This is a link to a great post on io9:
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Monday, October 28, 2013
A Study In Emerald
Are you interested in a
Sherlock Holmes/H.P. Lovecraft
style short story?
How about one written by Neil Gaiman?
If so, head on over to check out
A Study in Emerald
Which you can read for free HERE
and just in case the link doesn't work:
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Book Signing with James Dashner
Last night, James Dashner
was kind enough to stop by our local bookstore.
(The lady you see in the pic is our very awesome bookstore rep... who gets all these cool folk to stop by and chat with us)
I have to say,
his books may be bleak,
but he's a pretty funny guy.
Oh, and he *REALLY* wants you to know he's on Twitter.
(LOL... he kept referencing his Twitter account...
evidently it's the place to be for breaking Dashner news)
evidently it's the place to be for breaking Dashner news)
(his avatar is his new puppy, lol)
He is the author of
The Maze Runner
which is being made into a movie that will come out
in November 2014.
He also recently released a new book
The Eye of Minds
He went on to describe it as an homage to his love of The Matrix and Inception,
(evidently Mr. Dashner is quite the movie lover)
and when I read the inside cover I immediately thought of
Ready Player One
by Ernest Cline
(which is a friggin awesome read, if you haven't read it)
I'll be interested to see how the two compare.
(FYI, James Dashner has *not* read Ready Player One (although he owns a copy)...
so his book was not influenced by the other...
I'm just curious to see how these two books focusing on
virtual reality compare and contrast)
Mostly though, he talked about The Maze Runner series...
saying Minho was his favorite character,
explaining his reasoning behind things like
naming WICKED, the slang the kids use and the Grievers.
He also discussed how his goal was to create a sort of
anti-Lord of the Flies...
where instead of degrading into violence and wickedness,
these boys worked together to survive.
He answered quite a few questions and talked for a good hour
about a multitude of topics (he might be a rambler, hehe).
If he ever happens to be swinging through your neck of the woods,
I highly recommend stopping in to see what he's got to say.
Not related to Mr. Dashner, but I just had to share...
While I waited for the signing to begin, I went over to check out the
YA Used Books section and found this:
All of the Used YA books were gone... and this note was left behind:
HAHAHA!
It's a joke, of course,
they're just rearranging...
but it cracked me up.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Feature and Follow Friday
Follow along here:
Q: What are some of your favorite magazines?
Oh man... here we go!
I am both a Graphic Designer and a photographer...
so I have a lot of interest in Magazines...
and really, this just happens to be the favorite of what I have on my desk at the moment.
Are you interested in things geeky? This magazine is for you!
It covers just about everything from gadgets to girl-geek culture.
I've had a lot of fun reading it so far. :)
Plus, this month's issue features Daryl (Norman Reedus)... how can you not love them?
Filled with delicious recipes, bon appetit is a lovely magazine,
but unlike other food magazines,
this one is not always good for you in terms of healthiness or time consumption.
I love that you can choose pretty much anything in here and it's not going to be *terrible* for you.
Lovely photography, tasty recipes... it's a nice cooking magazine.
Again, another enjoyable, healthier food mag. Like bon appetit, they often have very eye catching photography.
This magazine is so well organized... it's very user friendly, starting right out with a picture index to guide you to each recipe. Someone was using their noggin when they put this magazine together.
Plus, you know, tasty recipes XD
I like to pretend I know things.
Hahaha, no no, this magazine often has interesting infographics in it...
plus, I really do like the content. :)
A magazine all about plushies... yes... yes, sign me up.
Put out by the Somerset folks, this is a cleanly designed magazine with large, lovely photos.
Sorry to all the Martha poo-poo'ers... but this woman is still a domestic GOD.
Her magazine is beautiful too, with amazing photography and lovely layout.
Plus it's only $10 for a year subscription.
Wired
Fun design, and super informative. I love me some Wired.
Fun design, and super informative. I love me some Wired.
National Geographic
Tried and true, if you want amazing photography, this is the place to go.
Tried and true, if you want amazing photography, this is the place to go.
A different beast than Martha Stewart Living...
Martha Stewart Halloween is a magazine I look forward to all year long...
her ideas are great, and it comes out right when Fall is settling in.
Advanced Photoshop
I love this magazine for Photoshop tips and tricks.
I love this magazine for Photoshop tips and tricks.
Imagine FX
If you're at all interested in the digital art medium...
If you're at all interested in the digital art medium...
this magazine is something you should seriously look into.
Tips and tricks from experts, as well as a really great companion website.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Hollow City The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children
Cover Revealed!
Here's an excerpt on
Hollow City
The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children
from Quirk Books:
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children was
the surprise best seller of 2011—an unprecedented mix of YA fantasy and
vintage photography that enthralled readers and critics alike.
Publishers Weekly called it “an enjoyable, eccentric read, distinguished
by well-developed characters, a believable Welsh setting, and some very
creepy monsters.”
This second novel begins in 1940, immediately after the first book ended. Having escaped Miss Peregrine’s island by the skin of their teeth, Jacob and his new friends must journey to London, the peculiar capital of the world. Along the way, they encounter new allies, a menagerie of peculiar animals, and other unexpected surprises.
Complete with dozens of newly discovered (and thoroughly mesmerizing) vintage photographs, this new adventure will delight readers of all ages.
RANSOM RIGGS is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California film school and is a writer for mentalfloss.com. He lives in Los Angeles.
Here's a link to my review of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children:
http://littlesqueed.blogspot.com/2013/06/review-miss-peregrines-home-for.html
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Top Ten Tuesday, What I'm reading and last week's Feature & Follow
Top Ten Books You'd Pair With A "Required Reading"
Warm bodies is an interesting twist on the tragic romance, not to mention an interesting twist on zombie novels.
Admittedly, thematically, these two books are not discussing the same things, but the setting is similar, and I think they would work as a reading pair for a lovely compare/contrast.
Both books focus on a group of children abandon on an island.
In Lord of the Flies, they are shipwrecked and left to their own devices... in which the societal structure they create degrades rapidly.
In Battle Royale, the children are forced onto the island to play a terrible game of kill or be killed... a game run by their government to keep the masses in check.
I think it would be interesting to look at the differences and similarities between these two books... to question why the boys in Lord of the Flies and the kids in Battle Royale ended up in similarly murderous situations. What was William Golding saying about his society? What was Koushun Takami saying about his?
3. The Scarlett Letter / Speak
Two ladies, outcasts in their communities because they have done something that is socially taboo.
It's not really that hard to draw the parallels here.
Again, not hard to draw the parallels between these two.
Both books are coming of age stories, both dealing with life as a teenager, that odd stage between childhood and adulthood,
and touching on the social awkwardness of the teenage thought process as it struggles to fit into an adult world.
Two orphan tales, in which the orphans leave behind abusive, cruel lives in exchange for something more wonderful and magical.
It would be immensely fun to compare and contrast these two English novels.
An oppressed, carefully controlled society in which truths are hidden and fear is the weapon used to keep the masses in check... the fact that that could be describing either of these books, I think, would make for an interesting compare/contrast. Or maybe I'm just hooked on slipping zombie novels into this week's top ten since it's coming up on October -_-
Both of these deal with societies where everything about the people living in them is controlled, where everyone is being lied to... and in which there is one person who retains all the knowledge of the past, uncensored.
Bridget Jones's Diary IS Pride and Prejudice with a contemporary spin.
It was a riot to read, and made me like the classic even more than I already did.
It did a beautiful job of making what are now the strange and awkward social customs of Jane Austen's time into things we can understand, like family holiday gatherings and office parties.
Or The Iliad, or the Odyssey... really, I just want to pair Riordan's Percy Jackson series with all the stories of the mythological characters that show up in them. I LOVE books that make kids want to learn, and Riordan's series has sparked an interest in the old Greek and Roman mythologies... so I think it would be a fantastic way to introduce kids to the original stories.
Ok, this is a pair that most likely won't happen... because the dream discussion on these two would be about varying opinions on religion, and various takes on belief, and what those beliefs might actually represent... but boy would it be fun to discuss what each of these authors was saying about religion.
For the record... I love this top ten question.
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This week I'm reading
The Apothecary
by Maile Meloy
Why did I choose this book:
It was one of Schuler Books Staff Picks.
Schuler Books & Music is our local book store,
with 3 locations here in Michigan.
I have yet to go wrong choosing one of their YA section staff recommendations.
Does anyone else have a non-chain bookstore that they love to frequent, and trust the staff picks from there?
So far this book is interesting, action packed and adorable.
It features an American heroine in England... something I don't run across often.
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Just as a side note...
I don't know why I do this...
I read all of the time, but am constantly forgetting to share it here on the blog as a review.
Example: I recently read all 4 books in The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld... but have I made a single review of them? Nope.
This blog's main purpose is for me to keep track of what I've read, and the details of that book...
so GAH! What the heck is wrong with me!!
Do any of you guys do this when it comes to your blog?
Not keep up with things they way you'd like to?
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Something I find interesting:
Last week I decided to participate in
in which my book selection was
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
by Susanna Clarke
This book came out 9 years ago, in 2004...
and I have to admit, I was a bit shocked to see that *most*
of the replies to my F&F post were something along the lines of,
"Wow, I've never heard of this before!"
The book won at least 6 awards
and was nominated for several more
(not small awards either, but some of the top in the industry)
and is currently being made into a BBC miniseries.
This really led me to wonder about the bloggers who populate
the Feature and Follow Friday.
Quite a lot of them listed a Harry Potter book as their choice,
the last one having come out in 2007,
only 3 years after Susanna Clarke's book...
I have to believe that most of them were reading at least the later Harry Potter books as they came out... which puts them on the literary scene during Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell's time.
So have they truly never heard of this highly acclaimed, much talked about book?
Is it simply because they weren't blogging at the time?
I had one comment saying
"I haven't heard too much about it review-wise"
and that just made me wonder...
How many of you follow blogs that pretty much only review current YA novels?
How do you choose the books you read?
Just by the reviews you read on other blogs?
How long have you been blogging, and has it affected how you choose books?
How did you choose the books you read BEFORE you got sucked into the world of book blogging?
When you start following a new book blogger,
do you ever look back through their reviews to see what they've read before?
How do you select book bloggers to follow in the first place?
Is it simply through hops, or do you research what the blogger likes to read and write about, and follow them based on common interests?
I'm not criticizing the people who responded to the F&F by saying they'd never heard of the book...
there are plenty of amazing books I've never heard of.
I really am just curious about how people go about selecting books these days...
and the turn-over rate of book bloggers and/or
the rate at which new book bloggers are hitting the scene.
Friday, August 30, 2013
Feature and Follow Friday
It's time for Feature & Follow Friday!
Go HERE to join in!
This week's question:
If you could only have ONE – one book – for the rest of your life, don’t cheat…what would it be?
Hrrrrm.... this is a tough one.
Really... reallyreallyreally tough.
My first instinct is to name a Harry Potter book,
namely, The Prisoner of Azkaban...
but if I really, really, really thought about it,
I think I'd want something with more to it... something that was a complete story, so that I didn't find myself longing for the other books in the series...
So my choice has to be:
Really... reallyreallyreally tough.
My first instinct is to name a Harry Potter book,
namely, The Prisoner of Azkaban...
but if I really, really, really thought about it,
I think I'd want something with more to it... something that was a complete story, so that I didn't find myself longing for the other books in the series...
So my choice has to be:
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
by Susanna Clarke
by Susanna Clarke
It's filled with elements I love,
it's long and beautifully written,
it's complicated and layered
and it's a complete story...
Something I feel I could read over and over if it were the only thing
I could ever read again.
and it's a complete story...
Something I feel I could read over and over if it were the only thing
I could ever read again.
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