2010 April » Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog

Stuff-y stuff

Posted by Anastasia on April 6, 2010 No Responses »

Apr 062010

Diana Wynne Jones’ new book, Enchanted Glass, came out today! My copy is coming in the mail. Yay! Double yay!

Dewey’s 24 Hour Read-a-thon is this Saturday. You can still sign up to participate, or to be a cheerleader! I’m going to be reading, though I still haven’t decided if I’m doing lots of little books or one big book. Probably I’ll end up doing little books; I still have a buttload of James Bond books to get through from the LAST read-a-thon.

This has been going around the book blogger blogosphere today, but in case you haven’t seen it yet: Book Blogger Survey for Improving Blogger-Publisher Relations! And, since Trish did it first, I thought I’d post my stats to give you an idea of what an average book blogger’s looks like:

Average daily unique hits: 100-200
Monthly average: about 3000-4000
Last year I had 33,238 unique hits total.
I’ve got about…85 subscribers? as of today.

Please note that:
a. I’ve been blogging for over a year now.
b. I’m not posting my stats to make you feel bad.
c. I don’t really think stats are all that important except maybe to publishers/authors, so if you’re not trying to get a lot of review copies I wouldn’t worry about anything. (None of the publishers/authors who have contacted me seem to be worried about stats, by the way.) If your goal is to get a lot of review copies, then, uh, I don’t know. Read this post, maybe.
d. Even if you don’t care about review copies you should do the survey anyway, because it’s Good Thing to help fellow bloggers out. Yeah.

Okay, now I’ve gone off topic. New Diana Wynne Jones book! I’m all over the place tonight, I swear.

Review: Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Posted by Anastasia on April 6, 2010 No Responses »

Apr 062010

74. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Publication: Mariner Books (October 24, 1973) originally published 1928, Paperback, 333pp / ISBN 015670160X
Genre: Fiction, Historical Fantasy
Rating:
Read: March 23-25, 2010
Source: Bought
Summary from Amazon:

In her most exuberant, most fanciful novel, Woolf has created a character liberated from the restraints of time and sex. Born in the Elizabethan Age to wealth and position, Orlando is a young nobleman at the beginning of the story-and a modern woman three centuries later.

Review

This was the fifth book we read for my Virginia Woolf class, and it’s the second one I’ve completely read instead of just pretending to. I loved it! I think I loved it even more than I love To the Lighthouse, though they really are two different beasts.

(Note: I’m not sure if I have to write a paper or not about Orlando, so I don’t want to get too deep into an analysis (just in case I need it later), but I’ll talk a bit about the book as if I wasn’t preparing to write an essay.)

Orlando is, like I said, a completely different sort of thing from To the Lighthouse. For one, it’s a historical fantasy.

I know! Virginia Woolf writing a historical fantasy? Completely at odds from what you think of when you think “modern fiction,” right? But though Orlando is historical fantasy it’s also modern fiction, and depending on who you listen to it’s also a love letter and a biography (see: here).

If you think about VW’s earlier books, they’re sort of…not depressing, but not happy-go-lucky, either. Orlando is happy-go-lucky. This is VW like she was high on love pills, or something, because it’s so lighthearted and funny and quirky and no-one dies and it’s wonderfully strange. I’ve gotten used to serious Virginia, but gleeful Virginia is lovely as well, and even more special for being so rare.

I could go on and on about what Orlando means in terms of GLBT history, in terms of gender and sex, of feminism and women’s history, and so on, but I might need that for the paper. So instead I’ll just say that besides all that admittedly interesting stuff, it’s a GREAT historical fantasy. It could stand up to modern historical fantasies, in fact, and probably even some urban fantasies.

Orlando is now my favorite Virginia Woolf book. I absolutely loved it, and I can totally see myself rereading it every year like I reread Diana Wynne Jones’ books. I for sure recommend reading it, though I’d also say that maybe you should read To the Lighthouse first (it’s short) so you can have something to compare to Orlando. I think it’ll make you appreciate it more? Yeah.

And

Get your own copy @ Amazon or IndieBound and support Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog!

Other reviews: Things Mean a Lot | Dolce Bellazza

Our next book is The Waves. Will I love it even more than Orlando? Or will I be disappointed with VW’s return to seriousness? Stay tuned to find out.

I do feel sort of bad for leaving this review half-finished. I totally DO want to write about, like, everything in it, but, seriously. I need to save that stuff up for class. Maybe I could post my essay after I’ve written it? OR! If you want to talk about something with me in the comments I will totally do it. Because I do love this book, immensely. And I wanna talk about it.

Oh, and: I could totally see this as a love letter (and the BEST LOVE LETTER EVER HELLO), but a biography? Not entirely. I think there’s bits of Vita in it but there’s also bits of Virginia, so if anything it’s a biography of their relationship instead of one single person.

Review: The Circus Lunicus by Marilyn Singer

Posted by Anastasia on April 5, 2010 No Responses »

Apr 052010

59. The Circus Lunicus by Marilyn Singer
Publication: Henry Holt and Co. (October 1, 2000), Hardcover, 168pp / ISBN 0805062688
Genre: Children’s, Sci-Fi, Fantasy
Rating:
Read: March 7, 2010
Source: Bought
Summary from Amazon:

Solomon Yanish has it rough. His mother has disappeared from his life, his father is constantly away on business trips, and now Solly is stuck with two crabby stepbrothers and an evil stepmother he calls Old Staircase. What’s worse, Solly can’t seem to get a straight answer about his family’s past. But who’s keeping it from him, and why?

Enter The Circus Lunicus, and Freeble — a fairy godmother in shrink-wrapped disguise. Suddenly things start to make sense. Until some strange transformations begin . . . Can Solly uncover the mystery behind his heritage before the circus leaves town?

Review

This is such a weird little book. One the one hand I really liked it because it’s so weird, but on the other hand it’s not so well-written. I liked the idea, and for much of the book I was enthralled in the plot. But it lost me by the end, and that ending is why I think it’s got problems with the writing. Also, there’s some issues with the characterization.

Problems first, I think:
1. Solly’s step-mother and brothers are seriously cliched. Possibly this is because Ms Singer is going for a Cinderella connection, but still. Seriously cliched.
2. The ending happened very quickly and I still didn’t even completely understand it. Partly this is because I didn’t understand the BIG REVELATION that happens somewhere right before the end, which I can’t talk about because it’s a spoiler. Also there was another cliched thing, which I also can’t talk about.

So basically there were cliches everywhere, with confusing elements, and that dragged the whole book down. But the things I liked?

I liked:
1. The weirdness. It’s really weird, especially when Freeble starts teaching Solly magic, but it’s a great kind of weird that I would have loved as a kid. Remember Bruce Coville’s My Teacher is an Alien series? It’s along that same line.
2. The circus theme. I love anything to do with circuses (except maybe clowns), and though there wasn’t a lot of it actually in The Circus Lunicus, I enjoyed that part anyway.

So, I don’t know. If I was a kid I think I would have enjoyed this more because I wouldn’t have been as aware of the cliched parts like I am now, after reading a bazillion books with the same sorts of characters in them. I suppose I’m just a little bit too old for The Circus Lunicus!

And

Find your own copy @ Amazon or IndieBound

Other reviews: Have you reviewed this book? Let me know and I’ll link to it from my own post!

Man, being too old for certain books makes me feel crappy. I want to enjoy every book, even ones for young readers. But sometimes the writing style just isn’t for me, when it’s a younger kids book. That’s why I can’t read the Magic Treehouse book, even though I really wanted to enjoy them.

TSS (April 4): Boy by Roald Dahl

Posted by Anastasia on April 4, 2010 7 Responses »

Apr 042010

For today’s Sunday Salon I just wanted to talk a little about Roald Dahl’s memoir Boy, which I’ve just finished reading. You may remember me reading Going Solo last year, which is about Mr Dahl’s life in the RAF during WWII. I loved Going Solo, and Boy is just as wonderful.

It’s a little bit harder to read, however. Not because it’s written any differently, or because it’s any less humorous or interesting, but because Mr Dahl talks about his llife in public school in England, and if you know anything about public schools in England during any time before, what, 1980, you know they’re pretty tough places to be schooled in. He talks a lot about corporeal punishments, and the horrible teachers he had and how the prefects were just as bad. It’s told in a very matter of fact way, so it’s not sensationalized or anything, but several times I was horrified enough to have to cover my mouth– corporeal punishment is just a horrible thing all around, and to know that so many children went through the public school experience for hundreds of years and experienced the same thing is just unimaginable.

Okay, I ‘m sort of going off track. Yes, that public school bit was bad, but the rest of the book is magnificent, and one of the best parts is when you can pick out some of the things that later inspired Roald Dahl’s books. The matron in one of his schools, for instance, reminds me a lot of Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, and he writes specifically about how getting test chocolates from Cadbury inspired him later when he wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Reading Mr Dahl’s memoirs makes me even more fond of his kids’ books, and I definitely need to get a hold of a biography or something soon. The only problem is that I’d want it to be written in the same style as Mr Dahl’s memoirs because they’re so funny and wonderful and charming– and I’d want the biography to be the same. Can someone help me find one like that? Any suggestions?

Books read this week:
79. Talking to Dragons – Patricia C. Wrede (full cast audiobook) [rating: 3.5/5]
80. The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes – Hugh Greene (editor) [rating: 3.5/5]
81. Truckers – Terry Pratchett (audiobook) [rating: 4.5/5]
82. The Waves – Virginia Woolf [rating: 4/5]
83. The Further Rivals of Sherlock Holmes – Hugh Greene (editor) [rating: 3/5]
84. Boy – Roald Dahl [rating: 5/5]

Books reviewed this week:
33. Me & Death – Richard Scrimger [rating: 3.5/5]
57. Odder Than Ever – Bruce Coville [rating: 4.5/5]
62. To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf [rating: 5/5]
71. Benny & Omar – Eoin Colfer [rating: 4/5]
72. Theodosia & the Serpents of Chaos – R.L. LaFever [rating: 3.5/5]

Mount TBR Stats
4 books conquered
18 books conquered total
0 additions
0 subtractions
334 books remaining

Currently reading:
I’ve decided to finally start reading the Charlie Chaplin memoir I got from the library all those weeks ago. Yay memoirs! I’ve only just started so I can’t say anything about it yet, really, but I’m hoping it’s exciting.

And
Rereading Holmes: A Study in Scarlet Ch 1-4
Win a copy of Halith (ends 4/15)

Monthly Review: March 2010

Posted by Anastasia on April 3, 2010 No Responses »

Apr 032010

So I think March was an excellent thing, statistically-speaking. I had midterms and papers and presentations, but I didn’t let that stop me from reading whatever I wanted. And, happily enough, some of those things were actual readings for class! And I finished them and everything! It’s like I’ve turned a whole new corner. Plus I didn’t worry about how many books I was reading– I know I said last month that my goal was 25 books per month, but this month I just read whatever, not thinking about the goal, and it turns out I read even more this month than I did last month. And not all the books were shorties, either! Pretty awesome.

Quality-wise, March was all over the place. I don’t know if the weird weather (hot-cold-hot-freezing-windy) affected my mood more than I thought or what, but I had some very very good books and some very bad books. The Virginia Woolfs I read were the definite high points of the month for me, and I think they’ll continue to be some of my most favorite books for a while.

On the other hand, though I read a lot during March I don’t think I did much else. One of my goals for this year was to be more involved in the book blogging world, through whatever means I could think of, but I hardly even commented on other bloggers’ posts and I don’t remember doing much else. But April should be different, because I’m a judge for Nerds Heart YA, and I’m doing Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon on the 10th. That’s a good start in being more involved, I think, and I’m sure I’ll think of some other things as the month progresses.

For April I’m hoping to continue to knock away at my Mount TBR, but I’ve also got some library books that I really want to read and that I’m going to let myself read. Because really, it’s okay. Yeah. And I’m also hoping to work on commenting more, and to get reviews written more quickly after finishing a book (posting them quickly is another matter), and to maybe come up with a discussion post or two. I’m also thinking about maybe changing up my layout again for the new season– keep the header, which I love, but maybe add some color somewhere to the blog itself. What do you think?

Reading Stats
28 total books read
17 total books reviewed
0 ebooks
5 audiobooks
24 pbooks

17 were by authors new to me
0 were rereads!

Mount TBR Stats
18 books conquered
6 books purged
8 books added
336 total books left
Continue reading »

Review: Me and Death by Richard Scrimger

Posted by Anastasia on April 3, 2010 No Responses »

Apr 032010

33. Me and Death by Richard Scrimger
Publication: Tundra Books; 1 edition (April 13, 2010), Paperback, 192pp / ISBN 0887767966
Genre: YA, Paranormal
Rating:
Read: February 19, 2010
Source: LibraryThing Early Reviewers program
Summary from Amazon:

The story of one boy’s experience with the (not so) sweet hereafter.

Fresh from having stolen a piece of fruit and taunting the grocer, Jim, a fourteen-year-old wannabe gangster, bully, and car thief, is run over by a car. What follows is a hilarious, bleak, and ultimately hopeful visit to the afterworld, courtesy of Richard Scrimger, one of the country’s finest writers.

This is an afterlife peopled with unforgettable characters that might be drawn from video games: angry Slayers, tearful Mourners, and scary Grave Walkers. Jim meets them all and is given the chance to return to earth with the extraordinary gift of knowing what happens when we die. Now he must deal with living demons, including a neighborhood torturer and a truly creepy older sister. With imagery from the mean streets as well as the arcade, Me and Death is thought-provoking, exciting, sad, and funny — sometimes all at the same time.

This book will be released April 13, 2010.

Review

This is an interesting little book. It’s short, and there’s not much in it, but I liked it anyway because it’s a little slice-of-life thing with ghosts. However, I think it’s a little bit too short.

Because it’s so short, the moral never really goes beyond “don’t be a jerk or you’ll end up as a depressed ghost.” But does it need morals? Maybe it’s really just a view into a life of a kid who has bad stuff happen to him, where everyone is unhappy and ghosts show up. The story is a lot better if you don’t expect deep digging into the human psyche. But I did kind of want some of that deepness, especially since Jim goes pretty quickly from punk to prince. It would have been nice to have more description of that character growth, would have made it a bit more real and more punch-in-the-gut awesome.

It doesn’t end with a definitive solution to anything, but it does end with hope for better things. Jim makes good progress towards being a better person, but because it went so quickly in that direction I have the niggling feeling that he’ll backslide. I have no idea if there’ll be a sequel or not– it’d be nice to see what happens to everyone after that shocking ending– but I hope there is! It’d be a good chance for some more of that true character growth I want.

And

Find your own copy @ Amazon

Other reviews: Have you reviewed this book? Let me know where and I’ll link to it from here!

It kind of reminds me of Dead Like Me, with the quirky humor and depressing dead people.

Rereading Holmes: A Study in Scarlet Ch 1-4

Posted by Anastasia on April 2, 2010 3 Responses »

Apr 022010

Bored in class one day, I decided to find a Sherlock Holmes story online and read it. I’m pretty sure I’ve read nearly all the Holmes stories before, but it’s been so long I can’t properly remember. I don’t normally write reviews for rereads, but though I’m not sure if this is a proper re-read or not I wasn’t particularly interested in writing reviews for the series. So I thought instead it might be fun to do a sort of compilation post of the things I noticed while reading whatever, much like when I was reading The Woman in White in January.

So! I’m calling this series Rereading Holmes, and I’m starting with A Study in Scarlet, the very first Holmes story. I’m reading this online copy, though I do have a complete Holmes book somewhere. (It’s hardback, double-columned and kind of unwieldy. I tend to forget where I’ve left it for months at a time.)

This format does sort of assumes you’ve already a) read the book or b) seen a movie/TV show that adapts it. I don’t know how interesting this’ll actually be, but I’ve stuck in some pictures anyhow to try and keep things spicy.

Chapter 1: In Which Holmes and Watson Meet

The Meeting

Epic meeting between Holmes and Watson!!
Funny how whats-his-face is all “you should totally live with him (Holmes) but he’s nutzoid so…yeah.”
Things noticed about Holmes: Holmes’ stained hands (stains which can’t come out?), the various cuts and bandages, how enthusiastic he is to meet Watson and about his work
How rich is Holmes? Why does he need a roommate? Isn’t his family some noble-thing– or am I transposing that from fandom? Whats-his-face says he needs help paying rent, so maybe he spends all his money on chemicals and things.

Chapter 2: In Which Watson Adjusts to Being Holmes’ Roommate

lol Watson not asking Holmes what he does for a living. Isn’t that, like, the FIRST THING you’d ask your new roommate? To know if they’ll have enough money to pay their own rent? But I guess it’s some Victorian thing to not ask people basic personal details.
Watson is all “Who are all these strange people coming in and out of our apartments?!” I think he thinks Holmes is a drug dealer, for real.
Holmes doesn’t know about the universe, but then how often does that come up in Victorian mysteries anyway? Hardly ever.
“You see I have a lot of special knowledge which I apply to the problem, and which facilitates matters wonderfully. Those rules of deduction laid down in that article which aroused your scorn, are invaluable to me in practical work. Observation with me is second nature.”
“It is simple enough as you explain it,” I [Watson] said, smiling.” — I think this drives Holmes nuts? Where did I read that? I remember him being all, “yeah it’s simple when I tell you how I did it, but you couldn’t do it so how simple was it really?” Is that fandom again?
Other famous literary detectives, Dupin, Lecoq. Holmes hates them, which made me giggle. Was Conan Doyle this antagonistic to other detective novels?
Plus it’s funny that later detective novels’ authors are so antagonistic to Sherlock Holmes. It just all circles around, doesn’t it?