In which I make a TBR for a challenge I love but probably won’t have time to do anything with because work-life balance is not a thing and I’m trying to get back into reading teen fiction which may or may not work.
Laini Taylor
Depression + Anxiety = Re-Reading
So, today’s From the Notebook segment is a bit of real talk. It’s about one of my coping mechanisms for when I’m depressed and anxious, but why this doesn’t exactly mean that I’ll be reviewing a lot of stuff until I get some down time to myself. I also talk about some of my TV obsessions, though I will admit that by the time I got around to making this post, I finished Covert Affairs. Whoops? Enjoy, and hope y’all are doing well and happy.
Bibliomancy for Beginners Season 4: Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor
Hey there guys! We’re back with another one of our follow up themed episodes for season 4. This is a follow up on our Imbibliomancy episode on Daughter of Smoke and Bone, which we all liked. I was hopeful we would all like this but, as usual, there are some split opinions. MOSTLY FROM TAYLOR BECAUSE HE HAS NO TASTE. Anyways. Here we go!
Weekly Wrap Up + What We Read 5/15/16
We are aware that this wrap up is late! Between Michaela’s car troubles and my senior week/graduation, this are the things that happen. Bear with us, friends, because once I graduate on Sunday there will be one less opportunity for disasters. Which will be replaced by my going back to work fulltime, but it’s okay. We’ll all be okay.
Sunday:
- #imbibliomancy: Drunk Book Club with Death Vigil by Stjepan Sejic
Monday:
- Gretchen’s From the Notebook: How My Thesis Almost Got Me to Almost Stop Blogging
- Michaela’s Review + Discussion of Tina Fey’s Bossypants
Tuesday:
Wednesday:
- Gretchen’s Worth It Wednesday: Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
- Michaela’s post on Free Comic Book Day
Friday:
Worth It Wednesday: “A Daughter of Smoke and Bone” by Laini Taylor
Worth It Wednesdays is a weekly post where I feature my favorite YA titles. Find out more about it here!
Title: A Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Author: Laini Taylor
Goodreads Description: Around the world, black hand prints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.
In a dark and dusty shop, a devil’s supply of human teeth grows dangerously low.
And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly war.
Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real, she’s prone to disappearing on mysterious “errands”, she speaks many languages – not all of them human – and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she’s about to find out.
When beautiful, haunted Akiva fixes fiery eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?
Why it’s worth it: I’ll admit that I’ve had a wild relationship with these books, but–at the end of the day–I still think that this series is really worth it. For one, when Imbibliomancy did this (my pick, of course), Taylor and Michaela actually didn’t hate it. In fact, Taylor even liked my idea of reading the second one this summer.
I have a lot of issues with this blurb, because I don’t think that it adequately represents the content of this book. One, Laini Taylor is a beautiful writer who crafts prose on a whole other level that your stereotypical young adult fiction. Two, while this novel involves a star-crossed romance, it’s the kind of romance that understand that there are things more important than their “will they, won’t they” back and forth.
This became popular around the time that angels were all the rage, but this world is so much more than that. It’s one of the more unique angelic-based fantasy systems I’ve ever read. Really, every fantastical creature in this book was interesting and unique to me in a way a lot of fantasy settings aren’t.
This series has some weird ups and downs, with the second one being the strongest. I felt like the third one was a bit too bogged down by new information and characters, but it was still a fitting end to the series that was interesting if nothing else. Still very worth it, I promise!
Read it if you’re looking for: strong female characters, angels, fantasy, strong prose, strong world building, interesting characters, unique setting, romance, magic, action, adventure, humor
From the Notebook: Top 5 Disappointing Books of 2015
As promised in my bookish resolutions video, so begins the From the Notebook feature on this blog! This week I’m talking about my most disappointing books from 2015, since I didn’t do a lot of reviewing this year!
Links for posts mentioned in the video:
Seeker Review * Poison Review * Ember in the Ashes book club episode * Daughter of Smoke and Bone Imbibliomancy episode
#imbibliomancy: Drunk Book Club with “John Dies at the End” by David Wong
You guys know that Taylor and I fight a lot about books, right? Well STRAP IN AND HOLD ON TIGHT because this Drunk Book Club was probably the most heated we’ve been in a really long time. But hang on. Let me explain the concept first.
The Bibliomancer team promised you more book club this semester, and we meant it. This time, with a very special bonus: all of the core team (since we’re all over 21!) came to this book club pretty tipsy–and we’re in the same room! With our English major love of pretentious discussion of literature, we figured that it really couldn’t get anymore hilarious than if we added alcohol to the mix.
As I said, this episode (2 of 3) is about John Dies at the End by David Wong. It’s Michaela’s pick, since she had to reschedule the gigantic postmodern opus that she had originally wanted to do. School has been hard on us all. But it was a good switch, because OH MY GOD THIS EPISODE. I start it off being pretty imbibed, having come from the biggest football game of Ithaca’s season (yes, laugh about a big football game for a D3 school) and it just goes from there. Taylor and Michaela really like it and I hate it (shocking, I know) and Taylor and I end up going at it pretty seriously. For the ENTIRE EPISODE. It’s entertaining, I promise.
If you missed our first episode on Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone, CATCH UP. All three of us actually liked that one, but the entire thing turns into us giggling like maniacal school children and dropping the mic into pizza and that sort of thing.
Our last episode, coming in December, will be Taylor’s pick: The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Anyways, here’s the video!
#imbibliomancy: Drunk Book Club with “Daughter of Smoke and Bone” by Laini Taylor
The Bibliomancer team promised you more book club this semester, and we meant it. This time, with a very special bonus: all of the core team (since we’re all over 21!) came to this book club pretty tipsy–and we’re in the same room! With our English major love of pretentious discussion of literature, we figured that it really couldn’t get anymore hilarious than if we added alcohol to the mix.
We were correct.
Come watch and/or listen to our discussion of Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone, which was my pick and MICHAELA AND TAYLOR BOTH LIKED IT. (If you’ve watched any of my pick videos before, you know that this is harder than pulling teeth [book plot pun intended].) That said, there is no end to the hilarity, whether we’re playing with Michaela’s hats, the mic is falling into the pizza, or we’re just generally … imbibed. There is also a GREAT discussion of the book somehow. CHECK IT OUT!
Below that video I’m adding our pregame test stream, if you’re bored. It’s us just hanging out and eating pizza, but it’s also hilarious.
Keeping you aware, November’s pick is Micheala’s–One Rainy Day in May by Mark Z. Danielewski–and December’s pick is Taylor’s–The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Waiting On Wednesday: Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor
Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Breaking the Spine!
Title: Dreams of Gods and Monsters
Author: Laini Taylor
ETA: April 1st, 2014
Note: That’s not the actual cover, just a placeholder, but you can bet the cover will look awesome, given the precedents.
Summary from Goodreads: By way of a staggering deception, Karou has taken control of the chimaera rebellion and is intent on steering its course away from dead-end vengeance. The future rests on her, if there can even be a future for the chimaera in war-ravaged Eretz.
Common enemy, common cause.
When Jael’s brutal seraph army trespasses into the human world, the unthinkable becomes essential, and Karou and Akiva must ally their enemy armies against the threat. It is a twisted version of their long-ago dream, and they begin to hope that it might forge a way forward for their people.
And, perhaps, for themselves. Toward a new way of living, and maybe even love.
But there are bigger threats than Jael in the offing. A vicious queen is hunting Akiva, and, in the skies of Eretz … something is happening. Massive stains are spreading like bruises from horizon to horizon; the great winged stormhunters are gathering as if summoned, ceaselessly circling, and a deep sense of wrong pervades the world.
What power can bruise the sky?
From the streets of Rome to the caves of the Kirin and beyond, humans, chimaera and seraphim will fight, strive, love, and die in an epic theater that transcends good and evil, right and wrong, friend and enemy.
At the very barriers of space and time, what do gods and monsters dream of? And does anything else matter?
Why I’m Waiting: I really enjoyed the first two books in the series. There are some problems–there are always problems, right?–but I love how Karou is not defined by her relationship to Akiva. She’s a veritable badass all by herself, resurrecting the dead and pulling off SUPER-TRICKY SPOILERY THINGS in the name of peace and sanity. Actually I can’t tell you many of the reasons why I love these books, but the prose is pretty awesome, the descriptions and worldbuilding are cool, the author skillfully avoids most of the things I hate in YA romance, so I’m very curious to see where the next book goes.
–Marina
Waiting on Wednesday #19
Waiting on Wednesday is a feature hosted by Breaking the Spine
Title: Foretold – 14 Tales of Prophecy and Prediction
Author(s): Richelle Mead, Carrie Ryan, Simone Elkeles, Meg Cabot, Heather Brewer, Saundra Mitchell, Diana Peterfreund, Laini Taylor, Margaret Stohl, Matt de la Pena, Kami Garcia, Malinda Lo, Lisa McMann, and Michael Grant
Expected Publication Date: August 28, 2012
Summary from Goodreads: Have you ever been tempted to look into the future? To challenge predictions? To question fate?
It’s human nature to wonder about life’s twists and turns. But is the future already written—or do you have the power to alter it?
From fantastical prophecies to predictions of how the future will transpire, Foretold is a collection of stories about our universal fascination with life’s unknowns and of what is yet to come as interpreted by 14 of young adult fiction’s brightest stars.
Why I’m Waiting: Okay, not going to lie, at first I only wanted this book for Mead’s Rose and Dimitri story. I mean, I have been DYING for that ever since Mead said she was writing it. But after seeing that author list? I’m going crazy for the WHOLE THING. This is almost too much awesomeness in one book to handle.
My Life is a Notebook 