Library Loot (Jan 22)

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.

 

 

 

With the weather being as hot as it has been lately, it takes a fair bit of enticement to get me to leave my nice air-conditioned house unless absolutely necessary. So today when Beth wanted to go out for lunch she had to make it seriously worth my while.

She offered up a trip to the bookshop AND library – as well as offering to carry my library tote back. She won!

 

 

For Beth:

• Candy Girl – Diablo Cody
• Nightlight: a parody – The Harvard Lampoon
• Shiver – Maggie Stiefvater
• Along for the Ride – Sarah Dessen

 

For me:

• Little Brother – Cory Doctorow
• The Bermudez Triangle – Maureen Johnson
• 13 Little Blue Envelopes – Maureen Johnson
• Star Trek Celebrations – Maureen McTigue
• Star Trek: Action! – Terry J. Erdmann
• I Lost My Mobile at the Mall – Wendy Harmer
• The Looking Glass Wars – Frank Beddor
• King Arthur: Dragon’s Child – M.K. Hume
• The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil’s Biblical Roots – T.J. Wray and Gregory Mobley
• The Bible and the People – Lori Anne Ferrell
• When Women Were Priests – Karen Jo Torjesen
• The Sandman: The Dream Hunters – Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano

 

Yeah… I went a little nuts. I blame Bethany.

Library Loot

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries!

And the library is open again! Yay! Bringing the firsts Library Loot of the year. My brother actually braved the heat with me today (without his card of course), so he managed to sneak some books into the pile as well.

 

For Alex (you may sense a theme here):

• Australian Photography, April 2009 [magazine]
• Through the Lense: National Geographic’s Greatest Photographs – Leah Brendavid Val (Ed.)
• How to Photograph Absolutely Everything: Successful Pictures from your Digital Camera – Tom Ang
• Portrait Photography: Secrets of Posing and Lighting – Mark Cleghorn

For me:

• The Babysitter’s Club Graphic Novels: #1 Kristy’s Great Idea – Raina Telgemeir
• The Babysitter’s Club Graphic Novels: #2 The Truth About Stacey – Raina Telgemeir
• The Babysitter’s Club Graphic Novels: #3 Mary Anne Saves the Day – Raina Telgemeir
• Ariel – Sylvia Plath
• M is for Magic – Neil Gaiman
• Let it Snow – John Green, Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle
• The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod: Ninth Grade Slay – Heather Brewer
• Star Trek and Philosophy: The Wrath of Kant – Jason T. Eberl and Keven S. Decker (editors)

And of course, no trip the library is complete without a trip to the ‘for sale’ spindle (for 20c each!):

• Girls in Love (3-in-1 book) – Jacqueline Wilson
• Tomorrow, When the War Began – James Marsden

Library Loot

I haven’t had a library loot post for awhile, though I love to read others, so since I went to the library this week I thought I’d share what followed me home.

 

 

 

• Waddell, Martin – Starry Night
• Collins, Paul – The Earthborn
• Jacob, Kate – Knit Two
• Pfeifer, Will – Catwoman: It’s Only a Movie
• Resnick, Mike (ed.) – Nebula Awards Showcase 2007
• Sedgewick, Marcus – My Swordhand is Singing
• Vaughn, Brian K. – Runaways, Vol 2: Teenage Wasteland
• Vaughn, Brian K. – Runaways, Vol 3: The Good Die Young
• Vaughn, Brian K. – Runaways, Vol 4: True Believers
• Vaughn, Brian K. – Runaways, Vol 5: Escape to New York

So… far more than I had intended to bring home, but I’d been waiting for the rest of the Runaway series to be returned to the library so when I saw them I grabbed then. Looks like I’ll be having a graphic novel week this week!

Library Loot (aka why I need a chaperone)

Today I had to drop my brother off at the library so he could study with some friends. I thought to myself:

 

“Self, not a problem. Sunday is your library day anyways. Remember though, you haven’t even started your book for book club yet, so just drop him off, stick your returns in the shoot and then leave.”

 

Turns out I can’t even follow advice from myself… I mean, I’m not really worried about the borrowing (what’s one more book in the pile?), but I’m a little concerned about my seeming lack of will power hehe.

 

• Charlaine Harris – Grave Sight
• Charlaine Harris – Grave Surprise
• J.G. Ballard – The Complete Short Stories
• Stefan Merrill Block – The Story of Forgetting
• Charlotte Bronte – The Foundling

How’d that happen?? How’d they make it into my bag??

 

I also entered via the sale rack (I know, I know!) and got myself a nice little pile. The best thing – they all smell so good.

• William Shakespeare – As You Like It
• Denys Kilham Robert (ed.) – The Centuries’ Poetry, Vol. 2: Donne to Dryden
• John Donne – Selected Poems
• Quentin James Reynolds - The Amazing Mr. Doolittle*
• Thomas Hardy – Jude the Obscure

 

The best find was the lovely little copy of As You Like It. Very tiny, very beautiful, very battered. It was published in 1889, and all for the grand price of … 20c. I love my library.

 

*Which, I found out when I got home, is not the stories of Dr. Doolittle, but a biography of Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle. Oops. Oh well, might be interesting.

Library Loot

Oh, how I love library day… guilt free book gathering…

I probably borrowed more than I will have time to read, but that’s half the fun.

 

 

 

 

YA Fiction

• Betrayed (A House of Night novel) – P.C. and Kristen Cast
• Sucks to Be Me: The All-True Confessions of Mina Hamilton, Teen Vampire (maybe) – Kimberly Pauley
• The Dead and the Gone – Susan Beth Pfeffer
• The Bermudez Triangle – Maureen Johnson

General Fiction

• Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk

Graphic Novels

• Complete Maus – Art Spiegelman
• Wonder Woman: Love and Murder – Jodi Picoult

Non-Fiction

• The Funny Thing Is – Ellen Degeneres
• The Children’s House of Belsen – Hetty E. Verolma
• Harry, A History: The True Story of a Boy Wizard, His Fans and Life Inside the Harry Potter Phenomenon – Melissa Anelli

DVDs

• To Kill a Mockingbird – Dir. by Robert Mulligan

Angels and Visitations

Angels and Visitations: A Miscellany
Neil Gaiman
166 pages; published 1993

Memory is the great deceiver. Perhaps there are individuals whose memories act like tape recordings, daily records of their lives complete in every detail, but I am not one of them. My memory is a patchwork of occurrences, of discontinuous events roughly sewn together: the parts I remember, I remember precisely, whilst other sections seem to have vanished completely. (141)

I always enjoy Neil Gaiman’s writing, so I pretty much knew I would love this one too. His writing is just so clever, so rich, that you can’t help but want to read more.

Angels and Visitations, however, was a little different from the other novels and short stories of his that I’ve read. It is, as the title says, ‘a miscellany’, a collection of literary bits and pieces he has accumulated over the years: poetry, book reviews, stories written for this and that. As such, it was a bit of an odd collection, but still full of wonderful pieces that I’d recommend to any Neil Gaiman fan. 4.5

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The Only Light in the Dark

The City of Ember
Jeanne DuPrau
267 pages; published 2004


"So the first Mayor of Ember was given the box, told to guard it carefully, and solemnly sworn to secrecy. When she grew old, and her time as mayor was up, she explained about the box to her successor, who also kept the secret carefully, as did the next mayor. Things went as planned for many years. But the seventh mayor of Ember was less honorable than the ones who'd come before him, and more desperate. He was ill - he had the coughing sickness that was common in the city then - and the thoughts the box might hold a secret that would save his life. He took it from its hiding place in the basement of the Gathering Hall and brought home with him, where he attacked it with a hammer...." (4)


Lina is twelve years old, which is a very exciting age for those who live in the city of Ember, for it is at twelve that children leave school and receive their first job. Lina is hoping to be assigned the job of messenger: she loves to explore and none of her peers can run as fast as her. But, horror of horrors, Lina is not assigned the coveted role of messenger, but of that of a pipe worker; the worst of all assignments.

When her ever-serious classmate Doon approaches her after school, wanting to swap his messenger job for her position at the underground Pipeworks, she’s too relieved to really question it. But then things start to happen: there are strange messages to deliver, blackouts that last longer and longer, and a sudden increase in the rationing of every item.

And then Lina finds a set of secret instructions, destroyed by her baby sister’s gummy chewing. What are they instructions for? Are these secret instructions related to the sudden silent panic and whispering of the mayor, or the determined investigating of Doon? What is happening in Ember?

Stories of the post-apocalyptic genre are one of my favourites, especially ones like these in the vein of Lowry’s The Giver. I’ll admit that I picked up The City of Ember from the library because I knew they were making it into a movie and wanted to beat it to the theatre. Because I knew little more about the book than that, I was surprised to see how young an audience it was aimed at. Because of this, I found it a little predictable in places, but this may not be the case for a younger reader newer to the genre. I liked the characters of Doon and Lina, but can’t help but think they would have been afforded a little more development if they were older. 3.5/5

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Library Loot (Feb 1)

I feel like I've been in a bit of a reading slump since Christmas - yes I've read books, but I haven't, especially in the past fortnight, REALLY felt like reading. I think I had lost interest in the books I had borrowed out from the library, so I've returned them and maybe I'll come back to them later. Hopefully this will help.

Well, this and my super secret suprise outing tomorrow ;)

Though I love the idea of reading non-fiction books on all the things I wished I knew more about, I rarely ever do. This book caught my idea from it's place on the New Book rack at the library this morning so it came home with me. I actually thought of my friend Wendy when I picked it up, so, Wendy, if it's any good I'll let you know.

I've seen this book reviewed quite a few times over the past couple months, so when I picked it up today - completely by accident, the blue caught my eye - it too went in the bag.

Well, I'm not a mum, but I thought I'd give it a read anyways. I like to be organised... but the truth of the matter is that I'm not, just really good at pretending I am :)

Okay, I'll fess up, I love kids books and I love kids movies, but I HATE to see the movie before I read the book. The person in front of me at the self-return machine had returned this one so I scooped it up.

This cover looks wierd, right? The cover I actually have is even wierder. I have no idea what it's about (it's my mystery book for the week) but the cover and the title won me over.

I think that should be enough to wake me up again!

Library Loot and more

I came across Alessandra and Eva's Library Loot meme last week and thought that since I had a big library haul this week I'd show off what I picked up.

* The Origin of Lament - Emma Magenta

* The Never Boys - Scott Monk

* This Lullaby - Sarah Dessen

* Friction - E.R. Frank

* An Abundance of Katherines - John Green

* Hey Nostradamus! - Douglas Coupland

* A Little Rain on Thursday - Mark Rubinstein

* The Geographer's Library - Jon Fasman

* The Book of Air and Shadow - Michael Gruber

* On Beauty - Zadie Smith

* Blankets - Craig Thompson

~*~*~*~

And all these books have made their way into my house since the beginning of the year. I don't feel too guilty cause the pile on the left are all from library/market sales and the pile on the right is my last book order from 2008 (the last book only just arrived). So TECHNICALLY speaking I didn't break my 'no new books' rule.

* Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator - Roald Dahl

* The Witches - Roald Dahl

* Eldest - Christopher Paolini

* Hogfather - Terry Pratchett

* Lords and Ladies - Terry Pratchett

* The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents - Terry Pratchett

* Faust/Eric - Terry Pratchett

* Howl's Moving Castle - Dianne Wynne Jones

* Living Dead in Dallas - Charlaine Harris

* Fool Moon - Jim Butcher

* Grave Peril - Jim Butcher

* Inkheart - Cornelia Funke

* The Tale of Desperaux - Kate DiCamillo

* The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld - Compiled by Stephen Briggs

Lock and Key
Sarah Dessen
422 pages; published 2008

“And finally,” Jamie said as he pushed the door open, “we come to the main event. Your room.”

I was braced for pink. Ruffles or quilting, or maybe even appliqué. Which was probably kind of unfair, but then again, I didn’t know my sister anymore, much less her decorating style. With total strangers, it had been my policy to expect the worst. Usually they – and those you know best, for that matter – did not disappoint. (1)

When Ruby’s mother disappears she doesn’t exactly panic. Her mother’s been gone before, and always returned sooner or later. Besides, she’s nearly eighteen, plenty old enough to look after herself, right?

Perhaps not.

Coming to the attention of social services, the courts place the seventeen year old Ruby under the care of her elder sister Cora and her husband Jamie. It has been ten long years since she has seen her sister, and the last thing Ruby wants is to be dependant on anyone, let alone the emotionally distant Cora (whom she still blames for abandoning her so long ago) and the super cheery, extra-enthusiastic Jamie. Their impressive house in an exclusive neighbourhood is a far cry from the lifestyle she is used too – and she doesn’t intend to stick around too long.

However, her plans for escape don’t go precisely to plan and, before she knows it, Ruby is entangled in this new life. So used to being alone, Ruby is now surrounded by people she not only comes to depend on, but who depend on her – Nate, her oh-so-perfect swimmer neighbour; Harriet, her control-freak boss; and Roscoe, a dog with a multitude of issues. And with her mother now missing from her life, the only remaining link to her former world is the cold key to her old house hanging around her neck.

But her new life and those who inhabit it aren’t all as shiny and perfect as they might seem. There are now people to disappoint, people to support, and even people to protect… and perhaps, a unlikely as it may seen, it is Ruby who holds the key to unlocking happiness in all their lives.

I’ve seen reviews for Sarah Dessen books pop up here and there and I got the impression that she was quite a popular YA author. Lock and Key is the first of her books that I’ve read but based on this book I’d have to say that that the reputation was probably deserved.

I liked Ruby as a main character – I felt that she had the perfect blend of almost-eighteen-arrogance and battered little girl fragility. Her interactions with those around her as she makes the change from isolation to being part of a family were genuine and moving – even humorous in parts. 4/5

Purchase Lock and Key here.

Other Reviews

• The Book Nut
• Trisha at Trisha's Book Blog

House of Night

Marked (House of Night, Book 1)
P.C. Cast and Kristen Cast
306 pages; published 2007


So the good news is that I wouldn't have to take the geometry test tomorrow.

The bad news was that I'd have to move into the House of Night, a private boarding school in Tulsa's Midtown, known by all my friends as the Vampyre Finishing School, where I would spend the next four years going through bizarre and unnameable physical changes, as well as a total and permanent life shake-up. And that's only if the whole process didn't kill me. (6)


Zoey wants nothing more out of life than to feel like she really belongs… well, that and her vintage VW beetle. Ever since her mother married the People of the Faith Elder, John Heffer, Zoey’s life has been miserable. Her new step-father (the step-loser) is both clueless and controlling, and her mother is growing more distant every day. The routine dramas of school (the self-centred gossip of her best friend and drunken exploits of her almost-ex-boyfriend) have become her refuge in life, her only escape.

Until the day the very dead – sorry, ‘undead’ – man, a vampyre Tracker, turns up at her locker and flips her life upside down. She’s been ‘marked’. She’s now a ‘fledgling’ vampyre and, as such, has two choices: die, or move into the prestigious vampyre boarding school, House of Night, and possibly die anyways.

Informing her parents of her fate didn’t go so well and, feeling abandoned yet again, she heads to her Grandmother’s lavender farm for comfort. While there she falls and hits her head, during which she sees a vision of the goddess Nyx, beloved goddess of the vampyres. She tells Zoey that she has chosen her to be her eyes and ears in the new world she is about to enter.

Coming to, she finds herself at her new school, her new home. How well is she about to fit in a new school where she knows nothing about the students?


Do vampyres play chess? Were there vampyre dorks? How about Barbie-like vampyre cheerleaders? Did any vampyres play in the band? Were there vampyre Emos with their guy-wearing-girl’s-pants weirdness and those awful bangs that cover half their faces? Or were they all those freaky Goth kids who didn’t like to bathe much? Was I going to turn into a Goth kid? Or worse, an Emo? I didn’t particularly like wearing black, at least not exclusively, and I wasn’t feeling a sudden and unfortunate aversion to soap and water, nor did I have an obsessive desire to change my hairstyle and wear too much eyeliner. (3)


Things are made all the more difficult when Zoey realises that the mark indicating her new vampyre status indicates that of a fully-fledged vampyre, not of a fledging. She’s a freak amongst freaks.

Turns out that the House of Night isn’t all that unusual, however: dorms, cafeteria (oops, ‘dining hall’), weird teachers, dorks, cool kids… but if everything’s so ordinary, what is it that Zoey’s supposed to be keeping her eye on? and what is it that makes her so special?

I picked up P.C. and Kristen Cast’s Marked, the first in the House of Night series, as I was leaving the library last. They had a ‘If you like Twilight…’ display in the YA section and the cover looked interesting (tsk, tsk, cover picking). When I started reading it, the first couple pages repelled me instantly – it was full of teenage jargon, all gossipy friends and football boyfriends drinking on the back of a pick up truck. And then the vampire turned up, all imperial and old-world threatening in his speech and I started to gag. There was no way I was going to get through this book. Giving it the benefit of the doubt, however, I decided to keep going to the 50-page mark. Next time I looked up it was 3:30am and I was about 200 pages in. Wait? What just happened? Apparently I was hooked and I read it all in one sitting (well, lying, I was supposed to be asleep, after all).

Vampire books are all the rage at the moment, so when reading (yet another) one, I’m really on looking at three things: the writing, the characters, and something that makes it different.

Written by a mother/daughter team, the authors have created an attention-grabbing Twilight-meets-Harry Potter world. As the first book, Marked introduced an interesting – if somewhat clichéd – set of characters, and setting (the school) that should pave the way for the next few books. Their treatment of vampyres (spelling aside) had great potential – a genetic process bought on by the hormones found in a teen body, one that not everyone survives – but could have benefited from more than just a couple throwaway paragraphs. I hope they look into it further in the succeeding books.

All in all, Marked was a good FIRST book, it set up a lot for the series and left me wanting to read the next one. 3.5/5

Purchase Marked here.

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Battle of the Sexes!

Olympic Games
Leslie What
234 pages; published 2004

Hera could practically smell the seduction on his breath; the way Zeus offered her a goblet of sweetened wine, how he plumper her feather pillows and tenderly slid them beneath her back. He rubbed her feet with clove-scented oil, then performed her favourite little trick: lighting the clouds on fire to leave warm, moist trails of smoke. Delightful. Oh, her husband was an expert at seduction when he wanted to be.

There was only one problem and it was a big one.

Zeus was not seducing her. (12)


Since the beginning of time, Zeus and Hera have been King and Queen of the Gods: greatest of the Olympians and supreme overseers of mortal beings. This hasn’t changed, though the times certainly have. Thing is though, what is a god without anyone to worship them?

In the hustle and bustle of modern life, worship of the Greek Gods has all but disappeared, and many of the Olympians (all but Hera and Zeus, in fact) have elected to do just that themselves, simply fade out of existence rather than continue in an unworshipped state.

For Hera and Zeus, however, it’s life as usual: Zeus charms and philanders while Hera gripes and deals with the consequences of having such a husband. This is all well and good until, as prophesised by a street oracle, a flame from Zeus’ past comes back to wreak havoc on their newly re-established alliance.

Penelope was a water naiad Zeus seduced and trapped inside a tree back in the “old country.” When freed by a love starved hermit named Possum, her human presence alerts Zeus, whose interest is immediately reinflamed.

Meanwhile, Hera’s abandoned and genetically curious son, Igor, (half Greek God, half common bar beetle) mourns the absence of his ‘father’ in his life. Despite Hera’s, admittedly somewhat indifferent, wishes he sets out to seek Zeus out.

What will happen when all characters collide? Will Zeus accept his ‘son’ and, by extension, his long-suffering wife? Or will he go onto disrupt the happy life of Penelope and Possum, claiming what he thinks of as his own? And what of Hera? Will she learn to love her son as she should, or is everything simply lost in her unending task of reigning in Zeus?

Leslie What’s Olympic Games was an ‘almost’ book for me. By that I mean that the characters, story, writing, humour, everything, was ALMOST right. I enjoyed the book, but it left me with a feeling of falling short, as if it had potential that it didn’t quite meet.

Zeus was nothing more than a hedonistic womaniser and Hera a bitter, self-centred prima donna. While I accept that, as gods of a central idea of concept, these characters may become very focused, What’s interpretations were, in places, almost two dimensional. In all fairness, I am a long-time fan of shows such as Xena: the Warrior Princess and Hercules: the Legendary Journeys, whose visions of the gods are much more rounded; I already had high expectations.

Secondary characters (Possum, Igor) were a little more interesting, but it’s redeeming character was that of Eddie, the mentally retarded shop assistant, whose chapters were heart-wrenchingly honest. He made me laugh and he made me cry. For me, he saved the book.

I was interested to read that it was a short story that had been rewritten into a novel. That cleared up a lot for me. I think that, for me, it would have been more satisfying as a short story. 2.5/5

Purchase Olympic Games here.

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First thing I did was steal a body...

Repossessed
A.M. Jenkins218 pages; published 2007
I don't like the term "demon". It carries quite a bit of negativity with it. It implies a pointy tail and cloven hooves. I prefer the term "fallen angel". That is, indeed, what we are. The difference between us and the angels who didn't fall from grace is that the Unfallen were, are, and always will be faithful, stalwart, and obedient. That is their nature, just as it is their nature to rejoice in worship and contemplation of the vastness of the Creator's perfection. We, the Fallen, wondered, questioned, confronted, eventually demanded, and in general, pushed the edges of the envelope until the envelope burst.

[...] the Unfallen don't hang out with us peons much anymore.

I've never really liked those guys. (p 9/10)

Kiriel is one of the Fallen, one of the angels who supported Satan in his uprising. But after spending millenia in the bowels of Hell, reflecting the sorrows of the sinners under his jurisdiction while living out his own eternal punishment, things have become a little stale and he decides to take a little vacation.

In order to take this vacation, Kiriel hijacks the body of the unassuming Shaun seconds before he dies - Kiriel thinks this perfectly acceptable, after all, he was going to die anyway, and his possession merely eliminated much of the pain the boy would have felt anyway. Taking over his body, however, also means taking over his life and Kiriel finds himself immersed in the sensations and emotions of human life - and more specifically, the world of a seventeen year old.

Kiriel knows that his 'vacation' won't go unnoticed forever though - it is, after all, completely against the rules - but he intends to enjoy it for as long as 'humanly' possible.

angeloftheLord: Kiriel, you are trespassing in direct contravention of the Creator's wishes. This is a warning: Return to your duties or you will be punished.

All the warmth had left my fingertips.

trojanxxl: who is this?

Bloo-bloo-bloop!

angeloftheLord: You must return to your duties immediately.

An eternity of wishing to speak directly to my Creator, I thought in despair - and this is how He finally contacts me? Through AOL Instant Messenger? (p 97/8)


While I loved the premise of the novel, and found it cute funny in places, I did have my issues with it. For instance, it took less than twenty pages for Kiriel to turn to his first major exploration of humanity: masturbation. This leads into his central (not only, but major) quest for the novel: sex. He sets his sights on one girl and pursues her for the entirely with little (some but not much) regard for the reality of the situation or the fact that this is a real person he's trying to catch here. Perhaps this would appeal more to a male, seventeen-year-old audience, but, for me, it had quite a large negative impact on what should have been a good book.

That said, however, it did have it's redeeming qualities. The presentation of Kiriel as a fallen angel (as opposed to a 'demon') who, despite his backing of Satan ("The Boss"), sincerly and desperately wishes to retain the communication with, and love of, God ("The Creator") was both fascinating and moving. Similarly, the unrecognised acts of redemption Kiriel undertakes during his illicit 'vacation' are quite touching.

It was an okay book - shifting to quite good in places - but overall I feel that the story had the potential to be much better than it was. 2.5/5



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Listening for Small Sounds
Penelope Trevor
157 pages, published 1997

The first book in a long time that ever made me truly sad and uncomfortable, and, if for that alone, I highly recommend it (though perhaps with a warning). Told entirely from the perspective of it’s very young narrator, Listening for Small Sounds explores the dynamics of a family bracketed by limited money, alcoholism and domestic abuse.

A book that I just happened to pick up as I left the library, it was a complete surprise to me. I read it cover to cover in one sitting and, naturally, got caught crying over it on a few occasions. 4/5