Get Lost in Literature

Book Beginnings on Fridays  by  Rose City Reader  -  Share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now. "The darkness bled into itself- no beginning, no end." Two Twisted Crowns by Rachel Gilig So I've only just started this book but I love that first line of the story sets up for a gothic tone. Now I have to find out if that tone can be maintained. Book Blogger Hop Q : Is there a book you've been meaning to read forever but haven’t gotten to yet? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee-Addicted Writer) A : Justify: 111 Days to Triple Crown Glory by Lenny Shulman . I sometimes add books that I plan on reading right away to my Currently-Reading shelf on GoodReads... and I think I put it on that shelf two years ago which isn't quite forever, but long enough considering I own it. Am I currently reading it? No, I am not. And I can't j...

If you can't tell by reading it, 'zeitgeist' is a word that has origins in Germany. It's the idea that ideas of a specific time are influenced by the mood, cultural, and social beliefs of that time. Zeitgeist is why and how artists and writers do what they do. Edgar Allan Poe for example, was notorious for writing stories where people were buried alive. A popular fear at the time? Being buried alive. He didn't invent this fear and put it in the peoples' minds. It was something he took from people and implanted into his short stories to make them both more engaging and more horrifying.  Now me? I'm afraid of spiders so being buried alive isn't half as bad as the idea that I'll wake up in bed some night with a spider crawling up my leg or over my face or in my ear... That's probably enough about me. More obvious examples of a zeitgeist include George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm . George Orwell who saw the start and end of both world wars, wro...

I don't know, I think using the word 'your' might be cheating a little, but I had trouble coming up with a word for Y. So today I want to discuss genres. If you are unfamiliar with the word 'genre' it's a way of grouping works of literature, movies, music, and art together by subject or type. I feel like my reading habits are eclectic. I try read from multiple genres a year, but I do tend to gravitate toward Speculative Fiction more often than not. Speculative fiction is a genre, but it's also an umbrella term to cover the sub-genres of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror . I'd say I read fantasy the most, science fiction second, and horror the least of the three. It's odd to think of fantasy, sci-fi and horror as sub-genres, because all three have sub-genres of their own that I don't intend to detail because that could go on for a long time. There's also Non-Fiction which, like Speculative Fiction , can cover many mini subjects like Hist...

Xenophobia is the fear of that which is foreign or strange, usually against people but can be a culture or a place. It might sound weird to include a phobia of foreigners to a A-Z theme that is all about bookish discussions, but believe it or not, it is a popular plot device.  Xenophobia is why Halflings ( The Lord of the Rings ) don't leave the Shire and don't like unexpected guests, making a character like Frodo a standout. The many races of Middle Earth held ill-will toward each other and they needed to overcome prejudices to fight for their freedoms. Xenophobia is why everyone in the Stillness ( The Fifth Season ) hates Orogenes, forcing protagonists Essun, Damaya, and Syenite into their 'me against the world' roles. The bigotry that surrounds them like a suffocating blanket is what makes them such complex, even if lonely, characters. They're strong-willed, they're angry, and they are on a mission. In Black Woods Blue Sky , recluse Arthur is universally dis...

  In my last post, we discussed books as a vacation from reality, so today I want to talk about what makes it so easy to step from one location to another: worldbuilding.  Worldbuilding is exactly what it sounds like: using literature to design an imaginary world. A good book should have the ability to take you somewhere, but a good author makes sure that's a place worth going. Worldbuilding is a more obvious concept when it comes to fantasy and science fiction, but it should be present across all genres. Worldbuilding is a setting: mountains, deserts, or vast oceans, skyscrapers or quaint villages. But it's more than that. Is it simply enough to say someone is in a room, or do you want to know what the room looks like that that someone is in? It's the old adage of " show, don't tell. " Worldbuilding is culture. How do the characters interact socially with others, with economy, with the government? Is there religion, is there art? The more culture a character ...

We've all been there. We've all had a bad day or a moment at work or after a family squabble where we've thought, "Gosh darn it, I need a vacation." And wouldn't it be nice to just get up and go whenever the mood suited you? Some people do. For many people, reading is a form of escapism. When you open that book and start reading those pages you can be transported somewhere new and exciting. Even if you don't have time to sit down and binge a whole book, for whatever time you are reading you get to escape your reality. When I was a kid, I spent an extraordinary amount of time at Redwall Abbey, Hogwarts, and in the frigid Yukon with Buck. But as I grew older, the places I visited became more varied. I've visited Middle Earth, Cape Horn, the Stillness, San Francisco, Daevabad, and Chernobyl. I've met Prince Harry, Leah Remini, Addie LaRue, Malala, famed vampire hunter Abraham Lincoln, and Bella Swan. It's easy to get lost in the pages of a good bo...

No, not the operating system. Ubuntu is actually a philosophy originating in Africa, loosely translated into, "I am because we are." It's the idea that an individual's humanity comes from their relationship with society. I don't read a lot of philosophy. In fact, I think I've only read one book I would classify as philosophical and that was The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by Benjamin Hale which I read sort of on accident. Which is to say I liked the cover art. It's sort of a satirical take on what it means to be human from the perspective a chimpanzee. It's not a book for everyone as it's slow and perverse and a billion pages long. I'm not interested in talking about books that are strictly philosophical. I find them to be a little boring, but maybe that's because I haven't found the right one... More I want to talk about books that contain a specific philosophy, ubuntu, whether the author meant to include it or not. "If you w...

This post is for the book lovers who love what goes bump in the night. I feel like horror can be broken down into its subjects: ghosts, monsters, murderers, and psychological. There may be more out there, but personally I love a good supernatural horror, something that contains ghosts or monsters. And while I have an attraction to the paranormal, the human-on-human violence that takes place in murder-horror is too rich for my blood. As far as ghost stories go, I can recommend  The Summer of Night by Dan Simmons,  it is the first horror novel that truly scared me as I read it. Seriously, it contributed to a couple of sleepless nights. A group of kids go to war with an evil entity... There are a lot of people that compare it to Stephen King's It having never read It , I can't tell you whether that's an accurate comparison or not. There's also The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones , where on the anniversary of a terrible deed a group of friends fall prey to a veng...

 Short stories are stories usually designed to be read in one sitting, unlike novels which are usually read over a period of time. While some people consider the short story to be its own genre, I feel that's an oversimplification of a sometimes-overlooked style of storytelling. Short stories can be about horror, love, sci-fi, or just about anything else, so how can they be a genre on their own? I'd say it's more accurate to describe the short story as a style of writing. Although the definition of what a short story is, is subject for debate. Some think it should have a beginning, climax, and end just like a novel, while others think it was meant to start somewhere in the middle. Some argue that a short story should be plot driven while others say it should be character driven. Authors who write them tend to pick options from above based on what they prefer and as long as the story is suitably short, it still qualifies as a short story. My favorite short story author of al...

Retellings are novels that are based on old classics or fairytales, rewritten from a fresh perspective and/or set in a new or modern world.  I've read a lot of retellings over the years but I admit, that most of them were written by Gregory Maguire, including one of my favorite books and his most popular one, Wicked . For those of you who don't know, Wicked is the life story of the Wicked Witch of the West starting from her conception to her last moments. I found it to be surprisingly detailed and richly imagined as if Gregory Maguire wanted to live in Oz himself. Another retelling I want to draw attention to is What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher. The story retells one of my favorite short stories, Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. Kingfisher's imagery completely and accurately sets the tone for this gothic novella that follows a retired soldier unraveling the mystery of her friends' declining health. If fairytales are your thing, A Curse So Dar...

What does it take to become a writer? I wanted to be a novelist. That was the dream. I wanted to take the things that I could imagine, write them down, sell them to people who would appreciate them. I wanted to be a published author. I went to school for it and everything. I really do feel that my writing improved with my education, I’m not saying it didn’t. But the dream never came true… And now I work in manufacturing and write novels at night that will probably never see the light of day. Hindsight being everything, I should have gone to school for accounting. But there are a lot of successful authors out there who never went to college. It didn’t hurt them. The lack of education doesn’t negate raw talent. They had the vision, the skill, and the dedication it took to write down their ideas and get them to the finish line. Maybe it’s simply those three traits that qualify a writer. I can’t look at any one novelist and compare them to the next. I can’t find a common life thread that u...

Today, I'm going slightly off topic by talking about fictional podcasts. If audiobooks are the same as reading a paperback, then a good fictional podcast is like an audiobook with voice actors and sound effects. Now I struggle to concentrate on audiobooks. The voice that drones on and on... I compare it to white noise and the quality of the story, assuming it's good, is completely lost on me. I had the same problem with my first podcasts. My attention span was just too short to follow true-crime or science or politics. But then I got hooked on Aaron Mahnke's Lore . Lore is not considered a fictional podcast, detailing stories of the supernatural that may have occurred if you believe in that sort of thing. But Lore was a gateway to my love of fictional podcasts because Aaron Mahnke created one called The Bridgewater Triangle . Hearing a story about the Bridgewater Triangle (a location in Massachusetts that is said to be a nexus for the paranormal) appealed to me greatly be...

O is for Opinionated, which is a thing that I am. Most of us are opinionated even if you are someone who insists you are not. You have a brain therefore you are. It's the driving reason so many of us have blogs in the first place: Have Opinion, Must Share. Some people share their opinions on crochet, fashion, photography... I share my opinion on books. I love to read. If you've been following right along you probably have guessed that by my previous posts, but if this is your first visit now you know. My blog was inspired by my need to read, a desire to connect with other readers, and yes, I wanted to share my opinion on what it is I'm reading. I also wanted to put all those literature courses I took in college to use, which is to say, I spent an awful lot of time learning how to analyze books. So now I give my opinion on books I've read. I try to keep my reviews fair. I try to make sure a book I'm reviewing negatively doesn't come off as bullying. If I get trap...

Today I want to talk about book bans and banned/challenged books. Or as I like to call it, nonsense. I'm going to start by saying I don't believe in book bans. I mean, I know they aren't mythical, they exist. But I don't believe you have the right to tell me what I can and cannot read just because you don't find it appropriate for you. And when books get stripped from school libraries, I don't believe you should have the right to tell someone else's child what they can and cannot read, that's really between that child and their parents. Technically speaking, book banning is still illegal. There are certainly people who want specific books banned from public consumption, and there are people who have advocated successfully for certain books to be pulled from library shelves, but you can't actually prevent people from reading these books. In the United States, there's a little thing called the 1st Amendment  and I tried to detail what it means on t...

  Myth - a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events. This is the definition of ' myth ' provided by Copilot when I Google-searched the definition of a myth. Typically, to my knowledge most of the best known myths are stories of gods and goddesses such as in Greek and Roman mythology (it even comes from the Greek word ' mȳthos '), and more controversially we could include the Bible in this category of story. Circe by Madeline Miller would be one example of a book that deals with mythology, detailing the life of the daughter of Helios. Seemingly powerless and ordinary, she eventually becomes the goddess of witchcraft and banished to an island where she hones her craft and takes the company of men. Another would be The Land of Lost Things by John Connolly , where the worried mother of a comatose daughter is whisked away to Elsewhere, a ...

Today's blog post is about listening, more specifically listening to audiobooks. Audiobooks are simply books that have been converted into an auditory narration. They're often preferred by people who don't have time to sit still and would rather utilize those headphones to listen to a good book, rather than use their eyes. I know there are people who exclusively listen to audiobooks, but I'm not a big audiobook listener. My attention span is a little too short to concentrate on the narration, my ears eventually reducing the voice to white noise. I've only successfully completed 4 audiobooks in my life:  World War Z 's unabridged audiobook, which was done entirely with voice actors and was a format I loved best. I've listened to Astrophysics for People in a Hurry , Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster , and I've listened to my favorite novel Call of the Wild .  Audiobooks are a bit controversial among diehar...

As in the whole kit-and-kaboodle.  That's right. Today we're going to talk about those collections. My collection, as you may have guessed it, is made up of books. It's organized by genre (mostly). I can always put my hands on a fantasy or a mystery or a horse book (horses, I've determined, are their own genre) because I always know exactly where it is. My only deviation from genre, is author collections. If I have multiple books by the same author, I group them together instead. I haven't counted my books. I don't know how many I have. Not as much as some, but definitely more than others. I don't share my books often. They usually come home dog-eared or with teeth marks from an inquiring kitten or smelling of cigarette smoke and occasionally they don't come home at all. I'm a collector you see, unless I truly didn't like a book and think someone else will enjoy it more, I don't just hand them out. I might want to read them again and I certai...

"What are you doing?" "Just reading." I suppose this post is sort of a tie-in with B and F and my upcoming K entry. Books are wonderful, and we all have Favorites, and K would be telling so let's hold off on that one. I'm just reading... Done on the weekends with my morning coffee while I sit in my rocking chair, or done outside in the shade in an adirondak, or done sprawled out on a towel at the beach. And let's not forget those blog posts when I'm sitting in front of a computer. I'm just reading. This whole blog is basically about my reading habits, and while I read some genres more than others, I read a little from almost every one. I'm a thrill seeker; excluding my aversion to carnival rides, skydiving, reckless driving, or anything else that could get me injured or killed... Okay, maybe 'thrill seeker' is the wrong term but I'm constantly looking for the next book to thrill me, enchant me, fill me with passion, sweep me off m...

  “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” ― Oscar Wilde Today's topic is inclusivity in literature. With the Trump Administration cancelling the DEI policies that sought to make it easier for minorities in the USA to be included, it's more important than ever to raise awareness for the fact that everyone needs a story that they can relate to and not just stories aimed at your stereotypical Mr. and Mrs. Mary Sue who are probably white. There's been a lot of talk about lack of representation of minority groups in media (in the US; I can't speak as to other countries' societal problems) over the recent years, including tv, movies, and yes, even books. People aren't always white, heterosexual, or without handicap. So if you supported Trump's so-called 'anti-woke' policies, which I believe is just an excuse to legally exclude people based on bigotry, feel free to leave at any time rather than be offended by my book recs. I'm going to start with...

“He moved like a dancer, which is not surprising; a horse is a beautiful animal, but it is perhaps most remarkable because it moves as if it always hears music.” ― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale The above painting was discovered in the Lascaux cave in France. It portrays two bulls, a handful of tiny red deer at the bottom, and in the center, a horse. This painting is estimated to be about 17,000 years old. Which confirms what I already suspected: We've been obsessed with horses for a very long time. (I certainly have been.) And maybe they haven't been appearing in books for as long as we've been painting them, but they've been appearing in books for quite a while. They're portrayal in literature is unsurprisingly memorable. Some books were written to convey major themes, like Black Beauty by Anna Sewell meant to remind us of animal welfare, or War Horse by Michael Morpurgo which has long been hailed as anti-war propaganda important enough to have been made into b...

 “We are the universe watching itself, watching and learning.” ― Christopher Paolini, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars Today's bookish topic is galactic... More specifically, our desire to be amongst the stars.  It's a desire on everybody's mind, more often than we care to admit. It was why Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a feat that seemed too fantastic, so people called it a hoax. It's why when we imagine the apocalypse, be it zombies or global warming, we imagine a space station or alien planet capable of supporting life after earth. It's why private space companies emerged after NASA, with billionaire entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson building their own spacecrafts, one of which looked comically like a male body part. And it's absolutely why the concepts of space-tourism and privatized space flight are so popular, even if the 'common people' probably won't be able to afford it. And although this is a book blog, I would be remiss if I...

  “It’s a gift if it makes us better. It’s a curse if we let it destroy us.” - N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season Let's talk about favorites today. via GIPHY I'm sorry if the giant Mamoa-making-heart-sign-gif is too much, I got excited thinking about my favorites. ( To be fair, I did try to shrink it, but resizing wouldn't stick. ) If you asked fifty people off the street what their favorite book is, they'll more likely than not, give you different answers. That doesn't make a single one of them wrong, not even if your answer to the same question is different from theirs. And the question, what makes a favorite a favorite, is equally subjective both to the individual being asked and the circumstances around the book. The first thing that stands out to me in any book, are the characters. They're the ones telling the story, regardless of setting or plot, so they better be good. The second thing that stands out to me is the setting... If I'm going to go on a proper...

"Wash the bones, bring the body, leave the heart behind." Tea Obreht, The Tiger's Wife  E is for Encyclopedia. An Encyclopedia is a collection of knowledge - history, science, art, people, whatever you want to know - hard bound, organized by alphabet and number, sitting shiny on a bookshelf. The dictionary, predates them, inspired them. A dictionary tells you what a word or topic is, but an encyclopedia explains it. Encyclopedias used to be a staple in most households and remain so in libraries. They're great for research, dependably true and easily citable.  If this sounds a lot like Wikipedia, it is and it isn't. They were the inspiration for Wikipedia, and for many 'modern' digital encyclopedias, but they are unalterable after publication, facts embedded in ink on paper. Wikipedia is open source, meaning anyone can publish an entry or alter one. The internet offers us all the knowledge we could ever want, but at a price: Everything you read on the inter...

Happy Sunday! I hope you are all doing well and enjoying your weekend. The Sunday Post is a news meme created by Caffeinated Reviewer . I'm also linking up with Sunday Salon at ReaderBuzz . I will be posting on the first Sunday of each month and I hope you'll join me. That super ridiculous amount of snow we got hit with last month is already gone. We had a heat wave, the temperature spiking from 30 to 70 almost overnight paired with a couple rainy days, and 30-something inches of snow just vanished. But the week of warmth gave way to cold weather again, just as quickly as it came...But Spring is here and the warm weather won't be far behind. My blog is finally getting a little more action; that is to say I've been posting again and gone back to responding to comments. The A-Z Challenge has finally begun, and while I enjoy blog hopping, I'm a little wowed to think of how much prep-work I put in for it to all be over in a month. The idea for this year's challenge...

 “There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.” Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card Dystopia - an imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic. Science fiction often likes to bring us visions of the future. Flying among the stars, robots, cloning, utopias... But dystopia has really taken off in recent years, providing us with visions of the future where humanity is struggling to survive or the government has taken away our rights and imposed cruel and sometimes unusual laws upon us. Sometime there are monsters, sometimes there's disease. It's become so popular there is now an end of the world scenario for almost everyone. For young adults there's Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, where the government has created a superficial world where teens are forced to undergo plastic surgery, and the wildly popular The Hunger Games by ...

  "I wanted my life to count for something, but not because I wanted to be important. People can be important and not have their life count for anything." - Justin Blaney, Evan Burl and the Falling. Review quality on my blog is not always consistent.  A lot of this has to do with the substance of the book, whether or not it's a metaphor or whether or not the author integrated his or her own life views into the story, or some other message of moral or lifestyle lesson. There are stories like  The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith  that tackle everything from cyberbullying to various types of bigotry under the guise of a who-done-it novel. There are stories advertised to be exactly what they are, contemporary fiction like  Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi  that cover cultural separation and systemic racism. They produce reviews like novellas, with endless content to study. My reviews for The Cursebreakers trilogy by Brigid Kemmerer were quite small. They were light,...

 "There are some awful things in the world, it's true, but there's also some great books." -Jo Walton, Among Others Okay, so not a very imaginative B for a book blog, but that's why I'm here: Books. Beautiful, bountiful, books. A book is a dream recorded. A book is an adventure waiting to be had. A book is a hero undiscovered. And a villain just a little bit bad. Okay, so poet I am not. But there are a lot of things to like about books. They can offer education. From a baby’s ABC book to your childhood textbooks to how-to manuals… Like how-to build that cabinet from IKEA, books journey with us every step of the way, even if we don’t like them. And if you do like them a whole new world opens up to you, or should I say worlds? Because the best part about books is their ability to take you somewhere new. With so many genres - spine tingling horror to the warmth of fairytales, to contemporary fiction with cities as familiar as the one you live in, to the strangene...

"I suppose that is the nature of monument...The monument does not say that this man or that man walked here...The feeling, at least here...and there... it remains the same." Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice Imagination is the place where your dreams are true. And it's as simple as opening a book and allowing yourself to be drawn into the world between the pages, get lost in that adventure with characters you've only just met...  Or maybe you're not much of a reader. Maybe you seek adventure through television, movies, or videogames. Getting lost in the dream may mean getting lost in the screen.  There is a place where dreamers of all types merge: the adaptations. Admittedly, some adaptations are  better than others, others deviating laughably from source material, but literary works are often translated into other forms of media. Like The Walking Dead ... Which started out as a graphic novel (not really my cup of tea) about surviving the zombie apocalypse an...

"It was downright uncanny, in a way that had nothing to do with ghosts and monsters. You could feel the weight of the stone pressing down overhead..." Before I summarize the story, let me express my surprise that Alex Easton is non-binary. In the first book I was convinced Alex was a he and in the second book I saw evidence that Alex was a she.  In this last book, I realized Alex is neither which is why gender is never emphasized. Three books into the  Sworn   Soldier series(trilogy?)  and it’s clear to see that I’m kind of slow on the uptake. Alex Easton is back in a new adventure. Kan (the pronouns Alex uses are ‘ka/kan’ originating from Galician) old friend Dr. James Denton has written to tell kan about an abandoned mine where his cousin Oscar has gone missing. Denton insists that Oscar was taken by something ‘other’ and that there’s the possibility he is still alive. Alex agrees to look into Oscar’s disappearance. While the original inspiration for this series wa...

"One sailor saw a dead eel in a barrel of vinegar. But it might not have been dead, because you know what eels are like." In 1628, Mayken and her nursemaid Imke set sail for Batavia on the Batavia.  Imke is taking Mayken to live with her father after her mother dies. During the journey Mayken learns of a monster that lives below deck and takes the form of a giant eel, Bullebak. Mayken comes to believe Bullebak is real when Imke's toe is bitten and begins her quest to capture the monster on board. In 1989, newly orphaned Gil is sent to live with his ill-tempered grandfather, Joss, on the island where his mother grew up. Once on the island, Gil is ostracized by the small community and left alone most of the day while his grandfather goes out fishing. Left to his own devices, he learns about a ghost that haunts the island and the ship that wrecked just offshore. I loved the tone of this book. While killing mothers in the opening act is nothing new - Disney has made a fortune...