Library Loot Pre-Game #1, or what I hope to find

So I have been beside myself for weeks, picturing every detail of my weekend day trip to the Minneapolis Public Library.  Because I don't live there 24 days out of 28, it really is only every other weekend I can make it to the mother of all public libraries within a 3 hour drive.  The past THREE WEEKENDS various things have intervened - flu bugs, *family time*, etcetera, etcetera, but this weekend, nothing on earth will come between us.  FOR REAL.  Or heads are going to roll.  Therefore, I've compiled a little list of books I really want to read and hope I can find copies of to tide me over these next two weeks (or four, or six) until I can make it for another visit:

Ash by Malinda Lo

In the wake of her father’s death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, re-reading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away, as they are said to do. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.
The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King’s Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Though their friendship is as delicate as a new bloom, it reawakens Ash’s capacity for love—and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.
Entrancing and romantic, Ash is an empowering retelling of Cinderella about choosing life and love over solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.

Fire by Kristin Cashore

Fire, Graceling's prequel-ish companion book, takes place across the mountains to the east of the seven kingdoms, in a rocky, war-torn land called the Dells.
Beautiful creatures called monsters live in the Dells. Monsters have the shape of normal animals: mountain lions, dragonflies, horses, fish. But the hair or scales or feathers of monsters are gorgeously colored-- fuchsia, turquoise, sparkly bronze, iridescent green-- and their minds have the power to control the minds of humans.
Seventeen-year-old Fire is the last remaining human-shaped monster in the Dells. Gorgeously monstrous in body and mind but with a human appreciation of right and wrong, she is hated and mistrusted by just about everyone, and this book is her story.
Wondering what makes it a companion book/prequel? Fire takes place 30-some years before Graceling and has one cross-over character with Graceling, a small boy with strange two-colored eyes who comes from no-one-knows-where, and who has a peculiar ability that Graceling readers will find familiar and disturbing...

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (ashamed to say I STILL haven't read it!)

Melinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. Now her old friends won't talk to her, and people she doesn't even know hate her from a distance. The safest place to be is alone, inside her own head. But even that's not safe. Because there's something she's trying not to think about, something about the night of the party that, if she let it in, would blow her carefully constructed disguise to smithereens. And then she would have to speak the truth.

The Rapture by Liz Jensen

Girl, Interrupted meets The Dead Zone in this utterly compelling drama about a paranoia that starts inside one murderously insane teenage girl's head and then grows to encompass the whole world.
With gothic intensity, Liz Jensen conjures the unnerving relationship between Gabrielle, a physically and emotionally damaged therapist, and her patient, sixteen-year-old Bethany, who is incarcerated in a British psychiatric hospital for the brutal murder of her mother.
Delving deep into the psyche of her fascinating, manipulative patient, Gabrielle is confronted by alarming coincidences between the girl’s paranoid disaster fantasies and actual incidents of geological and meteorological upheaval. Coincidences her professionalism tells her to ignore—but which her heart cannot.
As Bethany’s warnings continue to prove accurate beyond fluke, and she begins to offer scientifically precise hints of a final, world-altering cataclysm, Gabrielle is confronted with a series of devastating choices. Only to discover that in a world on the brink of apocalypse, belief is as precious—and as dangerous—as life itself….

 Now let's see what I actually walk away with on Sunday...

And...drumroll please...another huge giveaway at Juiciliciousss Reviews!

Here's the skinny: 2 winners get either 8-9 random, awesome, YA books, some of which haven't been released yet, or as many said YA books as Stephanie can cram into a box!  Woohoo!  Because these books are random, there's really not much else to say, so just go ahead and follow the link and enter!

P.S. Entries have slacked off for my 25 follower giveaway, but my prizes haven't!  :)  So please remember to tell your friends to enter (and enter yourself, if you haven't already!)

Massive Book Giveaway @ Steph Bowe's Hey! Teenager of the Year!

Holy cow.  Once again we have an amazing contest where I have a better chance of winning if I blog about it, so here goes:


Steph Bowe's Hey! Teenager of the Year! is giving away a colossal, tremendous amount of books:

• Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
• Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
• An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
• Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead
• Dreaming of Amelia by Jaclyn Moriarty
• Blue Plate Special by Michelle Kwansey
• The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey
• The Pact by Jodi Picoult
• World Shaker by Richard Harland
• Exposure by Mal Peet
• Sprout by Dale Peck
• Panama by Shelby Hiatt 

Not to mention a critique of the first 5 pages of your manuscript if you're an aspiring YA author!  Steph Bowe also happens to be a 16-year-old YA author, so you know you're getting some good teen perspective!

The more followers she gets, the more she gives away, it's open internationally, and the deadline is April 30th, which gives you plenty of time to get over there and enter!

A Reader to Writers: Foreshadowing

I read, on average, a book a day, and 85% of that is YA fiction.  (The other 15% is classic lit for school, adult lit the parents and grandparents pass on, and the occasional nonfiction book.  Not to mention the endless blog posts, Twitter feeds, web articles and magazines.)  So I figure I've read enough to give a little bit of advice on what I like and don't like in fiction.  Hopefully this will become a feature, when I run across a book that strikes me as particularly worthy of dissection...and today's post is about foreshadowing.

As you all probably have figured out, Donnie Darko is one of my favorite movies.  Ever.  I watched it for the first time with a friend in December, and since then, no joke, I have probably seen it at least three times all the way through and five or six times skipping around to my favorite parts.  I have a hard time sitting through any movie, much less a movie I've already seen that many times, but there's something about Donnie that keeps me interested - foreshadowing.

Because I am cool enough to own (and listen to repeatedly) Tears for Fears' "Head Over Heels", a.k.a. the song in that montage where we see Donnie going to school for the first time, I started thinking about that montage in a little more depth, and how it relates to writing.  In 2-3 minutes of painless, entertaining viewing we are introduced to almost all of the important/semi-relevant supporting characters (Cherita, Gretchen, the school bullies, Mrs. Farmer, Jim Cunningham, the English teacher, the science teacher, Sparkle Motion, and a few more I don't remember offhand), the concept of time-travel (all of the fast-forwarding/slow motion), not to mention the fact that it sets the trippy, bizarre, and satirical tone that pervades the rest of the movie (Hello, you Mongrels!).  It's one of those scenes I could watch over and over and get more out of every time, one that went way, way over my head the first time I watched it.  (Though that might have been because it was 2 in the morning over Christmas break.)

Unfortunately, I can't think of many scenes/passages like that in books.  Part of that is because it's inherently more difficult to miss a red herring in a novel, where you rely on every one of the author's words to set a scene in your mind, as opposed to a movie where you have much more to observe and overlook.  But it can be done.

Now, this might seem like a really bizarre comparison, but the only book I can think of that is equal to Donnie Darko in terms of foreshadowing prowess is the classic romantic suspense novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.  Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...That entire prologue, especially that line, not only sets the tone for the rest of the novel, it leaves us seemingly innocuous clues as to how the how the whole thing turns out - clues that you, conveniently caught up in the rest of the story, forget until the last page is turned.

If I had to pick one thing that makes or breaks a story for me, choice one would be characters.  But choice two would definitely be foreshadowing.  So, writers, for my sake and the sake of others, please don't neglect it!  I don't need a shock ending, but everyone loves a gotcha.  And maybe it doesn't even need to come at the end - it didn't in Rebecca.  I won't name names, but I've read some really awful examples of foreshadowing lately, and I don't want to waste my time reading any more - so please make it work.  Please?

Waiting on Wednesdays #2 - Bloody Jack

As for books I am desperate to read, I can't think of any many (I want to read more than the latest installment in L.A. Meyer's Bloody Jack series.  Except for maybe Mockingjay!  (Are you listening, Suzanne Collins?)  But anyway, there are few books that I like more for a good historical fiction/raunchy chick lit laugh than the Bloody Jack novels.  I was disappointed in My Bonny Light Horseman, maybe because Jacky was way out of her element on land, but it sounds like she's headed back to sea in this book - and I can't wait to read it!  (Top of my library to-read list for sure!)  Check out the summary below:

On the very day that Jacky Faber is to wed her true love, she is kidnapped by British Naval Intelligence and forced to embark on yet another daring mission—this time to search for sunken Spanish gold. But when Jacky is involved, things don't always go as planned.
Jacky has survived battles on the high seas, the stifling propriety of a Boston finishing school, and even confinement in a dank French prison. But no adventure has quite matched her opportunistic street-urchin desires—until now.

And once I get around to reading that, there's an eighth novel coming out this September - The Wake of the Lorelei Lee!  This one sounds pretty exciting as well, kind of like In the Belly of the Bloodhound, which I got a kick out of.  Here's the summary:

Jacky Faber, rich from her exploits diving for Spanish gold, has purchased the Lorelei Lee to carry passengers across the Atlantic. Believing she has been absolved of past sins against the Crown, Jacky docks in London to take on her crew, but is instead arrested and sentenced to life in the newly formed penal colony in Australia.
To add insult to injury, the Lorelei Lee is confiscated to carry Jacky and more than 200 female convicts to populate New South Wales. Not one to give in to self pity, Jacky rallies her sisters to "better" their position--resulting in wild escapades, brushes with danger, and much hilarity. Will Jacky find herself a founding mother of New South Wales, Australia? Not if she has anything to do about it!

What are you waiting on this Wednesday?

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing - Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves by M.T. Anderson

ISBN 9780763629502
Associate Links: Amazon/IndieBound

Fearing a death sentence, Octavian and his tutor, Dr. Trefusis, escape through rising tides and pouring rain to find shelter in British-occupied Boston. Sundered from all he knows — the College of Lucidity, the rebel cause — Octavian hopes to find safe harbor. Instead, he is soon to learn of Lord Dunmore's proclamation offering freedom to slaves who join the counterrevolutionary forces.
In Volume II of his unparalleled masterwork, M. T. Anderson recounts Octavian's experiences as the Revolutionary War explodes around him, thrusting him into intense battles and tantalizing him with elusive visions of liberty. Ultimately, this astonishing narrative escalates to a startling, deeply satisfying climax, while reexamining our national origins in a singularly provocative light.

Put it this way - no amount of praise, ever, in a million years, could come close to doing this book justice.  I mean, holy crap. It might not be a page-turner, per se, and I certainly had to keep my dictionary handy - I mean, how often do you find dialogue like "I can see that if we allow the slightest divagation on the subject of your charms, we shall never have time to hear the tale of your escape" in YA lit? - but wow, was it worth it.

I might have enjoyed this book even more than the first installment - everyone's characters seemed more fleshed out, Octavian came into his own, and it chilled me to the bone in a way that The Pox Party never did.  But maybe I liked it better because I knew what to expect - I remember having to pick up The Pox Party several times before I made it all the way to the end, which for the record, never happens to me.  Either way, in The Kingdom on the Waves, M.T. Anderson's narrative is at once terrifying and breathtakingly beautiful in its prose, casting a harsh eye on the hypocrisy of our Founding Fathers' ideas of liberty.

I was also impressed with the extensive mythological and literary sources Anderson drew from.  Octavian's voice was authentic and polished in a very Colonial American way that had me forgetting, at times, that I was reading fiction.  (Yes, that's a cliche, but in this case it was true.)  With his nickname of Buckra and his desperate attempts to find belonging, Octavian won me over 100%.  Even though on the surface we're very different, I started compiling a mental list of the ways we were the same - overachievement, perfectionism, social awkwardness, etc., etc.  The fact that I was able to do that is a testament to what an incredible writer M.T. Anderson is, for sure!

Sad is not a strong enough word to describe how I feel after reading this, and knowing that there's not going to be another sequel.  What makes it worse is knowing that the author has carved out a niche so deep and so unique that I will probably never find another book like this in my life.  But that's what re-reading is for, right?

The Final Verdict: Bar none, one of the most well-written novels I have ever read - YA, adult, whatever.  Definitely not an easy read, but a very worthwhile one - 5 out of 5 stars.

Disclosure: I received this book as a birthday present, and received no reimbursement from neither the author nor the publisher for this review.  (See Disclosure in Accordance with FTC Guidelines)