Chime by Franny Billingsley
Y'all.
I love this book SO MUCH. After reading great reviews here and here, I decided to ignore the horrendous cover and trite description on the inside flap. Also, I got it from the library so there wasn't much to lose. Turns out this is the best novel I've read in a long long time. The prose is beautiful and the narrator's voice is self-deprecating, humorous, and believable. Here are a few excerpts:Yes, I was jealous. I was practicing one of the seven deadly sins (although it doesn't actually take much practice). I probably had all seven.Anger?
Absolutely. I was especially gifted there...
Pride?
Absolutely. I hated myself, but I also loved myself in a hateful way...I stood up. What was I doing here? I hated people my age. How stupid they were. I should hate to be a regular girl with a sugar-plum voice. I should hate to have swan-like lashes...I should truly hate to be like Leanne, so charming and ordinary and stuffed with cliche feelings. I'm glad I'm the ice maiden. Who wants to be crying over every stray dog? Not I. Scratch my surface and what do you see? More surface. There is even more loveliness. The characters play what they call the Metaphor Game- if Leanne were an invention, which would she be? If she were a sculpture which would she be? And while the inside flap talks primarily about a boy named Eldric, Eldric is really just icing on the cake. The book is about Briony figuring out who she is and how to be happy with what she discovers. It's about self-confidence and love, boldness and bravery. I will read everything this author ever writes.
Hopefully she will be prolific and find a publisher with less awful marketing designs (I hated their cover so I made some modifications).
Children's books written by celebrities
My time in the Children's Department has opened my eyes to all kinds of books I didn't know existed. I mean, we all know that Obama wrote a children's book. But did you know that Taye Diggs did, too?
Chocolate Me! by Taye Diggs
Rock Steady: A Story of Noah's Ark by Sting
Little T Learns to Share by Terrel Owens
Queen of the Scene by Queen Latifah
Sugar Plum Fairies by Whoopi Goldberg
Meeting authors is fun!
At the National Book Festival here in DC I met Sherman Alexie! We basically talked for three seconds because there were a gazillion people in line to get their books signed. But still.
Earlier this week Elizabeth Brokamp came into the bookstore for a signing event. Because she writes Children's books and I have no children I didn't actually know who she was. But she is a local (DC) author and it was really fun talking with her about the creative process, the ins and outs of publishing, and the publicity events that go with it. Meeting authors is fun! Have you met any authors? Who? And who was the most fun to talk to?Real life characters
The other day while I was working at the cash register a large man with a thick accent (French? German? I'm horrible with accents...) made small talk with me and I handed him is change. He looked at me for a second and very magnanimously handed the nickel back saying,
"You keep it. For ze American economy."
Dreadnought by Cherie Priest
So. The American Civil War has been raging for twenty years. Yes, I know this is not True Life but that is why fiction is so great! Anyway, our stalwart heroine, Mercy Lynch, is in quite a predicament- she's a Southerner working in a Confederate hospital married to a Union soldier. This causes a modicum of internal conflict and a plethora of external conflict. Add to that a sick father in Tacoma, a wild ride on a massive war machine, a Texas Ranger, and zombies and you get one very fabulous book.
I loved this book even more than Boneshaker. Mercy's Southern accent was totally believable (you won't believe how many bad Southern accents I've read), Mercy herself was a great character with all kinds of bravery, inner turmoil, and a little bit of silliness. I recommend this book to history buffs, people obsessed with surviving the zombie apocalypse, Southerners, and steampunk lovers.
Index of Reviewed Books
Becoming Jane Eyre by Sheila Kholer
The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King
Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
Dark Angels by Karleen Koen
Divergent by Veronica Roth
Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffery
Dragonquest by Anne McCaffery
Dreadnought by Cherie Priest
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
Fire by Kristin Cashore
The Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis McGraw
The Gospel of Ruth: Loving God Enough to Break the Rules by Carolyn Custis James
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
Heart of Iron by Ekaterina Sedia
The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran
The Heroine's Bookshelf by Erin Blakemore
Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns
Hood by Stephen Lawson
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Incarceron by Catherine Fisher
The Isles of the Forsaken by Carolyn Ives Gilman
Love Wins by Rob Bell
Married to Murder by Jennifer Oberth
Maximum Ride by James Patterson
The Passage by Justin Cronin
Plan B by Pete Wilson
Poison Study by Maria Snyder
The Power of Half by Kevin and Hannah Salwen
A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver by E.L. Konigsburg
Radical by David Platt
The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff
The Revisionists by Thomas Mullen
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Talking about Jane Austen in Baghdad by Bee Rowlatt and May Witwit
The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaressen
Vivaldi's Virgins by Barbara Quick
Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's Guide by Frederick Buechner
Busy times in the book world
- Met (and spoke with!!) Sherman Alexie at the National Book Festival
- Trained to be a volunteer at the Library of Congress
- Finally finished Goliath by Scott Westerfeld
- Discovered the true genius of Cherie Priest (author of Boneshaker and Dreadnought)
- Learned that the DC Public Library now supports downloads in Kindle format!
- Got a job at a bookstore!
What have you been up to?
Becoming Jane Eyre by Sheila Kohler
The Bronte sisters led pretty awful lives, I'm not gonna lie- lots of death, loneliness, and oppression. Sheila Kohler imagines how these elements influenced their literary writing. Charlotte Bronte is the main narrator, however, perspective shifts between her sisters, her father, a nurse, and family servant. The writing style is gothic and dark. It evokes the tone and style of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, etc. I love how Kohler ties in specific events in the sisters' lives to their works- often quoting directly from the novels themselves. Here's an excerpt in which Charlotte is writing Jane Eyre.
She invents a bully, a fourteen-year-old boy, John Reed- drawn from her days as a governess...He has sallow skin and two spoiled sisters. How she has suffered at the expense of spoiled children whose doting parents could find no fault in them! She makes her heroine small for her age, delicate, and, like herself, plain.
Anyway, the book is wonderful. It's slow-paced but beautifully written. Read if you like classics, historical fiction, or the Bronte sisters.
Divergent by Veronica Roth
I feel like this is THE BOOK to read this year. The publicist did a great job because I saw this book EVERYWHERE- blogs, stores, etc.
It was good. All the classic YA distopia elements were there- world building, lots of action, a love interest, etc. Beatrice "Tris" Prior lives in a world divided into five "factions" dedicated to a particular value: Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Erudite, and Dauntless. At age 16 each citizen chooses which faction he or she will join. Tris faces many trials- from her initiation into Dauntless to an escalating conflict between factions. Throughout all the action, Roth does a great job of developing her characters; Tris struggles to define herself as well as understand the world around her. It's not Hunger Games but its still good fiction- entertaining, compelling, and believable.
