Title: The Book Thief
Author: Markus Zusak
Genre: Young Adult
Pages: 560
My Rating: 5/5

Premise: Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The child arrives having just stolen her first book–although she has not yet learned how to read–and her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers Handbook, to lull her to sleep when shes roused by regular nightmares about her younger brothers death. Across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayors reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and especially her foster parents. Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing and original story but also writes with poetic syntax, causing readers to deliberate over phrases and lines, even as the action impels them forward. Death is not a sentimental storyteller, but he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving Liesels story all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled expectation that it deserves. An extraordinary narrative.–Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA

My Review: WOW. This is one of my new favorite books. Honestly amazing. It wasn't a book that I couldn't put down, but it was one I kept thinking about. It had beautiful imagery, a sad and wonderful storyline. I love that it was from the point of view of Death. I have heard so much about the book, and now I know why. I want to get my own copy since I checked it out of the library. For book lovers, it's great. I love historical fiction, and even though stories set during World War II break my heart, it's usually in a good way. I cried so much at the end.

A pipe broke underground, and since they have to turn off the water, that means the whole site closes!

That's right. If the toilets don't run, everyone gets to go home!

Ah, government. :)

*Was Castle new this week? My local channel decided to air some weird documentary so I have no idea.

*( So You Think You Can Dance was tough to watch this week. )

*( Glee )

*Is The Mentalist new tonight?

Winter in Hamilton finally turned cold. I took Daisy to the dog park (NO COYOTES) and let her run around with other dogs' toys until I could no longer feel my legs. She has been chewing on this neon orange ball she stole from another dog since our first arrival at the park. She chewed it all the way home, and now she is chewing it in her bed. It is so saturated in slobber that it makes these nauseating squelching sounds you can hear throughout the house.

Blade Runner

Hi, everyone! I'm a published poet, and I'm new to this community. I figured I'd stop in while I have a few minutes.

I recently read Inkheart by Cornelia Funke, and I absolutely loved it! I stayed up all night so I could finish because I absolutely could not put it down. I cannot wait to read the rest of the series, and my incredible roommate bought me the next book in the series, Inkspell, for Christmas. I'm going to dive into it over the weekend when I'm not working on marketing for my recently published poetry collection.

I'd recommend Inkheart to anyone who loves intricately spun fantasy. Funke's writing is charming and the idea is original. Inkheart speaks to all who have an innate love of reading and the amount of soul that goes into creating great fantasy.

Here we go:

The Witch's Alphabet

0 / 472 pages. 0% done!

My goals for today are to do all of the holiday mailing that needs to happen, do some laundry, go to my dance rehearsal and then write like my hair is on fire.

Originally published at Caitlin Kittredge.

The holiday party went well. Way too much food. The curried butternut squash soup was wonderful. My spiced apricot couscous was a huge hit. (if you missed that recipe just ask, i'll give it to you). Sadly the Indian math prof didn't come (rather worried us since she helped arrange it). I missed having Indian goodies.

( Spoilers for ch 102 )

I actually like it better than the real version with Wyclef Jean. Power chords and metal beat just improves Shakira.

And I'm also watching Kings. It takes a special actor who can do a scene where he's talking to G-d and yelling at the sky and not make it look stupid. Ian McShane is seriously awesome.

By specific request, a list of things that are on my radar at the moment:

-Climbing helmet (specifically the Petzl Meteor III)
-This cute plaid shirt with a ruffle down the front
-Super-soft scarf like this or from Burberry
-Cookbook that I saw at Costco recently and has been on my Amazon wishlist: "Cooking for Two"
-Fabulous necklace of red fabric flowers from Anthropologie
-Any one of these lovely scents: Jo Malone's Nutmeg & Ginger, Origin's Ginger Essence, or Anthropologie's A Rather Novel Collection Eau de Parfum in 1856 Darjeeling

YAReads has an interview with me up! I’m pleased and proud to report they’ve chosen Betrayals as their Book of the Month for December, so I encourage you to go on over there and take a look. I’ll also be posting a guest review there in the near future, so stay tuned.

Yesterday, someone brought up a good point: when you’ve got a school full of teenage half-vampire and werwulf boys, and one half-vampire girl, it’s not just the choice of tampons or pads you have to deal with, but also the question of disposal. A steel lockbox is a good idea, but I decided to take the FM approach and just teach Dru a method of burning the stuff with sorcerous fire as a disposal mechanism.

I do spend a lot of time on worldbuilding, and some of it is just FM. What’s FM, you ask? Well, I was married to a mechanical engineer for a while, and that’s a highly-technical term I picked up from him. Basically, it’s F!cking Magic.

Sometimes you can make the decision to just have things a certain way for the sake of the story. You have to make sure they’re consistent, and use the FM wand with a great deal of caution. I’ve read a lot of manuscripts and books where FM is the plot device of choice, because it’s easy and fun and playing God in your own little created world is much less difficult than actually doing research, thinking things through, and aiming for complete internal consistency. (I don’t think any book achieves complete internal consistency–we live in an imperfect world. But at least we can aim, right?)

Sometimes, especially if you’re getting bogged down in details, it’s nice to just make the conscious choice to have something be F!cking Magic. It helps you actually finish the book, and a good editor will call you on it and make sure it’s conscious choice instead of laziness. You may even get to the point where you can call yourself on it, and that’s a rare and wonderful thing.

Anyway, I’ve got school supplies to buy today and wordcount to achieve. I’ve got this heroine about to take refuge in the subways while being chased by vampires. It seems like a good idea at the time, we’ll see how it works out.

Over and out.

Posted from A Fire of Reason. You can also comment there.

I forgot to mention on Tuesday, but even though It's Complicated doesn't look like the sort of movie I would go see, the trailer was full of not-young, not-skinny Meryl Streep being sexually active and sexually attractive. More attractive, in fact, than the toned "younger woman". After so many years of Hollywood fuckwittery and cougar jokes, that trailer made me intensely happy. Maybe I will go see it anyway, and hope for the best.

Teenager dies because her schoolmates shamed her for acting moderately sexual and the alleged grownups piled on.

Thanx to rm

I received the proofs for “A Murder of Vampires,” my story in the Evolve anthology. Need to go over them and get any changes back to the editor asap since the book will be launching at World Horror. Though March 2010 seems like a long way off, it’s really only three months away. I finally bit the bullet and bought my plane tickets yesterday. I’d been waiting for a more favorable airfare, but the prices have been all over the map and don’t seem to be trending downward at all. I wanted to fly into Gatwick, but Heathrow will have to do.

Criminal Minds has been concentrating on some emotionally difficult material lately, what with the death of a secondary character last week and its repercussions this week, though it seems like the official period of mourning will last for only one episode. Hey, at least CBS is still cranking out new episodes at this time of year–there’s even another new one next week–when most other shows are on hiatus. I suspect that at some point the writers will explore Emily Prentiss’s backstory. It’s clear from the way she reacted to the perp at the end of this week’s shows that she has some serious issues bottled up. Gun pressed against forehead to accentuate proclamations of delight at the perp’s future behind bars as someone else’s bitch.

It’s always good to see John Larrouquette, who was a guest star on Law & Order: SVU this week. He had a neat role on Boston Legal in its last season or so, and I’ve enjoyed watching him since the days of Night Court, when he was another smarmy lawyer, Dan Fielding.  He played that part with panache. On L&O he got to trot out his southern drawl and range from advocate to outrage. The show needs to get rid of its unfortunate tendency to turn every episode into a protracted public service announcement. As an aside, I caught an old episode of Homicide: Life on the Streets this weekend and Munch hasn’t changed a bit in all those years.

Double elimination week on Survivor. Can’t wait to see if/how Russell manages to make it through.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

Ooops.

I forgot to announce.

My short story "werelove" has officially been accepted for RUNNING WITH THE PACK, edited by Ekaterina Sedia.

I have now written two werewolf stories, although you can debate if "Fire Rising in the Moon" is really a werewolf story at all.

This one's a little more overt. But only a little. Werewolves in suburbia. It's not what you think.

Remember he Author Solutions-fueled vanity press called Harlequin Horizons? It's now called Della Arte Press, but it is still a Harlequin-run vanity with outrageous prices, designed to separate submitting writers from their money.

Among the services one can purchase is for $360.00 the chance to "[p]ique the interest of editors across the country with a professionally scripted press release about you and your book."

Author Solutions also provides this service via Xlibris, which they also own. Under that imprint the service costs anywhere from $349 to $1799. And this is what you get:



That press release was sent blind to my workplace fax number. It was addressed to nobody and is for a book called Lord, What Would You Have Me Do In My Life?, which came out last year. It took me a few minutes to find a link to the book that wasn't a copy of this press release, btw, which had been released several times since 2008 when the book was published.

It looks like he also paid for a cover:



Incidentally, this fax was not simply thrown out just because I happened to see it. I, for those of you who may not know, edit Haikasoru, an imprint of Japanese SF and fantasy in translation. Books such as Usurper of the Sun, All You Need Is Kill, Battle Royale and Brave Story make great Christmas presents and other holiday gifts, incidentally. You should certainly by a few of those books if you like me, or this post, or something like that. (Also, I have a book out too, you know, unrelated to my day job. You Might Sleep... Check it out.) What I do not do at my day job is acquire books in this category, especially not those that have recently published. Indeed, I don't even have anything to do with books originally written in the English language.

So, what does our friend David A. Zaukelis gain from paying Author Solutions to send a press release to my day job? That's right...nuffin.' Luckily, Zaukelis has a PhD in Physical Chemistry from Northwestern, so I bet he can afford to spend a lot of money on press releases that go down the memory hole...but what of many of the other would-be writers? What is great about writing is that an ordinary working-class person can do it without substantial investment. Other art forms such as painting, photography, music, etc. require sometimes significant outlay and purchasing paintings and instruments and such also requires a pocketful of money. With writing, you can do it on the cheap.

Unless, you get suckered in by one of these vanity firms, many of which lead back to Author Solutions. Then it is likely you'll spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars, and for results like the cover shown above and the press release I, an editor whose interest was piqued, saved from the recycle bin.

But now, here it goes...

Publishers Weekly, The New York Times and bunch of other news outlets are reporting that the venerable old trade magazine Kirkus Reviews is dead.

Founded in 1933, Kirkus Reviews became one of the big four trade magazines that publishers absolutely had to send advance review copies of their books if they wanted those books to get any kind of market attention, along with Publishers Weekly, Booklist and Library Journal (or School Library Journal for kids' books).

Kirkus Reviews was notorious for two things. One, it was purportedly read by every Hollywood exec--or more likely their underlings--looking for literary properties to option for film (at its height, I'm told Kirkus was used for this purpose even more than PW was). And two, their reviewers were impossible to please. I mean, impossible. If your book got a good review from Kirkus, that really meant something because they pretty much hated everything.

I railed against Kirkus years ago when they launched their Kirkus Discoveries program, which charged "independently published" authors money in exchange for "unbiased" reviews in a completely separate book review service from their esteemed magazine (i.e., online). That program remained active until now, and if there's anything good to come out of this sad news, it's that Kirkus Discoveries will die along with the magazine.

I can't help feeling a pang of nostalgic regret at this news, though. The publishing world keeps changing, and not always for the better, but that's the way of the world. It may only be a matter of time before the other big trades follow suit, and then...well, let's just say it'll be a brave new world.

I have some books/comics/mangas/DVDs for sale at http://www.amazon.com/shops/bluesequinsr Here is a list of things I'm selling right now, and I'm always adding things

Books:
The United States of Wal-Mart by John Dicker
Ruth Gordon, an Open Book by Ruth Gordon
Harold et Maude (in French) by Collin Higgins

Comics/Manga:
Return to Labyrinth Volume 1 by Jake T. Forbes
True Porn Volume 2 by various people

DVDs:
Wonder Showzen Season Two
Stryker
West Side Story
Simple Plan-Big Package for You
Two of a Kind

I'll have to wait until after the finals to sit and read FMA 102 but I had some thoughts on what I'd find

( speculation )

*scrolls through f-list*

Wait...

WTH?? There was a new ep of Criminal Minds last night?? Way to advertsie, CBS! Hopefully my Tivo caught it. It should have.

It's not like this is "Oh, darn, I missed an ep. Hope the killer this week wasn't too interesting!" No, no. This is more "OMG WTH is happening to follow up that tremendously emotionally wringing 100th ep in which they do their best to break [spoilers]! Is [spoilers] doing okay with [spoilers]? WHAT IS HAPPENING?!" !!

Also, I seem to recall some odd episode order/airing stuff from last season, or the season before, which my Tivo didn't catch, that was also around the time of holiday hiatus. WTF, CBS?