Hour 4 Mini Challenge: Quotable Quotes

Posted October 18, 2014 by lionbird in General, Giveaways / 206 Comments

Welcome to the fourth hour of the 24 hour readathon! Are you all having fun? This challenge is about just taking a minute to really appreciate what you’re reading — it can be really easy to get caught up in just getting as much read as possible, but there’s got to be stuff you want to remember. So to participate in this hour, here’s the rules:

Comment with a quotation from one of today’s reads.
Include your email address to make sure I can get in contact with you.
I will randomly select one of the people who comments.

And… that’s it! Your prize will be a book of your choice up to £10 in value from the Book Depository, depending only on being in a country that TBD ship to!

Tags: giveaway, readathon

Readathon Progress

Posted October 18, 2014 by in General / 24 Comments

Yay! Soon the 24 hour readathon will start. To begin, have a photo of our bunny with some of my stack…

Isn’t she a darling? She’ll be keeping me company throughout, even when my partner abandons me to go shopping.

Anyway, here’s the opening meme:

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today? Belgium.
2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? Hmm, not really sure. All of them have their attractions. Maybe the comics? I don’t knooow.
3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? Whenever I let myself have my chocolate with Speculoos!
4) Tell us a little something about yourself! It was my one year anniversary of book blogging yesterday! Normally I live in Wales, and this is the first time I’m doing the readathon while visiting my partner.
5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to? Last time, I had to sleep. This time, well, I’m insomniac at the moment, most of the time, so I’m thinking I’ll probably stay up for most of it. On the other hand, tomorrow morning we’ll be leaving the civilisation of the internet and going off to a convention, so I probably won’t see the last few hours.

Right, I’m going to assemble the rest of my stack and get comfortable, ready for the start!

15.07: It is occurring to me at this point that I might like to get dressed, on the grounds that I’d be warmer like that. Ah well, we’ll see. I’m nearly finished with Galapagos (Kurt Vonnegut), which I’ve read about 150 pages of.

15.38: Finished reading Galapagos. Gonna go update the books read database and then curl up with something else. What? I’m not sure yet. Maybe Loki: Agent of Asgard.

16.16: Yup, read Loki: Agent of Asgard. Also had some chocolate. In terms of the shelfie challenge, my whole webpage is one since my top banner has a rotation of three or four different views of my bookshelves.

17.18: My mini-challenge is up, and I’m battling a tide of comments to approve while also reading Shards of Honour, by Lois McMaster Bujold.

18.21: Current fuel: cola and candy bracelets. Still reading Shards of Honour. Amazed by the number of comments on my mini-challenge! Can’t take part in this hour’s challenge since most of the books I have here are ebooks.

19.02: Just finished Shards of Honour. It was a reread for me, and I liked it a lot more than I did the first time. Might have to wait until after the ‘thon to find the words to review it, though I normally review as I go. For the name-your-readathon challenge, hmm: Agents of Honour and The Old Ways. Because why not?

20.30: I’m now reading The Old Ways, by Robert MacFarlane, since I don’t think I want to be reading non-fiction much later in the ‘thon! My partner’s been napping, already, tsk. Can’t do this hour’s challenge, as I have no physical books here, and I don’t want to mess up my partner’s books or the library books, or expose them to the dangers of the bunny. Even if it is the bunny’s naptime.

21.37: Paused for dinner, which was nachos and cheese and chilli and noms. Partner’s cooking always the best except maybe my dad’s. Still on The Old Ways. Bunny still napping. Here’s my signed book picture for the mini-challenge — Lifelode, by Jo Walton. Among Others is marginally more precious to me, but Lifelode is signed to me and my partner, which is why I took a picture of it to show her after spending the day with Jo out on the moorland near Swansea. We’re both big fans.

22.56: Finished reading The Old Ways, and reviewed everything so far. Not sure what I’m going to read next; partner’s going to be going to bed soon, but she’s letting me keep the main light on, whew. Otherwise I’m sure I would end up sleepy.

Even still, I can imagine getting tempted in the chill of 5am to squirm into bed next to her. Let’s hope the bunny can keep me awake!

00.07: I’m now reading Rose Daughter, by Robin McKinley. Partner’s gone to bed, so now I’ve got her chair. Not sure I won’t sleep, but I do want to at least finish Rose Daughter.

01.13: Nearly finished with Rose Daughter, and then I think I am going to curl up with my partner. If I can’t sleep, I’ll get up and read more; if I can, well, I have a con to go to and quite a bit of work to do, tomorrow, so I should get rest if I can.

1. What are you reading right now? Robin McKinley’s Rose Daughter.
2. How many books have you read so far? Four.
3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon? I think I was looking forward to Rose Daughter most! But perhaps A Song for Arbonne, on the train tomorrow or if I can’t sleep.
4. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those? Not really. My partner’s understanding of the readathon, and the bunny can be pet while I’m still reading.
5. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far? Perhaps how print-orientated the challenges are. It’s not the only way to go, guys! Some book lovers don’t collect; some book lovers aren’t at home. It makes me feel a little left out, honestly.

01.46: Finished reading Rose Daughter, now. I’m not so tired I have to go to bed, but five books is a good amount and I do have a busy day tomorrow, so I’m going to have a quick shower and then scurry to bed. If I can’t sleep, it’ll be A Song for Arbonne keeping me company.

09.56: About to go to the con! Reading A Song for Arbonne on the train, I think. Or maybe The Crystal Cave.

19.04: Back from the con and settled down after doing some work. I started my rereads of both A Song for Arbonne and The Crystal Cave; I’m getting on better with the latter now than I did before, though Misogynistic Merlin is my least favourite flavour.

I’ll do a draw for the winner of my mini-challenge tomorrow morning and send them an email ASAP. For now, thanks to everyone in and running the readathon!

Which hour was most daunting for you? None, I just did what I could and then chose to go to bed.
Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year? Honestly, it’s different for everyone. But maybe Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce books would suit a pretty wide audience: they’re fun, but not too heavy.
Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? Fewer challenges focused on physical books.
What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon? Everything seemed to run pretty smoothly.
How many books did you read? I finished five and read a bit of two more.
What were the names of the books you read? Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut; Loki: Agent of Asgard by Al Ewing; Shards of Honour, by Lois McMaster Bujold; The Old Ways, by Robert Macfarlane; Rose Daughter, by Robin McKinley. And part of The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart, and A Song for Arbonne by Guy Gavriel Kay.
Which book did you enjoy most? Probably Rose Daughter; it’s a familiar favourite.
Which did you enjoy least? I didn’t really dislike any of them.
If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders? N/a.
How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time? Reader, along with running a mini-challenge, methinks.

Tags: books, readathon

Stacking the Shelves

Posted October 18, 2014 by in General / 2 Comments

Despite the fact that I have a £10 Kobo voucher to spend, I actually haven’t bought anything this week! Shocking, I know. I have received two books to review, though — the first via LibraryThing Early Reviewers, the second via the author.

I know, I know, it’s a miracle as far as my usual stacks are concerned. What’s everyone reading? Anybody doing the readathon? My stack is here, and my post will be up later in the day in time for the start. Also, if you drop by around hour four, I’m running a challenge!

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves

Readathon stack!

Posted October 17, 2014 by in General / 6 Comments

Readathon time! It doesn’t seem like it’s been long since the last readathon, but here we are again with the event coming up on Saturday-Sunday of this weekend. Naturally I’ve been working on my stack and trying to decide what to read. For once, I’m actually at my partner’s flat in Belgium for the readathon, which means a) I’ll probably be up for the whole thing because I have chronic insomnia here, and b) I only brought my ereader with me, no dead tree books. On the other hand, I have comics to borrow and a whole stack of library books too, so it’s not as though I’m short of reading material.

To reread:
-Robin McKinley, Rose Daughter.
–Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour.
-Guy Gavriel Kay, A Song for Arbonne.
–Mary Stewart, The Crystal Cave.

New:
–Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park.
–Keri Hulme, The Bone People.
-Robert MacFarlane, The Old Ways.
–Kurt Vonnegut, Galapagos.

To finish:
-James Morrow, This is the Way The World Ends.

Comics:
-Loki: Agent of Asgard.
-Thor.
-Winter Soldier.

Anyone else I know doing it?

Tags: books, comics, Guy Gavriel Kay, Lois McMaster Bujold, readathon, Robin McKinley

Thursday Thoughts: Love Triangles

Posted October 16, 2014 by in General / 8 Comments

The latest prompt from Ok, Let’s Read is on… love triangles!

October 16: Love Triangles – Are you an out and proud hater of love triangles? Or, do they not bother you all that much? Do you feel like love triangles are overdone and have a tendency to be similar? What is it that you like or dislike about love triangles in books? Do you think that one genre or section of books overdoes the love triangle thing more than others? Do you think love triangles can be okay if done correctly?

I’m not really a hater of love triangles, as long as they feel authentic. You have to genuinely feel that the character in the middle could have feelings for both his/her paramours, and that they could have feelings for him/her. It has to be handled like they’re all people, not brainwashed adoring harems. It has to feel like more than a plot device — something necessary to the characters, as grounded in who they are and where they’ve been as their love or hate or indifference toward their parents.

Obviously, the genre everyone talks about for love triangles is YA, with The Hunger Games and its imitators. But it’s been a staple for hundreds of years — hello, Arthuriana. Although, I love Arthurian stories, but not many have ever really made me believe the love between Lancelot (or Bedwyr, the other common choice) and Guinevere and the love between Arthur and Guinevere, at the same time. Rare is the writer who can make me feel like there is no other way for it to happen. Guy Gavriel Kay somewhat manages, and John Steinbeck definitely succeeds.

All in all, I guess I’m pretty ambivalent? It just has to make sense.

Tags: books, Thursday Thoughts

What are you reading Wednesday

Posted October 15, 2014 by in General / 0 Comments

What have you recently finished reading?
Beauty and Chalice by Robin McKinley, both rereads. I love those books so much. It’s funny to think that I didn’t like Chalice thaaaat much the first time I read it, but it stayed on my mind and now I think it’s probably earned the title of “Comfort Read.”

What are you currently reading?
A huge mess, as usual, but mainly at the moment I’m reading Rose Daughter, Robin McKinley’s other Beauty and the Beast retelling, and Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park — I can’t believe I’ve never read Jurassic Park before. It’s actually better than I was led to believe? And the science is none too bad considering when it was written.

What will you read next?
The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart, probably, and then The Bone People, by Keri Hulme. I’ve got both of them out of the library here, so I need to get on with it. I need to read some of my partner’s comics, too — Thor, Winter Soldier, Loki: Agent of Asgard.

Tags: books, comics, Marvel, reading meme, Robin McKinley

Review – Beauty

Posted October 15, 2014 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

Beauty, Robin McKinley

I think I’ll blame my partner’s Disney song playlist for making me want to (re)read a bunch of Beauty and the Beast retellings. The obvious place to start (for me, anyway) is with Robin McKinley’s two attempts at telling the story, Beauty and Rose Daughter. Beauty is perhaps the less delicate of the two, being suited to a younger audience in terms of complexity, language, etc, but it still makes a good story. You come to care for the little family, and learn to care for the Beast; the mysteries of the Beast’s castle are genuinely interesting, though how confining someone to a castle which contains a library full of all the books ever written and yet to be written is a punishment, I’m not entirely certain.

(You can see why I empathise with this version of Beauty, who loves her books and her studies, who reads and rereads Malory’s Le Morte Darthur.)

As usual, then, I found this a charming read, and I liked the little references to domesticity that are nearly inevitable with McKinley — the sisters’ rough hands as they learn their new work, their learning curve. And as usual, the thing I disliked most was that Beauty had to be made to match her name, in some magical transformation that made little sense — the goodness of her is in her inner beauty, and why on earth she needs to have dancing amber eyes, I couldn’t say. I liked that Beauty started out plain. I would rather she come to some happy acceptance of that than get a wish to be beautiful — that doesn’t solve anything.

If I’m remembering the key difference between this and Rose Daughter rightly, too, it’s a little awful that the Beast vanishes and changes so much too, leaving Beauty faced with a man she doesn’t know, who doesn’t even know his own name. He’s the same person, but then, you can’t really say he is when everything’s so different and suddenly the Beast she loved is a handsome prince, with very little explanation. It would, perhaps, be better if Beauty instantly recognised him instead of feeling so confused — at least then there would be a sense of continuity, of the importance of knowing what someone is like rather than what they look like.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Robin McKinley, SF/F

Review – Chalice

Posted October 14, 2014 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

Chalice, Robin McKinley

For a book that I originally gave three stars, and found somewhat… disappointing, it probably seems weird that I’ve come back to it for a second time. But actually, I’ve grown very fond of it. I love the fact that it isn’t just a generic medieval Europe, but something that has some of those aspects while having rules, rituals, histories and roles of its own. And yet at the same time, it’s still rooted in the earth: in the common elements, in water and milk and honey, in the straightforward clear sight of a beekeeper called to higher things.

Mirasol makes a great character: neither so knowledgeable about the world she lives in that worldbuilding ends up being ‘as you know, Bob’, but not so ignorant that she’s completely at sea. We come into the story when she’s starting to find some purchase, starting to figure out what she needs to do, but even by the end of the story, she’s not all-powerful, so special she can fix everything. I like that a lot: the down-to-earthness of her; the fact that she turns to books for the knowledge she needs and just reads desperately, almost indiscriminately; the fact that she is so overwhelmed, unready and untrained, and yet does what she has to do.

I also like the sense of strain and work that comes through. It’s not effortless for Mirasol and the Master to save their land; it comes slowly, in fits and starts, as they adjust to each other and to the circumstances. The last section is one long hard slog for Mirasol, and she isn’t even sure she’s doing the right thing, only that she knows she has to do something.

I think I can still understand why people find it disappointing or unsatisfying — there’s so much unsaid about the world, so much more that could be done with it, and Mirasol’s story is only beginning here. And yet Chalice is whole in and of itself, a standalone fantasy story in a world that feels bigger than the story, which is exactly the kind of thing I like.

Despite the fantasy setting, it’s not really something to read for the sense of magic. One comparison that comes to mind now is Lifelode (Jo Walton) — the importance of the domestic in that.

Rating: 5/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Robin McKinley, SF/F

Top Ten Tuesday

Posted October 14, 2014 by in General / 16 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is “Ten Places Books Have Made Me Want To Visit (whether fictional or real)”. I suspect we’re going to see a fair amount of agreement on this one? I’m betting there’ll be plenty of “Hogwarts”, “Middle-earth”, etc.

Middle-earth (The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien) — imaginary. I didn’t say I was exempt from that.
Tywyn (The Grey King, by Susan Cooper) — real. And Cadair Idris, and… everywhere else that Will and Bran visit.
The Lost Land (ditto) — imaginary. It sounds so amazing, and I want to look in their library.
Fionavar (The Summer Tree, by Guy Gavriel Kay) — imaginary. Okay, it’d be a little bit like Middle-earth, really. But still.
Camelot (Arthuriana) — somewhere in between. Possibly even both the imaginary courtly version to see the knights of legend, and the nearest real equivalent to see what it was really like.
Scotland (Five Red Herrings, by Dorothy L. Sayers) — real. My mother has actually traced the whole route of solving that mystery. I wanna.
Everywhere (Daughter of Smoke and Bone, by Laini Taylor) — real. All the travelling Karou does…
London (Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman) — real and imaginary. Okay, London Below sounds pretty dangerous, but also really cool.
Wherever Moomins live (The Moomin comics/books, by Tove Jansson) — imaginary. Because Moomins are cool.
The Clangers’ moon (Clangers, by Oliver Postgate) — imaginary. Because I can totally communicate in whistles and I wanna know what blue string pudding tastes like.

Tags: Arthurian, books, Dorothy L. Sayers, Guy Gavriel Kay, J.R.R. Tolkien, Laini Taylor, Neil Gaiman, Susan Cooper, Top Ten Tuesday

Review – Maplecroft

Posted October 13, 2014 by lionbird in Reviews / 6 Comments

Maplecroft, Cherie Priest

I like Cherie Priest’s ideas a lot, and even the writing when it works for me — Bloodshot and Hellbent being books I totally adore. I like her characters, the way she picks people who other writers might overlook: the working mother of Boneshaker, the neurotic vampire and her found family of Hellbent, and here, Lizzie Borden — yes, that one. She takes the two Bordens and makes them heroines, tries to change your perspective on the murder of the Borden parents, makes them women of learning and resolve, biting back against patriarchal society. And Lizzie’s relationship with Nance O’Neil is explicitly a sexual one here, which… I’m not sure if I think it’s a bit exploitative, using these real people in the service of this story. And yet I don’t flinch if you go back further and use Chaucer or Gower or Shakespeare, speculate about their relationships, so I guess it’s just because they’re that much closer to living memory. Either way, I do enjoy the way Priest chooses characters to weave her stories around.

The format is pretty cool, too: an epistolary novel, basically, very much in the same sort of vein as Dracula — only here, it’s a woman acquitted of murder versus stuff from the Cthulhu mythos. I’m not sure how completely Priest draws on that or whether it’s just nods in that direction, but she does a pretty good job of making the menace felt. One thing I didn’t quite get was the tetanus stuff and how/why that worked, which weakened things for me a bit — I felt like just a bit more explanation on that point would’ve helped, much as it might have gone against the grain of the mystery and the superstition that was wrapped around the scientific aspects.

It is a bit slow at some points — the epistolary format doesn’t help with that, since it gives us very explicit glimpses into how characters are feeling after the events they’re recording, which can slow down the action as they introspect. But overall I thought it was interesting, and I’d definitely read more in the series, where I’m much less bothered about the Eden Moore books or even the Clockwork Century books, which I haven’t read all of.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Cherie Priest, SF/F