Uncreated Conscience

Autumn is in full swing in New York City, which means that JJ is approaching hibernation mode. My inherent tendency when the weather grows cool and the days grow shorter is to curl up under the covers with a White-Harp and read, read, read (and occasionally gorge on Indian food). I have about a million things I need to take care of (including grocery shopping), but my first reaction is to snuggle with a fuzzy Harp and never leave the bed. This means that not only errands are pushed to the wayside, but things like blogging and book reviewing are also forgotten.

I need an office

While I was in DC last week visiting Mum, we made a stop by the nearest bookstore for something to read. She wanted something light and funny, so I recommended David Sedaris’ ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY, which I think she’ll enjoy, especially the France sections. Not so sure about the drugs and homosexuality though. Oh well.

I got myself Scott Westerfeld‘s LEVIATHAN, but I will admit it was a close call between that and Joshua Gaylord‘s HUMMINGBIRDS, both of which had co-op at the front of the store. But because I am cheap—and because I love steampunk—I went with LEVIATHAN. (The one advantage to being a lover of YA is that it is significantly cheaper than adult fiction.)

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Last night I burned my thumb on our oven. With my oven mitts on. I knew there was a reason I didn’t cook. Now there’s a tiny blister on the edge of my thumb that’s making it impossible to type.

Today is Bear and my 4-year anniversary. Who knew that missing an Arctic Monkeys concert in 2005 could be so fortuitous? The secret to our longevity? I will quote my Teddy Bear himself:

Come for the JJ, stay for the White-Harp.

Yes, everyone should adopt a stuffed baby harp seal into their home. They are the glue that holds relationships together.

Today is also the release date for three awesome books that I am dying to buy (but will most likely have to wait until I have more funds):

1. LEVIATHAN by Scott Westerfeld (STEAMPUNK. CROSS-DRESSING GIRLS. YES.)
2. ICE by Sarah Beth Durst (remember, this one has POLAR BEARS)
3. HUMMINGBIRDS by Joshua Gaylord (I heard him read from it last week at Kettle of Fish and HOLY COW IT’S AMAZING. Also, it is about an all-girls prep school.)

Anyhow, I did promise to review PAPER TOWNS, which I read a few weeks ago and then wept like a baby once I finished it. For the record, FTC, I bought it. In paperback. Because I am poor. Just letting you know.

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As some of you might know, the FTC released new guidelines on product endorsement, which now includes books and book bloggers. To quote Ron Hogan quoting the new regulations:

Shortly after the Federal Trade Commission issued its “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” yesterday, the world learned that the FTC judges newspapers and blogs by different standards—while newspapers (and magazines, and radio shows, and TV shows) are able to receive consumer products for the purposes of review with no requirement to disclose the provenance of those products, the FTC’s stated position is that bloggers are receiving those same consumer products as compensation for a presumed endorsement: Nobody but a blockhead ever gave a blogger anything, according to the FTC, except for good reviews.

Excuse me while I laugh. The idea that I might generate even the tiniest bit of income from this blog is ridiculous. I blog because I love: I love to read and I love to blog about what I read. And for the record, I have bought the majority of the books I review on this blog, with the notable exceptions of LIAR by Justine Larbalestier and CATCHING FIRE by Suzanne Collins, the ARCs of which I borrowed from Russ. (And I went and bought the hardcover for CATCHING FIRE anyway, so nyah.)

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Another White-Harp review vlog! She stayed up so late finishing A CURSE DARK AS GOLD by Elizabeth C. Bunce that this one isn’t quite as coherent as her review of SHIVER.

P.S. You can follow her vlog reviews on YouTube or Vimeo.

Both she and I really thoroughly enjoyed it, and my review follows beneath the cut.

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I used to want to be an animator.

NOT ANYMORE. No wonder traditional handdrawn animation became passé. Even drawing the scant 25 frames in here almost drove me batshit insane.

I procrastinate a lot. I often procrastinate from doing creative things by…making other creative things. In this case, I’m trying not to look at the flaws Scrivener keeps pointing out in my manuscript.

Mostly I’ve been inspired by Maggie Stiefvater who, in addition to being a wonderful writer, is a multi-talented woman. I just loved her stop-motion trailer for SHIVER that I decided to have a go at something similar myself. White-Harp has also been pestering me for ages to make her into a famous internet star and gladly jumped at the opportunity to make her opinions known via video blog.

Arwen Not Appearing In This Book

Everything I learned about revision I learned from…

…listening to the Writer/Directory commentary on The Lord of the Rings films with Peter Jackson and his writing partners Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens.

I’ve begun my annual reread of THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien (I think that ranks up there as one of the geekiest statements I have ever made). Tolkien forms a large part of my childhood as my dad used to read the books to me before I went to bed. To those who criticize Tolkien as being “dense”, “dry”, and “unreadable” I say Read them aloud. Or find a recording of Tolkien himself reading the books. There is a lovely, oral-storytelling quality to his fiction, well-suited to curling up at the foot of an armchair before a roaring fire on a stormy night. To people who say Tolkien can’t write, well, please to be reading “The Bridge of Khazad-Dum” chapter and tell me that the entire chapter didn’t keep you up at night with the creepy-crawlies.

His prose is evocative and lovely, but I will own that his narrative pacing could use some significant work. Infodumps, strange characters popping up for some deus ex machina before disappearing altogether, entire segments where the characters actually do nothing, etc. I try to get people to listen to THE LORD OF THE RINGS as much as possible because Tolkien is part of a dying breed of writers who are more closely tied to an oral tradition than this generation’s authors (please see: Philip Pullman and Lloyd Alexander).

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I need a Boswell who skydives, mostly because I keep forgetting to log my jumps after I do them and then have to do some detective work to find out which dates I was at the DZ. (Thankfully, this is what Twitter seems to be good for.)

I have a gazillion ideas for blog posts, but I never seem to have the time to update, although I suppose that is because I am either falling through the sky or sleeping off my adrenaline crash. The season is winding down to a close for me (alas!) as Bear has started med school again. I am hopeful that we will get at least one more day of jumping in this summer, if things don’t get too crazy too quickly cutting up dead bodies.

Well, if my season is drawing to a close, at least I can review a book about a different sort of season altogether. (Ah ha! Did you see what I did there, oh-so-clumsily?)

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Ka'anapali Beach, Lahaina, Maui

Greetings from the Westin Ka’anapali in Lahaina, Maui! My body is absolutely confused as to what time it is. My family and I flew into Kahului Airport last night around 4:30pm Hawai’i time, which meant it was 7:30pm in Los Angeles, and 10:30pm in New York. Coordinating daily phone calls with Bear was a bit of a challenge as he is now six hours ahead of me. I woke up around 5:30am here to a beautiful silvery full moon was hovering over a lavender and indigo ocean in the pre-dawn light. I’m excited; it’s been five years since my family and I went on vacation together. Unfortunately as I seem to have forgotten my camera battery back in LA, I can’t photodocument everything I normally would, so you will have to make do with a random photo of Ka’anapali Beach I found online.

But gloating over being in Paradise is not what I meant to blog about. I bought and finished GRACELING by Kristin Cashore several days ago and meant to review it before I left Pasadena. Without further ado:

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One morning before work, Russ dropped a book on my desk with the injunction: “You like YA. Read this, it’s really good.”

Now, I trust his taste, but I will admit that I was initially skeptical because the cover is a monstrosity of pink and sexual suggestiveness, exactly the sort of book (YA or not) I try to avoid. Behold!

Review of PURE by Terra Elan McVoy

Pure by Terra Elan McVoy

Well, they do say never judge a book by its cover, but the entire package is a disservice to the novel. Not only is the jacket misleading, the cover blurb is terribly misleading as well.

Promise. Betrayal. Confession. Revenge. Tabitha and her four best friends all wear purity rings, symbols of the virginity-until-marriage pledge they made years ago. Now Tab is fifteen, and her ring has come to mean so much more. It’s a symbol of who she is and of what she believes—a reminder of her promises to herself and her bond to her friends.

But when Tab meets a boy whose kisses make her knees go weak, everything suddenly seems a lot more complicated. Tab’s best friend, Morgan, is far from supportive, and for the first time, Tabitha is forced to keep secrets from the one person with whom she’s always shared everything. When one of those secrets breaks to the surface, Tab finds herself at the center of an unthinkable betrayal that splits her friends apart. As Tab’s entire world comes crashing down around her, she’s forced to re-examine her friendships, her faith, and what exactly it means to be pure.

Yeah, yeah, I thought, Girl wrestles with the conflict of “Is sex bad if I love someone? Will God strike me down?” Blah, blah, I’ve seen this before.

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Sometimes, I really do wish William Shakespeare had written a play called Gold Diggers of 1602 or whatever that made-up book was in GOOD OMENS. Because it would have been amazing.

The other day I finished reading Anna Godbersen’s THE LUXE, which I picked up from Ye Olde Literary Agency. I never had much interest in reading it before; while I do enjoy the Gossip Girl TV show, I’m not much for the book series and this was once described me to me as GOSSIP GIRL meets THE AGE OF INNOCENCE.

Review of THE LUXE by Anna Godbersen

The Luxe by Anna Godbersen

I gobbled this book up in one sitting. I could not put it down, even as I could feel my IQ slowly draining away with every turn of the page. It isn’t that the book is poorly written or even dumb so much as it’s like eating an entire can of Pringles instead of a solid, nutritious meal. As far as these things go, it’s pretty trashy in a Lifestyles of the Rich and Overly-Monied of 1890s New York sort of way. Now I love novels about the Gilded Age; I loved Edith Wharton’s THE HOUSE OF MIRTH and THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (less sold on ETHAN FROME), and I especially love novels of manners detailing the difference between old money and the nouveau riche like THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM by William Dean Howells and THE AMERICAN by Henry James.

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