Books I’ve Loved (and should have reviewed)

 Book Reviews, Books  13 Responses »
Aug 232011
 

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.

August 23: Top Ten Books You Loved But Never Wrote A Review For (either books you loved and couldn’t bring yourself to write a review for or books that you read long before blogging…time to give them a shoutout!)

 

 

1. The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman – I read this long before I had a blog to review it on, but I always wanted to review some of my favorite graphic novels and this would be at the very top. Not only is the writing gorgeous, but the storyline is quite complicated right from the beginning. I can’t pick a favorite storyline, but I love A Midsummer Nights Dream retelling and the storyline with John Constantine. OH! And every time Cain and Abel and the House of Mystery shows up. Love!

 

2. Blankets by Craig Thompson – Whenever someone says to me that they’ve never read graphic novels and they just don’t think they’d be interested in them and aren’t they kind of for kids? I pull out Blankets, which is sort of the everyman’s graphic novel. It’s a beautifully drawn, emotionally complex, harrowing story that is universally the doorway by which non-graphic novel readers can fall in love with this medium of storytelling. The art is easy on the eyes and not too complicated, which helps those not used to visual storytelling, and the themes and plot are quickly accessible, heartbreaking, heartwarming, and believable. Once a person has read Blankets, the whole world of graphic novels is opened up and storytelling is never the same.

3. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood – Not as famous as Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, I’d be so bold as to say it is better at dealing with the same themes. Oryx and Crake is disturbing and devastating and really hard to read but in that way that you can’t put down. I’ve tried before to write a review about it, but every time I try I end up giving too much away or when I give away too little I just sound like a crazy person because it’s that sort of book – so crazy and also believable and that makes the whole thing terrifying to read.

 

4. The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson – Forget the review, can I just ship this book to everyone I know?

 

 

 

5. The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor – This poor series has like, the biggest identity crisis. I’ve seen it shelved in Middle Grade, in YA, and in Fantasy at various stores. Frank Beddor came and spoke at a junior high near my house a couple of years ago. I love this series a lot – it’s a reimagining of Alice in Wonderland and a really spectacular one at that. It pays homage to the original while creating a whole new story and setting unique to itself. The 3 books are supported by a graphic novel series called Hatter M that’s ridiculous in how cool it is and covers a span of time in the first book when the Mad Hatter is part of our world looking for Alice.

6. The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson – One of the first (maybe THE first) YA sci-fi I stumbled across a couple of years ago. The idea is uncomfortable and while I think the world building was a little light, I didn’t really get some of it, but Jenna? Her issues? God, it was so good. I would love to do an in depth analysis about what this book means to things happening in our world right now.

 

 

7. Ash by Melinda Lo – A book that flew seriously under the radar, Ash is a retelling of Cinderella and it is striking in familiarity but also unlike anything I’ve ever read. The prose is mesmerizing, and grief stricken and in search of a fairy tale of her own to save her from the cruelty of her step mother, Ash has the opportunity to be saved by her Prince, or learn to save herself from a huntress named Kaisa. I love the friendship and romance that develops between Ash and Kaisa, a dramatic turn from the whole knight in shining whatever we’ve all grown up with in these fairy stories. I love the bond and I love the power given to Ash. I think every little girl should have to read Ash and know that her dreams can look like anything under the sun.

8. The DUFF by Kody Keplinger – The issues involved in this book, body image, body size, self worth, self esteem, and the use of promiscuity as a way to gauge acceptance and worth – these are all topics that hit a little too close to home but are very important to me. I think that is why it has been so hard for me to write about this book.

 

 

9. The Unidentified by Rae Mariz – Much like The Adoration of Jenna Fox, The Unidentified puts issues we’re dealing with right now in a somewhat unbelievable situation, but it allows us perspective and insight we couldn’t have seen otherwise. And it is a scary insight.

 

 

10. The Piper’s Son by Melina Marchetta – A companion novel to Saving Francesca, it is one of the few books that transcend YA standards in order to deal with topics that cannot otherwise be tackled. While Saving Francesca was written through Francesca’s point of view during high school, The Piper’s Son is written from one of the boys Francesca befriends in the first book. The kids are all older and in college, but they are still dealing with the growing pains of transitioning from young adult to adult, and so despite their ages, it still fits firmly in YA. It is also one of the few books written for boys that is honest and brave and doesn’t condescend to stereotypes in order to sell to reluctant readers. I would say The Piper’s Son is a contemporary little brother to books like The Chocolate War.

 

What have you been up to, my pretties?

 Uncategorized  15 Responses »
Jul 182011
 

Before I get into anything else, I’d just like to say: I have missed you all very, very much.

 

When I decided to take a vacation from the internet, I wasn’t fooling around. I checked my email maybe once a day and I skimmed Twitter for the first few days then not at all. I checked up on the Bransforums every once and a while and I read my favorite online comics, though sometimes belatedly. I didn’t read much news. I didn’t chat.

I wrote about taking blog vacations when you need them not very long before I ended up needing one, but it was sort of a reverse blog vacation. Usually I need a break from the internet and obligations, but this time I just had a lot of stuff going on in my real life that made very little time for anything else. I missed blogging and commiserating with blog friends, but I was too scrambled to form even the most basic coherent sentences.

Originally I wanted to do a lot of writing – which didn’t exactly happen. I wrote some but not as much as I’d wanted. Unexpected events rolled up and I had to do battle. Things happen.

 

Health and Happiness. And sleep.

A couple of months ago my husband was diagnosed with type II diabetes. As a writer, I spend most of my time with my Butt. In. Chair. and while I am technically healthy, I can feel the sedation wearing down on my body. My husband has been doing awesome awesome awesome with his eating habits, but we wanted to do even better and I wanted to improve my eating habits too, so at the beginning of my vacation we embarked a fairly significant lifestyle change. We cut out a lot of our carbs except what my husband needed to control his diabetes, and I eliminated almost all for a short time while I detoxed my body. We eliminated sugars, extra sodium, and all processed food. We started drinking a lot of tea and water and bought a lot of our food from the Farmer’s Market.

And for the first four days I wanted to kill people. With a bazooka, preferably. You really don’t realize how many chemicals you are putting into your body every day by eating crappy food until you start living off fresh vegetables, fruit, fish and lean protein and your body goes into serious withdrawal. I had headaches, I couldn’t sleep, I craved the weirdest food, and I was cranky and mean. Four days of rottenness that I never thought would end.

After the fourth day I experienced a pretty rapid weight loss and everything changed. I felt lighter and brighter and happier. I had cut coffee (temporarily) from my diet and I suddenly no longer needed coffee to get me going in the morning. I woke up with the get-up-and-go I needed and I sustained a pretty consistent energy all day long. I didn’t feel like staying awake until 1am anymore, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, and I stayed asleep all night long, which is a thing my insomniatic body has just never done. Not since I graduated high school have I had normal sleep. It has been a wonderful, life changing experience. I still crave weird food sometimes, and I have indulged twice on sushi, but all in all it has been going exceptionally well.

 

Shakespeare.

I attended Shakespeare on the Green and saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream under a canopy of stars. The performance was amazing and I fell in love with Oberon and his minions. My husband and I stretched out on a blanket, ate cheese and crackers and it was beautiful. It would have been romantic had we not spelled so strongly of OFF bug spray.

 

Like Family.

One big change in my life is that my best friend, costume designer Lydia Dawson, moved into our guest room last weekend so we prepared for her arrival and we’re adjusting where to put all the crap we’d stored in the guest room all this time. The arrangement is temporary as being a costume designer means she’s out the door with her next big job, but it has been fun having her nearby. We’ve been watching a lot of BBC Jane Austen movies and playing a lot of Battlefront II on my XBox.

Oh I also became a red head again.

 

Reading and TV.

I’ve been touched with a bit of ADHD reading lately, unable to finish any book but I’ve started a lot of them. I’m just about done with Boneshaker by Cherie Priest, I’ve started Shine by Lauren Myracle, Ash by Melinda Lo, The Dark and Hollow Places by Carrie Ryan, Fury of the Phoenix by Cindy Pon, and Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King. I need to pump the breaks and actually finish them before they are lost to me forever.

As for tv, thanks to Netflix I’ve been watching Legend of the Seeker and Camelot and re-watching the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series from the beginning. I am unimpressed with the actor who plays Arthur on Camelot – the same actor who will be playing Jace in the Mortal Instruments series. He’s goofy and kind of weird looking. Not that being goofy and kind of weird looking is necessarily bad, but these are two qualities that Jace is not. My interest in the movies has diminished. However, Camelot is awesome because of Merlin. I could just watch 50 minutes of Merlin cavorting about with his schemes and intense stares and maniacal looks of maniacism. He’s evil and adorable at once, what’s not to love?

 

Also? It is hot as HELL here. Outside it feels like I’m melting, like some kind of terrifying horror movie. Just a little time outside and my head goes all funny.

 

Ok, so that’s been my life for the past two weeks. What about you? What have YOU been up to?

 

 

 

A is for Anxiety

 Blogfest  23 Responses »
Apr 012011
 

The year I turned 21 I packed up all of my worldly possessions and my cats and hightailed it out of the Midwest for Boston Mass where I was sure all of my dreams would come true.

Some did.

When I arrived, I moved into an old New England house broken into three apartments. The third apartment was the top two floors and it was here that I lived with several other roommates, all boys.

They were great for the most part, but they were still boys of dubious maturity levels and every April Fool’s Day I lived in abject terror of what might happen to my stuff at the hands of their nefarious imaginations.

For three years I either took April 1st off work or called in sick in order to protect my bedroom from pranks.

My anxiety level was so powerful during those years that it is a miracle I wasn’t medicated. And we’re not talking about plastic bugs hidden under pillows or fake vomit in the fridge. No way. Nothing so pedestrian.

The first year one of my three roommates left town for the weekend over April 1st. Poor fool. I watched as my other two roommates glued every item in his bedroom to the ceiling exactly above where it had been left in the room. Don’t think they didn’t try to figure out a way to put the bed and dresser up there too. And then they used packing tape and duct tape to seal the door.

It took him over an hour to cut his way inside and I promptly left the house when he walked into his brand new Alice in Wonderland bedroom theme.

One year the girl in the basement apartment discovered cherry jello powder loaded into her shower head.

One year a roommate discovered plastic wrap over the toilet bowl. After, of course.

I still wonder about the 8 foot long Burger King Pokemon banner I discovered decorating the stairwell one year.

I stood vigilant for the entire 24 hours each year, bribing my roommates out of the house or distracting them with food and pretty things. But I’m not kidding when I say I lived April 1st for three years as if psychopaths were stalking my every move.

I don’t get anxiety about writing anymore. You’d think that would be my main source, but generally I live anxiety free from day-to-day. I think back to to those three years and the guerrilla warfare and the rest of my worries pale in comparison.

How could I possibly stress about deadlines or bills when I no longer have to worry about climbing our neighbor’s tree to retrieve my bras decorating its branches like party streamers or prying my alarm clock off the ceiling with a letter opener?

 Sometimes we just need a little perspective.


 

Get the button code

——————————————————————————————-

  • Ananda bliss Blog – Gorgeous photos from Europe and a wonderful travel tale to go along with. I was particularly taken by all the food photos and that of the Topkapi Palace. I loved the photos from Istanbul. (It also immediately prompted me to play some They Might Be Giants.)
  • Everything Emerald- A photographers blog! I love photography and these are very nice.
  • Rapturous Randomicity- A writer with great ideas! Also, my eye immediately found on her blog roll that she reads Nathan Bransford. For the win!