watch for new books by these authors!

I realized the other day that I'm waiting on new books from lots of authors. I have a little notebook of books that I want to read (as well as my goodreads page), but maybe I need a little notebook of authors to check on. Hmmm...

But I can start here, can't I? :)

Let's see. I just read two awesome new graphic novels last night and I'd like to keep an eye on those authors. Check them out for yourself! Also, I have some favorites where I'm waiting for the next book in the series... Oh, I'll just list them.

• Aaron Renier (Yay for Spiral-Bound!)
• James Turner (Rex Libris is awesome, especially if you love librarians)
• Kaza Kingsley (Erec Rex, of course, and I just looked and the 3rd book is coming out in November!)
• Lee Welles (3rd Gaia Girls book)
• Laurell K. Hamilton, Kim Harrison, Kelley Armstrong, Jim Butcher (my usuals)
• JT Petty (Clemency Pogue books--why aren't there more???)
• Andy Runton (Owly #5 will be out soon)
• Jennifer L. Holm & Matthew Holm (b/c you have to love Babymouse & there's a new one in August!)
• Melanie Watts (um, hello, Scaredy Squirrel!)
• Meg Cabot (particularly Being Nikki or whatever the sequel to Airhead will be)

That's all I can think of right now...I know there are more. I'll add as I see fit. I'm glad I checked on some of those authors--I found some new books coming out! Yay! Then I can indulge my love of pre-ordering... :)

Summer Reading update

I've gotten off to a REALLY slow start on my Summer Reading game thinger. But! I finally finished my first adult book. :) So...the tally so far...

1. Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot
2.
3.
4.
5.

Reading mysteries seems to be a summer reading program staple for me. I started reading Janet Evanovich for a summer reading program (I had to read a mystery and I don't really like mysteries (as they are traditionally conceived) much). And last year, I think I read a Janet Evanovich. I tried Meg Cabot's mystery series this year b/c I like her YA books so much. And I liked it. It was funny. :) I like funny mysteries. Oh, and ones about supernaturally people (you know, like vampires and werewolves and witches and such). *laughs*

Hmmmm...I've got at least one other adult book started (a non fic book even) and a couple prospects. Yay! I just have to quit getting all those graphic novels and manga from the library. Then I'll have time!

Oh, and GUESS WHAT! The Northfield Township Library has a Summer Reading program for adults too! I starts tomorrow (or techincally today). You enter yourself in a raffle for every book you read. Don't know what the prizes are, but I'm betting they're better than a free movie popcorn. You think?

I was thinking today that I wish I could have my own summer reading game with my friends. I don't know what we'd do, but...we'd have cooler prizes. And then I was thinking, I'd like to have friends who'd be interested in playing reading games with me. Not reading groups. Blech. But, like...someone who would exchange recommendations with me and we could talk about them. Someone to expose me to new books I've never read before or new authors. Well, I often wish I had friends who'd play games with me (like the question game or Truth or sending each other real letters/packages or something). I'm weird that way, I guess.

Anyway... I'm not much for posting this month, am I? I have lots of cool ideas for posts, I've just been too busy to write them. I have to write about the backroom buried treasures, that cookbook Julie & I found, and The Story of the Little Mole Who Went in Search of Whodunit. I'll get around to it...I hope.

Lovely new books

More adoration for paperbackswap & bookmooch b/c I got THESE books from them:

• Sexual Lives: A Reader on the Theories and Realities of Human Sexualities by Robert Heasley & Betsy Crane
• Babymouse: Beach Babe by Jennifer L. Holm & Matthew Holm
• Bumperboy and the Loud, Loud Mountain by Debbie Huey

Bumperboy and Babymouse are two of my absolute favorites. :) And I adore Robert and Betsy--I'm so glad to have their book! I've wanted it since they told me it came out. I knew them back at IUP. They were two of the people who kept me sane in that insane place.

Because I was in a book buying mood:

• Once Upon a Time in the North by Philip Pullman
• The Blue Girl by Charles de Lint

And from Borders super bargains:

• Lucinda, Darkly by Sunny
• Oh My Goth by Gena Showalter

I'm not sure if I want to read Lucinda, Darkly anymore. I read one of Sunny's stories in some anthology and didn't like it much. But...it was $2 in the bargain section at Borders. If I don't like it, I can swap it! :)

David Levithan!

Okay, so I just adore this man's writing. :) Just finished How They Met and Other Stories. Lovely. Especially b/c I'm feeling all lovey and such. Thank you, David, for writing such wonderful books.

Realm of Possibility is still my favorite though.

You know, there's still just so few young adult authors who write fiction for queer kids. That's partly why I love David Levithan. If I was a more accomplished author, I'd write such things. You know what I'd like to see? Young adult lesbian love stories? David and a couple others have written gay boy love stories books, but I can't recall even one about a teenage lesbian couple... Hmmm...might have to research that.

Quotes from How They Met and Other Stories:

I knew I was getting perilously close to opening up my History of Stupid Things Done in the Name of Crushes, but the insidious thing about the History was that I always felt each new blank page had the potential to transform it into a different book. One successful gesture, one successful relationship would suddenly turn it into a History of Stupid Things Done in the Name of Crushes That Were All Redeemed in the End.
--from "Starbucks Boy"

I mean, why is everyone so brainwashed into believing that they have to be in a relationship with one other person? Look at us, Teddy. If anyone were to tell us that the whole girl-boy thing was natural and anything else was unnatural, we'd know they were completely wrong. But have them tell us that every person needs to be with another person in order to be happy, and we nod along like it's the most obvious thing in the world. But there's no reason for it, is theree? It's not a proven truth. It's just some thing that our culture has come to spin itself around, mostly so we'll procreate, and we're the dupes who fall for it over and over and over again.
--from "Miss Lucy Had a Steamboat"

Love weaves itself from hundreds of threads.

We'd said we'd keep in touch. But touch is not something you can keep; as soon as it's gone, it's gone. We should have said we'd keep in words, because they are all we can string between us--words on a telephone line, words appearing on a screen.
--from "Breaking and Entering"

To love--to fall--is not a question.
To touch--to kiss--to speak--those are questions.
--from "Without Saying"

It doesn't have to be on Valentine's Day. It doesn't have to be by the time you turn eighteen or thirty-three or fifty-nine. It doesn't have to conform to whatever is usual. It doesn't have to be kismet at once, or rhapsody by the third date.
It just has to be. In time. In place. In spirit.
It just has to be.
--from "Intersection"

Quotes from "Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac" by Gabrielle Zevin

I officially adore Gabrielle Zevin. She's written exactly two books and I love them both. :) Elsewhere was an amazing story about a young woman's afterlife. Not only was it cool to imagine an afterlife completely like any other I've heard of, it was a sweet love story. And Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac is an awesome love story about two best friends. Cool.

But, the quotes!

It was a nice day, and I don't mean that it was sunny either. It was humid and not too cool, like winter was getting annoyed with itself and wanted it to be spring just as much as everyone else.
--Gabrielle Zevin

"Love stories are written in millimeters and milliseconds with a fast, dull pencil whose marks you can barely see," Fuse said. "They are written in miles and eons with a chisel on the side of a mountaintop."
--Gabrielle Zevin

I wondered if the person who really loves you is the person who knows all your stories, the person who wants to know all your stories.
--Gabrielle Zevin

Andi Watson

I thought Andi Watson was a girl. He's not, he's a boy.

Why are nearly all graphic novels done by men? Where are the women? I want to see women do graphic novels! Granted, I have seen some...but there needs to be more!!

Sorry, Andi Watson. I do really like your graphic novels. :)

So lazy with the new books...

I've got so many from the past few weeks!

Bookmooched & paperbackswapped:

• Bad Cat by Jim Edgar
• American Virgin: Going Down by Seagle, Cloonan, & Kelly
• American Virgin: Wet by Seagle, Cloonan, & Rugg

Manga, manga, manga from Vault of Midnight!:

• After School Nightmare #6 by Setona Mizushiro
• Ouran High School Host Club #10 by Bisco Hatori
• Absolute Boyfriend #5 by Yuu Watase

I really have to catch up on my manga reading...

And new comics from Vault too!:

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 #10, #11, #12
• Anita Blake Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures #7, #8, #9
• Runaways #29
• Angel: After the Fall #3, #4
• Y: The Last Man, the final issue

I can't believe Y is over! I love that comic. Oh, and one of the cool guys at Vault told me there's going to be another 3 issue Serenity/Firefly comic!! And another next year! YES! Oh, Joss Whedon... How I adore you.

I should be reading my comics too. *sighs* I'm so behind... Gotta quit with all the library books!

Such lovely quotes by Sabrina Ward Harrison

I've "read" two of her books now, Spilling Open and Messy Thrilling Life. I say "read" because they are mostly art. Quite lovely art. With messy written words, mostly. Very cool.

Now, the quotes:

The thing that I've been noticing about myself is that I don't make it clear what is important to me--because I don't want to lose the connection or seem like I'm too much work to them. But then I become too much work for myself because I'm not being true to myself. It isn't my job to judge what is "too much" for them. My job is to be completely honest and myself and let the other respond honestly with who they are and what feels right to them. I must not shift, after or hide myself in order to experience love--because that's not really love--that's when resentment is born.
--Sabrina Ward Harrison


I'm afraid to show you who I really am, because if I show you who I really am, you might not like it and that's all I've got.
--Sabrina Ward Harrison


our love matters truly.
--Sabrina Ward Harrison


they talk of the power of the "wounded healer"--the one who dares to bare their soul, who feels the pull to do so, to guide others through the twilight to dawn. it is the wounded healer [who] knows the blood of the people, and isn't afraid to show that they too are bleeding. that is their tincture, their medicine. maybe that's what we are. maybe the medicine is in the revealing, the baring of scraped knees and bruised hearts.
--Sabrina Ward Harrison

Maya Angelou is a rainbow...

Well, she is! If you had heard her speak, like I did, on Friday at U of M, then you would understand.

I was so excited when I heard that she was coming to U of M. I went and got a ticket (free!) right away. And even though I haven't felt good all week, I still went.

She walked on stage, with the help of a cane and a gentleman, and I almost cried. She has such presence. Vitality, power, and beauty. And she was so funny!

She talked about how art and science need each other. She talked about poetry and how she came to love it. She talked about her life and struggles. She talked about a quote and now I can't remember who said it, but basically, it was "I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me." And she explained how everything humans have done, have created, have learned is for every other human. She talked about how she reads poems and knows the author wrote them for her. She talked about how we're all human beings and we should value each other as such despite our differences. She talked about loving ourselves for who we are because we all have positive effects on people. She talked about always saying yes to good things. She told beautiful stories and read beautiful poems. She laughed and sang. It was simply...amazing. If you ever have the chance to see her in person, please do. You won't regret it.

At the end, she said that each of us is a rainbow in the clouds for many people and that we should remember that. She told a story of reading a poem at the UN's 50th anniversary and how when she was 16, they were forming the UN in San Fransisco and she would stare at all the people going in, thinking that some day she might able to do what the translators did. And 50 years later, she did go into that building, invited by the UN and read a poem they asked her to write and she said she took every person/rainbow who had every supported, encouraged, and cared for her into that building with her. It made me think about my rainbows... And that is why she is rainbow for me.

China Shakes the World & James Kynge

I finished China Shakes the World this evening. It was not by choice that I read this book--it's not my type. The living-learning program I run is reading the book as part of the inagural summer reading program at U of M. All my students are reading it...

Well, I'm just not that interested in business and economics. I found the chapter on environmental concerns interesting. Overall, I found the book frightening. Especially the last chapter... China is growing and expanding, people are living better, there are greater opportunities, education is flourishing--all that is great. But the scary part is the limited resources that everyone in the world is competing for (and the implied lengths they will go to in order to protect their share or gain new resources), the lack of concern about the environment, the nuclear weapons... I don't know that I can pull my thoughts together better than that... Everyone who has read the book has said that Kynge presents a balanced view, but it didn't seem that way to me. I don't know. I'm not good at reviewing...

James Kynge is coming to campus on Sept 18th to give a talk based on his book. I'm very curious to see what he has to say. I hope it will be interesting.

I'm also curious about what my Chinese students will have to say about the book... I know many of my students have found it deadly boring. Well, this should be interesting...

Why couldn't we have stuck with a nice book like A Thousand Years of Good Prayers? That was a nice little book with many interesting different stories touching on the lives of different people and highlighting different cultural aspects of China. That would have been so much better, in my opinion... Oh well. *sighs*

I love BookMooch!

Mooched:

• The Magic Fart by Piers Anthony

So, I found this book, Pornucopia by Piers Anthony when I was working at B&N the first time. I love Piers Anthony and I get up on his Xanth series. The Apprentice Adept and Incarnations of Immortality series were two of my absolute favorites (that my mom got me into, actually). So when I found Pornucopia, I was intrigued. I still haven't read it all the way through. But I will! Then, I saw The Magic Fart somewhere, so I put it on my Paperbackswap & BookMooch lists and LOOK, here it is!! Yay!!!

Once I catch up on my manga and get my library book list down to something manageable, I'll have to start reading some of my own books too. It'll happen...someday.

Caitlin R. Tiernan

I read a Caitlin R. Tiernan book quite awhile ago called Silk. I actually read it and returned it to the bookstore. I never do that. It was just...not that good in my opinion. I tried another of her books, I think Threshold when I was dating Randall and one of his friends said her books were better than Poppy Z. Brite's books (whom I do adore). I thought I'd give Caitlin a second try. I couldn't even make it through the book.

I saw Alabaster at the library and was intrigued by the illustration on the cover. I read the back and it sounded like a good story. I decided to give Ms. Tiernan one more try. Eh, no luck--I didn't enjoy Alabaster any more than her other books (besides the illustrations by the guy who draws Gloom Cookie).

I've been trying to pinpoint why I don't like her writing. I think it comes down to the fact that she's so poetic and detailed in her descriptions of mood and place AND she's never straightforward about what's going on in the story. Alabaster is a series of short stories she wrote about one character, Dancy. Dancy is interesting, her purpose in life (killing monsters as directed by an angel) is interesting, the sequencing of the various stories was interesting, but I still feel like I have no clue about exactly what happened in the book (besides the killing monsters bit). That frustrates me. I want to know why the angel chose Dancy to speak to. Who is the angel exactly, anyway? What happened to her mother and grandmother? How does she kill the monsters? Maybe that's supposed to be part of the charm of the book--not having specific answers to questions like those. I don't know. It just wasn't a favorite.

But if you're into horror type books, check it out. Lots of people DO like Caitlin R. Tiernan.

Cassandra Clare & Holly Black

Borders had a booksigning & authors visit with Cassandra Clare & Holly Black this evening and I WENT!!! Holly Black is cool--I LOVED The Spiderwick Chronicles and I have her book Tithe but haven't read it yet. It was cool to see her.

But the coolest was Cassandra Clare. I've read her HP fan fiction! She did an amazing trilogy of stories and it was one of the first GOOD pieces of fan fiction that I've ever read. She also did LotR Very Secret Diaries, which were hilarious. So, when I saw her name on a book a few months ago, I wondered. Did a little digging and found out it was the same person! I haven't read her book yet (City of Bones), but I'm really looking forward to it. She was so cool. When I went up to have her sign my book, I told her I had read her fan fiction and she said cool and that she likes it when people have read her fan fiction and are now getting her book, b/c it shows her evolution and she said she hoped I'll enjoy it. SWEET! We also talked about Nicola's books and the fairy doors in Ann Arbor. :) YAY! Once I get my hoarded group of library books down, it'll be next on my list. Then Tithe too.

YAY!!!

Lilith Saintcrow

I picked up Working for the Devil by Lilith Saintcrow b/c I was intrigued by the main character, Dante--strong woman fighting supernatural baddies--just what I like. I really enjoyed it and I went through it quickly. I've got her second book, Dead Man Rising on my shelf, but have been swimming in my library books and haven't gotten to it yet (yet another problem with my giant library list and my tendency to hoard--no time for the books I have and REALLY want to read).

I was searching around and found some older books she's written, the first being Dark Watcher. I got it from ILL, not sure if I was going to like it--it looked a little romancey. But what a surprise! I loved it. It was intriguing (and short, which is a bonus these days). It seems Ms. Saintcrow has some sort of pagany history, b/c she did a pretty cool job of implementing witchy elements into her story. I really enjoyed it and can't wait to read the next one. It's always a nice surprise when someone includes Wicca and Wicca-related symbols and concepts into fiction. YAY! :) Here's hoping that Storm Watcher becomes available soon.