A Reader Torn

“So many books, so little time.” –Frank Zappa

Never has this little nugget of wisdom rang truer with me than now. Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance is sitting less than a quarter read on my bedside table nearly a month after I started it–school and other commitments have only left room for about a chapter a night. No less than eight books are sitting on my shelves waiting to be read. I’m in the midst of reading The Mortal Instruments series and the Gemma Doyle Trilogy. And every day I get loads of book reviews delivered to my inbox so I can add another book to the ever-expanding list of volumes To-Be-Read.

It’s somewhat masochistic.

I spend a good amount of time trying to organize my reading life. What would be the benefits of reading this book before that one? Should I put aside the books already in my possession to pick up a newer, shinier release? Should I spend by extra time reading (“honing my craft” is my excuse) or actually writing? To top it off, I’ve started experiencing something I call Reader’s Guilt. It comes to me in under various guises:

• Haven’t-Read-That Guilt. This is experiencing guilt over having not read classics like, in my case, Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia, Don Quixote, or anything by H.G. Wells. I feel I should take a break from keeping up with the new stuff and try to build up my reader’s repertoire a bit more.
• Leaving-a-Series Guilt. I’m experiencing this version of Reader’s Guilt at the moment with the Heroes of Olympus series, one of the various derivatives of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.I haven’t read The Son of Neptune and don’t intend to. This type of guilt can also be associated with leaving a once-beloved author; for example, I haven’t read anything by Brandon Mull since his Fablehaven series concluded.
• Why-Did-I-Buy-It Guilt. Have you ever bought a book and just let it sit there for more than six months? Yup. That pretty much sums up this one. One feels that if a book has been purchased, one is obligated to read it at some point.
• And, finally– Not-Reading-Enough Guilt. Maybe if I just didn’t check my email in the morning, or spent less time making lunch, I could fit in ten minutes of reading in the morning? Or maybe I could bring my book to school and read in between classes…this is that feeling that tries to guilt-trip you into spending more time reading when you’re already bending your schedule to fit in that daily half-hour.

What about you, readers–how do handle your extensive reading lists? Do you experience any forms of Reader’s Guilt, or am I alone in my suffering?

 

Strike Against Censorship

I’m technologically impaired enough that I can’t figure out how to get this blog to go on strike for the January 18th protest against SOPA, PIPA, and the potential destruction of the Internet as we know it. Perhaps you can do better.

STRIKE AGAINST SOPA

**EDIT: We’re striking! Thanks to WordPress for providing an easy way to do it. See you after 8 PM Eastern.**

 

Books as Projectile Weapons

This post is for the January 2012 Teens Can Write Too! blog chain. This month’s prompt was:

“What are examples of books you’ve thrown across the room with force? Why did you throw them?”

This was a pretty tough prompt for me–to be honest, I’m not much of a book-thrower. I’m really more of set-down-the-book-as-if-it’s-a-bomb-and-start-crying person, and I’ve only done that one or two times. If I had the strength of will, however, to throw a book across the room and risk denting my Doctor Who poster, here are a few volumes that could have had the honor.

1. Bright Shadow by Avi. I think we can all agree that if we met Avi, we would get down on our knees and worship him. He’s an amazing writer and just as cool as any pop star–he goes by just one name, after all. However, this book severely disappointed me. I probably wouldn’t have hated it so much if I hadn’t expected so much. The plot, characters, everything seemed poorly done. It’s been quite a while since I read this, so I can’t go into much more detail, but I know that this book was the bane of my existence for a few days in middle school. Although I didn’t throw this one myself, I did witness my science teacher throw a copy of it across the room when I told her I hated it. Thanks, Ms. N.
2. Swordbird by Nancy Yi Fan. I’m just begging for rotten fruit to be thrown at me by including this one on the list. Nancy was 12 years old when this one was published, making her a common teen author idol. The book was good enough–perhaps a high average. I was frustrated by this one because of pure, raw, teen-angsty jealousy. The only reason I did slam this book down when I’d finished and not, for example, Eragon, was because there were some aspects I disliked rather than none at all. I’m ashamed to include this one on the list, but I’m speaking for my past self here.
3. Thirteenth Child by Patricia C. Wrede. How did I dislike thee? Let me count the ways…oh, this book.  I absolutely detested it. The characters were poorly drawn, the world-building was weak, and the action was so slow that when I got to the end, I hadn’t realized that the climax had already happened. Some folks absolutely adore Wrede’s work, but I won’t be getting another one of her books. When I threw this book down, it was more out of relief that I’d finished than anything.
4. The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan. I used to be completely and utterly infatuated with Riordan’s work. I still have a soft spot for the PJatO series and the various derivatives, but I haven’t read any more of it since this one. I thought everything was going to be merry and bright when the young demigods made it back to Camp Half-Blood, but no–we have to reveal a horrible truth in the last sentence of the book. Riordan fans, you know what I’m talking about. I said “NO!” about five times before it finally sank in that the book was over on that sour note. I then went into a phase of pseudo-depression for about a week before I got over it.
5. Mastiff by Tamora Pierce. This book, too, was tossed down on the bed and moped about because of the ending. *SPOILER ALERT* I waited six months for my pre-ordered copy of this series conclusion to come, barely able to wait for Rosto and Beka to finally declare their mutual love. And what do we get? Some random mage dude instead. *END SPOILER ZONE* I really think Pierce could have done better with that. Authors, you can only cross us fangirls so many times before we get upset. Your book might just end up wedged in somebody’s bedroom wall.

Want to follow our blog tour? Here are the participating parties, day by day

January 5 – http://weirdalocity.wordpress.com/— From My Head
January 6 – http://correctingpenswelcome.wordpress.com — Comfy Sweaters, Writing and Fish
January 7 – http://laughablog.wordpress.com/ — Laugh A Blog
January 8– http://taystapeinc.wordpress.com — Tay’s Tape
January 9 – http://estherstar1996.wordpress.com — Esther Victoria1996
January 10– http://thewordasylum.wordpress.com — The Word Asylum
January 11– http://kirstenwrites.wordpress.com — Kirsten Writes!
January 12– http://delorfinde.wordpress.com — A Farewell to Sanity
January 13 – http://greatlakessocialist.wordpress.com — Red Herring Online
January 14– http://herestous.wordpress.com — Here’s To Us
January 15– http://incessantdroningofaboredwriter.wordpress.com– The Incessant Droning of a Bored Writer
January 16– http://teenscanwritetoo.wordpress.com –Teens Can Write Too! (We will be announcing the topic for next month’s chain)

 

 

 

Review: A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray (Gemma Doyle Trilogy #1)

December 2003, Random House Children’s Books

Young Adult fantasy

It’s 1895, and after the suicide of her mother, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from the life she knows in India to Spence, a proper boarding school in England. Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma’s reception there is a chilly one. To make things worse, she’s been followed by a mysterious young Indian man, a man sent to watch her. But why? What is her destiny? And what will her entanglement with Spence’s most powerful girls—and their foray into the spiritual world—lead to?

I adored Libba Bray’s most recent novel, Beauty Queens, so it’s a wonder I haven’t read the Gemma Doyle Trilogy, for which Bray is better known, before now. I’m sorry I’ve waited so long. This book is, simply put, utterly flawless.

A Great and Terrible Beauty starts off with a scene the majority of the readership will be able to relate to: a mother-daughter dispute. From there the story takes off and refuses to slow. Bray sets the scene vividly and shows sharp contrast between the three main settings, India, England, and the spiritual realms. Most of the characters started off as simple, but as I got to know them better through Gemma’s eyes, new layers of complexity were added and I found myself deeply invested.

Bray is known for confronting issues prevalent in her adolescent audience head-on in her writings, and this book is no exception. Things as light as high-school politics to as heavy as self-mutilation are seamlessly touched on, but I especially noticed Bray’s inclusion of girls’ budding sexualities in a society where showing one’s ankles is considered scandalous. Readers will undoubtably see portions of themselves reflected in the characters and perhaps even find comfort.

A Great and Terrible Beauty is dark, adventurous, romantic, fantastical–there’s something for everyone here. It’s consistently well-written and believable; it’s not particularly difficult to read–the thoroughly engaging plot forbids that–yet is anything but mind candy. I can’t wait to get on with this series, and, as an added bonus, there seems to be a movie planned for 2015 release. This book is a must-read.

Rating: 5 stars

 

 

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 17,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

 

Review: Mastiff by Tamora Pierce

Mastiff by Tamora Pierce (The Beka Cooper Trilogy, #3)

October 2011, Random House Children’s Books

Young Adult fantasy

Three years have passed since Beka Cooper almost died in the sewers of Port Caynn, and she is now a respected member of the Provost’s Guard. But her life takes an unexpected turn when her fiancé is killed on a slave raid. Beka is faced with a mixture of emotions as, unbeknownst to many, she was about to call the engagement off.

It is as Beka is facing these feelings that Lord Gershom appears at her door. Within hours, Beka; her partner, Tunstall; her scent hound, Achoo; and an unusual but powerful mage are working on an extremely secretive case that threatens the future of the Tortallan royal family, and therefore the entire Tortallan government. As Beka delves deeper into the motivations of the criminals she now Hunts, she learns of deep-seated political dissatisfaction, betrayal, and corruption. These are people with power, money, and influence. They are able to hire the most skilled of mages, well versed in the darkest forms of magic. And they are nearly impossible to identify.

This case–a Hunt that will take her to places she’s never been–will challenge Beka’s tracking skills beyond the city walls, as well as her ability to judge exactly whom she can trust with her life and her country’s future.

 Let me start off by saying that Book One of this series, Terrier, is one of my all-time favorites. It was exemplary in characters, action, and plot. Beka was ineffably believable in this volume, along with the rest of the cast. Things only went downhill a little in Bloodhound, as the plot got a bit less intriguing, but it was still an excellent book. In Mastiff, most of all the wonderful things about Terrier are lost. Beka seems an entirely different person, changed so much over three years that she is not at all recognizable as the shy but street-smart Lower City trainee of the first book.

The plot is well laid in Mastiff, and once all the pieces are put together, the horrible truth does make sense. However, the story is grandiose to the point of being obnoxious: instead of tracking down kidnappers and counterfeiters in cases staying within city walls, Beka gallops across the realm, dealing with various noble houses and overall getting involved in things much bigger than she is. This sort of story may appeal to many, but it’s jarringly different from the first two books of the series. It might have been more tolerable for me if it had moved along a bit faster–it wasn’t until the final hundred pages or so that I began reading at more than a snail’s pace.

Beka wasn’t the only character who changed in this book. Favorites from prior volumes, such as the classic trio of “rushers,” Aniki, Kora, and Rosto, were all but nonexistent in Mastiff. As Beka expands her horizons, the wonderful world of the Lower City created in Terrier disappears in readers’ sights. It was, frankly, depressing, and the final pages left me discontented and disappointed.

Tamora Pierce, however, continues using her well-earned trademarks of strong female protagonists, intricate plots, and scrupulous description in Mastiff. Glimpses of Beka’s former life are breaths of fresh air throughout the story. Call me an old softy, but Pierce could have done better to stick with the Corus area and her fantastic older characters throughout this otherwise wonderful series.

Rating: 3 stars

 

Triumph

My eyes are tired. My fingers feel like jelly from all that typing. I have finished The Novel, with a few days of NaNoFiMo to spare! I have rarely felt this accomplished in my entire short life.

I could write a magnum opus here on the neccesity of persistance and dedication in writing, yadda yadda yadda, but honestly, I don’t feel like it. A proper non-mind-numbing post is coming soon, I promise you.

 

Some Impromptu Christmas Poetry

With novels and schoolwork

To weigh on my mind

The right Christmas spirit

Can be hard to find

But now that it’s evening and

The church services are ending

Here in my home

My spirit starts mending

As choirs sing “Silent night, holy night”

Through the radio

Life indoors and out

Begins to quietly slow

Sipping hot chocolate in front of the fire

Reading stories by Dickens

Singing songs of jete-ing nobles

And female French chickens

Worldy things loom less large

All that matters here is our family and friends

We’re all in this together

Have each other’s backs till the end

Think of all the people out there

And go now, spread some of that holiday cheer

If you make a donation

Marley’s Ghost won’t appear

Deck the halls and sing a song

After all, Christmas won’t be here very long.

*applause*

 

I guess you shouldn’t read my blog at work…or in study hall.

Thanks to the lovely Kirsten at Kirsten Writes!, I have received my second blogging award this month: the Don’t Read This Blog At Work Award.

Here are The Rules for this one:

1. You may nominate no more than three bloggers, each of whom must have made you laugh out loud with at least one post.
2. Those who receive the nominations may consider themselves as having received the award, and they must post a gushing acceptance speech thanking the person who nominated them, and perhaps thanking any companion animals they may blog about.
3. Those who receive the award may, but need not, pass on the award, but will not themselves be eligible again until they have published at least ten more posts.

Friends, readers, followers, lend me your ears–we have come to praise Allegra, not to bury her. If we were burying her, and she was writing the speech on her blog, she would be a zombie, which would be COOL. But she is perfectly alive and suddenly speaking in the third person.

Anywho, I’d like to thank Kirsten, of course, for sending me this award. I’m glad my posts are as amusing as I think they are. I’m feeling as if I should try to write more comical stuff and fewer long-winded hoity-toity book reviews. Would anybody actually be upset with me if I stopped writing book reviews? Do any of you people actually read them? Would any of you like me to hurry and wrap up this speech?

The rest of my thanks go to everyone who’s commented on any of my posts, especially the funny ones, and all of my followers. I’m also obligated to thank everyone who’s ever written something funny that I read, because they’re all my inspirations. Also my mom, for making me keep blogging when I almost quit. I was really annoyed by that at the time. Funny how things work out.

OK, that’s the acceptance speech. I hereby nominate:

Liam, Head Phil: Liam’s posts rarely fail to make me laugh, and they only don’t make me laugh when he’s not trying to be funny.

John Hansen: Pure dry wit is readily available on John’s fantastic blog.

Josie, aka EricDoesNotExist: Josie hasn’t posted in a very long time, which is saddening to me, because Eric Does Not Exist is one of my favorite blogs, and riotously funny to boot.

Just in the event that I don’t get around to posting and/or I can’t come up with a creative way with which to present the sentiment, happy holidays to all of you, whether you celebrate steampunk Christmas or Saturnalia. Hopefully there’ll be lots of nerdiness in store.

 

How To Make a Monster

This post is for the Teens Can Write Too! blog chain. This month’s prompt was:

“How do you develop and relate to your characters?”

To come up with characters, I have a fairly static system. I call it P.L.A.N., the criteria being placed in order of importance, like so:

1. Purpose: Why does one come up with a character in the first place? So he, she, or it (I’ll be using “she” for ease of typing for the rest of this post) and can carry out the action of a story, of course. The first thing I need to think about when developing a character is her purpose in the plot. Whether it’s to fulfill a long-lost prophecy or bully the protagonist in the cafeteria, a character’s reason for being is always the most important and easiest thing about her to come up with.
2. Looks: A character’s physical features help determine what readers think of her. They can tell a lot about her background and can add to the story’s atmosphere. They also give readers an automatic evaluation of the character. Even a reader above stereotyping is going to have a different opinion of a character, who, say, has died-black hair and a nose piercing than of a character wearing a cheerleading uniform and pink eye shadow.
3. Attitude: Basically, this is a character’s personality, but I call it attitude so the character development system forms a coherent acronym. This is fairly self-explanatory.  It includes how a character reacts to a situation, her morals, how she acts with other character, how she speaks, and her interests. This is the most likely to change element of a character. I revise character’s personalities constantly, almost obsessively. Is she turning into a Mary Sue? Or is she so flawed that readers won’t give a crap about her? I’d even go so far as to say that I’m usually insecure about my characters’ personalities.
4. Name: Although I often come up with a character’s name before numbers two and three, it is the least important thing about a character, at least to me. Names can be interpreted in different ways. Say this arbitrary character I’ve been talking about is named Antoinette. Maybe her parents are French, or maybe they’re just francophiles. Perhaps they’re professors of history who were studying the French Revolution at the time of her birth–though if this were the case, I would be convinced that these parents must also have a love of the macabre, considering the lovely Queen’s bloody fate. My favorite resource for names is this–it provides the most comprehensive name search I’ve found. I also have a baby names book that I use for instant reference or when the Internet is down.

All of this is a rather dull and commonplace explanation of how I invent my characters. The second half of the question, relation, is where things get very interesting. I’m sure you longtime readers have heard the following tale multiple times, but for the newbies stopping by for the chain, here it is once again:

I was in the midst of one of my hardcore multi-thousand word writing sessions usually taking place on weekends. The hour was late, nearly 11 PM, but I was really into the groove, and the momentum my fingers had picked up on the keyboard would probably have been difficult to stop anyway. My handy plot map now directed me to set my merry band of characters on the run from The Bad Guys, and I complied. As I wrote of their desperate bid for freedom, I found myself noticing how tired they must be getting, how cold, how thirsty. Their boots would be soaked through, because, like in any good fantasy novel, it was snowing. I was bone-tired myself, but I could not bear to let the gang suffer. Therefore, I stayed up past midnight getting them safely to their destination. Only once they found a proper tavern in which they could have a bit of mead and get some shut-eye did I go to bed myself.

All this may sound like I’m over-indulgent of my little creations. In fact, I’d like to say quite the opposite, because there’s rarely a moment in my stories during which the protag or one of her sidekicks is suffering emotional and/or physical pain. As Gail Carson Levine writes in her handy guide for younger writers, Writing Magic (allow me to detour briefly by saying that, years after procuring this little volume and following its advice religiously, it still holds a treasured place on my bookshelf), making your characters suffer is what makes the story interesting. Don’t accuse me of not letting my characters suffer sufficiently, because they sure as Hades do.

It’s just that those perfectly annoying little figments worm their way into my mind, my soul, until they’re more than figments. They become real to me, more real than any character whose story I’ve read or watched, and, in a strange way, more real than myself. Creating characters puts my mind on a whole other level of reality. Sometimes I feel like the suffering I put them through isn’t exactly my fault, because it’s “part of the story.”

But that story came out of my head, and so did the characters! My characters are monsters, each and every one–from the evil overlord to the barmaid, they become a part of me, and refuse to let go. It’s a love-hate relationship. They suffer, I feel bad about it sometimes (I cried when I killed off a certain character), but feeling for characters so deeply, and in such a complex way, sure makes for a good story.

Want to follow our blog tour? Here are the participating parties, day by day

December 5– http://correctingpenswelcome.wordpress.com — Comfy Sweaters, Writing and Fish

December 6– http://taystapeinc.wordpress.com — Tay’s Tape

December 7– http://insideliamsbrain.wordpress.com — This Page Intentionally Left Blank

December 8– http://alohathemuse.wordpress.com — Embracing Insanity

December 9– http://noveljourneys.wordpress.com — Novel Journeys

December 10– http://sporkattack.blogspot.com — Crazy Socks and Ninja Bunnies

December 11– http://kirstenwrites.wordpress.com — Kirsten Writes!

December 12– http://herebefaries.wordpress.com — The Land of Man-Eating Pixies

December 13– http://delorfinde.wordpress.com — A Farewell to Sanity

December 14– http://estherstar1996.wordpress.com — Esther Victoria1996

December 15– http://thewordasylum.wordpress.com — The Word Asylum

December 16– http://teenagereader.wordpress.com — Teenage Reader

December 17– http://biozarre.wordpress.com — Missy Biozarre, Young Adult Author

December 18– http://greatlakessocialist.wordpress.com — Red Herring Online

December 19– http://incessantdroningofaboredwriter.wordpress.com– The Incessant Droning of a Bored Writer

December 20– http://herestous.wordpress.com — Here’s To Us

December 21– http://teenscanwritetoo.wordpress.com –Teens Can Write Too! (We will be announcing the topic for next month’s chain)