ash | Regular Rumination

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Hello! I apologize in advance for the lengthiness of this post! I just have a lot to say because last weekend I sadly missed the Sunday Salon, but for a good reason. I was celebrating my birthday and all the wonderful birthday comments just made my day! Thank you everyone who left me a message There are just a couple of outstanding reviews that I’m having trouble finding inspiration for, so I am just going to do a few mini reviews to catch up.

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Push (Precious) by Sapphire: I saw the trailer for the movie “Precious” a couple weeks ago and really want to see the movie. I picked this up at the store and read it in one sitting (yes, I confess, I’m one of those people that sits in bookstores and reads! I can’t help it). It’s part poetry, part narrative about the life of Precious, a teenager who is pregnant for the second time by her father. Her mother, also physically and sexually abusive, claims the children for her own to get more money from the government, but does nothing to help raise them. Precious, overweight and 16 years old in the 8th grade, is kicked out of school for being pregnant. But the guidance counselor, feeling guilty for robbing Precious of her education, leads her to a special school for people who need help learning to read to get their GED. There she is inspired to not only learn to read, but write about her life. Push is what she writes. It’s a really moving and upsetting novel, but one that everyone should read. Highly recommended.

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Ash by Malinda Lo is another book that I read a while back, but never got around to reviewing. I really enjoyed it. Ash is a retelling of Cinderella in which Ash, as she is called, does not fall for the handsome prince, but his beautiful, strong-willed Huntress. The fairytale is extended even further than that to create a world that is unique and well-formed. Ash’s desire to be with a woman and the reciprocation of that desire is not perceived as abnormal in this world, it is accepted and approved of. It is a hopeful look at what our own world could look like one day, maybe without the fairies and huntresses and kings and princes. Though I wouldn’t mind some fairies. Lo had me convinced from page one, and I think this is a great read.

dead I read and loved Life as We Knew It, the first book in the Moon Trilogy by Susan Beth Pfeffer a few months ago, so I was really looking forward to reading The Dead and the Gone. Well, I would start it, and then I would put it down. Then I would pick it up again and give it another shot, but I never did get into it. Finally one day I sat down and made myself finish it. It was… okay. The things that were re-hashed from Life as We Knew It felt just like that, instead of feeling new in a different setting. Everything was the same, but not as good. I think that the diary format worked really well, and I would have liked to see that again. Though perhaps it would have seemed even more repetitive. The characters were particularly unmemorable and I didn’t understand them. I did appreciate a broader look at the situation and a different religious reaction to the event. There were things that I seemed to remember happening to New York in the first book that didn’t happen in the second one. I might be making that up, but I had that sense the whole time. Overall, I was disappointed, but I’m still going to read the third one in the series. It was not an awful read and it was a decent continuation of the series. I find that the second book is usually my least favorite (exception: Chamber of Secrets), so I’m still looking forward to number three!

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There are just a few words to describe this graphic novel: weird, mind trip, bizarre, strange, maybe-awesome. I say maybe, because I honestly have ZERO idea what happened here, but I think I liked it. Plus, I really can’t wait to read more Gilbert Hernandez.

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The only reason that I’m not doing a full review of this book is that I read it during read-a-thon and I just don’t think I could do it justice! It was awesome, amazing and an excellent follow-up to The Knife of Never Letting Go. I really really really really really (5 reallys, at least) can’t wait to read the next one. Thank you Patrick Ness, for creating this world. It’s wonderful and I love every minute of it. But MAN, everyone in this book made me want to climb in the pages and give them a good face slap for being STUPID. It was realistic and I can totally see how they would have made the mistakes they did but I must have screamed, out loud, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” several times. Making She jump and stare at me.

WHEW. Glad I got those off my chest! Hope you found something good there to read!

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In other news, Frances of nonsuch book and Emily of Evening All Afternoon have announced Woolf in Winter, a read along where we will be reading four Virginia Woolf books in January and February. Hello! Isn’t that the most beautiful button you’ve ever seen? I can’t wait. I’ve already put all of the books on request at the library, one on audio, and I might add in a reading of A Room of One’s Own because I happen to have it and want to add it to the list. Here is the schedule:

Sarah – Mrs. Dalloway (January 15)

“Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking toward Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself.”
Emily – To the Lighthouse (January 29)

“So now she always saw, when she thought of Mr. Ramsay’s work, a scrubbed kitchen table. It lodged now in the fork of a pear tree, for they had reached the orchard. And with a painful effort of concentration, she focused her mind, not upon the silver-bossed bark of the tree, or upon its fish-shaped leaves, but upon a phantom kitchen table, one of those scrubbed board tables, grained and knotted, whose virtue seems to have been laid bare by years of muscular integrity, which stuck there, its four legs in the air. Naturally, if one’s days were passed in this seeing of angular essences, this reducing of lovely evenings, with all their flamingo clouds and blue and silver to a white deal four-legged table (and it was a mark of the finest minds so to do), naturally one could not be judged like an ordinary person.”
Frances – Orlando (February 12)

“But, above all, he had, he told Orlando, sensations in his spine which defied description. There was one knob about the third from the top which burnt like fire; another about the second from the bottom which was cold as ice. Sometimes he woke with a brain like lead; at others it was as if a thousand wax tapers were alight and people were throwing fireworks inside him. He could feel a rose leaf through his mattress, he said; and knew his way almost about London by the feel of the cobbles. Altogether he was a piece of machinery so finely made and so curiously put together (here he raised his hand as if unconsciously and indeed, it was of the finest shape imaginable) that it confounded him to think that he had only sold five hundred copies of his poem, but that of course was largely due to the conspiracy against him. All he could say, he concluded, banging his fist upon the table, was that the art of poetry was dead in England.”
Claire – The Waves (February 26)

“I shall walk on the moor. The great horses of the phantom riders will thunder behind me and stop suddenly. I shall see the swallow skim the grass. I shall throw myself on a bank by the river and watch the fish slip in and out among the reeds. The palms of my hands will be printed with pine-needles. I shall there unfold and take out whatever it is I have made here; something hard. For something has grown in me here, through the winters and summers, on staircases, in bedrooms. I do not want, as Jinny wants, to be admired. I do not want people, when I come in, to look up with admiration. I want to give, and to be given, and solitude in which to unfold my possessions.”

I might not finish them all, but I can’t wait to dive right in. Thank you for organizing this! I love you all! (I might just have huge, secret blog-crushes on ya.) That I guess aren’t so secret anymore?

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bbhs_teaser_small I’m sad I didn’t get the information about the Book Blogger Holiday Swap out sooner, but I wanted to send a thank you to all the organizers and participants for all the hard work you’re doing! Thanks so much guys, I’m super excited!

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Well, thanks for reading all that, kids. I know it was a long one! Today I’ll be reading Under the Skin, The Pluto Files and some stuff for school. What will you be reading?

Regular Rumination

A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness… – Madeleine L'Engle

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TSS – Mini Reviews, Woolf, Holiday Book Swap!