ann

Title: Ash Editor: Malinda Lo Format: ARC Available Formats: TC, Kindle, Barnes and Noble eBook Page Count: 264 Genre: Young Adult/Fantasy Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers Pub. Date: September 1, 2009 ISBN-13: 9780316040099 Series: Stand Alone Rating: 6 of 10

Summary:
Ash is a re-imagining of Cinderella's story. Only in this story, the prince isn't nearly as important. And in this story, instead of a kindly old fairy godmother, there's a fairy with darker intentions. Ash is the story of a girl's loss, coming of age, the dangerous temptations of the fairy world, fairy tales, finding yourself, and falling in love. The story revolves around Aisling, called Ash. Like the familiar fairy tale, her parents die and she is left in the care of a cruel stepmother. However, Ash's story focuses on overcoming her grief and learning to live again more than finding her fairy tale "prince".

TL;DR Version:
Another take on Cinderella, only with darker fairies and a female love interest. The book offers many unique and interesting ideas with competent writing, but appears to rely on the fairy tale it didn't need.

( Read the rest at BLA? )

The IPA has only 100 some phonemes, if I understand correctly. But there are clearly more sounds than this in all the spoken languages of the world. One language of Africa has 40+ clicks in it alone. I would be interested to know how many there are total, and I would REALLY be interested in being able to hear them all.

I'm unoriginal.


Meet Chuck Klosterman, and if you have already met him - well, shake hands and say hi. He is on a journey to visit the places where famous rockstars have died; it is motivated mostly because his boss at Spin told him to, and because he is rather elitist. He says he is not throughout this whole book, but really he is mostly a music snob.
The book is entertaining, because  you are reading about  himself.
He ends up going on a quest almost, talking about his inability to not be in love.
He snorts cocaine in a cemetery.
He talks to a man who thinks that the only way to really know someone is to see them angry. Really angry, and drunk.
He visits an old friend. They agree never to see each other again.


If someone is a music person - you can understand some bits of a person by knowing their music.
Meet Chuck Klosterman, and his fascination with death and music.

Zoe can't help but be lonely. Her mother is dying of cancer, and she feels as if her father is pushing her away as a result. Her only real friend is moving out of state. Normal tasks, such as eating, writing and sleeping at a normal times, are becoming difficult for her. Then, everything changes when she meets Simon, a strange boy with pale skin and silver hair. Eventually, Zoe befriends him, and learns that he is actually a vampire. Simon knows the pain of loosing a mother, and is tracking the creature that murdered her hundreds of years ago. Zoe agrees to help him, but will the task prove too dangerous?

I'm beginning to notice that books that I read at 13/14 are reappearing in popular culture. It's a strange feeling. I go to Walmart and see the Night World series proudly displayed. I turn on the TV and can watch an adaptation of the Vampire Dairies. I go to my local book chain and there's Christopher Pike's Last Vampire Series. The resurgence of such titles is of course due to the popularity of the Twilight Saga. One of the books that have been recently repackaged is The Silver Kiss by Annette Curtis Klause, originally published in 1990. Like Twilight, the focus is on a teenage girl facing a dramatic change in her young life (Bella's change was moving to Forks. Zoe's change is the forthcoming death of her mother) who becomes caught up with a strangely beautiful boy who happens to be a vampire.

The Silver Kiss is probably the weakest of the three Annette Curtis Klause books I've read (the other two being the werewolf story Blood and Chocolate, and the sci-fi novel Alien Secrets). Although it's a nicely written novel, occasionally it can wander too deeply into the melodramatic, and Simon's character felt inconstant at times. Still, there are many things that it does very well. It captures the emotional trauma and confusion a young girl about to lose her mother must go through. It manages to tell a story about vampires that can hold up to the test of time. The fact that it is still being read and enjoyed almost twenty years later proves that. Not to mention that it has a villain that is truly creepy. One thing I found refreshing was how the author treats the subject of death, always a big subject when dealing with books about cancer, or vampires. Klause chooses not to treat it lightly, or romantically, but instead very directly, leaving no room open for the option of an afterlife. Although I am a Christian myself and see things differently, I have to appreciate the honesty in which Klause presents her beliefs, and how she views this step as natural and necessary for this world.

I originally read this book at about thirteen and fell completely in love with it. With a slightly more mature view, I can see that it does have it's flaws, but still feel that the book is solid.

Rating: four stars
Length: 198 pages
Source: paperbackswap
Similar Books: Try Companions of the Night by Vivian Vande Velde (my review), Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, or Blood and Chocolate by the same author (my review)
Other books I've read by this author: Alien Secrets, Blood and Chocolate

xposted to bookish  and temporaryworlds

Oryx and Crake opens to find “Snowman,” alone and malnourished in a tree. Believing himself (and convincing us) he’s the last remaining human on the planet, he watches over a curious group of multi-colored beings known to us only as the “Children of Crake” and the “Children of Oryx.” Their odd behavior and impressionable nature has both entertained and exasperated Snowman up to this point. While he’s relished the power he’s had helping them navigate what remains of the world around them, he’s also found the lack of normal conversation frustrating. In his lingering despair, he traces his steps in time as he narrates through memory the events leading up to the mysterious plague that’s wiped out humanity. He walks through the broken city, avoiding wolvogs and pigoons--weird genetic amalgamations bred for specific traits and features--and finds in the wasteland the memories of a better time when the deserted streets he now walks flourished with people, activity, and promise.

One of the first things we learn is Snowman’s name isn’t really Snowman--it’s Jimmy. Before he reduced himself to walking around on a beach wrapped in a bed sheet, he lived on a compound with his parents, two OrganInc Farms scientists churning out the latest ideas for growing human-tissue organs and implementing their strategy on things like pigoons--a pig genetically altered to grow several organs at once that would then be harvested for human use. The genius of the project isn’t just the end product, it’s the guilt-free sustainability of the pigs as continued organ hosts. Once a product is reaped for use, the pig isn’t rendered useless--it continues to live and grow more organs like a tomato plant. The perpetua of the Pigoon project served to satiate concerns over waste and humane treatment. After all, who would want an organ harvested from an abused or poorly treated animal?

What drives Oryx and Crake forward is the desire to find out who Oryx and Crake are, what caused the plague that killed so many people, what Jimmy’s past has to do with his present, who are the weird, child-like beings Snowman surrounds himself with and why. What begins as a tale backward in time to Jimmy’s childhood unravels into a long demonstration of the tortuous back and forth game Snowman plays with himself: what if he had seen the clues earlier? What if he had said or done something? Could he have actually done anything? This recollection of events that turns into our narrative is a type of self-flagellation as Snowman tries once more to rid himself of the guilt of hindsight.

( Read the rest! )

I selected Ship of Fools, by Richard Paul Russo, randomly at the used bookstore while searching for a book by another author. The simple cover and trade paperback size caught my eye, so I read the cover blurb and skimmed the pages. A giant spaceship with a crew who forgot their purpose, an abandoned colony, rows of corpses, a dead alien ship… that all caught my eye. However, I don’t know if this qualifies as hardcore or “pure” sci-fi. Not all science fiction has to be monsters and space babes, and Ship of Fools is definitely not that. It’s focus is more about the people and the aliens only make a token appearance. It's not even that "actiony". It’s more, in my opinion, a mystery-drama set in space.Let me backtrack, though, and provide the review from Publisher’s Weekly:

Link to the Rest of the Review

Author: Khaled Hosseini
Pages: 402
Published in: 2007
Grade: 3/5

I am one of the five people on this earth who hasn't yet read The Kite Runner, so A Thousand Splendid Suns was was my introduction to Hosseini.

It's definitely a very compelling read and whatever flaws it may have, it's one that will keep you wanting to turn the pages; I bought it yesterday (the shopkeeper advising me to "read it slowly... it's such a beautiful, beautiful story,") and read it all in one sitting. It's a highly emotional account of the friendship between two Afghan women, Mariam and Laila, and their struggle to survive amidst war, poverty, hunger and eventually the ominous ascension of the Taliban.

Parts One and Two simply kept me glued and I couldn't tear my eyes away, but I felt differently about the second half of the book; the characters lost quite a bit of depth and the author seemed to be adding on depression just for the sake of it (and I say this as a huge fan of Thomas Hardy). I also thought that part of the ending was really quite predictable, albeit very moving. As part of the book is also dedicated to telling the recent history of Afghanistan I felt as if the the many historical accounts were to blame for the sometimes poor development of the main characters, making it difficult at times to empathise with them despite it fleshing out their backgrounds. The prose itself, I have to admit, is not that remarkable either, and it's my opinion that Hosseini is a better storyteller than he is a writer. Because of this, as with The Lovely Bones, it's not something that I imagine myself going back to re-read many times over despite having liked it the first time around.

It's still a book that I would recommend, however, and it does have some very strong female characters which is always a plus for me. It goes without saying that it's an immensely interesting and emotional perspective on what women have to go through living under the Taliban, and how the Western world views Afghanistan and its people.

I've just done a thirty-minute interview about LAadan for the BBC, as part of a segment they were doing on conlangs; other guests on the segment included Arika Okrent, author of _In the Land of Invented Languages_, someone talking about Klingon, and perhaps a few more. The interview went very well; however, I have no idea how much of the thirty minutes will actually be used.

The show is called "Word of Mouth", and this episode goes out on 5 January at 16:00 [GMT]; you can also listen again for a week at the Radio 4 website which is www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 .

Just posted Review: Curse the Dawn by Karen Chance

Title: Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
Pages: 440
Rating: 5/5
Summary: (from Goodreads) Prince Aleksander, would-be heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, is on the run. His own people have turned on him. His title is worthless. All he has is a battletorn war machine and a loyal crew of men.

Deryn Sharp is a commoner, disguised as a boy in the British Air Service. She's a brilliant airman. But her secret is in constant danger of being discovered.

With World War I brewing, Alek and Deryn's paths cross in the most unexpected way…taking them on a fantastical, around-the-world adventure that will change both their lives forever.

Review: ( Actually, I kept it pretty spoiler-free because it's a new book. I cut to save your friends list. )

You can read this review and all my others on my Goodreads account.
Books so far this year: 50/50   :D
Currently reading: Paper Towns by John Green

What are your favorite book-related podcasts? In particular I would love something which looks at all the vampire stuff that's out at the moment -such as Twilight which I loved or perhaps even the Sookie Stackhouse series which I've just started reading- or else something which just looks at books in general. At the moment I already listen to both PotterCast and MuggleCast, the later being my favorite so I don't need any more Harry Potter podcasts. Thanks in advance.

Title: Next Author: Michael Crichton Genre: Science Fiction/Medical The first of my completed reads this week was Crichton's typical medical-terminology filled Next, which despite not being my normal, was excellent. I'm not usually into this type of thing, but my s.o. if (being a scientist) and after having taken History of Medicine, I was thrilled when he let me read it. The book follows a handful of researchers, doctors, politicians, lawyers, and general no-good, greedy men out to patent everyone's genes for their own benefit. Most of the characters leave you wanting to shoot them, and by the time the book is done, you'll never want to see another doctor again. I don't. The most interesting, at least for me, was the intricate weave of fact and fiction throughout the novel. I was constantly researching to see what was true, what wasn't, and always looking at the sources he listed to see the actual documents he used. I think he's highlighted a major problem in American medical practices in a fun way-a book! Title: Demon in the Freezer Author: Richard Preston Genre: Nonfiction/Medical This is actually a nonfiction book that reads like a science fiction novel, much like watching a Hollywood version of an Ebola outbreak. The book details the eradication of smallpox, research on the disease, Ebola and Marburg outbreaks, and finally, biowarfare in the form of Anthrax letters in the 2000s. It was recommended by my professor, and I confess, I never put it down until I was finished with it. If anyone is interested in how the CDC, NIH, USAMRIID, and all the other major research facilities work with level 4 diseases, this is the book to read. It's low on terminology, as well, which makes it user-friendly. Just knowing that these are real people, you feel the connection that much more, through the Ebola scares when a needle goes through a glove, to the fear when 9/11 hits and Anthrax arrives in D.C.'s big government office buildings. Title: The Zookeeper's Wife Author: Diane Ackerman Genre: Nonfiction/War Can I say how much I enjoyed finally getting to read this book? I loved Antonina, I loved the spirit of the Polish (probably because I'm half!), and I loved the idea that you can truly make it through anything if you try. There's not a lot to say about this book, seeing as everyone's literally read it, but if you haven't, get it! 

Hi!

Can anyone please recommend some Tudor fiction or non-fiction? I haven't read any yet, and I've recentley started getting into it thanks to the Showtime series.

Any help is appreciated! I'm especially intersted in Anne Boleyn. =D

I hate to keep dominating this board, but no one else seems to post much. ;-)

I was just wondering how many of you are actually fluent in your own conlang. I want to become fluent in mine, which is part of the reason I'm not straying too far from the grammatical structures I'm most familiar with (those of English, Spanish, French and Hebrew). My vocabulary has a few loanwords but mostly I'm making that up on my own. Vocabulary has always been easy for me to learn, but grammar is another story.

Anyway, how did you reach your degree of fluency? I assume it's just like learning any other language. You would think that since a conlang is your own creation, it would be easier to learn, but I'm finding that doesn't really seem to be the case.

The cut is due to BIG SPOILERS for the first Zodiac book, The Scent of Shadows. There are no spoilers for The Taste of Night.

( Read more... )

Rating: four and a half stars
Length: 440 pages
Source: paperbackswap
Similar Books: For similar works of urban fantasy, check out Kim Harrison's Hollow Series, and Jim Butcher's Dresden Files.
Other books I've read by this author: The Scent of Shadows

xposted tobookish and temporaryworlds

Title: Coraline
Auther: Neil Gaiman
Genre: Fantasy, Horror
Pages: 162
Rating: 5/5

from the blurb

When Coraline steps through a door to find another house strangely similar to her own (only better), things seem marvelous. But there's another mother there, and another father, and they want her to stay and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go.

Coraline will have to fight with all her wits and courage if she is to save herself and return to her ordinary life.

review

Hi everyone,
I'm looking for recommendations on romance books where the main couple is extremely devoted to each other. It doesn't even have to be JUST romance, as long as the characters are loyal and lovey. I'm just tired of at least 1 person in the couple cheating or thinking about being with someone else. It happens in just about every book I read. :) Thank you!

Warning: This review contains spoilers

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold is about a 14-year-old girl named Susie Salmon who is raped and murdered by a neighbour (George Harvey) and then spends her time in heaven watching over her family and friends on earth.

Sebold's novel starts out strong -in particular I thought that the rape and murder scene was very realistic- but it quickly falls flat from that scene onwards. I know that a lot of people have commented on Sebold's poor writing skills but this wasn't my biggest problem with this novel. The only thing that bothered me in that respect was that we are never really given an actual description of George Harvey except that he was really creapy and liked to build dollhouses for a living. In fact my biggest problem with the novel was the plot, the unrealistic characters etc, and a very disatifying anti-climatic ending.

The plot was frustrating because after the rape/murder scene the story seems to focus too much on the boring lives of Susie's family and friends and less on actually solving her murder. I know that the novel is supposed to explore themes such as loosing a loved one and learning how to overcome that loss but I found that this made the story really dull whereas it could've been a really scary ghost story.

The characters are also very unrealistic. In particular I found it difficult to believe that a women who had spent years longing to be a teacher decides to spend eight years working in a winery. In fact the only characters that I thought were realistic at all were Jack and Buckley. And as for character development there was none. For instance we have Lindsey who reacts to Susie's death by emmotionally detatching herself from everyone around her and although this is perfictly understandable we never learn whether or not she ever opens up to other people again.

There were also some characters which didn't really add much to the story such as Holly and Franny who rarely appear at all, and some really confusing characters such as Ruth who may or may not be a lesbian/phychic. That's not to say that those characters weren't important but I think that Franny expecially should have played a bigger role than she did -the girl was raped and murdered for crying out loud! so if that doesn't require much intake councelling then I don't know what does. We also don't learn much about Holly and Franny's past which wich could have been interesting. However I thought it was interesting that we get to see George Harvey's past although I think this could have been explored in a bit more detail.

As for the ending it was very dissatifying because George Harvey is not captured and the one moment where Susie has the chance to reveal the location of her body she decides to spend that moment having sex with her highschool crush. It was this scene that really turned me off the novel.

However Sebold's depiction of heaven is interesting. In particular I thought that idea of "intake councellors" was unique. It was also unique because we don't get to see God or any other heavenly beings such as Angels etc, and we learn that people can have whatever they want if they wish for it. But as interesting and unique as Sebold's depiction of heaven is we never really learn whether Suzie is actually in heaven or if she is in a limbo-like state, although the latter is implied.

So if you've considered reading this because you thought it was a scary ghost story then don't because it will just dissapoint you. However if you like books which explore family relationships then this might just be the book for you.

I apologize in advance if this kind of post isn't allowed.

I am now the owner of a brand new hardcover set of the Percy Jackson and The Olympians series. Unfortunately, I already own these books. I'm looking to donate them, as well as a couple dozen books from my Children's Lit. class.

Does anyone know of any children's charities that will accept them? I would like to give them away to a Christmas-based charity, but that's not a necessity.

I live in the Houston, Texas area.

I've already called Barnes and Noble, but they only accept donations that have been purchased in-house.

Thank you,
Emily

Cross-posted to bookshare .