Author: booknutgirls

booknutgirls http://thebooknutdotcom.wordpress.com I read. I blog. I sell books. I chauffeur my kids. What more do you need to know?

Bella at Midnight

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This really wasn’t so much a fairy tale as a tale of discovery with fairy tale overtures. There’s a wicked father, a frustrated step-father, a prince and a not-quite-princess in disguise. There’s intrigue, courage, love, war, betrayal: what more does a good tale need?

Nothing.

Bella is a happy peasant girl, daughter to a blacksmith, who happens to be friends with the king’s youngest son. That is, until her life is turned upside down the year she turned 13. She discovers that her real father is a knight, but a cruel one; he has remarried and has sent for her, tearing her from the family she loves. On top of that, Prince Julian is sent as a hostage/prisoner/guest to the enemy country, where it turns out — because of his brother’s vanity — that his life may be forfeit. What is Bella to do, but try and save his life?

I loved this little book. With elements from Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Joan of Arc, Diane Stanley wove a captivating little tale of a courageous girl with a huge heart. It wasn’t as magical as I was expecting, though there were some elements of magic. It was more religious than I was expecting (the climax is attributed to a miracle of God), but I feel that’s what this story needed, especially since Bella had a role similar to Joan of Arc. I also liked the format; Stanley deftly wove the story from numerous perspectives; different chapters being narrated by different characters. This very easily could have been distracting, at the least, but I thought that it actually added to the charm of the story.

Which made it, if not a fairy tale, then a really good book.

A Spot of Poetry

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By M, for her Language Arts class (I found it lying on the counter…)

I AM
I am a loud reader
I wonder what to read next
I see my books as gold
I want a library
I am a loud reader

I pretend I’m the hero
I feel the characters
I touch my imaginary friends
I worry for them
I cry at the sad parts
I am a loud reader

I understand my “insane” mom
I say “Go away, I’m reading!”
I dream to be the hero
I try to eat and sleep
I hope to have a book dedicated to me
I am
a
LOUD
READER!

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

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Ever wonder what you’d do if you lost — just like that — four years of your life? Panic? Start over? Get depressed? I was fascinated by the whole premise behind Gabrielle Zevin’s latest book: Naomi is a 16-year-old, who, because of one fall down a flight of concrete steps and a nasty bump on the head, can’t remember anything past the time she was 12 years old. Call it fate, call it gravity, but suddenly she’s a completely different person than what everyone else was expecting.

There’s a lot going on in this book. There’s a love story, there’s a psychological mystery (who was Naomi before), there’s issues of alienation and depression and dealing with choices one makes.

But beyond all that, it’s a smartly written novel with a compelling story about a fascinating girl who takes the chance fate has given her to create something and someone new. A good little book.

Three Days Gone

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And I get behind… We had family — both my parents and Hubby’s — in town this weekend and on top of all that, I caught the flu on Thursday, so I’m just now coming out of my self-imposed blog hiatus (only three days, and there were more than 200 posts to read!) , and I discovered that Armenian Odar put up the March Bookworms Carnival. It’s a very lovely little carnival, go visit it, if you haven’t already.

Next month, the carnival will be held at In the Louvre, and the theme will be Latin American literature/authors. If you’d like to submit a post, email admin at inthelouvre dot org. Michelle has also set up an informational page for the April carnival.

Enjoy!

The Faerie Path

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My first book for the Twisted Fairy Tale Challenge. I picked this mostly because it was a take off on Midsummer Night’s Dream: the main character, Anita/Tania, is the seventh daughter of Faerie King Oberon and Queen Titania. But that’s where the similarities end.

The basic plot is that on her 16th birthday, Anita is pulled back into the Faerie Realm (by the man who was once engaged to her as Tania) where she discovers that she’s been missing for 500 years. Everyone is overjoyed to see her, and she must set about figuring out what all this means, as well as coming to terms with her power, to straddle the Mortal and Faerie worlds.

As a stand-alone book, this wasn’t very good. Anita spends half of the book denying that she’s the fairy princess Tania, and then when she does try to accept and believe in it, she spends time trying to figure out whom to believe and wanting to get back to the Mortal World. It isn’t until the last 50 pages that the book gets exciting, where action takes over for exposition.

But as a first book in a series (which it is, the second being The Lost Queen and the third, The Sorcerer King), it serves it’s purpose extremely well. It sets up Tania as a seemingly flighty girl, but also one who knows her own mind, and who can use the experience of the Mortal World to her advantage. The romance isn’t very interesting, but since Tania spent half the book being angry at her “true” love, perhaps it will be stronger in the later books. But there’s intrigue, betrayal, and confusion, and finally revelation and an even bigger quest to fulfill. It ends with the promise of more adventure, more danger, more romance. Which is good, because the one thing this book did was leave me wanting to find out the rest of the story.

A Sure Sign it’s Spring

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Is that it’s time for Carl’s Once Upon a Time Challenge again!

I had so much fun with this last year that I’ve been eagerly looking forward to participating again. I’m going to do Quest the Second, since I actually read Midsummer Night’s Dream last year and I think the Nook is learning toward a tragedy this year…

So, my list:

1. Fantasy: Swordspoint, by Ellen Kushner. (If I’m feeling ambitious, I may actually read the other two in the series… The Privilege of the Sword and The Fall of the Kings.)

2. Folklore: The Other Boleyn Girl, by Philippa Gregory. Again, like last year, it’s more historical fiction than folklore, but I’m going to pretend it’s not. 🙂

I bailed on The Other Boleyn Girl, and read American Gods by Neil Gaiman instead.

3. Fairy Tales: Into the Wild, by Sarah Beth Durst. Also for the Twisted Fairy Tales Challenge

4. Mythology: I’m going to re-read Mary Stewart’s Merlin Trilogy (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment). I’ve wanted to do this ever since finishing Song of the Sparrow, and this is my golden opportunity. Bonus book: Rick Riordan’s Battle of the Labyrinth. It’ll be out in May, and M has promised me we’ll get it AS SOON AS IT COMES OUT. (No, she’s not excited.) I’m second in line for reading it anyway. 🙂

I’m really looking forward to this. So much fun!

Graphic Novel Roundup #2

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My second foray into graphic novels, all YA this time:

I liked this book — done in the more traditional comic book style by Joann Sfar and Emannuel Guibert — in the broadest sense of the word. That is, it entertained me. But, man, was it weird. The basic plot: an Egyptian mummy, Imhotep IV, comes to life (how? why?? I have no idea.) and falls in love with the Professor’s daughter, Lillian. They have adventures, get in trouble, escape, run into Imhotep’s dad (why is he alive?) and eventually live “happily ever after”. It was odd, it was violent, it was funny in it’s oddness and violence (Imhotep III was , but I finished with a feeling of “wha‘, huh, what on earth just happened?”

Maybe I’d have gotten it better if I knew more about ancient Egyptian kings?

Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg, on the other hand, I really liked. And not just because it was entertaining, though it was that. I liked Jane, I liked the story that was being told, and I liked the way that it was told. It’s a story of losing thing and finding oneself of adjusting and making friends and belonging.

Jane was a survivor of a bombing in Metro City, and because her parents don’t feel safe in the city any more, they move out to Kent Waters, a suburb. Jane’s going through shock on top of the adjustment of moving and starting new high school. And as part of her reinventing herself she gravitates toward the less-popular crowd, which just happen to be a group of Janes. They form a friendship, create art and inspire a town. I enjoyed the creativity, and realized when I finished it that this was something unique: I don’t think this story could have been told nearly as effectively in novel form. And perhaps that’s what graphic novels are for.

Born Standing Up

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I was really glad when I saw that this one came in (Eventually I’ll read Rascal.) at the library. I’ve wanted to read this ever since I saw a bit about it at someone’s roundup of some publishing conference (how’s that for specific) primarily because I’m a fan of Steve Martin. Not a big fan — I don’t love everything he’s done — but I generally enjoy his humor, and I’ve enjoyed his writing in the past. A memoir by him sounded both funny and intriguing.

Martin insists that this book isn’t an autobiography, but rather a biography, because, he writes, “I am writing about someone I used to know.” I enjoyed getting to know that person. While it wasn’t always funny (though there were some great funny bits), it was an insightful, gentle trip into how Steve Martin became the Steve Martin of the late-70s and early-80s. (He’s no longer that Steve Martin. One of my favorite lines was: “At first I was not famous enough, then I was too famous, now I am famous just right.”) I learned that being a comic is work (probably should have figured that), that when people stand up to entertain us, it doesn’t just happen spontaneously. One of the more interesting aspects of the book was the evolution of Martin’s comedy. From magician-banjo-everyguy to hippie-cuttingedge-philosophical guy (get the book just to see photos of Martin’s hippie days… they’re hilarious) to finally what he ended up as: manic-physical-crazy guy. Fascinating stuff. I also learned that his rise to fame was not just a product of hard work (he’d tape his shows and make corrections/adjustments based on what he heard), but also a bit of luck (he got on as a writer on the Smothers Brothers show because an ex-girlfriend’s current boyfriend was a writer), and because he’s basically a decent guy. He was willing to be polite and willing to be humble and willing to make the effort to make it all happen. And it was interesting watching the evolution of it all and finding out why he gave up the life of a stand up comic for movies and writing (well, who wouldn’t?).

The weirdest thing about it all was the writing style. I don’t know what I was expecting and I can’t quite put my finger on it. But there was something about the way it was written that kept nagging at me. Perhaps because he got a bit overly sentimental at times? Or maybe because he kept flipping back between past and future and the foreshadowing just didn’t fit? Or maybe because it wasn’t as funny as I was expecting it to be?

Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough to keep me from really enjoying this trip down Martin’s memory lane. I’m glad he invited us along for the ride.

Let’s Try this Prize Thing Again

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It’s March. There’s 70 reviews over at the Expanding Horizons Challenge review page. I know at least one person has finished. Since visiting other people’s reviews and commenting elicited such a piddly response (People, you really ought to read each other’s reviews. There’s some interesting books being read out there.), I’ve decided to do something at little less strenuous.

For the prize package — which includes an ARC of A Bottle in the Gaza Sea and chocolate from here (c’mon… who wouldn’t want this stuff?!) — all you have to do is leave a comment in this post with the name of the book you’ve liked best so far (for the challenge, of course), and why.

First, the blurb about Gaza Sea:

A seventeen-year-old from Jerusalem, Tal Levine comes from a family that always believed peace would come to the Middle East. She cried tears of joy when President Clinton and Yitzhak Rabin shook hands with Yasser Arafat in 1993—a moment of hope that would stay with her forever. But when a terrorist explosion kills a young woman at a café in Jerusalem, something changes for Tal. One day she writes a letter, puts it in a bottle, and sends it to Gaza—to the other side—beginning a correspondence with a young Palestinian man that will ultimately open their eyes to each other’s lives and hearts.

Just to show you how easy it is:

I liked Hummingbird’s Daughter best. While it wasn’t a perfect novel, I enjoyed the elements of faith and of magical realism, and I loved Tomas’s journey from a superstitious jerk, to a loving, caring father.

See? Easy peasy. I’ll leave this post up until the 15th, then A gets to do a drawing. She’s very excited.

ACK!

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I forgot it was March (how could I; It’s SPRING here!) and that the deadline for the Bookworm’s Carnival is TODAY. I need to go submit something…

Heres’s the info:
This month’s carnival is being hosted by Myrthe, and the theme is Women in Literature.

You can email your link to Myrthe at armenianodar [at] yahoo [dot] com.

Myrthe says:

It can be a review of a book by a female author, a review of a book in which the main character is female, it can be a non-review type post in which you discuss a topic relevant to the theme, a post with your favorite female authors or book-characters. Or something completely different.

Hope I’m not too late…