STACKED

books

The end of bloggiesta

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Phew! My whirlwind weekend of bloggiesta is coming to an end, and I put in roughly 15 hours of blog work this weekend. Many of the changes you can see: new tabs on top, a more organized label system, and better color matching on the blog.

Some of the changes you’ll see soon, including a host of new posts and topics to be rolled out over the next couple of weeks.

And some of the changes you won’t see: you probably won’t notice the new matter of subscribing to the blog, the necessary emails that needed to be sent out, the spreadsheets for reviewing purposes, and more.

Thanks to the support of the wonderful blogging community for keeping me going. A lot of these were little things that piled up in my mind to do, but I’ve never had the opportunity to do it. A crummy weekend of hot, sticky, wet weather allowed me more than my goal of 10 hours, for which I am grateful.

I’m excited to have discovered tons of new blogs and bloggers, many of which have been added to my now-cleaned-out Google Reader. And now that the bulk of my work here is done for a while, you can find me spending the evening reading on the couch (I’m currently falling totally in love with Jenna Blum’s new The Stormchasers) and encouraging the other bloggers still chugging on.

Bloggiesta, Ole!

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I’ll be participating in Bloggiesta this weekend. You can check out what that celebration is right here. I’m committing to 10 hours of blog work this weekend, but I hope to get a little more accomplished total (aim low, right?).

What are my goals? Most are going to be behind-the-scenes things, but my list of goals includes:

  • Updating my blogging business cards
  • Set up FeedBurner for better subscription information
  • Writing a number of posts for future dates
  • Developing a couple of series posts (a la the “Guys Read” and “Audio books”)
  • Adding a favicon
  • Creating a gravitar
  • Add sitemeter in addition to Google Analytics
  • Create tabs for AudioSynced, Reviews, and Review Policy
  • Update AudioSynced
  • Maintain AudioSynced Archive
  • Updating my review spreadsheet and adding missing titles
  • Cleaning my bookshelves back to their original beauty and reorganizing my to-review shelf
  • Editing our tagging system and making it more user-friendly
  • Creating a page for our review policies and updating the policies regarding third party contests
  • Making a facebook fan page for STACKED to reach a wider audience Tabled for now.
  • Connecting via blogrolls to other book bloggers and updating our blog roll
  • Working on some of the cool post ideas we saved from our initial brainstorming sessions well over a year ago (you’re in for some treats!)
  • Implementing form letters for blogging purposes
  • Follow up with starred items in Google Reader and fix my tagging system to help with future blogging
  • Brainstorming new features and post ideas (One counts, right?)
  • Adding one of those nifty post footers to share posts via twitter, facebook, and other social media
  • Contacting Important People about Audiosynced and organizing future AudioSynced posts
  • Reading a ton! I didn’t get to participate in last weekend’s 48 hour reading challenge, so I’d like to be able to do some catching up. I’ve been making headway in my BEA pile, but I’d like to dive further in.
  • Adding my reviews to Amazon, Goodreads, and other bookish networks

Over the course of my participation, I will return to this post to cross off/add to my list. I won’t inundate your readers with posts, but I will recap everything Sunday night.

Are you participating or participating via reading other participants’ blogs?
What would YOU like to see here? Share your thoughts!

Field Notes: The Iron King by Julie Kagawa

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Megan Chase’s brother Ethan has disappeared. But this isn’t the first strange thing to happen in her life. When her father disappears from the family — and we’re not talking about “leaving” in the sense as we understand it, it’s a real disappearance into thin air here — her mother moves them to a remote part of Louisiana, where she begins seeing strange things. Of course, she’s also a misfit in school, though she has a strong friendship with Robbie.

And it’ll be Robbie who introduces her to the idea that Megan isn’t who she thinks she is: she’s a member of the fairy world. Her father sired her with her mother, he being half-fairy and her mother being a mortal. So, now that that bomb’s been dropped in Megan’s life, she gets the news that Robbie, too, is a member of this world. In fact, he’s Robin Goodfellow; that’s right, he is who we lovably know as Puck from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And Megan’s dad? Oberon.

Through a series of discoveries and battles in the fairy world, Megan traces down her family’s roots, her place in this half world, and aims to track down and save Ethan from this world in which he doesn’t belong.

The Iron King was a fast-paced fantasy that appealed to all of my senses, despite my hesitation to fall into a fantasy book. This one just worked for me. Megan is a strong female character who begged me to escape into her reality, and the use of Shakespeare’s fairy world kept this book pulsing forward. Kagawa develops her own world and does a fantastic job world building, but I can’t help saying that she has a lot to work with in the original story, as well. In short: I really liked this book and think it has wide appeal.

Kagawa’s story will appeal to fantasy fans, as well as non-fantasy fans who may want to try a book in that genre. Teens who are drawn to Shakespeare’s original tale will enjoy this one, and I believe that those who are seeking to be writers will love what Kagawa has done here. The entire time while reading the book, it felt to me like it could have began has a writing exercise: taking a well-known story or set of characters and shaking up their worlds. I think this is one of those books that could be quite inspiring for young and new writers.

The Iron King encompasses the fairy world, making it a true fantasy (rather than a paranormal book). This is refreshing in a world of paranormal thematics. An additional and interesting theme is technology. Kagawa’s world dives into how technology has changed humans — err, fairies — and what impact that has had on societies as a whole. So, while we’re swept into a created world, it is very much grounded in many of the issues and challenges present in our own world.

Kagawa has convinced me enough to check out her forthcoming sequel, The Iron Daughter, as the title alone has me intrigued after the conclusion of this book.

Don’t forget, too, you have a week to enter our contest to win this title. You can find the details right here. This is one title worth devoting a up-too-late-reading excuse to (or in my case, it made a wonderful plane read!).

Lois Duncan: A cover retrospective

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Lois Duncan: you’ve read her work. Her thrillers were core to my teenage reading years, and it was at that time that film makers produced I Know What You Did Last Summer, as well. Let’s talk a walk down memory lane and check out some of her covers past, present, and remastered.

A Git of Magic, published in 1960. I think this is the original cover. WHAT is with the person in the background — are they dancing? levitating? having a seizure?

Here are a couple of different renditions, with the signature style of her newer covers featured last:



Season of the Two – Heart published in 1964. Definitely fits what the aesthetic of the 1960s young adult book was, right down to the color tones.

Point of Violence published in 1966. I love the crime club selection style here, as it really does set it apart — you know other books in that time period had similar covers if they were crime selections. That sort of cover work really aids in reader advisory. I sometimes wish we still had this sort of visual aid (we do in some ways but not like this!).

1966 also brought us Ransom. This one underwent a title change, as well. It is also known as Five Were Missing.


This one’s been redesigned a couple times. The first stands out, fits with the aesthetic of Duncan’s other titles, and screams thriller with its tag line. I might have to say the second redesign is kind of hokey. It reminds me of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer cast shot.


1973 brought us When the Bow Breaks. This is one that again fit with the books I’ve seen or had from the 1970s.

Of course, what would a Duncan retrospective be without this 1973 classic?

That is our original cover for I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Film style, of course.

I love this one! Talk about spooky.

Killing Mr. Griffin came to us in 1978, and it, too, got the movie treatment.



I think the last one’s my favorite. I like how similar they all are, but they each still provoke just a little bit of a different feeling.

Let’s move on to the 1980s. Duncan brought us these titles in that decade:
1981’s Stranger with My Face. I love this cover. It is so 1981 — think about how much this is reminiscent of the original Sweet Valley series!
I love this one. This is the first title of Duncan’s that really looks like something other than a white girl/boy.

1985 brought us Locked In Time, featuring a cover model who looks about 35. But this one, too, has gotten a few make overs.


She looks much older than teen aged, too, doesn’t she?

1989 brought us Don’t Look Behind You. This one SCREAMS 1980s and teenage thriller. A red corded telephone transports us back to such an innocent era, doesn’t it?

And finally, we’ve reached the 1990s.



I really like all three of these. The crystal ball and snow globe images are eerie.

Duncan hasn’t written much for the teen group in the 2000s, as Hotel for Dogs is aimed at a younger crowd. However, as you have seen, many of her books have been repackaged over and over. These have incredible staying power, and it has been smart of the publishers to redesign the covers to fit the ever-changing aesthetics of our culture.

Do you have a favorite here? I think mine might be the incredibly cheesey 1989 Don’t Look Behind You. I bet it would still circulate like crazy with that cover!

What Graphic Novels I’m Reading

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I spent a lazy Saturday plowing through about half a dozen graphic novels – easy to do, since most of them were around 100 pages with about 20 words per page. As I read more of this format, I’m learning how to read them. When I started with my first few graphic novels, I had to translate the art into text in my mind in order to understand the story. I would literally tell myself, “She’s getting out of the car…now she’s walking down the road to the school,” and so on. It reminds me a lot of how a person learns a foreign language: first, everything must be translated into the known language, but eventually, the foreign language becomes understandable on its own. Now, the pictures tell the story for me without the need for me to create words as intermediaries.

Here’s a sampling of the graphic novels I read recently:

Outlaw: The Legend of Robin Hood
I saw the (bad) movie recently and needed an antidote. This graphic novel takes the legend back to its roots – no surprises, but it’s well-done and well-drawn for the most part (although I had a hard time telling certain characters apart at times).

Cat Burglar Black
The best graphic novel I’ve read since The Eternal Smile. Like a cross between Nancy Drew and Heist Society – lots of fun, and the art style grew on me. I’m hoping for a sequel.

The Hound of the Baskervilles
A faithful interpretation of Doyle’s story that retains the feel of the original, but nothing spectacular.

Orange
Absolutely incredible art, with a story that needed a lot of work. I wouldn’t recommend the novel as a whole, but the artwork really is worth poring over.

The Nobody
I haven’t read the original upon which this story is based, but the graphic novel is a great standalone – layered story and really evocative art.

Parade (With Fireworks)
A graphic novel that taught me I need to brush up on my Italian history. Hard to follow and I wasn’t wild about the art.

Flight (Volume 1)
The art is beautiful (particularly the cover) and the variety of artistic styles on display is impressive, but I would have appreciated more actual story in each offering. Many of the contributions were very slim on plot. By that I don’t mean they didn’t have enough text – just that the combination of art and text didn’t always tell a story with the requisite beginning, middle, and end. A lot of them seemed all beginning.

Britten and Brulightly
A mystery about a depressed private detective and his assistant, a teabag. (Yes, literally, a teabag. As in, what you use to make tea.) Sometimes hard to follow, but I really loved the art.