My Reading List Fall 2012

Ahhh... I've got some humorous blog posting coming your way soon, but until then, I'm going to post my reading list for this fall. I'm going to have to become friends with the persons at my library that order books, to be sure, to be sure.

*drum roll*

 ZE REEDING LISTZ (Darn, Aubrey. Thanks a lot. ;-D)

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy
The Book Theif by Markus Zuzak
Get Thee to a Punnery: An Anthology of Intentional Assaults Upon the English Language by Richard Lederer
These Happy Golden Years by Laura Wilder
Folks, This Ain't Normal by Joel Salatin
John Adams by David McCullough (started this last year and didn't finish)
Sleeping Freshman Never Lie by David Lubar (re-read; yessssss it was that good)
Firmament: Radialloy by Grace Pennington (missed the sale on July 4th... have to beg the library!)
Peter's Angel by Aubrey Hansen
National Velvet by Enid Bagnold
God and Kings: Chronicles of the Kings by Lynn Austin (got this for free on Amazon)



"EN AVANT THE CARTS!"

 I also want to read some of the other self-published books that were suggested for the VLAs, like Pirate Daughter's Promise, Charity's Diary, and the Destiny Trilogy, but I'll probably read those after I get some of the classics and non-fiction crossed off my list, :-D


( As a side note: prayers that I can afford a laptop to replace my old one would be appreciated, so I can get going on my senior year of homeschool. )

///////Ahhhhh

 Am I being lazy? I took a trip to the library this week, so I haven't felt much interest in wasting my time on  The Facebook, Twitter, or my blog. Not that I don't love ya'll, but I'm not obsessed over your life and I can always read about it four hours after you post instead of two minutes. ;-D

PacMan anyone? Oh, that's right, it's an Eclipse.

I have a very narrow field of reading interests, I know.

And I must really be lazy, because I salvaged the first part of this post from last week and added the pic from the Annular Eclipse last night. ;-D

 Listening to Adam Young. Youtopia is probably my favorite.

MORE Library Books

On Tuesday or so I went to the library with one of my longest lists yet--about 19 books. As I went through the isles, I declined getting some of them. I mean, snore. It's one thing to get excited about something on Goodreads, it's another when you see the opening sentence.

 So after a bad run-in with a I-wrote-a-book-for-people-who-hate-goody-goody-Christians (your loss, author dude. not everyone has to be obsessed with adult garbage) I found some other books and put them on hold, and today my parents took me to get them. Of course I couldn't help but get a few extra.




 Yep, they finally got Ruby Redfort. My mom flipped through this and said SHE might even enjoy reading it, so that's a good sign. Also, each library branch in my town has two copies, and there was only one copy not checked out in the whole town. So obviously people like it a lot.
 The Weight of the Sky is actually in verse, which slightly annoys me but On Pointe was good and I had to force myself to put this down after two pages.
 And Gary D. Schmidt... well Wednesday Wars was just awesome so how could I resist?
 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Vingt Mille something-something uhh... okay I forgot the rest of the original title. I'm not that far in French yet. Whatever.) Kate from Dream Sailor has been bragging about this book, and it's science fiction so I'm giving it a try. I personally wanted Around the World in 80 Days, but my library is not that cool.

(FROM A TAG ON THE FLIKR WEBSITE: "from Jules Vernes' Journey to the Center of the Earth, Chapter 5;

"This church exhibited nothing remarkable in itself; in fact, the worthy Professor had only been attracted to it by one circumstance, which was, that its rather elevated steeple started from a circular platform, after which there was an exterior staircase, which wound round to the very summit. - ed snook")

 Which makes me want to read Journey, but the edition my library had was weird and I didn't want to read that.
---
 And for your enjoyment, I have decided to start doing book pair ups. If there are two book that have something very similar, I'll talk a little about it.


VS.

Both are a mystery about the past. Both I could not finish reading. Blah, blah, blah. If your going to write something about being obsessed about something small from your childhood even when you are seventeen, add more than one dimension to the story, please.
---
 I would also like to add that Smiles to Go by Jerry Spinelli is ultra rad. Skateboards, astronomy, and an awesome style of narrative. Lovin' it!

Favorites Volume I

 There will always be that list of books you tell people are your favorite, that you keep repeating and repeating. I will always say Anne of Green Gables is my most favorite book, but even then I oft forget the wondrous words that make me keep reading.

Empurpled. Anyone remember that?     

  Often by favorite I mean something that I would read more than four times. It's stiff competition out there, ladies.

Here are some grand words to read:

 - - The Wednesday Wars by Gary D Schmidt
 - - The Plastic Ocean by M
 - - Wonder Struck by Brian Selznick
 - - Olive's Ocean by Kevin Henkes
 - - The Mozart Season by Virginia Euwer Wolff
 - - The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall
 - - Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorensen
 - - First Snow by Kate Sayloor
 - - Good Hours by Robert Frost

From 1940s Census

LHBP 2012: The Lowdown on Me

 The Literary Heroine Blog Party is already deeply underway, but Jess slips in anyways, smoothing her clothes and sitting on the edge of a small, elegant chair near the door. Kellie is asking the new members to answer questions.

"Introduce yourself!  Divulge your life's vision, likes, dislikes, aspirations, or something completely random!" Kellie asked first.

 "I'm Jessica Verve. I've been deeply interested in writing fiction for years, and have been penning a mystery book since last summer that is almost completed. Anything I do in my life would be completely hopeless if it wasn't for God, my wonderful heavenly Father. He inspires me with so many things and has piqued a broad variety of interests in my heart, so many I could go on for quite a long time..." Jessie grins.


 "What, to you, forms the essence of a true heroine?"

bookzzz

The Reinvention of Bessica Lefter (eh)
Waiting for Normal
Listening for Lions (liked the safari theme... who knows if it'll be good)
The Healer's Apprentice (don't laugh xD)
What I Call Life (knitting on cover is the only reason I got it)
Eight Keys (wanted to buy this)
The Trouble With May Amelia (everyone likes this for some reason. We'll see)
Junonia <3
The Summer Before Boys (wanted to buy this a looooong time ago)
Seaglass Summer (didn't even look at the description)
Mo Wren Lost and Found (this is questionable, but it looked funny and it was in the kids section)
More Than a Horse (awesome cover)
Penderwicks 2 & 3 (read before)


 The librarian smiled at me while I was checking out. "That's some good stuff."
 Me: "Uuuuhh..... yeah, yeah, it is. *smiles stupidly*"

 Not to copy Lidia, who just did a book list post. xD

 Hopefully one of the new ones will go up for the VLA. I'm considering doing a drastic change. It's a #snore. AHHHHH, I'm using hashtags in EVERYTHING now.


 That, ladies and germs, is my random post for the week. Bear with me.

Going to the library library blibrary!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1) God delivered me from my sinus infection last night! WOOT now I'm all better.

2) The thought of having the power to give a book award to any YA author only enthralls Me and said Authors.

3) Today is library day. Going to get a bunch of titles on my Goodreads list. I might take a picture of the mountain of books. Haha.

Newberry Shock

 I'm a little slow in looking up this year's Newberry winners, as I completely forgot when they announce it. xD Almost a whole week late!

 Dead End in Norvelt was the winner? It must be a lot more exciting than I remember the dust jacket blurb being. I am kinda biased and don't look at a book if the description is dull or the opening is a snooze. I might read it eventually.

 The only books I've read or heard of on the Notable List are Junonia (I have recently reconciled with Kevin Henkes' books), Okay For Now (read a review on Into The Book), and Tall Story. I actually got Tall Story from the library a couple of weeks ago. Bleh.

 They could have at least mentioned Penderwicks 3. >.<

 This, my friends, is why I do my own awards. I get incredibly frustrated when my favorite books don't make the list. A lot of kids I know feel the same way.

Sailboats...

CURRENTLY READING: The Great Wide Sea by M. H. Herlong

VLA SITE CONSTRUCTION : 99% Complete

What does this mean? I can stop being a web designer and be a writer again. To be honest, I was getting a little frustrated with writing when I began the heavy work on the site last week. The break did me good. Every time I want to throw my notebooks in a heap and run the garden hose over it, I know it's time to take a breath.

 That is another reason why I work on more than one novel at a time. Easier to write a more refreshing point of view.

 Speaking of POV, does anyone else find themselves doing multi-POVs without noticing? Deceptive's been getting a little confusing with the constant switching, and it's making me wonder what my story is really about--what would the meaning be if it was ONLY in one person's eyes?

Windsor Airlift - Love (w/o weird beeping=beautiful); No One Tells Me Anything

Black Hearts in Battersea... hmmmm

 So I pick up things at random whenever I go to the library. Mysteries, audio books, biographies, math textbooks (last time I picked up The Writer's Market and tried to check it out. *Reference section only* Oops). And some times, I find a good one. Well, last week I was feeling British, historical, and oceanic, so when I saw Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken, I thought "OH GOODY, a sea mystery." (I often take things literally.) At first I read the description and thought it was an adventure novel along the lines of King of the Wind, but when I got hope it turned at to be a mystery. A fantasy mystery. But not THAT kind of fantasy, I was pleased to find out.

 It turns out, even after the Inklings ruled the world, there were actually fantasy novels that were not about alternate universes, but alternate history. Pretty interesting.

 Long ago in England, there was some kind of war between people of a political persuasion called 'Hanoverians' and those for King James III. Who the heck they are, would take a search engine and an encyclopedia to find out, to be sure. Anyways, I guess the Hanoverians won, but Aikens was not exactly one to write things the way they ended up originally, so in her "Wolves of Willoughby Chase Chronicles" the sovereign over England is King James the III. Thus it is classified a historical fantasy. Though I think some of it had to do with a 8-person hot air balloon. ;-P

 A reviewer on Goodreads pretty much sums it up:

A humorously convoluted Victorian melodrama, complete with plots, assassination attempts, kidnappings, shipwrecks, hidden identities, secret societies, and hot-air balloon escapes.

 This book was quite interesting and had a remarkably good style; however, many overtly convenient plot twists kept this from being a favorite. The beginning was extraordinarily fun and mysterious, as was the middle, but the ending had too many obvious outs. You can tell it is a series because of the references to Willoughby Chase as well as the loose ends that are left at the end. To be honest though, I liked the loose ends and thought that a book standing by itself would be very intriguing with them.