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Friday, November 7, 2014
Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly blog hop hosted by Parajunkee's View & Alison Can Read
This week's question: Craziest thing you'd be willing to do for an ARC you are dying to read (aka what would you doooo-ooo for that ARC you want? *think of the Klondike bar music*
To be honest I'm kind of ambivalent about ARCs because I'm a mood reader. It's great when I'm allowed access to something I'm interested in on Netgalley, but I try to keep my requests selective because if they pile up the reading & reviewing becomes more of a stressor than a pleasure. Also if I don't get access to an ARC, oh well, it'll be released eventually. That being said, there are always new releases I'm dying to read and right now these two top the list:
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I was lucky enough to get chapter samplers for these two books the last day of NYCC, it's only made me more anxious to read the rest. Uprooted seems to only have a selective few physical ARCs, I'm hoping it'll go up on Edelweiss at some point. It comes out June 30. JUNE! BEA 2015 will have come and gone by then. Shadow Scale may only have a very limited ARC release due to the popularity of Seraphina (an excellent book).
Nevertheless, for these ARCs I'd be willing to do any social media promotion Random House asked, and as for going extreme lengths, I wouldn't say no to holding a advertisement in Times Square for a few hours, perhaps in costume. I'd fit right in with all the Elmos, Spidermen, Naked Cowboys, etc. wandering around there.
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
By Gail Carriger
Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Release Date: 11/4/14
Disclaimer: Copy received from the publisher via Netgalley. This does not affect the content of the review.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
Class is back in session...
Sophronia continues her second year
at finishing school in style--with a steel-bladed fan secreted in the folds of
her ball gown, of course. Such a fashionable choice of weapon comes in handy
when Sophronia, her best friend Dimity, sweet sootie Soap, and the charming
Lord Felix Mersey stowaway on a train to return their classmate Sidheag to her
werewolf pack in Scotland. No one suspected what--or who--they would find
aboard that suspiciously empty train. Sophronia uncovers a plot that threatens
to throw all of London into chaos and she must decide where her loyalties lie,
once and for all.
Gather your poison, steel tipped
quill, and the rest of your school supplies and join Mademoiselle Geraldine's
proper young killing machines in the third rousing installment in the New
York Times bestselling Finishing School Series by steampunk author, Gail
Carriger.
Review: This third installment in the
Finishing School series is as charming, funny, and action-packed as its
predecessors. I find these books to be
a lot of fun; a farcical comedy of manners blended with spy vs. spy thriller
and set in a steampunk world inhabited by supernatural creatures. The light,
humorous tone, the contrast between the strict social rules of the Victorian
age and the madcap adventures undertaken by the spies in training make for very
entertaining reading. That said, it’s the heroine, Sophronia, that really makes
this series.
Sophronia
is a competent, intelligent character who excels at being an “intelligencer”
yet can still make mistakes and is uncertain about what she wants. She’s a fully
fleshed out character who matures with every book. After being forced to face
the tragic consequences of her actions in Curtsies
& Conspiracies, Waistcoats & Weaponry has a more mature Sophronia
pondering her future as she must someday decide what side she is on when it
comes to the espionage game.
Complicating this decision are
Sophronia’s feelings towards her friend Soap, a worker in the engineering room
of the floating finishing school, and her flirtation with Lord Felix Mersey, a handsome nobleman with close ties to her enemies.
Yes, there is a love triangle, more central to this book than in any book
previously, but I feel it’s written well, gives the boys some added depth, and
rather than cause the narrative to stall Sophronia’s struggle with her feelings
allows for great character development (plus I was very happy with her ultimate choice).
The
other characters, particularly Sophronia’s friends Dimity and Sidheag (strong
female friendships, another thing I love about this series) are given time to
shine, though I would have liked more of Sidheag's story, even knowing what the future holds for her in The Parasol Protectorate series. The plot provides plenty of action in the form of a train heist, a game of chicken with a dirigible, assorted disguises, etc. and it wraps things up nicely yet leaves plenty of threads dangling for future installments.
Recommended for those who enjoy
historical romance, particularly the Victorian era, humorous adventures,
awesome heroines, and the idea of a mechanical dog named Bumbersnoot.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-thon is taking place October 18 and I'm happy to be able to participate. Here's a stack of books I'll be choosing from:
I've been in a bit of a slump lately, hopefully this will shake me out of it.
Anyone participating in this read-a-thon? What books will you be reading?
Update #1: Hour 8: Finished Authority and am halfway through Acceptance, the Southern Reach books were a great choice for the read-a-thon. Took a break for a run at hour 4 and listened to Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy on audio.
Mini Challenge: Name Your Reading Challenge at The Geeky Blogger's Book Blog
The Accidental Authority Acceptance Box
Update #1: Hour 8: Finished Authority and am halfway through Acceptance, the Southern Reach books were a great choice for the read-a-thon. Took a break for a run at hour 4 and listened to Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy on audio.
Mini Challenge: Name Your Reading Challenge at The Geeky Blogger's Book Blog
The Accidental Authority Acceptance Box
Mid-Event Survey:
1. What are you reading right now? Finishing Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer
2. How many books have you read so far?
Just one, soon to be two.
3. What book are you most looking forward to for the
second half of the Read-a-thon?
I'll probably pick up Holly Black's The Darkest Part of the Forest, I've been looking forward to reading for a while.
4. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with
those? A few, mostly phone calls and laundry that won't fold itself, etc. It's good to rest my eyes a little. Also I spent a surprising amount of time on twitter.
5. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far?
I'm surprised how relaxed I've been about meeting reading goals this year. Though, I am going to try to read into the night, I have a stock of tea to help me maybe finish one more book.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by The Broke and the Bookish
This week's topic: Top Ten Books that were hard for me to read. For various reasons
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2. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce - I borrowed this from my English major sister the summer before I started HS. Did not know what I was getting into.
3. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf - I like Woolf, but this one's more opaque than say, Mrs. Dalloway. Wrote a college term paper digging out meaning.
4. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James - I chose this for a read-a-thon because it's short and that was a mistake. James's sentences tend to be labyrinthine, though interesting.
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6. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton - The only book I read for school I straight up hated.
7. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - The best dystopia, in my opinion, but terrifying in its plausibility.
8. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez - another book I borrowed from my sister many years ago, I feel a lot of this went over my head. I should re-read it, I'd get more out of it now that I'm more familiar with magical realism.
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10. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - I loved this more than I thought I would, but I read it bit by bit over two months, setting it aside for other books whenever descriptions of Levin's in-depth love of farming got too boring but always picking it up again.
Monday, September 29, 2014
By Lauren Oliver
Published by Ecco
Publication Date: September 23, 2014
Copy received from: Publisher at BEA
My Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
The New York Times bestselling author of Before I Fall and the Delirium
trilogy makes her brilliant adult debut with this mesmerizing story in the
tradition of The Lovely Bones, Her Fearful Symmetry, and The
Ocean at the End of the Lane—a tale of family, ghosts, secrets, and
mystery, in which the lives of the living and the dead intersect in shocking,
surprising, and moving ways
Wealthy Richard Walker has just died, leaving behind his country
house full of rooms packed with the detritus of a lifetime. His estranged
family—bitter ex-wife Caroline, troubled teenage son Trenton, and unforgiving
daughter Minna—have arrived for their inheritance.
But the Walkers are not alone. Prim Alice and the cynical
Sandra, long dead former residents bound to the house, linger within its
claustrophobic walls. Jostling for space, memory, and supremacy, they observe
the family, trading barbs and reminiscences about their past lives. Though
their voices cannot be heard, Alice and Sandra speak through the house
itself—in the hiss of the radiator, a creak in the stairs, the dimming of a
light bulb.
The living and dead are each haunted by painful truths that will
soon surface with explosive force. When a new ghost appears, and Trenton begins
to communicate with her, the spirit and human worlds collide—with cataclysmic
results.
Elegantly constructed and brilliantly paced, Rooms is an
enticing and imaginative ghost story and a searing family drama that is as
haunting as it is resonant.
Review: This melancholy gothic tale
features ghosts, and uncanny happenings, but the horrors are very much based in
reality. The ghosts are not what the Walker family is primarily haunted by, it’s
the horror and disappointments in their lives.. A sense of sadness permeates
the novel as characters, both living and dead, are forced to reveal their
secrets and deal with their grief, not only over death, but the loss of
innocence, love, potential, and hope. Loneliness is also prevalent, whether the
loneliness of death or the loneliness that comes from holding in a terrible secret.
One of my favorite aspects of this
story is the structure: the novel is divided into sections each featuring a
room of the house. Over the course of this section, the characters, whether the
remaining members of the Walker family or the two ghostly former residents, confront
the memories of events that have taken place in that room, things they have
kept hidden from their loved ones or refused to admit, even to themselves. Be
warned: suicide, domestic abuse, and child molestation are all included in the
house’s history.
As far as the characters inhabiting this
haunted house, I can’t say I found them likable but I did empathize with their
grief and understood their various ways of coping. They have all been hurt by
life and, when it comes to the Walker family, this damage has prevented them
from connecting with each other. Even the ghost characters felt very real, flawed
in a way that doesn’t leave much room for likability but is interesting and
honest.
I do have one or two nitpicks: one
being the teen girl character that appears out of nowhere so that Trenton has
someone outside of the house to interact with, the second being the suddenness with
which some later revelations are made: to the point where I was wondering if my
ARC was missing pages. But these are minor, and on the whole I found this story
engaging. There are no easy solutions to the Walker family’s problems, but they
do unburden themselves of the weight of what’s haunting them and there is a
sort of catharsis. A definite recommended read for those looking for a more
contemplative haunted house story.
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Friday, November 7, 2014
Feature & Follow Friday: What would you do? Edition
Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly blog hop hosted by Parajunkee's View & Alison Can Read
This week's question: Craziest thing you'd be willing to do for an ARC you are dying to read (aka what would you doooo-ooo for that ARC you want? *think of the Klondike bar music*
To be honest I'm kind of ambivalent about ARCs because I'm a mood reader. It's great when I'm allowed access to something I'm interested in on Netgalley, but I try to keep my requests selective because if they pile up the reading & reviewing becomes more of a stressor than a pleasure. Also if I don't get access to an ARC, oh well, it'll be released eventually. That being said, there are always new releases I'm dying to read and right now these two top the list:
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|
I was lucky enough to get chapter samplers for these two books the last day of NYCC, it's only made me more anxious to read the rest. Uprooted seems to only have a selective few physical ARCs, I'm hoping it'll go up on Edelweiss at some point. It comes out June 30. JUNE! BEA 2015 will have come and gone by then. Shadow Scale may only have a very limited ARC release due to the popularity of Seraphina (an excellent book).
Nevertheless, for these ARCs I'd be willing to do any social media promotion Random House asked, and as for going extreme lengths, I wouldn't say no to holding a advertisement in Times Square for a few hours, perhaps in costume. I'd fit right in with all the Elmos, Spidermen, Naked Cowboys, etc. wandering around there.
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Release Day Review: Waistcoats & Weaponry (Finishing School #3)
By Gail Carriger
Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Release Date: 11/4/14
Disclaimer: Copy received from the publisher via Netgalley. This does not affect the content of the review.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
Class is back in session...
Sophronia continues her second year
at finishing school in style--with a steel-bladed fan secreted in the folds of
her ball gown, of course. Such a fashionable choice of weapon comes in handy
when Sophronia, her best friend Dimity, sweet sootie Soap, and the charming
Lord Felix Mersey stowaway on a train to return their classmate Sidheag to her
werewolf pack in Scotland. No one suspected what--or who--they would find
aboard that suspiciously empty train. Sophronia uncovers a plot that threatens
to throw all of London into chaos and she must decide where her loyalties lie,
once and for all.
Gather your poison, steel tipped
quill, and the rest of your school supplies and join Mademoiselle Geraldine's
proper young killing machines in the third rousing installment in the New
York Times bestselling Finishing School Series by steampunk author, Gail
Carriger.
Review: This third installment in the
Finishing School series is as charming, funny, and action-packed as its
predecessors. I find these books to be
a lot of fun; a farcical comedy of manners blended with spy vs. spy thriller
and set in a steampunk world inhabited by supernatural creatures. The light,
humorous tone, the contrast between the strict social rules of the Victorian
age and the madcap adventures undertaken by the spies in training make for very
entertaining reading. That said, it’s the heroine, Sophronia, that really makes
this series.
Sophronia
is a competent, intelligent character who excels at being an “intelligencer”
yet can still make mistakes and is uncertain about what she wants. She’s a fully
fleshed out character who matures with every book. After being forced to face
the tragic consequences of her actions in Curtsies
& Conspiracies, Waistcoats & Weaponry has a more mature Sophronia
pondering her future as she must someday decide what side she is on when it
comes to the espionage game.
Complicating this decision are
Sophronia’s feelings towards her friend Soap, a worker in the engineering room
of the floating finishing school, and her flirtation with Lord Felix Mersey, a handsome nobleman with close ties to her enemies.
Yes, there is a love triangle, more central to this book than in any book
previously, but I feel it’s written well, gives the boys some added depth, and
rather than cause the narrative to stall Sophronia’s struggle with her feelings
allows for great character development (plus I was very happy with her ultimate choice).
The
other characters, particularly Sophronia’s friends Dimity and Sidheag (strong
female friendships, another thing I love about this series) are given time to
shine, though I would have liked more of Sidheag's story, even knowing what the future holds for her in The Parasol Protectorate series. The plot provides plenty of action in the form of a train heist, a game of chicken with a dirigible, assorted disguises, etc. and it wraps things up nicely yet leaves plenty of threads dangling for future installments.
Recommended for those who enjoy
historical romance, particularly the Victorian era, humorous adventures,
awesome heroines, and the idea of a mechanical dog named Bumbersnoot.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books to inspire Halloween spirit!
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.
This week's topic: Top Ten books to put you in the Halloween spirit. Here are some of my favorite books that will send shivers up your spine:
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Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Dewey's Read-a-Thon Sign-Up
Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-thon is taking place October 18 and I'm happy to be able to participate. Here's a stack of books I'll be choosing from:
I've been in a bit of a slump lately, hopefully this will shake me out of it.
Anyone participating in this read-a-thon? What books will you be reading?
Update #1: Hour 8: Finished Authority and am halfway through Acceptance, the Southern Reach books were a great choice for the read-a-thon. Took a break for a run at hour 4 and listened to Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy on audio.
Mini Challenge: Name Your Reading Challenge at The Geeky Blogger's Book Blog
The Accidental Authority Acceptance Box
Update #1: Hour 8: Finished Authority and am halfway through Acceptance, the Southern Reach books were a great choice for the read-a-thon. Took a break for a run at hour 4 and listened to Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy on audio.
Mini Challenge: Name Your Reading Challenge at The Geeky Blogger's Book Blog
The Accidental Authority Acceptance Box
Mid-Event Survey:
1. What are you reading right now? Finishing Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer
2. How many books have you read so far?
Just one, soon to be two.
3. What book are you most looking forward to for the
second half of the Read-a-thon?
I'll probably pick up Holly Black's The Darkest Part of the Forest, I've been looking forward to reading for a while.
4. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with
those? A few, mostly phone calls and laundry that won't fold itself, etc. It's good to rest my eyes a little. Also I spent a surprising amount of time on twitter.
5. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far?
I'm surprised how relaxed I've been about meeting reading goals this year. Though, I am going to try to read into the night, I have a stock of tea to help me maybe finish one more book.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Top Ten Tuesday: Hard Books Edition
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by The Broke and the Bookish
This week's topic: Top Ten Books that were hard for me to read. For various reasons
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2. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce - I borrowed this from my English major sister the summer before I started HS. Did not know what I was getting into.
3. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf - I like Woolf, but this one's more opaque than say, Mrs. Dalloway. Wrote a college term paper digging out meaning.
4. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James - I chose this for a read-a-thon because it's short and that was a mistake. James's sentences tend to be labyrinthine, though interesting.
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6. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton - The only book I read for school I straight up hated.
7. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - The best dystopia, in my opinion, but terrifying in its plausibility.
8. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez - another book I borrowed from my sister many years ago, I feel a lot of this went over my head. I should re-read it, I'd get more out of it now that I'm more familiar with magical realism.
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10. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - I loved this more than I thought I would, but I read it bit by bit over two months, setting it aside for other books whenever descriptions of Levin's in-depth love of farming got too boring but always picking it up again.
Monday, September 29, 2014
Review: Rooms by Lauren Oliver
By Lauren Oliver
Published by Ecco
Publication Date: September 23, 2014
Copy received from: Publisher at BEA
My Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
The New York Times bestselling author of Before I Fall and the Delirium
trilogy makes her brilliant adult debut with this mesmerizing story in the
tradition of The Lovely Bones, Her Fearful Symmetry, and The
Ocean at the End of the Lane—a tale of family, ghosts, secrets, and
mystery, in which the lives of the living and the dead intersect in shocking,
surprising, and moving ways
Wealthy Richard Walker has just died, leaving behind his country
house full of rooms packed with the detritus of a lifetime. His estranged
family—bitter ex-wife Caroline, troubled teenage son Trenton, and unforgiving
daughter Minna—have arrived for their inheritance.
But the Walkers are not alone. Prim Alice and the cynical
Sandra, long dead former residents bound to the house, linger within its
claustrophobic walls. Jostling for space, memory, and supremacy, they observe
the family, trading barbs and reminiscences about their past lives. Though
their voices cannot be heard, Alice and Sandra speak through the house
itself—in the hiss of the radiator, a creak in the stairs, the dimming of a
light bulb.
The living and dead are each haunted by painful truths that will
soon surface with explosive force. When a new ghost appears, and Trenton begins
to communicate with her, the spirit and human worlds collide—with cataclysmic
results.
Elegantly constructed and brilliantly paced, Rooms is an
enticing and imaginative ghost story and a searing family drama that is as
haunting as it is resonant.
Review: This melancholy gothic tale
features ghosts, and uncanny happenings, but the horrors are very much based in
reality. The ghosts are not what the Walker family is primarily haunted by, it’s
the horror and disappointments in their lives.. A sense of sadness permeates
the novel as characters, both living and dead, are forced to reveal their
secrets and deal with their grief, not only over death, but the loss of
innocence, love, potential, and hope. Loneliness is also prevalent, whether the
loneliness of death or the loneliness that comes from holding in a terrible secret.
One of my favorite aspects of this
story is the structure: the novel is divided into sections each featuring a
room of the house. Over the course of this section, the characters, whether the
remaining members of the Walker family or the two ghostly former residents, confront
the memories of events that have taken place in that room, things they have
kept hidden from their loved ones or refused to admit, even to themselves. Be
warned: suicide, domestic abuse, and child molestation are all included in the
house’s history.
As far as the characters inhabiting this
haunted house, I can’t say I found them likable but I did empathize with their
grief and understood their various ways of coping. They have all been hurt by
life and, when it comes to the Walker family, this damage has prevented them
from connecting with each other. Even the ghost characters felt very real, flawed
in a way that doesn’t leave much room for likability but is interesting and
honest.
I do have one or two nitpicks: one
being the teen girl character that appears out of nowhere so that Trenton has
someone outside of the house to interact with, the second being the suddenness with
which some later revelations are made: to the point where I was wondering if my
ARC was missing pages. But these are minor, and on the whole I found this story
engaging. There are no easy solutions to the Walker family’s problems, but they
do unburden themselves of the weight of what’s haunting them and there is a
sort of catharsis. A definite recommended read for those looking for a more
contemplative haunted house story.
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