Nyotaimori

So there’s a good reason for being late this month. I was driving from San Diego all the way back home on the 1st with a three hour stop in Los Angeles to hang out with Long-Hai. Blurgh. Love Long-Hai, hate driving from SD to the Bay Area. Too long. Too many horrible cow farms. Poor cows.

So books! Last month, I read some. Mostly I read parts of some and then threw them to the ground and yelled, “No!” Heh. It was a lot of partial reads.

Books Read: 14

Books Partially Read: 12

Books Bought: 13

Money Spent: $31

Books Borrowed: 9

Books Given: 3

Books Re-read: 1

Money made (from selling books): 0

Books on To-Be-Read Shelf: 35

So books read squeaked past books partially read. Go me. The books bought were 12 from the Alameda Public Library Book sale and 1 from Serendipity Books in Berkeley (which is an AWESOME used book store Tami introduced Kris and I too last month). The one book I re-read is a book I read like 2 months ago and then sat around on the library waiting list again for a month and read again. It was not quite as good the second time. I was sad. And To-Be-Reads…well it’s a little less than last month. Maybe I’m getting ahead (hint: I’m not).

Favorite Books This Month: Wither by Lauren DeStefano, Cloudy With A Chance of Marriage by Kieran Kramer, Vespers Rising by Rick Riordan et all, The Emperor of Nihon-Ja by John Flanagan, George and Martha: The Complete Stories of Two Best Friends by James Marshall and Abandon by Meg Cabot.

That was a lot. Sorry. Short now!

Wither is this awesome dystopic future novel where one generation tries to extend life spans and fucks up the genetics of their offspring so everyone dies in their 20s. Girls get forced in to polygamous marriages to procreate and the story follows one girl put in this situation. It is excellent. It’s also a trilogy. So I recommend reading this one but also caution you that you might want to wait for the second one to be out at least.

Cloudy With A Chance of Marriage is the third one in Kramer’s Impossible Bachelor series and I’ve already written about 1 and 2. This one was better than 2, I thought, but still not as delightful as 1. Maybe I need to read 1 again to see if it’s really as good as I think because Jocelyn was unimpressed with it and liked 2 better. Basically this one is about a navy captain and a bookseller and their romance on a foggy street plus all the wacky characters living on the same street. In Regency England.

Vespers Rising is the bridge book between the 39 Clues series and the new Vespers series which will be starting soon. Damn Riordan for these books. Because I like them but there’s so many and you have to wait for them to come out and they’re all written by different famous YA/tween authors and they’re all good in different ways. This one was pretty great. It was short stories to introduce the Vespers and I enjoyed 2 of them more than the other 2.

Nihon-Ja is the 10th book in Flanagan’s Ranger series. 10th. I have been reading this forever. Also they come out in Australia and then take months to come out here so I also own several Australian copies that I paid a pretty penny for (damn you, shipping). This one is set sort of in Japan (it’s total alternate reality) and is great but maybe not AS great as some of the middle ones which were super great. I mean, it is 10 books. And he’s not like a super versatile author. A lot of the jokes/writing/plot/themes are the same. Still, I enjoy them.

George and Martha is our next Finer Things Club book so I don’t want to talk about it much. But it’s a picture book about two best friend hippos and I love Martha.

Abandon is the story of Hades and Persephone basically. Not quite, of course because it’s set in present day and has different people. It was good. It’s the start of a new series for Cabot and if you know me you know I’ll read anything she writes. Still, I enjoyed this one. It’s set off the coast of Florida on an island and I like the girl, Percy.

Least Favorite Books: Green by Jay Lake, Hacking Timbuktu by Stephen Davies, and Hounded by Kevin Hearne.

Green, I got almost all the way through and then it just devolved into S&M and I was like, “Seriously?” I mean, I am not against S&M at all (see how I own Carrie’s Story?) but this storyline didn’t need it. It was totally gratuitous and when it came to doing it with her older female role models I just couldn’t take it anymore.

Hacking Timbuktu–uh. It’s hacking computers and non-hardcore parkour in Timbuktu. I’m horrified I even bought it. Fifty cents seemed reasonable. And now I can give it to my 12 year old boy cousin.

Hounded is the first in a series about an Iron Druid and his fights with the fae and gods and witches and possibly vampires and who knows what else. I couldn’t handle it after like four chapters. Soooooo badly written. And it’s the first of at least 3! The others are coming out later this summer. How are people that write this shitty getting awesome book deals? Why can’t I have one?

I’ve already read one book this month and loved it (the new Julia Quinn so, of course). We’ll see how many others I do this month. Got to work on my own projects more this June. So much to do!

Favorite Quotes:

“[The clouds] have seen abysmal oceans and charred, scorched islands. They have seen how we destroyed the world. If I could see everything, as the clouds do, would I swirl around this remaining continent, still so full of color and life and seasons, wanting to protect it? Or would I just laugh at the futility of it all, and meander onward, down the earth’s sloping atmosphere?”

“And here we are: two small dying things, as the world ends around us like falling autumn leaves.”

Both quotes from Wither by Lauren DeStafano.

May, you glorious month, you! Does it seem like April lasted FORever to anyone else? Because I really felt it was unduly long. Looking back at my calendar at things I did at the beginning of the month seems like they happened 60 days ago instead of 30. The month where time stood still. And it’s not that I wasn’t busy and therefore bored out of my skull. I was actually quite busy. Plus I did Script Frenzy (and finished successfully with 100 pages of graphic novel on Friday).

So this month I set no goals. I wasn’t trying to read a book a month. And I wasn’t successful at that either. Unless you count how many books I TRIED to read this month, in which case I did do 30. Boo-yah. I did also borrow a shit-ton from the library, a lot of those were gardening books. Oh library, how I love you. Why will you not give me a job?

Books Read: 20

Books Partially Read: 10

Books Bought: 1

Money Spent: $3.50

Books Borrowed: 36

Books Given: 5

Books Re-read: 3

Money made (from selling books): $11.25 (Look at me go! I’m living the high life now.)

Books on To-Be-Read Shelf: 41 (Boo-garty.)

Favorite Books this month: Chime by Franny Billingsley, Eon: Dragoneye Reborn and Eona: The Last Dragoneye by Alison Goodman, Bossypants by Tina Fey, Alcatraz Versus The Shattered Lens by Brandon Sanderson, and The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

OK, so, I read The Little Prince for Finer Things Club (which happened today and of which there are pictures coming soon). I read it once long ago in the French during High School for Madame Pantzer’s class. I remember liking it then, I like it now also. It is delightful and puzzling and great for a tea party/costume/reading club.

Eona came out this month and I was pretty excited because I read and liked Eon months (years?) ago when it first came out (I also re-read it this month). It was not a disappointment. I think it was actually better than the first one. There was a lot of character development which went in unexpected, but totally logical, ways. I love that kind of thing. Eona impressed me because Goodman took a character that was horrible and made me like him. And then made me hate him again. I don’t normally change my opinion of a character so many times.

Bossypants I requested from the library well over a month ago and finally got up to #1 on the waiting list. It was hilarious. It could have been MORE hilarious but it was still satisfactory in the number of laughs. I laughed a lot. Mostly sort of choked delighted horrified laughter. Kind of like my reaction sometimes to Liz Lemon. The two things I liked best about the book (other than the funny) were how ordinary she made herself seem. She’s writing about being on SNL and being called by Bill Clinton and stuff but she’s also talking about pumping breast milk and being intimidated and talking to her mom. It’s a lot more ordinary than extraordinary which was something I didn’t really associate with Tina Fey prior to this. Secondly, she writes a little about the writing staff for 30 Rock and mentions Donald Glover. I love him! So basically I was just thrilled about that.

The latest Alcatraz book by Sanderson was great and also misleading. I am still irritated by that. The cover flap says it’s the thrilling conclusion but then I got to the end and it WASN’T OVER. Why must you always lie to me, Alcatraz? And why do I keep coming back for more all the same even though I hate unreliable narrators? If I haven’t raved about these books to you before–they’re about a boy named Alcatraz who has to fight the evil Librarians who rule the Hushlands (aka our world) and are hiding the Free Kingdoms from us because they like to control information. They’re delightful and A. is an excellent voice.

Chime. Chime, chime, chime. OK. So Jocelyn forwarded me this review about Chime and I was like, “Wellllllll, it does sound pretty but I hate hate hate unreliable narrators.” But the library had it so I got it and the rest, as they say, was me reversing opinions. Not only is the writing lovely and entrancing, she’s not actually an unreliable narrator. Those bitches to me are the ones who out and out lie to you and know it. Briony isn’t technically ever lying to you and also the truth was rampantly obvious within like 20 pages so I could just sit back and enjoy the lovely story-telling. This is gonna be a huge claim but in some ways it reminds me of The Changeover by Margaret Mahy (that cover is HORRIFIC)–which is one of my favorite books of all time. It doesn’t quite reach that level for me but I think that’s only because I didn’t read it as a teenager. If Chime had teen nostalgia on its side I might like it just as much. Outrageous claim. We’ll see if I read it multiple times in the next 20 years and still love it in 2031 like I love The Changeover now.

Least Favorites Books this month: Lord Lightning by Jenny Brown and Choker by Elizabeth Woods. I have nothing to say about those.

Book I feel the need to mention: Dukes to the Left of Me, Princes to the Right by Kieran Kramer. Because I talked about her first book When Harry Met Molly last month and was all excited about this one, remember? But this one was kind of disappointing. It was kind of like she wrote Harry/Molly and it was a success and then she took a book she had already written and changed the character’s names and revised a little so it would fit as the second book in this Impossible Bachelors series. Disappointing. Just not the same air of whimsical discordance. At the same time, I will fully be getting the third in the series–Cloudy With A Chance Of Marriage–ASAP and reading it. I’ve not given up on Kramer yet.

So May month. Goals? Thoughts? I do have a lot of back-log to read. I mean it’s sort of ridiculous. Lots of books out from the library still. And ones I’ve been given and haven’t gotten to yet (I’m looking at you 10th Flanagan. Should I read the first 9 again before I read you? Who can say.)

Who can say.