2011 February » Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog

TSS (Feb. 13): Being okay with less & IMM (15)

Posted by Anastasia on February 13, 2011 12 Responses »

Feb 132011

The Sunday Salon (Feb. 13)

I think I’ve been spending too much time on the internet. I’ve got too many blogs, and too many social media things that I feel pressured to keep up with, and it’s all gotten really exhausting lately. It feels like so many people are expecting me, as a blog owner, to be doing all these millions of things– keeping up with the news, reading tons of books, expanding my social media network, interacting with readers and fellow bloggers and people in the industry. Basically: putting all my time and effort into being a book blogger. I know no-ones actually SAID any of those things (well, not directly to my face), but I still feel the pressure of all the unsaid stuff anyway.

So what am I going to do about it?

Obviously: I’m going to stay off the internet more. There are things I want to do offline but because I’ve been feeling pressure to be more and more online, that offline stuff has been pushed to the side. I’m not even talking about reading books– which I’ve also been feeling pressured about– but other stuff, like watching movies or doing collages, or even writing in my journal. Lately, I’ve been feeling that if I’m not a) doing something related to my blog or b) reading a book, then I’m “doing something wrong.” Especially since I’ve got this self-imposed books read goal for the year that I can’t match unless I’m reading way more than I’m doing now.

I don’t like feeling like a failure, especially when I’m the one who’s pushing all these goals and stuff on myself. So I’ve come up with the following resolutions:
1. I’m okay with reading less books if I’m doing other fun offline stuff instead. I don’t mind not meeting my yearly reading goal.
2. I’m okay with not being online every moment I’m not reading.

Don’t worry, I’m still going to regularly update my blog. But I’m going to be less on Twitter, and I’m going to be reading less per week (I assume), and I’m going to be doing other awesome things instead.

Do you feel pressured to read and review more than you actually want to? How do you deal with the expectations and responsibilities of having a blog and being a book blogger?

Books read this week:
19. The Book of Tomorrow – Cecelia Ahern [rating: Borrow it] R
20. Bitter Melon – Cara Chow [rating: TBD] R

Books reviewed this week:
09. Brain Jack – Brian Falkner [rating: Borrow it] e
11. Jackaroo – Cynthia Voigt [rating: Buy it]
19. The Book of Tomorrow – Cecelia Ahern [rating: Borrow it] R

Currently reading:
I’m about 33% into Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey. It reminds me a lot of the Dresden Files series, except with less humor and an angrier protagonist.

In My Mailbox (15)

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren (who was inspired by Alea of Pop Culture Junkie‘s This Week in Books). Basically you just post about new books that came into your house over the past week, whether in the mail or by getting them at the library or by buying them in a store. Capiche?

Bought/Downloaded:

On indie books

Posted by Anastasia on February 12, 2011 19 Responses »

Feb 122011

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

The recent bru-hah-ha about indie books and the Future of Publishing has made me think more deeply about indie books. Are all of them bad? No. Some of them even have relatively nice covers! And, more importantly, some of them are probably pretty good.

Myself, I’ve read at least three good self-published books, plus tons of zines, comic books and chapbooks that were self-published. Plus, I’ve definitely read some real stinkers in traditionally published books realm, so it’s not like I think all trad. published books are automatically awesome anyway.

Really, the only thing that trad. published books have going for them is better marketing and more of a chance that they’ll have at least been glanced at by an editor. Well, that and the fact that they’ll probably get reviewed more, they’ll be available in libraries and bookstores, and, yeah– I’d be less judgemental of them from the start.

One of the articles I read was this one on USA Today, about an indie author who first tried to get her books published traditionally but was continuously rejected. She then decided to publish her books online– in ebook format, as well as paper– and she’s done really, really well. Better than she would have if she HAD gotten picked up by a trad. publishing agency.

That article, along with several others, have made me think a lot more about the future of publishing in relation to indie books. Here’s what I know:

traditional publishing, if not in “trouble” or “dire straits,” is having some, er, issues. This is partly due to the economy, to the advancement of ebooks and ebook readers, and to how people think about and interact with books now compared to pre-internet times.
the internet is king. Internet culture has permeated Western society and along with that comes the DIY ethos, the cutting out of the middle-man, and, most importantly, the idea that authors (and readers) don’t necessarily NEED big businesses to tell them what to do any longer.

So, basically, I’m not overly surprised at how popular self-publishing has become, especially with new technologies and more options in getting one’s book out there if one wants it to be out. What’s surprising to me is that some authors seem to prefer being self-published than not! The balance between self-pub and trad. pub is changing, and I’m actually really excited about where it’s going and how it’s going to end up. Especially if self-pub and trad. pub can figure out a way to work together that doesn’t involve fists and name calling.

Do I think trad. publishing is going to die? No. (I don’t think paper books will disappear, either.) Do I think self-pub authors are going to become more prolific? Yes, although considering how few literature awards, professional reviewers, and other established trad. publishing thingies actually deal with self-pub books, I think they’ll have to be prolific in other ways than trad. published authors are (or those established whatsits are going to have to change their criteria).

Though I’m very interested in indie books and want to explore them more, it still feels like less of a crapshoot to stick with reading trad. published books– basically, the odds are more in my favor that I’ll be reading a good book if it’s been through the trad. publishing wringer, if for the (copy-)editing than nothing else. However, I’m wondering if I shouldn’t give indie authors more of a chance. Some of them, at least, are willing to fork over the time (and money) to make their books the best they can be, and for those authors? I would be willing to at least give them a shot at convincing me how wonderful they are.

Also, if I ignore self-published books entirely, will I be cutting myself off from a big and soon-to-be (if not already) important part of the book world? I think it’s worth at least dipping my toe in.

So here’s what I’ve decided: I’m still not going to accept self-published books for review (so please don’t email me offers), but I will be branching out more and seeing what good indie books are out there. Luckily there’s some places that are helping to separate the dreck from the diamonds, and I’m hoping they’ll help me find some good reads. I’ll have to work hard to overcome my prejudice first, though!

Do you have a stigma towards self-published books, too? Have you ever read an indie book, or if you haven’t yet– would you? What do you think about authors doing really well selling their books themselves instead of through a publisher?

Note: none of this relates to backlist books that authors have rereleased themselves, which does happen and which is an entirely different thing I’m also excited about.

REVIEW: The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern

Posted by Anastasia on February 11, 2011 6 Responses »

Feb 112011

19. The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern
Publication: Harper (January 25, 2011), ARC, 310pp / ISBN 0061706302
Genre: Fiction, Magic Realism

Rating: Borrow it
Read: February 8, 2011

Source: Publisher

Summary from Amazon:

Born into the lap of luxury and comfortable in the here and now, spoiled, tempestuous Tamara Goodwin has never had to look to the future—until the abrupt death of her father leaves her and her mother a mountain of debt and forces them to move in with Tamara’s peculiar aunt and uncle in a tiny countryside village.

Tamara is lonely and bored, with a traveling library as her only diversion. There she finds a large leather-bound book with a gold clasp and padlock, but no author name or title. Intrigued, she pries open the lock, and what she finds inside takes her breath away.

Tamara sees entries written in her own handwriting, and dated for the following day. When the next day unfolds exactly as recorded, Tamara realizes she may have found a solution to her problems. But in her quest to find answers, Tamara soon learns that some pages are better left unturned and that, try as she may, she mustn’t interfere with fate.

Review

It’s taken me a while to figure out what I wanted to say about this book, because while I enjoyed it and had fun reading it, there was something about it that was bothering me. That something was actually bothering me so much it was making it hard to me to sleep at night, because I’d be laying there wondering wtf it was that was pinging my Wrong! radar. Then I had to tell myself to stop thinking about it because I had to be up early in the morning to catch a bus– anyway, I didn’t figure out what the something was until Wednesday night.

Here’s the something: I didn’t believe in the characters. I didn’t believe that Tamara was an actual 16-year-old girl; she felt more like an adult’s IDEA of a 16-year-old girl, one that was trying too hard to fit into that mold of “stuff teenagers like” (big hair, The Ting Tangs, Facebook) and it all came off as really false.

On the other hand, Tamara did say that she felt she had aged several years in the time since her father’s funeral, so maybe the two sides of her– adult and teen– weren’t playing nice together, and that’s what I picked up on.

But Tamara wasn’t the only problem. None of the other characters felt real to me, either, except maybe Tamara’s crazy aunt, and even that was a push. And then the crazy aunt got shoved into the “not real” side of things in the big reveal bit at the end of the book and it all went to hell.

The author

I didn’t like that ending. It felt like it happened too quickly, with too much shoved into too few pages, and the aunt became even more of a caricature with no real personality or even personhood. It was like a bad mystery show, one that was made on a budget of $2 and a limited time to shoot. Plus, the end had a flashback sequence narrated by an omniscient observer that I completely hated– mostly because it was SO different from the rest of the book.

However! Despite the fact that I didn’t believe in the characters and hated the ending, I really enjoyed the story. It was super suspenseful, with some scary parts and really nice descriptions of the Irish countryside, and it had a great mystery. It moved really quickly and I wasn’t bored the whole time I read it.

Because I do place so much importance on characters, though, the awesome story wasn’t enough to up my rating from “Borrow it.” I’d definitely read another of Cecelia Ahern’s books, and it’s not like I think this one is a complete wash. I just wish the characters had been a bit more layered.

Basically: If you place importance on story more than characters, or if you don’t mind slightly unrealistic characters, then the story is enough to make this a really good book.
If you like: Gothic romances, magical realism, those true crime shows on TruTV, Lifetime movies with titles like “I Had My Sister’s Baby,” you’ll like this book.

They say a story loses something with each telling. If that is the case, this story has lost nothing, for it’s the first time it’s been told.

This story is one for which some people will have to suspend their disbelief. If this wasn’t happening to me, I would be one of those people. (Chapter 1)

And

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

Other reviews: Rhapsody in Books Weblog | Books, Movies, and Chinese Food | Leeswammes’ Blog | GalleySmith | Bookfoolery and Babble

Credit: Author photo lifted from her website.

Literary Rock is my new favorite genre

Posted by Anastasia on February 10, 2011 3 Responses »

Feb 102011

Of music, that is!

Meet Glass Wave, a literary-rock band that sounds a lot like what would have happened if Jefferson Airplane or Pink Floyd spent all their time in a library surrounded by classic books and ghosts of dead authors.

The marriage of words and music can be paradise. The members of Stanford, California-based Literary-Rock band Glass Wave understand this better than most. Comprised of three professors, a Ph.D. candidate and an upstart jazz drummer, Glass Wave seeks to bring the exuberance of rock n roll to bear on the world of literature. Taking on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Ovid, Sigmund Freud, Jane Austen and others, Glass Wave recast classic tales from new and surprising perspectives against musical arrangements that incur thoughts of groups such as Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, Jerry Garcia and even The Decemberists.

Listen to songs and learn more about the band at their website!

Thursday Tea (Feb. 10): The Whitechapel Horrors

Posted by Anastasia on February 10, 2011 No Responses »

Feb 102011

Thursday Tea is a weekly(-ish) meme hosted by yours truly. To play along, all you need is a cup of tea, the book you’re currently reading, and the answers to the following questions: what tea are you drinking (and do you like it)? What book are you reading (and do you like it)? Tell us a little about your tea and your book, and whether or not you think the two go together.

The book: I’m back to reading that Sherlock Holmes meets Jack the Ripper book, The Whitechapel Horrors by Edward B. Hanna. Technically I think I started reading it…in December? Or maybe early January. I’m not sure– all I know is that I got stuck on a really suspenseful part and it took me a while to convince myself to go forward into the story. I’m a chicken, okay? I can’t handle scary-suspenseful situations all that well!

Anyway, I’m now past the scary part and I feel like I’ve got up enough courage to finish the rest. (I don’t think it’s even really all that scary, I’m just super invested in the whole Sherlock Holmes thing now and I couldn’t stop myself thinking “omg what if something HORRIBLE happens to Holmes/Watson/Lestrade omg” and I sort of…freaked myself out?)

The tea: A new tea this week! Pomegranate and raspberry, one of Stash’s holiday teas. I actually didn’t really like it, but I think that might have been because a) I put too much sugar in and b) some of the tea bits escaped from the bag and were floating around in my cup, which isn’t really appetizing. I think next time I’ll cut down on the sugar and not shake the bag around so much.

Do they go together? Well…not really, although the tea is an interesting purple color which is…er. In no way related to the story.

Oh, how I wish I still had my blood orange tea! Blood orange tea goes with EVERYTHING, from pirates to murders to stories of decades-long family feuds. It’s been so long since I had it I can’t actually remember what it tasted like, though. Did I even like my blood orange tea? I can’t remember. Damn.

(Now that I think about it, Earl Grey would go GREAT with this book. Earl Grey is another tea that does well with so many different types of books, don’t you think? But I mustn’t let myself fall into a rut, so I’m staying away from EG until next week or something.)

What’s your Thursday Tea?

If you’d like to participate, please feel free to use the image in your own post! Here’s a code for it; just copy-paste it into your own Thursday Tea post.
<a href="http://birdbrainbb.net/"><img border="0" src="http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/369/thursdayteanew.jpg"></a>

And you can link to your post in this Mr Linky! Please do link to your direct TT post, not the main page of your blog, so people can find your posts easily!

REVIEW: Jackaroo by Cynthia Voigt

Posted by Anastasia on February 9, 2011 4 Responses »

Feb 092011

11. Jackaroo by Cynthia Voigt
Publication: Fawcett Juniper Books (1992) (originally published 1985), Paperback, 289pp / ISBN 0449701875
Genre: YA Historical Fiction

Rating: Buy it!
Read: January 23, 2011

Source: BookMooch
Recommended by: Abby the Librarian

Summary from Amazon:

In a distant time and far-off kingdom, life is hard. People don’t have enough to eat, and winter is upon them. There’s little that offers hope, and many turn to the legends of Jackaroo — the masked outlaw hero who rides at night giving aid to the helpless and coin to the destitute — for solace. But Gwyn, the Innkeeper’s daughter — sensitive, industrious, and independent — is too practical to believe such tales.

But when a snowstorm forces her and a young Lordling to seek refuge in an abandoned house, Gwyn wonders if perhaps she has been too cynical. Hidden away in an old forgotten cupboard, Gwyn discovers a package — a cloak, a mask, a sword….Jackaroo? Could the stories be true?

It takes a shock and a devastating betrayal for Gwyn to begin to understand what — and who — Jackaroo really is. And she comes to know what part she will play in discovering the truth, such as it may be, behind the legends.

Review

The first Cynthia Voigt book I ever read was Homecoming, and I think I was in elementary school when I did. It was slightly traumatic– a parent ABANDONS her kids?! They don’t just run away like in the rest of the fun orphan books I enjoyed? OMG! (The movie was really good, too, by the way, but similarly traumatic.)

Anyway, Homecoming is basically why I haven’t read another Cynthia Voigt book before now. Not that Homecoming was a bad book! It’s just, y’know. I was worried.

The author

Luckily Jackaroo is almost completely different from ! For one thing, it’s a (kinda) historical fiction novel with vaguely medieval overtones. For another, it wasn’t traumatic at all! Really, the only things Jackaroo and have in common is that they both have strong female characters and they’re both very well written.

I adore Jackaroo. I can’t talk about it too much because I might ruin the plot, but basically: it’s awesome. When I first started reading it, I was a little worried because it seemed a) super slow and b) another “damsel is in distress and needs rescusing by manly hero” kind of book. I suppose I should have know better, having read Homecoming which is all about rescuing yourself and taking control of your life, but I read it over 10 years ago! That’s long enough for me to forget anything except my own name, really.

Jackaroo does not have damsels in distress. It has PEASANTS in distress, but the people who (mostly) help the peasants? Are also peasants. Awesome!

Despite the whole peasants-rescuing-peasants thing, however, Jackaroo doesn’t let you forget that in the olden days, royalty had the last say in, like everything. In Jackaroo, peasants aren’t even allowed to learn how to read, and they sure as hell aren’t voting in any sort of election. Everything extremely controlled, but there are pockets of freedom and I appreciated how Gwyn, especially, made good use of those pockets to better life for herself, her family, and her neighbors.

I love Gwyn, who’s starts out a little bit naive but gets savier by the end of the book. She might be a little bit too modern, I guess– she doesn’t want to get married because it’ll impede her freedom, which is pretty radical for a pseudo-medieval setting. But she’s not stupid, and she comes to her decision to not marry after a lot of thinking and considering every option and consequence. It was so nice to have a rational (lady) thinker in a book! (Perhaps I’ve been reading slightly too many YA books lately, where all the teenagers seem to be so full of hormones I’m surprised they can even figure out what they want for breakfast each morning.)

Gwyn may not know how to read but she sure knows how to do a lot of other things, including how to fight! She can kick some ass, for sure– whoops, that’s getting a bit close to a spoiler, there. Er.

Moving on. Besides Gwyn, I love the secondary characters (except maybe Gwyn’s spoiled brother, Tad), the setting (pseudo-medieval times, somewhere in a vaguely European land), the ACTION and ADVENTURE! And the emotions! So many emotions (and a bit of heartache). It got to be pretty powerful stuff, sometimes, enough to make me turn the pages really quickly so I could find out what happened next FASTER.

You shouldn’t think Jackaroo is ALL action/adventure, though. Some people might argue it’s not action/adventure at all! But I’m a bit focused on the action/adventure part because, uh, I haven’t read THAT many books (that aren’t paranormal/paranormal romances) with heroines doing action-y things, so I was really excited when it happened in Jackaroo.

There are so many exciting things in here, and Cynthia Voigt does it all so well.

Anyway, what I love even MORE than the action is Gwyn’s character growth, and how she became much more like herself than she was at the beginning of the book. It also had some really insightful things to say about human nature, and mythology, and so on. I loved especially how it showed that people have layers, and multiple reasons for doing things, and that you can’t always know what a person’s like just from their job or station in life.

The worst thing about Jackaroo? When I got to end of it and realized there’d be no more. It’s a series, yeah, but I don’t think the protagonists are the same in every book– and I’ll miss Gwyn a lot.

Basically: An intriguing story with fantastic characters and enough action scenes to make anyone happy.
If you like: Robin Hood, The Three Musketeers, Diana Wynne Jones, or pseudo-historical alternate reality type books, you’ll like Jackaroo.

Gwyn stood crowded in among the women. She held the hood of her cloak close around her head, covering her hair, shadowing her face. The basket she kept at her feet. Like the others, she kept her long dark cloak close around her, as if she too were cold. (page 1)

And

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

Other reviews: What! No other reviews? What kind of madness is this?

That’s not my actual cover, by the way. This is the cover of my copy:

I actually prefer the new one– this old one makes it look like a weird cross between a gothic romance and the Three Musketeers. The new one’s not perfect (the mask is wrong and the starkness isn’t really working for me), but at least it’s less 1980s and Gwyn isn’t portrayed as a soon-to-be-a-damsel-in-distress kind of woman. What do you think?

Credit: Author photo yanked from author’s website.

Birdwatching: Space colonies!

Posted by Anastasia on February 8, 2011 6 Responses »

Feb 082011

Space colonization (also called space settlement, space humanization, or space habitation) is the concept of permanent human habitation outside of Earth. (Wikipedia)

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to live out in space. Or on another planet! Would things be completely different from how they are here on Earth? Or would we somehow be able to replicate Earth life exactly, containing it in a ship or colony?

Here’s a list of ten books that explore the idea of life in space. Would you want to live in a space colony? Or would you prefer to stick to your home planet?