The Weekly Wanting (26)

Well, it's that time of the week again - time for a Weekly Wanting!

This has been a real roller coaster of a week for me. I'm working on a post about Book Expo America (Do's and Don'ts), I'm working on some articles, and - best of all! - I found out I won a two-night stay at the Library Hotel in New York City! I have always wanted to stay in the Library Hotel ever since I found out it existed - every floor is a section of the Dewey Decimal system, every room pertains to a section of literature - Poetry, Fairy Tales, History - everything about this hotel is about books, books, books!

Of course, staying there would also require Money, Money, Money, and I figured I didn't have enough to stay there anytime in the near future. That is, until I entered their Poetry Contest and won! I haven't decided when I'll go (it's too late to schedule the room for Book Expo America), but I'm still crazy excited!

But on to what books I'm crazy about this week:

The Silent Land, by Graham Joyce

Genre: Fiction, Fantasy.

Cover Snark: Icy Dead People.

Story: A married couple go on a skiing trip and are swept up in an avalanche. Although they seemingly survive - when they return to an empty town, they begin to suspect they might not have...

Why I Want It: I really enjoyed Joyce's Some Kind of Fairy Tale, and this novel seems to have a similar concept - using a fantasy device to tell a deeply sympathetic human story. I'm in!

Below, by Meg McKinlay

Genre: YA, Mystery.

Cover Snark: That green water does not look healthy to swim in.

Story: A girl goes swimming in a manmade lake over what was once her hometown, and discovers that some secrets may still lie buried beneath the waters.

Why I Want It: I love mysteries about long-hidden secrets, particularly with small-town settings. Plus, I love the idea of a city beneath a lake.

The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black, by E.B. Hudspeth

Genre: Historical, Fantasy.

Cover Snark: I'm hunting angels, instead!

Story: Part novel (about a Victorian-era doctor who documents impossible creatures), part imaginary science book about mythological creatures (complete with illustrations!).

Why I Want It: I've seen samples of some of the illustrations and journal entries online, and I'd love to see how creatures like mermaids and angels are "scientifically" explained.

 Cinnamon and Gunpowder: A Novel, by Eli Brown

Genre: Historical, Fiction.

Cover Snark: I am a Pirate Cheeeef (oh yes, he is a Pirate Chef!)

Story: A famous chef is captured by a vicious lady pirate and the only way he'll survive is if he continually cooks her fantastic meals using only their regular ship's rations.

Why I Want It: The story sounds gonzo and amazing - pirates and gourmet food! Possibly romance! Swashbuckling and soufflés! Yes please!

Diving Belles, by Lucy Wood

Genre: Fantasy, Short Story Anthology.

Cover Snark: I got nuthin' - this cover is gorgeous!

Story: It's a set of short stories all dealing with Cornish folklore popping up in contemporary life.

Why I Want It: I love England and I love magical-realism short stories even more!

Absent, by Katie Williams 

Genre: YA, Paranormal.

Cover Snark: Silence of the Cover Art.

Story: When our heroine dies in a freak fall, she becomes a ghost and has to hear other people talk about her - including about how she might have jumped on purpose. Afterlife's a pain until she discovers that whenever someone does think about her, she can possess them and make them do whatever she wants. 

Why I Want It: The concept sounds like something someone could have a lot of fun with, and I'm interested in how they'd deal with a ghost protagonist.

The Weekly Wanting (25)

Another week, another Weekly Wanting - I swear, I'm going to try and be more regular about these posts.

Reconstructing Amelia, a Kimberly McCreight

Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller.

Cover Snark: The only thing better than a Big Ol' Face on the cover, is Half a Big Ol' Face on the cover.

The Story: When a teenage girl apparently commits suicide by jumping off the roof of her exclusive Park Slope prep school, her successful attorney mother decides to find out what really happened - and uncovers a wealth of secrets.

Why I Want It? The story sounds amazing - plus I'm a sucker for stories with prep school settings. I read a review of it in Entertainment Weekly which called it "the new Gone Girl" - which I hope means it's as clever and twisty as Gone Girl without being quite as obsessively creepy.

A Corner of White, Jaclyn Moriarty

Genre: YA, Fantasy.

Cover Snark: Deceptively cutesy cover looks like it's for a fluffy YA contemporary romance. Involving umbrellas.

The Story: Actually, A Corner of White is about a fantasy world that lies parallel to the real world, in which colours are dangerous entities capable of killing people. A boy from that world looking for answers accidentally ends up contacting Madeleine, a girl from the real world who is also on the run from her past.

Why I Want It? The story sounds AMAZING and weird (even if the cover is COMPLETELY deceptive and inappropriate), plus it's been positively reviewed all over the place, including The Book Smugglers. Although most of the reviews do admit that people either love it or hate it. No middle ground.

So what books are you wanting this week?

The Weekly Wanting (24)

It's time for a super-sized Weekly Wanting Post! I read a lot of blogs for the last couple of weeks, and found a lot of interesting books to add to my library list! 

What the Family Needed, by Steven Amsterdam

Genre: Fiction, Fantasy

Cover Snark: Cross-stitched awesomeness.

The Story: Over three decades, a multigenerational family deal with strife and conflict - all the while with superpowers!

Why I Want It: I love family dramas when written well, particularly when they deal with multigenerational conflict - and the superpowers are just an awesome bonus. Credit goes to Entertainment Weekly for bringing this novel to my attention.

Period 8, by Chris Crutcher

Genre: YA, Mystery

Cover Snark: Hot Biceps for Justice

The Story: A soon-to-retire teacher starts a program in eighth period where students can come and talk about anything. No expectations, no judgements. It's all going well - until one of the participating students disappears, and it looks like someone else in Period 8 might be responsible.

Why I Want It: I'm finding I actually quite enjoy dark YA if it comes with a mystery element. Plus, Forever Young Adult's review mentions it has a cast of thousands, something I really enjoy in novels. More characters = more stories and more drama.

Farthing, by Jo Walton

Genre: Mystery, Alternate History

Cover Snark: I got nuthin'.

The Story: Set in an alternate universe in which England made peace with Hitler, the social and political group who orchestrated this peace attend a house party where one of their own is murdered. One of the guests (whose Jewish husband is being blamed for the crime) must find the real killer before time runs out for her family.

Why I Want It: It's been recommended loads of times, but one last mention from The Book Smugglers clinched it! I like the idea exploring an alternate history - and the fact that it takes place at a classy house party just makes it that much more interesting.

The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, by Cathrynne M. Valente

Genre: Middle Grade, Fantasy

Cover Snark: Absolutely gorgeous, and fully in keeping with the series.

The Story: More of September's adventures in Fairyland as she develops as a person.

Why I Want It: Have you not read the reviews of the previous two books?

The Waiting Tree, by Lindsay Moynihan

Genre: YA, LGBT

Cover Snark: Gorgeous use of light, shadow, and stained glass.

The Story: A boy struggles to remain true to himself and take care of his three brothers even though his religious community ostracizes him.

Why I Want It: A lovely write-up from The Book Smugglers brought this novel to my attention. I found I've been really interested in well-written LGBT stories. I only hope the religious element is sensitively handled. I really hate it when religion is made into a cheap villain ALL THE TIME.

Rose Under Fire, by Elizabeth Wein

Genre: YA, Historical

Cover Snark: Big Ol' Face.

The Story: Rose Justice, a pilot for the Allies, is shot down and captured by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp - where she meets a truly memorable cast of characters.

Why I Want It: I adored Code Name Verity (Wein's previous novel about Awesome Lady Pilots), so I am completely down with this one, provided I can get over the heroine's rather silly name (Rose Justice? REALLY?).

What books are you wanting this week?

The Weekly Wanting (23)

I've been a little behind in my Weekly Wantings. Don't know why - just haven't found my books that catch my interest. Thankfully, this week we have two.

After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story, by Michael Hainey
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir
Cover Snark: Instagram'd book covers need to stop.
The Story: When the author was six, his journalist father died - apparently of a heart attack. However, as an adult, the author discovers the details of his dad's death don't hold up, and he goes on a journey to find out what really happened.
Why I Want It? There was a two-page spread about it in Entertainment Weekly, and it just sounded so incredibly fascinating - as the author examines not just his father's life as a journalist, but also his mother's life and how she recovered from the tragedy to raise her sons alone. 

Six-Gun Snow White, by Catherynne M. Valente

Genre: Non-Fiction

Cover Snark: Choke on this apple, mofos! 

The Story: Snow White. As a bad-ass Western. 

Why I Want It? See above. See, also: Why Catherine M. Valente is fucking awesome at everything.

What books are you eagerly wanting this week?

The Weekly Wanting (22) and the Power of Blogging

I thought I would turn this particular Wanting into a bit of a post on the importance of blogging.

Not all blogs are created equal - if they were, I would have no time to eat, sleep, or tentatively type a few words of my novel before fleeing in terror. I'd just be blog-hopping all the time.

I realize that blogging, for many people, is a personal activity. And it should be - you should blog about what you want because you want to. But it does mean that the standard of writing in blogs can vary widely. This also means that different readers react differently to different types of writing.

Over the years, I discovered I gravitated the most towards blogs that were exceptionally well-written. The blogs that read as if someone spent time considering what to write about a particular book instead of spewing their raw opinions across their keyboards.

I recently had to unfollow a longtime blogger because her reviews were just terribly written - garbled syntax, non-specific blanket statements, lazy descriptions. And she's actually an author! That boggled my mind - why wouldn't you apply the same standard of writing to your blog that you do to your books?

I realize writing well doesn't come easily to everybody. I feel this is the point where I should clarify that this isn't a post about how bloggers should write, but rather an explanation of the type of blogging I prefer to read. I am a pretty insignificant person in the larger scheme of things and writing does come very easily to me so I tend to take the ability to write well for granted. I also realize that other people prefer blogs with clearly effusive or condemning writing styles. They feel passionately about books and they want reviews that demonstrate how out of their mind AWESOME a book was. Capslock-awesome! Glitterfont-awesome! 

And "good writing" can vary. For me, good writing means that it falls under the hazy categories of "easy to read," "fun to read," and "effectively gets the point across." To me, that means I actually enjoy the occasional .gif-using review because hey, it's funny, and it very clearly gets the point across so long as it's not overused.

And all of this is a roundabout explanation of why I finally decided to add this novel to my Wishlist:

Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman

This novel was mentioned freakin' everywhere and wound up on a huge number of Best of the Year Lists and for the longest time I just couldn't bring myself to give a crap about it. I read review after review, and I got to the part about "angsty girl with a musical secret plus dragons" and a switch in my head would just go "nope nope not interesting at all nope." 

So the more reviews that came out about this novel, the more I skimmed over them. Nothing about them really explained to me why I should find this novel interesting. Even reviews from other bloggers I love and admire! It just didn't hit my buttons.

Until Janine's review from Dear Author. Somehow, the way she explained the intricate worldbuilding and the gorgeous writing, and the way the heroine's musical talents actually related to the dragon plot instead of being some random Mary Sue affectation, parted the clouds, removed the scales (heh) from my eyes, and made me realize that yes, this is a book I must have. Now. At any price. Please please?

Now, this isn't a wagging-finger at the other bloggers who loved this book. This is just an indication of how important writing and blogging can be - that even one review, one special review, can sell a book to a reader where dozens of others have failed. And I just thought it would be meaningful to try and explain that this week instead of going with my usual format.

What books are you eagerly wanting this week? And which bloggers have changed your life and made you want a book you'd never thought of before?

Birthday Musings and the Weekly Wanting

Happy birthday to me! I'm another year older and presumably wiser. I say presumably because my mind seems determined to remain permanently seventeen and in high school.

Last year my novel writing suffered but my non-fiction writing soared. I've been writing more and more for Heroes and Heartbreakers and have been enjoying it immensely thus far.

And I've finally gotten off my butt and made some travel plans for this year! Sarah from The Smart Bitches invited me to the RT Book Blogger Con in Kansas City, Missouri, and I've decided to go! It's only for one day, but I get to meet all these cool bloggers and actually talk about blogging at an event THAT IS ACTUALLY ORGANIZED BY BLOGGERS. The BloggerCon at BEA last year was a very weird experience, and beyond getting to meet some of my blogger heroes (like The Booksmugglers), I found it terribly boring and it missed the point of blogging by a solid Canadian kilometre. 

So I'm looking forward to that. Next up - the Wanting! Okay, so one of my New Year's resolution is to spend less money on books (right after I spent my Christmas money burning through my Wishlist), so I'll be waiting to get these books at the library. Hopefully. If I can manage it.

A Woman Entangled, by Cecilia Grant

Genre: Romance, Historical.

Cover Snark: Does - does your man really sleep like that? And should you really be posing that way if he's trying to get some shut eye? Did you pose him while he was sleeping? Man this cover unsettles me.

The Story: Our heroine is determined to make a high match in Society to help her family overcome the stigma of their father marrying an actress - until our hero (at her father's request) arrives to try and dissuade her. 

Why Do I Want It? Another year, another Cecilia Grant novel! I hate that her books come out so slowly, even as I realize that the extra time spent on them is why they're so lovely and perfect! But I want this book now! NOW!

Spoils, by Tammar Stein

Genre: YA, Contemporary

Cover Snark: Oh look, a blurry-female-figure cover that explains nothing about the story, what a novel concept.

The Story: Our heroine's life was changed forever as a child when her family won the lottery, but now her eighteenth birthday is a week away and her family has spent nearly all their winnings. Well, except for the money in her enormous trust fund, which she'll be able to access in a week. She's just about to hand the money over to her parents when another family crisis erupts - who will she choose to help?

Why Do I Want It? First of all, props to the blog Great Imaginations for introducing this book to me. I love the interesting and original storyline for this novel - what would it be like to live in a family that spent 10 years living extravagantly but on borrowed time? It also sounds like an excellent way to examine the true value of money in regards to family and love. 

The Fairest of Them All, by Carolyn Turgeon

Genre: Fantasy.

Cover Snark: I whip my hair back and forth!

The Story: A new spin on the Snow White tale that suggests that a bitter Rapunzel is actually Snow's despicable stepmother. 

Why Do I Want It? I love fairy tale retellings, and with an awesome hook like that, how can I refuse?

So what novels are you eagerly wanting this week?

The Weekly Wanting (20)

It's time for the Weekly Wanting! I'm still in the middle of my Re-Read Rollout but that doesn't mean I can't find new books I want to read in the new year!

The Importance Of Being Wicked, by Miranda Neville

Genre: Romance, Historical.

Cover Snark: In the days before Ye Old Wonderbra...

The Story: A penniless bohemian falls in love with the wealthy, upright Duke courting her cousin.

Why Do I Want It? I haven't been reading as much new romance lately, but a joint review from Dear Author convinced me - plus I quite enjoyed The Wild Marquis. On top of that, it's a Wild Heroine Meets Staid Hero romance, which I personally love.

The Raven Boys, by Maggie Stiefvater

Genre: YA, Paranormal.

Cover Snark: As Directed By Alfred Hitchcock.

The Story: A teen psychic (one in a family of psychics) and a rich prep school boy team up to find a sleeping king in a small Virgina town.

Why Do I Want It? Well, I wasn't interested in this story at first, mainly because I was put off by Stiefvater's arrogant and condescending remarks on book reviews (unless she writes them, of course). And also because I'd heard m'eh-to-average things about her Shiver trilogy. But honestly so many people have been raving about this book and I love small towns, psychics, and prep schools, I figured if I had to start on one of her books, it would be this one.

Beautiful Music for Ugly Children, by Kirstin Cronn-Mills

Genre: YA, Contemporary

Cover Snark: Psychedelic!

The Story: Gabe, a popular local DJ, runs into trouble when some of his brutish classmates find out he is trans*, a gendered male born in a female body.

Why Do I Want It? I'm always interested in good LGBTQ stories, and the buzz for this has been just stellar. Plus, I really like the idea of a Pump Up the Volume-style story where Gabe is able to the person he's always believed he is on the air, even while the people at his school still think he's a girl named Elizabeth.

What novels are you guys eagerly awaiting this week?

The Weekly Wanting (19)

It's time for the Weekly Wanting, folks! This week was a surprisingly fertile one for books that caught my interest, as this longer than usual Wanting post will demonstrate.

Surfacing, by Nora Raleigh Raskin

Genre: YA, Contemporary, Magical Realism.

Cover Snark: Teen Angst Now Comes with a Swimsuit Competition

The Story: Our heroine, who dreams of becoming a professional swimmer, is rendered an outcast by her near-magical ability to force people into revealing unwanted truths in her presence. 

Why I Want It: The story sounds so interesting - what would you do if your mere presence made people uncontrollably start TMI'ing around you? What would it be like to be friends with or hang out with someone with this power? And what secrets will she wind up finding out? Unfortunately, looks like I'll have to wait until March 2013 to find out.

The 39 Deaths of Adam Strand, by Gregory Galloway 

Genre: YA, Fantasy.

Cover Snark: Perfect book for the bridge-and-tunnel crowd.

The Story: Teenager Adam Strand is so very bored with his life that he's killed himself 39 times - even though, inexplicably, he keeps coming back to life afterwards. It'll take something truly special to make him appreciate life and the bonds of connection that come with it.

Why I Want It: Well, mainly because the idea sounds a lot like Groundhog Day. That being said, the blurb does make Adam out to be an obnoxiously selfish ass so we'll have to see if the creative story and good writing will counteract that. (Released February 26, 2013)

Deathless, by Catherynne M. Valente 

Genre: Historical, Fantasy.

Cover Snark: Old-School is the Best School.

The Story: Valente takes on the Russian folktale of Koschei the Deathless, with a nuanced, modern twist. 

Why I Want It: Cathrynne M. Valente. See: In the Night Garden, Cities of Coin and Spice, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland and The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland. Case closed. (Already released)

Invisibility, by Andrea Cremer and David Levithan

Genre: YA, Fantasy.

Cover Snark: This cover looks so radioactive I think I got cancer just from saving this image to my computer.

The Story: Our hero has been invisible his whole life thanks to a curse his magician grandfather cast on his mother. When he finally meets a girl who can miraculously see him, life's peachy - until his grandfather re-enters his life and the magical poop hits the fan.

Why I Want It: Magic, wizards, teen romance, and David Levithan. That's a match made in heaven if I've ever heard one. (May 7, 2013)

And that's it for this week! What books are you guys eagerly wanting?