Archive for August, 2010

#fictionalspouses

Published 23 August 2010 twitter made me do it 1 Comment

in no particular order. i could only come up with five tonight, but i reserve the right to have several installments.

Wash (and because this is FICTIONAL, Zoe does not exist to beat the living daylights out of me.)

Ike Thermite (go on, read the book, i’ll wait. c’mon — a kung-fu master/mime? NOTHING SEXIER.)

Spike (he knows what he wants and goes after it. plus, bonus points for sexy accent!)

Anders (that idiot Starbuck doesn’t know a good thing when it marries her)

Harry Dresden (if you know me at all, this does not come as a shock)

my bookrageous photo shoot

Published 23 August 2010 bookrageous 5 Comments

the wonderful, lovely, and talented Laura Kalman helped me from start to finish on this photo shoot. i knew the book (do you even have to ask? The Gone-Away World, FTW!) but Laura helped a ton with the concept and the poses themselves, not to mention she was patience personified as she wielded an eyeliner pencil and then the camera. we ended up writing most of the first page of GAW on my face, neck and shoulders, starting at my forehead. what is this for, you ask? why, the very awesome BOOKRAGEOUS CALENDAR: CHECK IT OUT!

and now, without further ado, i give you: my bookrageous photo shoot.


Continue reading ‘my bookrageous photo shoot’

bookrageous: IT’S ALIVE!

Published 22 August 2010 bookrageous Leave a Comment

so bookrageous has gone from being something that was just a hashtag on twitter to having a life of its own! i am so proud to see it grown up and gallivanting about in the wild:

book notes

Published 13 August 2010 reviews 2 Comments

TAROKO GORGE, Jacob Ritari: picked this one up half because of twitter (what else is new) and half because i had been meaning to read it since before it was publicly available. and a good thing i finally got to it! well worth a read. it’s a murder mystery (kinda sorta), a meditation on Buddhism (kinda sorta) and tourism and cultural clashes, and also a high school drama (kinda sorta). in other words, i am bad at summarizing books and this one is a doozy. Ritari writes evocatively and well, with a few lines so sharp you’ll want to quote them to people. tense, surprising, and satisfying.

STALEMATE, Icchokas Meras: when a publisher gives a push to a book that’s been out for FIVE YEARS in their newsletter, i for one pay attention. Other Press publishes some of the best international/translated writing i’ve read, and this one is up at the top. as i say, i am bad at summarizing books, and in the wrong hands the plot summary sounds like an over-done Hollywood drama: in a ghetto during WWII, a chess game between a Jewish prodigy and a German commandant will decide the fate of the ghetto’s children. but nothing, in the history of everything, could be less cliche. and i mean that. the book spirals through the lives of Abraham Lipman and his children (one of them the chess prodigy). moving, horrifying, redeeming, stunning. they should teach this book in schools and colleges, both for craft and topic. READ IT.

ten of the ACTUAL best dragons in literature

Published 1 August 2010 Uncategorized 9 Comments

in protest against this post (has this guy actually ever read a book with a dragon in it?!) i give you (in no particular order) ten of the ACTUAL best dragons in literature:

1. Smaug, THE HOBBIT (Tolkien) (and the only one The Guardian got right): the grand-daddy of all bad-ass dragons in fantasy for all time. ’nuff said.

2. Temeraire, of Naomi Novik’s Temeraire Series: this dragon manages to be FUSSY and PRIM, in addition to giant and deadly. what’s not to love?!

3. Kalessin, THE OTHER WIND (Le Guin): if you haven’t read Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea novels, i am sad for you. the original trilogy is wonderful, but the Tehanu books (TEHANU and OTHER WIND) are far and above my favorites. go forth and read them.

4. Eustace, VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER (Lewis): poor kid. if you leave out all the lit-crit that usually accompanies talk of the Chronicles of Narnia, Eustace’s misadventure is something straight out of an honest-to-god fairy-tale — vaguely lesson-ee, but mostly just creepy as all get out.

5. Snow Tiger, NAAMAH’S KISS (Carey): i love me some Jacqueline Carey, and i feel safe in declaring that i like the Moirin books better than the Phedre books. like Eustace, Snow Tiger is an unfortunate human caught in the grips of the supernatural — but way sexier, not to mention bad-ass.

6. Falkor, NEVER-ENDING STORY (Ende): seriously? i have to explain this one? i think not.

7. Mayland Long, TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON (MacAvoy): no one else, as far as i know, has ever read this book. and yet, it is one of my all-time favorites. short, intense, well-written, a fantastic present-day fantasy that i cannot even compare to anything else in the genre. pure unadulterated story-telling. READ IT.

8. Norbert, HARRY POTTER & THE SORCEROR’S STONE (Rowling): see Falkor.

9. Alamarana, ELVENBANE (Lackey): not only is she a dragon with an excellent internal life, but she is a shaman who can call LIGHTNING. how cool is that?

10. Heart’s Blood, Jane Yolen’s The Pit Dragon Trilogy: this whole series is ridiculously good. and the tear-jerker of the second book, HEART’S BLOOD? oh my.

alright, let’s hear it. who did i miss?

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