New On The Shelf: Adventures in Book Collecting

Well,I've been trying to be good. I really have! But this collection of new books has built up slowly from the last post. Let's take a look at what I've collected:

Goodwill Book Store

Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Mort by Terry Pratchett

This was from a random stop. We were out and about one Saturday afternoon and we passed by so I insisted we make a stop. Mort is #4 of the Discworld books. After recently reading Snuff and liking it a lot, I was really excited to add another Discworld book to my collection.

Venessa really enjoyed The Tale of Despereaux movie and really really really likes Coraline (she went a week where that was all she watched recently), so I thought the book versions of both would be nice to have.

Library

Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed

This book was stalking me. I first saw the book here at the OF Blog. During a browsing excursion to Barnes and Noble (where I didn’t buy anything, thank you very much!) I saw it on the shelf. Then I read the reviews here and here. The last review and the comments convinced me this is a book to read. I tweeted this as my #FridayReads and got a response from the author, saying he hopes it doesn't ruin my weekend. I'm happy to report it didn't and I don't need to resort to this.

Goodwill, Destin, FL

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

How to Read a Film: The Art, Technology, Language, History, and Theory of Film and Media

While on vacation in Destin, FL (which has beautiful beaches by the way!), the weather was poopy so we just took walks on the beach when we could and ate good food and had lots of drinks! We also did some shopping and that included exploring some of the local thrift stores. My husband found the film book for me because I had mentioned wanting to get one. I thought it’d be nice to have some knowledge on film techniques to help with my future film reviews. This book is older but for a couple bucks it looks like it’s a good start.

I read the Maltese Falcon years ago and I couldn’t pass up having my own copy. I remember so little of it and the movie! Time to correct that!

Fun fact #1: Once upon a time I was obsessed with the name Dashiell. Some of you ladies have probably done this as well, but I kept a list of names I wanted to name my kids. Dashiell was on the list and I also thought it’d make a great pen name.

I also found a copy of one of the Fuzzy books by H. Beam Piper. Fuzzy Nation, the book I reviewed recently, was a retelling of one of the stories. I really want to read H. Beam Piper’s but the copy I found wasn’t that great. I was disappointed and sad. It was only .75 but the book was in really bad shape.

Great beaches in Destin!

Loud Voice Books

Shining at the Bottom of the Sea by Stephen Marche

Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories by Steven Millhauser

The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett (Dammit! I forgot to have it included in the pic!)

This was a two part trip. On some other weekend I felt the need to browse a bookstore so I went to Loud Voice Books. I didn’t have anything in mind and ended up with Dangerous Laughter and Shining at the Bottom of the Sea.

Then of course after such purchases I see Steven Millhauser’s name pop up on a blog where I find out he’s nominated for something and someone not at all happy with some other Stephen Marche book called How Shakespeare Changed Everything.

I believe The Company Man was a Kindle Daily Deal that popped up on my Facebook feed. It sounded really interesting as alternate histories go. I emailed Loud Voice and got a great deal on it. Much better than if I’d gone through Amazon!

From Mom-In-Law

Spy Killer by L. Ron Hubbard

Inside Straight (Wild Cards, #18) by George R.R. Martin and others

My mom-in-law, Laura, sent these two to me. Notice how George R. R. Martin's name is insanely huge compared to the title. It's the same on the front of the book. Reading through Goodreads this book has some pretty good reviews. And though it's part of a series, it sounds like you can jump in with this book and not be completely lost.

I enjoyed L. Ron Hubbard’s, Battlefield Earth (enough to have read it twice and yes, I saw the movie, which was NOT GOOD) so I’m really curious about this one. According to his Wikipedia page, he did a lot of writing before he invented Scientology.

Fun Fact #2: One of the reasons I read Battlefield Earth was 1) curiosity and 2) those Dianetics commercials. Does anyone remember those? It’s the only book commercial I ever remember seeing on TV and they were on ALL the time it seemed!

Fun Fact #3: In my days as a QA Analyst I used this program to find broken links: http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html Xenu is a "dictator of the "Galactic Confederacy" who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of his people to Earth in a DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and killed them using hydrogen bombs". I swear I did not make this up. I copied it straight from wikipedia so it must be true!

Scientology just amuses me. Please, don't be afraid. I'm not trying to brainwash you! I'm curious to see what Spy Killer is like, if it will have traces of the beginnings of Scientology, where in Battlefield Earth, his beliefs were blatantly obvious.

So that's it! Anything look interesting to you? Has anyone read any of these? Let me know what you think if you have.

Book Nerd Out!

This post is my entry in the Book Nerd Out giveaway hosted by Book Riot: Reviews, Recommendations, and Commentary about books and reading (but, you know, fun).

Book Riot forced my hand to post on a non-posting day. My mild OCD is having a fit! But I wasn’t about to pass up a $100 gift card!

So they wanted to know when I was at my crazy nerdiest for a book. My first reaction was Captain Blood. And then I remembered the two months of my life that were literally out of my control and in the hands of George R.R. Martin as I read the first three books of the A Song of Ice and Fire series. It's not fair to choose just one when I geeked out over four!

First we have Captain Peter Blood, the Captain Jack Sparrow/Dr. Doug Ross of the high seas! Oh Peter, weren’t you just so charismatic, smart and boy, can you swoon over a woman! I really just wanted to slap you and say, well, I only know one person who can do what I wanted to do much better. Cher, you have the honor...

And you did, Peter! You washed and curled your hair, buckled your sword to your hip (hee) and oh my goodness don’t even get me started on the cannon scene! There is a sinister side to Captain Blood that makes him such a great complicated character! And there's swashbuckling, sailing the Caribbean, hidden pirate hang outs, running from the Royal Navy and the Spaniards and there's RUM!

Yeah, Captain Blood goes everywhere with me now thanks to the Kindle App on my phone.

Then there was the drama of A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords. Books I read in a ROW! Seriously, I wasn’t joking. I had no life for two months. I was living and breathing Westeros.

With A Storm of Swords I had serious issues. I would got angry, giddy... I was reading a hundred pages a night! Then the way it ends! Tyrion, you little, sinister, snarky, smarty pants you! And Jon Snow: if the theories on the internet turn out to be true, I approve. Arya Stark: Girl, you frighten me. But in a “I swear it wasn’t me who killed half your family don’t kill me” kind of way! Ser Jorah: Getting a little too swooney but still your handy with a sword. Ugh, dragon girl, how could you... why... I don’t care... ugh, I’m still angry at what you did to him! Characters got what they deserved. Others got what they DIDN'T deserve. I was rendered incoherent after one particular scene from A Storm of Swords. Oh George, you terrible terrible man, but oh, how I loved handing over those two months of my life to your world.

Yeah, I still haven't recovered. Book Nerd, over and out.

To Be Read: The Hunger Games

I wrote earlier I was hesitant about reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. It has the same idea of Battle Royale and The Running Man: futuristic society, games used to entertain/exert government control, yada yada yada…

The Hunger Games takes place in what was once known as North America, in the nation of Panem. Panem is separated into districts, each one specializing in a certain industry that basically supports the Capitol, where the government of Panem is located. Every year each district must send a tribute, one boy and girl, between the ages of twelve and eighteen, to the Hunger Games, where they will be thrown into an arena to battle to the death until one emerges as the victor. Our heroine, Katniss Everdeen, is only sixteen and has been struggling to survive in District 12, being the sole provider of her family. When it’s time for District 12 to send their Tributes, it’s Katniss’ little sister who has been chosen but Katniss volunteers to go in her place.

I’ve only see the movie versions of Battle Royale and The Running Man, and it’s been years since I’ve seen them. I don’t know if I can watch Battle Royale again. The scene with the girls who turn on each other still haunts me. While The Hunger Games describes how some of the children – who have been forced to participate in the games – were killed, it is quite graphic but it didn’t really hit me. It is a YA novel, written in a certain style that didn’t make me cringe compared to the type of cringing I did while reading the first three books of A Song of Ice and Fire series, by George R.R. Martin. Although, it was written from the point of view of Katniss, and it could be that she herself had shut herself off in order to survive the Hunger Games.

The book is definitely a page turner though. I got through it in a week and I recommend it. Oh, just a warning, the names are horrible and don’t work well when read aloud. As a book it did its job; I was entertained. Though being entertained by the death of children may not be something I should be admitting…