead . The zombies scare people, because they are different and unknown, but a camaraderie even forms amongst some of the DBs and living kids when they participate in a special work-study group.
My one complaint with the novel is that to build tension we see the "bad" guy's point of view and we know that he is unstable and what he is planning. Unfortunately since we spend all this time with the bad guy you'd expect more character development than "he had a girlfriend who died and didn't come back." But, that's all you get, that same little piece of information in not really very different ways. And in real life some people are quite fixated and single-minded, maybe he was painted that way on purpose. Unfortunately it made me more bored than tense.
Anyway, if that is my one complaint in a zombie novel that is more about -isms than it is about running around screaming and trying to find an ax or a shotgun...than you know it is worth a read.



View all my reviews >>

The great thing about all of these books, the reason I know that they all deserve these ratings is that as soon as I finished the book and closed it, I wanted to open it right back up again and start all over. Definitely going to acquire them all for my personal library when I get a chance...and bookshelves.

Wasn't the Umbrella Academy where they train people to fight Zombies in Resident Evil?

The Umbrella Academy, Vol. 1: Apocalypse Suite by Gerard Way


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
There is a device in fiction (and sadly, sometimes in real life) that I can not abide. When adopted/ive family members, for whatever reason, are considered less than and not equal to biological family. Partially because my mom, my uncle, and a cousin I didn't know I had until just a few years ago were all adopted by their parents. Partially because for a number of reasons I would rather adopt than bear a child and I do not want to raise a child in a society that stigmatizes the fact that I chose them. Two things in this otherwise charming series of somewhat disjointed vignettes ruined my enjoyment because of my particular bias. So this is going to be one of those reviews where I get too personal with my reading. Sorry, Shannon Hale.

The first point is one of the 7 siblings adopted makes out with one of the other siblings. These children were raised as brothers and sisters from nearly birth.(This family is comprised from 7 of 43 babies that were spontaneously simultaneously expelled as full formed infants from women who had not shown any signs of pregnancy. Hargreeve's (father figure) could only find these 7 left from that incident and he adopts them all as soon as possible after they are born.)

I don't know about you, but I'm grossed out by sibling makeouts even if the siblings weren't "biologically related." Maybe this was an intentional gross-out factor? The other moment that set me off is not even in the main story arc, but a part of extra stories at the end. A villain asks the rough/broody Wolverinish character,Kraken,if it will bother him to see his whole family killed he says, "Not Really--we're adopted." My blood boiled my vision went hazy and red and I turned into The Awkwardable Hulk. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. Mostly because now I'm going to tear your book--that you obviously worked hard on to prove that you aren't just another alcoholic rock star*--apart.

Of course, I don't know how intentional it is, but if you haven't noticed by now the story is a bit of a spoof (or rip-off, depending on just how much you really hate My Chemical Romance) on the X-men, with the enigmatic "father" Prof.X-type figure being a total Jerkface McGee to his family. Though actually other than the whole raising up the mutanty superpowered kids Hargreeve is more "Dr. Kellogg" from The Road to Wellville than Prof.X. He's such an over-acheiver who expects too much from children that the "unspecial" one actually writes a tell-all memoir. I like that each of the main characters is as dysfunctional as they are special, and each in their own way. And I like that instead of much world-saving the family is mostly showcased at some of their worst moments.

Okay, I have to admit, the adoption thing does bother me, a lot, and the storytelling is choppy at best. But it IS interesting, and there is a talking chimpanzee named Dr. Pogo, whose hideous past is only briefly hinted at (these hints are actually the choppy/disjointedness I'm talking about. I get what they were going for but it really didn't work for me.)

Actually, I must grudgingly admit there were a few little moments of humor in the book too. For instance, I crack up at the repeated use of "space" as a modifying descriptor for "alien." But maybe that is just me.

The art is great. You will not hear a complaint from me about that aspect, except that I actually kind of liked Gerard Way's initial ideas better than Gabriel Ba's final product. The Viole Blanche is well imagined and beautiful, if not the most original idea. But still, to me as a fan of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns and so on and so forth, the whole flawed superhero thing is starting to be as tedious as the whole perfect superhero thing was during the golden age. But to those who only love their superheroes with issues, this book will be right up your ally.


*I know, low blow, but google "drunk Gerard Way" and you will get 138,000 results. I understand sudden fame is difficult to handle and according to internets he is not drinking anymore, good for him.

View all my reviews >>