The Errant Bookshelf

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Gracious, soft-voiced girls, who were brought up on memories instead of money.

F Scott Fitzgerald --The Ice Palace

I've never actually read this book, but I think this quote might just have convinced me.

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Giveaway Winner

Firstly, let me say thank you to everyone who entered the contest, to the new followers who've joined us this year, and all the others who have been here since the start. I would love to give something away to everyone, but unfortunately only one can win.

Congratulations to lameyxx, who has won the giveaway this year.

See you all next time, and keep on reading!

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Two More Days

Don't forget, you only have two more days to enter for the giveaway!

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Life is a city where time has given up on itself so there are no beginnings and no end. His life is the same dry verse of a broken record spinning endlessly between a needle. The same lines over and over. A bad habit. Wine is poured into the glass of the only other woman at the table. She arrived late, after Henry, and is the only other person there who hears the music the way he does, who understands it not as a sound, but as a place beyond language. They are two solitary notes of the same score and come from a place where one plus one is one. But only one of them knows this.

L (and things come apart) by Ian Orti

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Guys, the Blog is Two Years Old!

Yes, The Errant Bookshelf is officially two years old today! We have certainly come a long way since Jan. 20th 2011, in the number (and quality) of reviews as well as in number of followers. For that, I thank you guys for staying with me and being great.

In honour of the blogiversary, here's a link to the first review I ever did, the one that started it all. http://theerrantbookshelf.tumblr.com/post/2845375487/lookingforalaska

Here's to another great year!

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Giveaway News

Because I've only gotten two entries for the giveaway, I'm going to keep it open until the end of the month. As you've probably noticed from my lack of blogiversary material posted, I'm going to drag that out too. So keep entering!

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Let's Talk About Poetry

You sea! I resign myself to you also - I guess what you mean, I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers, I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me, We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of sight of the land, Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse, Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you.

Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

I'm not going to put on literary airs for you guys -- I used to hate poetry. This was way back from when I first learned about it right up until probably when I took Sixteenth Century Literature in University and we talked about sonnets for four months. Now, this may be in part due to the fact that I thought poetry had to rhyme and had to be about trees or love and nothing else.

However, as you get older and start actually reading poetry you realize that certain things deserve to stand on their own, but don't have enough in them to be made into a short story or novel or anything other than a poem. So yes, poetry is necessary. The litle snippet I posted above is one of my favourite verses from poetry because it's exactly what I said: one moment that would be lost in a larger work but in and of itself isn't enough to constitute a whole work of its own. Never mind that it is encased inSong of Myself, which is pretty long for a poem -- just this piece of the poem I love for its simplicity.

Now, keeping in mind that the first time poetry became a thing for me was when I was reading it in very fancy early modern English (shakespeare, anyone? Sidney?) and most of it had to do with adultery and courtiers and things I know very little about. However, it remains that the things I loved about those poems were how totally they captured one single moment in time, or one single thought -- I mean, in Astrophil and Stella there was a whole sonnet about the moment Stella looked at Astrophil --one look, and there was a whole poem about it. This moment in a novel or a story can be easily lost because of how much lies before and after it. The mass of words and ideas in these cases can allow small moments to get lost very, very quickly, which is why we need poetry to pull them out and shine a light on them.

Other favourites include the last, say, ten lines fromSex Without Love by Sharon Olds, which I'm not going to post here because it's kind of explicit -- I don't like the explicitness, but I really like how she talks about almost the transcendentalist nature of one's own sensations of pleasure. I also really likeEnivrez-vous by Charles Baudelaire, which translates to Get Drunk, and which has been translated into at least English if not many other languages. However, as the original is in French, I'm not going to post it here either.

Do you guys have any favourites?

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I'm going to make a wild assumption here in saying that most of us readers are probably also writers. This is by no means gospel, but I've found that oftentimes the same people who love to read are those who love to write. That in mind, here are some photos I've found over the years with some great quotes about reading and writing. None of these photos are mine, and I found them largely on tumblr. I don't remember where, but if they are yours and you object to their use here, just let me know.

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The book giveaway is open internationaly? :)

I'm going to say yes, but with the stipulation that if the postage is going to be, like, a hundred dollars, we'll work something out.

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Insurgent by Veronica Roth

The Acquiry

I read Divergent last year and loved it, so I was excited for the second book in the series to come out so I could continue following Tris on her journey. However, the jacket description kind of turned me off initially, so I waited a couple months before buying Insurgent, then another month before actually reading it. Not that it sounded bad, but it sounded like Tris and Four spent the entire time beyond the fence leading up to a heartwarming moment where Tris becomes all she can be by embracing her Divergence...yeah. However, that was foolish of me.

The Book

Publisher: HarperTeen (HarperCollins) Page Count: 525

One choice can transform you--or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves--and herself--while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love. Tris's initiation day should have been marked by celebration and victory with her chosen faction; instead, the day ended with unspeakable horrors. War now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grows. And in times of war, sides must be chosen, secrets will emerge, and choices will become even more irrevocable--and even more powerful. Transformed by her own decisions but also by haunting grief and guilt, radical new discoveries, and shifting relationships, Tris must fully embrace her Divergence, even if she does not know what she may lose by doing so.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11735983-insurgent

The Plot

The plot of Insurgent was, like Divergent before it, pretty linear in nature. It progressed from where Divergent left off, with Tris and Four on the run from those who want them dead. It then leads up to their eventual reclaiming of their faction and the planned retaliation against Erudite -- the faction that attempted to enslave an entire society in the first book. I can't talk too much about the plot because Insurgent is the kind of book with twists and turns at every corner, and I don't want to ruin anything for any of you. I will say that one of the things I enjoyed about Insurgent was how through the course of the story the lines between factions were blurred over and over. If you read Divergent, you'll know that the factions are very clearly split up and very, very different. The fact that members from all the factions comingled and worked together through the course of Insurgent serves to emphasize Tris's Divergence, which I thought was kind of...poetic. A Divergent person is someone described, basically, as having aptitudes for several factions instead of just one -- Tris, for example, has aptitues for Erudite, Dauntless, and Abnegation (don't quote me, I'm going from memory). If the point of Insurgent was for Tris to use her Divergence to her avantage, then I really liked how that Divergence was made manifest through the ways in which the factions all worked together.

The People

One of biggest pet peeves with sequals is how characters often seem unaffected by things that happened in the first book(s). That said, Roth did exactly the opposite. At the end of Divergent, there is a big battle resulting in the mass killing of almost a whole faction, Tris is forced to kill one of her good friends, and her family dies. As I'm sure we can imagine, those kinds of events would change all of us. I really admired how Roth confronted the aftermath of those events in Insurgent, making Tris more vulnerable than she had been in the first book, chiefly because of the things she's seen and done since we first met her. There are moments in Insurgent where Tris is physically unableto take certain [life saving] actions because of mental blocks that she's created because of the trauma that came out of that final battle in Divergent. Had Roth portrayed Tris -- not only Tris, but a number of the characters -- as a person who could just rise above and put all these wrongs out of her mind in order to do what needs to be done, I don't think I would have been as happy with the book as a whole. While I felt bad that Tris had to deal with these things while simultaneously resolving the conflicts born in Book 1, I liked that she was this real person with real vulnerabilities and real problems instead of a machine who doesn't feel things unless it's convenient.

The Verdict

While I think there could have been a few improvements to Insurgent, in all I thought Roth did an excellent job of taking the story where it needed to go. The plot was fast paced and remained consistently interesting throughout, and the characters remained real, three-dimensional characters who took action and, above all, felt what needed to be felt.

8/10

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It's That Time of Year Again...

No, not New Years.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, or have taken a trip through the archives in the past year, you may remember that last year around this time was the first anniversary of the blog, and I did stuff for a whole month leading up to it. The anniversary itself is on January 20th, and as that day is coming, I thought I'd talk about this year's celebration.

As this year is the second birthday I will not be making quite as big a deal as I did for the first. Also I have substantially less time on my hands than I did last January so, yeah, that. However, this is a Momentous Occasion and I will be treating it as such for the week leading up to the 20th. That said, here's the plan:

Sunday the 13th: Review. Probably of Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Monday the 14th: Some sort of book related item

Tuesday the 15th: Review. Probably of The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Wednesday the 16th: Some sort of poetry item. Not my poetry, good poetry. And perhaps some analysis for those so inclined.

Thursday the 17th: Review. Probably of The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Friday the 18th: Another book related thing. I might talk about social media, but who knows.

Saturday the 19th: Review. Probably of The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour

Sunday the 20th: TBA. I'll think of something good, don't worry. Also, GIVEAWAY DAY.

Yes, I will be giving away another book this time around. I'll be using the same system I used last year -- it seemed to work pretty well. For those of you who were not with us back then, let me explain.

Starting RIGHT NOW, submit a number between 1 and 100 to my inbox (through the Request a Review/Ask a Question button on the blog). If you are an Anonymous user, you may submit one number. If you are a follower, you may submit three numbers, therefore increasing your chances of winning. On the 20th, I will use a random number generator, and whoever is closest to the generated number will win.

Your prize: You can choose any book that I've reviewed since starting the blog, and I will buy it, and I will send it to you free of charge. This will require providing me with an address/PO Box to send the book to, so if you are uncomfortable with that, you will not recieve the prize. I will not send you the cash equivalent of the book you choose.

Another point of this giveaway is to offer support to brick-and-mortar bookstores. If I cannot reasonably find the title you choose at an actual, physicalstorethat I can get to, I will message you through your tumblr (or a public post for anon winners) and ask you to choose another title. I ran into this problem last year, and that winner has still not recieved their prize (kaseykasket, if you're still here, I STILL OWE YOU A PRIZE).

If, come the 20th, there are not enough number entries to reasonably hold a contest, I will extend the date of the giveaway until the end of the month.

ENTER AWAY!

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2012 in Books

I am aware that 2012 was perhaps not my finest year in blogging. I reviewed fewer books, neglected the blog far more, and said I would do blog things I most certainly did not. However, that doesn't mean I didn'treadin 2012, so to help you start 2013 off right, here are a few of the best books I read last year. Mind you, these may not all be 2012 releases, and they are listed in no particular order, so if your favourite book is #10 FEAR NOT.

1) The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour. I took a risk with this book when I bought it on a whim, and it was SO WORTH IT. It has everything I love in a book: music (see Beige by Cecil Castellucci), road trips, friends, art, and a beautiful cover. I'm just waiting until enough time has gone by that I can reread it and be surprised all over again.

2) Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor. As I just reviewed this book, I'm not going to say a lot about it except for that it met every single one of my expectations and then some, and I can't wait until the next book in the series is here.

3) The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater. I didn't read this book right away which, considering how much I liked The Scorpio Races (one of Stiefvater's previous novels), was strange. However, when I did eventually pick it up, it blew me away. It was paranormal without being in your face, mysterious without being confusing, and everything without being too much of anything. A+ for The Raven Boys.

4) The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin. I read this on recommendation from one of you lovely folks, and I'm so glad I did. It was such a mind f*ck (as my best friend would say), but in the best way. Every chapter you believe something different about Mara's life, and it kept everything so interesting right up until the end.

5) Uglies: Shay's Story by Scott Westerfeld. I've talked before about my small love affair with Shay from Westerfeld'sUgliesseries, and I was so happy when we finally got a chance to hear her side of the story. Nevermind the fact that it was a graphic novel (which I don't usually enjoy but will have to rethink after this) -- it was exceptionally well done, and I'm so excited for the next volume in the series.

I realize a lot of these end with me being excited. Be that as it may...

6) Black Heart by Holly Black. I cannot possible tell you how much I love Black Heart. Well, the whole series, really. I have a friend who I occasionally pester to read certain books, and the last several months have been me saying "Have you read White Cat yet?" I just loved everything about this book, especially as a closer to the series. The characters are more grown up, everything is more compicated, everyone has more to lose, but it turns out perfectly in the end (and by perfect I don't mean happy-ever-after; I mean that there was just enough sacrifice and just enough reward).

7) Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma. Again, a book I'm in love with. This book toes the line between reality and paranormal in a way I love. I had trouble placing it on my bookshelves (I organize by genre like all the cool kids) for this very reason, but it's one of my favourites for that reason too. Also, Ruby is one of my favourite characters ever, and I love her and Chloe together, and I love the power dynamics of the whole town...I could go on.

8) I realize this is such a highfalutin thing to say, but Astrophil and Stella by Sir Phillip Sidney. Once you get past the language and the fact that it's probably just the kind of thing you used to hate reading in high school or college, Astrophil and Stella is great. It's all angst over this woman you love who's also married and won't talk to you, and a lot of "Stella just blushed. Does that mean she likes me?", and Astrophil's occasionally inappropriate physical reactions to Stella's gaze...fun stuff, right? I also enjoyed Shakespeare's sonnets, if we're on the subject. But we've all probably read at least one of those.

9) What's Left of Me by Kat Zhang. Another book I picked up by chance and loved. Apart from the fact that I'm jealous of Kat Zhang being younger than me, this book was fantastic. I love the relationship between Eva and Addie, and the friction of the entire society, and the depictions of life and loss, and the concept of people having two souls. It's not often that I find a book so refreshing and so unexpected.

10) Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. I realize this book came out a couple years ago, and the fourth book in the seriesBeautiful Redemption was released far more recently, but upon readingRedemption I realized how much I likedBeautiful Creatures, far more than any of the other three books in the series. Even if you've read it, I urge you to revisit.

11) L (and things come apart) by Ian Orti. I actually read this book three years ago, and I haven't revisited it since, but it's fantastic. It's about a man who may or may not be going insane, and his relationship with a woman who may or may not exist. It's not so much plot driven as incredibly lyrical and gorgeous and interesting. It's hard to get ahold of, but it's worth it.

12) Rosie and Skate by Beth Ann Bauman. I've reviewed this book, but it's worth mentioning again. This year I tried to read a lot of books about sisters or sisters and brothers, so that's how I found it. The way the relationship between Rosie and Skate was portrayed is probably my favourite thing about it, but really everything is great. I also always think of Pretty Bad Things by CJ Skuse in the same breath (yes, mixed metaphors, I know) so check that out too.

Just as a closing remark: I'm going to do another giveaway this year for the second anniversary of the blog, so keep your eyes open.

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Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor

The Acquiry

I have wanted to read this book forever -- the minute I finished Daughter of Smoke and Bone I was ready for it. However, like most of us, I had to wait. Then, to add insult to injury, I thought the release date was one day earlier when it actually was, went to the store, and found out that no, I wasn't allowed to read it just yet. OH THE HUMANITY!

The Book

Publisher: LittleBrown Page Count: 517

Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a world free of bloodshed and war. This is not that world. Art student and monster's apprentice Karou finally has the answers she has always sought. She knows who she is—and what she is. But with this knowledge comes another truth she would give anything to undo: She loved the enemy and he betrayed her, and a world suffered for it. In this stunning sequel to the highly acclaimed Daughter of Smoke & Bone, Karou must decide how far she'll go to avenge her people. Filled with heartbreak and beauty, secrets and impossible choices, Days of Blood & Starlight finds Karou and Akiva on opposing sides as an age-old war stirs back to life. While Karou and her allies build a monstrous army in a land of dust and starlight, Akiva wages a different sort of battle: a battle for redemption. For hope. But can any hope be salvaged from the ashes of their broken dream?

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12812550-days-of-blood-starlight

The Plot

I'm not going to beat around the bush on this one: I absolutely loved this book, even more than Daughter. Plot-wise I found it a lot more exciting. My main criticism of Daughterwas that it was pretty solidly split into a Before and After -- before and after the breaking of the wishbone, that is. I'm not going to ruin it for you, but I thought that having the book so cleanly divided kind of took away from the building action of the plot, and took me away from the world I had spent hundreds of pages falling in love with. In this book, though, Karou knows everything, and she's set with the task of dealing with it and reconciling these two sides of herself she found out about in the second half of the last book. The plot of Days of Blood and Starlight is told from multiple points of view -- from Karou's, obviously, but also from Akiva's and Karou's best friend's and a few new characters more connected with Karou's life from before Daughter than the one we're introduced to. One of the biggest plot elements inDays is the war between Chimaera and Angels, which I really enjoyed -- not because there were lots of gory battle scenes, but because Taylor really focused on the planning and logistical stages of the war, and on everything else that happens, and everything else that goes into fighting, and the moral doubts of some of the characters. I realize this is not an excellent description, but there are so many things I could spoil for you, and I really don't want to do that.

The People

While I enjoyed the plot ofDays of Blood and Starlight, my favourite thing about it would have to be the characters. Because this is the second book in a series, we've already been introduced to most of the main characters in the book, or at least heard mention of them, so we've already come to love or hate or have some sort of opinion on them. What I loved about this book is how the characters all seemed to mature and become more complex. I have to say that as a whole,Dayswas a lot darker thanDaughterbecause things that happened in the first book have shaken the world of these characters, and they're now forced to deal with it.

The person I saw the most change in is also my favourite character -- Karou. In the first book, Karou was presented as independent and self-sufficient, but there was also a playfulness to her in her use of her wishes, her interactions with her friends, and her overall attitude toward her job as Brimstone's human tooth collector. In this book though, she's more mature. More responsible, because she has to be. The world Karou lives in throughout this book is much heavier, and filled with a lot more uncertainty and the very real possibility of deceit at every turn. And while Karou struck me as much unhappier a character in this book, I really liked it. I liked how we saw her deal with things nobody should have to, I liked her sense of duty and her confusion about right and wrong, and I liked how she seemed not in control of everything -- it made her seem human.

The Verdict

As with when I finishedDaughter of Smoke and Bone, I am so ready to read the next book in the series. I'm ready to see where Karou's adventures take her, and I'm ready to see how the choices she made in this book affect what happens in the next. Bring it on, Laini Taylor. I'll be waiting.

9/10

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At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.

Toni Morrisson

I was supposed to read her bookBelovedonce but never got around to it. I'm going to eventually. This quote convinced me I'll like her as a writer.

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-geektyrant.com

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The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

The Acquiry

As I'm sure some of you may remember, this book was recommended to me by a reader of the blog, to which I said "Finally a reason to read it!" This has been on my reading list for a very long time, but there are a lot of things in life that often (sadly) have to come before reading. However, now I've read it. Here's what I thought...

The Book

Publisher: Simon and Schuster Page Count: 452

Mara Dyer doesn't think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there. It can.

She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed. There is.

She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love. She's wrong.

-from book jacket

The Plot

I can't say too much about the plot here because I run the risk of ruining the book for those of you who haven't read it. The basic storyline is exactly how it sounds from the jacket description: Mara Dyer woke up without any memory of the accident that killed three of her friends but left her alive, and as she adjusts to a new life in a new city, she has to try and remember it, then figure it out. Something that really intrigued me about the book was this concept of unbecoming. Like most of the book, it can be read one of two ways. Either you're unbecoming who you were in the evolution to becoming someone new, or you're unbecoming without anything else to become. That leads to one of the most interesting things about this book: that Mara's flashbacks to the accident and some of the conclusions she draws about it can be viewed as the thoughts of someone mentally insane. That was the fun of the book for me: trying to figure out at each new twist and turn whether Mara was accurately remembering and interpreting this information, or whether she was having hallucinations that led her to believe certain things that weren't right, and weren't sane. The plot lent itself to this very well because everywhere you turned there was some new twist or some piece of information you han't heard about that suddenly made your idea of Mara shift until she wasn't who you thought. Then there would be another twist and you'd be right back where you started. As the plot progressed, I think I got an idea of what Mara wanted to think, or what she wantedyouto think, but I'm not sold on the conclusions that were drawn at the end. I'm going to have to wait for the second book to figure that one out.

The People

In all, I really enjoyed the characters in this book. Mara was a fantastic narrator, if unrealiable, and painted the picture of the world she was in so richly I felt like I was there with her. Noah I wasn't so fond of, mainly because of his personality. I got a haughty impression of him right from the start, like he thought himself better than Mara, that he knew all the answers...an impression that was only enforced around the end of the book when he admitted to not believing Mara about her impressions of herself. I also found Mara's family to be a little overbearing, which while I didn't like it, served to emphasize the confusion as to whether Mara was sane or not -- I mean, if your family's all over you like hers was, you have to question certain things you think you know.

As I mentioned above, Mara was an unreliable narrator. There were facts about her and her situation that she herself didn't know, so how could she communicate them effectively? I really like how Hodkins, in the first pages, had the declaration that Mara Dyer wasn't Mara's real name -- how it was one she had chosen for herself. So already that says that the person we're reading about, the person we come to know, isn't who she really is. Right from the beginning you know there are certain things about Mara that are kept from you, and that makes you think about what else might be unclear.

The Verdict

Whoever recommended this book to me, thank you. I initially thought this was going to be another paranormal fantasy world, but instead it turned out to be something darker and more complex than I ever imagined -- something that I enjoyed immensely. While there were certain elements about the book I didn't enjoy, and while at times it seemed a bit drawn out, I loved being able to puzzle through Mara's life, and anxiously await the release of the second book in the series.

8/10

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[ cloud overview ] [ get your own cloud ] This is a Tumblr Cloud I generated from my blog posts between Dec 2009 and Sep 2012 containing my top 90 used words.