Category Archives: Blog

Throwback Thursday (June 7) – Ender’s Game

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Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly meme hosted by The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books!

It’s the nature of book blogging to focus mainly on new releases, but there are thousands of great books out there that haven’t seen the “New Releases” shelf in years. We hope to be able to bring attention to some older titles that may not be at the top of the current bestseller list, but still deserve a spot in your To-Be-Read pile.

You don’t have to be a book blogger to participate! You can put up a Throwback Thursday post on your non-bookish blog; or if you don’t have a blog at all, just use the comments to tell us about a book you remember fondly.

Here’s how it works:
1. Pick any book released more than 5 years ago. Adult, YA, Children’s; doesn’t matter. Any great book will do.
2. Write up a short summary of the book (include the title, author, and cover art) and an explanation of why you love it. Make sure to link back to The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books in your post.
3. Link up your post at The Housework Can Wait or Never Too Fond of Books.
4. Visit as many blogs as you can, reminisce about books you loved, and discover some “new” books for your TBR list!

Feel free to grab the Throwback Thursday button code from the sidebar to use in your posts.

Thanks for participating, and we look forward to seeing which books you choose to remember!

For this week, my Throwback is…

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.

Originally published in 1985, Ender’s Game is the story of Earth following an alien invasion that threatened to wipe out the human race. The humans were victorious — barely — and are now trying to prepare themselves in the event of a future attack. Their strategy? Start training the generals of the future while they are still children, so that when they mature, their military genius will be unrivaled.

Ender Wiggin is one such child. Plucked from his family at the age of 6 to be trained in a Battle School orbiting the Earth, Ender is the military’s best hope for defeating the Formics, should the need arise. Ender’s Game is the story of Ender in Battle School, and a world in which the future of humanity rests on the shoulders of child prodigies.

I have done a full review of Ender’s Game already, so I’ll try to be brief. I love this book mostly because of the way it explores the mind of Ender, and the psychology behind his actions. The sci-fi and alien elements certainly are cool and thrilling, but lots of books are cool and thrilling. I’ve never read another book with characterizations quite like those in Ender’s Game, and maybe that’s because most of the characters in this book are child prodigies. They don’t talk or act a bit like the children in my 6-year-old daughter’s elementary school classroom, but they don’t act entirely like adults or teens either.

Ender’s Game appeals to the part of me that wants a great sci-fi story where things blow up, the part of me that needs suspense and psychological thrills, and the part of me that just enjoys well-written characters. And Ender himself is unlike any other character I’ve ever encountered. If those things also appeal to you, I’d suggest you give it a try.

This is a blog hop! Link up your own Throwback Thursday post below!

Armchair BEA: Beyond the Blog

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Today’s topic for Armchair BEA is “Beyond the Blog.”  We’re supposed to talk about how we monetize our blog and how we are achieving our personal writing goals.

Um.

Okay, first of all, this is my financial goal as far as monetizing my blog:

But really, at the moment, the actual monetization of my blog is more like this:


So if any of you established bloggers have great words of wisdom on how I can get from point A to point B (or, I guess, from point B to point A, considering the order I put those GIFs up), I’m all ears. Eyes? Dang it, my colloquialisms fall apart on the Internet.

[Edit: Since several people are mentioning this in the comments, I already am an Amazon Associate. I detail that and other small ways readers can support my blog here. So far I have made enough to buy half an old paperback. Woohoo!]

As for writing outside the blog…well, like probably every other book blogger on the planet, I’ve at least flirted with the idea of writing my own book. I’ve conceptualized, outlined, and discarded two concepts for a book. I’m a really harsh critic, especially on myself, and neither concept held up once I attacked it with my brain. But who knows. Maybe someday.

But for right this minute, I’m happy cultivating my little blog. It’s still new and shiny, and I’m excited to see if it will grow into something special. I mean, I already think it’s special, but it’s my blog. I’m supposed to think that.

I think my mom thinks that too.

So instead I will share a fun aspect about my life, because that’s what we’re supposed to do if none of the day’s topics apply to us. And the most fun (and infuriating) aspects of my life are these two goobers:

My oldest is 6, and she is just starting to read beginner chapter books to herself. I’m trying to convince her to help me launch a new children’s section of my site, where I would provide a brief summary and parent reaction to a children’s book, and then she would provide the child’s perspective. If, that is, I can get her to say more than 3 words to me about the books she reads.

I think I’m winning her over, because I just received three ARCs of children’s books in the mail. Did you know they even made ARCs for children’s books? Well they do, I got them, and she read them, and one of them came with jewelry. So bribery may be swaying her to my cause.

My youngest is 3, and she is not reading yet. She also is not entirely sure of the difference between letters and numbers, and even though I consider myself an intelligent person, I’m having the hardest time explaining it to her. I know, it should be simple, but sometimes when you are dealing with a 3-year-old, simple things are not as simple as they should be. So she keeps doing things like looking at flowers and telling me they start with ‘4’. Which makes sense in her world, because ‘flower’ and ‘four’ start with the same sound, whereas when I tell her ‘flower’ actually begins with ‘F’, she retorts that can’t be true because ‘F’ starts with an ‘eh’ sound. And by the time we’re finished, she’s halfway convinced me that ‘flower’ starts with ‘4.’

Why is any of this relevant? Well.

A large part of the reason why I love to read YA books, aside from the fact that I really do personally enjoy them, is because I know that in a few years, my kids will be old enough to read them. Maybe not the more mature ones (you had better believe I’m not giving a copy of The Immortal Rules to a 10-year-old. Right now, they both claim that there are scary parts in Backyardigans), but at least the middle grade titles. And by the time they are old enough to read those books, it is my goal to have a home library full of books they will love that I have already read. And then not only will I know what they’re reading, but I will be able to talk about the books with them.

I want to be a mom my kids can talk to. I want to be able to understand what they like. Both of my kids have displayed a great love of books since they were babies. My 6-year-old takes one of her chapter books to bed with her every night. She actually cornered me in the kitchen the other night, when I thought she had been asleep for an hour, because she was upset that her book ended on a cliffhanger (who knew Rainbow Fairy books ended on cliffhangers?) and she wanted me to buy the next one. Right then.

So if she stays true to form (and if she has any of my genes…which I’m pretty sure she does…), she will be a voracious reader into her tween years and beyond. And by the time she’s old enough to realize what I’m doing with my blog, hopefully she’ll think it’s awesome. And we will be our own book club. And it will be glorious.

Hm. This post turned into something different than what I was intending when I started it. But I think I’m okay with that.

In case you’ve missed any of my previous Armchair BEA posts, here they are:

Introductions First!

Best of 2012 + Win a TIMEPIECE Poster (probably signed by Myra McEntire)!

Networking…in Real Life?!

As a bonus, I guest posted about YA Dystopians on my friend Kelly’s blog this week. Check it out!

Armchair BEA: Networking…In Real Life?!

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Today’s suggested topic for Armchair BEA participants is to talk about a real-life bookish experience. And no, “once upon a time, I exchanged witty banter with my favorite author on Twitter” is not a real-life experience.

As I admitted in my Intro Post, I’m a relatively new blogger, so I haven’t been able to go to ALL THE EVENTS yet. I haven’t yet braved the booths of a convention center or rubbed elbows with all my favorite authors. However, I have been to one event, where I met three fabulous authors and a group of Tennessee-based book bloggers. I’ve already gone into detail on the Author Event itself, where I met Myra McEntire, Amy Plum and C.J. Redwine, but I haven’t really recapped the blogger get-together portion of the day. So that’s what I’ll talk about today.

First, if you’re a newbie like me, you may be wondering how you even begin to go about getting to know other bloggers. And my strategy is simple: Twitter stalking. If I see a blog I like, I follow the blogger on Twitter. If I keep seeing people mentioning a certain blogger, I follow them on Twitter. And if I like the comments someone leaves on my blog, I follow them on Twitter.

I follow a lot of people on Twitter.

(You can always unfollow later if their tweets prove to be super-annoying).

Most people don’t follow back right away (or ever), and I don’t ask them to. But I watch their tweets, and I join in when they’re talking about something I’m interested in. The beauty of Twitter is that it’s all public, so it’s not really rude or creepy to insert yourself into a conversation the same way it would be if you just, for example, walked up to a group of strangers at the mall and started talking to them.

At least, I don’t think it is.

Please don’t burst my bubble.

So since I blog in Tennessee, I had visited the blogs of all the other Tennessee folks listed on Southern Book Bloggers and started following most of them on Twitter. And one day, I saw a discussion going on between a few of them about an event happening in Nashville in a few weeks. I butted into their conversation, got details, learned who the authors were (whose books I had absolutely not read at the time, but you better believe I read them before the event!), and next thing I knew, plans were made for many of us to meet up a couple hours before the signing at Panera.

Representing the book bloggers of TN were Hannah from The Book Votex, Nikki from Books Most Wanted, Marla from Starting the Next Chapter, Shalena from Writer Quirk, Megan from Myth-Illogical…and me.

I’ve got to admit, I was a little nervous. I mean, these were real bloggers (in my head, I was still kind of a pretend blogger, because it seemed bizarre to me that anyone would want to take my little blog seriously) with more followers, more subscribers, more blogger and author relationships, and longer histories than me. What if they didn’t like me?

Also, I should mention I’m a total introvert. I fake extroversion online, but in real life, I will do just about everything I can to avoid human contact. So the fact that I invited myself along on this little excursion in the first place is kind of mind-boggling.

So, smacking down my inner introvert and telling her to shut up and stay in her corner, I arrived at the bookstore mostly on time. I drove through a flash thunderstorm on my way there that made me a couple minutes late, but nothing ridiculous. And as I parked, listening to my brakes squeal and repeating to myself for the thousandth time that the mechanic said that’s okay, I scanned the parking lot trying to see if I could spot anyone who was clearly the in-person version of their Twitter avatar.

I saw a clump of women. Some of whom had curly hair. “Hey, I’m pretty sure Hannah has curly hair,” I thought to myself. So I walked up to them (carrying so many bags it looked like I thought I was going to move into Panera for a week), and said something really articulate like, “Am I looking for you?”

And someone said, “Lauren?” and I said, “Yes!” and I shook many hands in what I hoped was a firm-but-not-bone-crushing manner. And we went to Panera.

And at Panera, I ordered tomato soup in a bread bowl, forgetting for a moment that consuming a post-soup bread bowl is one of the most undignified things you can attempt to eat in front of a bunch of people you just met, but not caring too much because whenever I have an opportunity to get a bread bowl, I get a bread bowl. Bread bowls rock.

We spent two hours talking about all sorts of things (mostly about how Shalena’s husband is Batman), and amazingly, very few of them were book-related.

I had this irrational fear that our entire conversation was going to consist of book trivia and I was going to have to admit that I haven’t read ALL THE BOOKS yet, and they were going to look at me with disdain and take away my Book Blogger credentials. Um, yeah, that was stupid and did not happen.

No, these ladies were very fun, very personable, and absolutely did not look down on me for one second for being the newest one to don the title of “Book Blogger.” On the few occasions where a book was mentioned that I hadn’t read, no one took away my Book Blogger credentials. They didn’t even take away my bread bowl and yell “No soup for you!” (which is good, because I would have fought for that bread bowl). They just said, “Oh, it’s great, you’ll love it!” and moved on with the conversation, where we talked about My Little Ponies and Batman and the police (not to be confused with The Police, who we did not discuss, unfortunately) and hoodlums. And some other things.

And when it was time to go to the book signing, we went to the book signing. Which was amazing. You can read my recap of it here. Here’s Hannah’s recap. Here’s Marla’s recap. And here’s a recap from Amy Plum herself.

And what I learned from this, my first experience with authors and bloggers, is threefold:

1. Everyone is new at some point. Nice people won’t judge you for it, hold it against you, or demean you for being new and not knowing ALL THE THINGS. And not-nice people…well, why would you want to associate with not-nice people?

2. Book bloggers and authors are real people and have real interests outside of books, although they (I should say we) do love books with a fiery passion.

3. Lots of bloggers and authors are introverts too, and they understand that I may be horribly intimidated at the prospect of meeting people and talking to them and possible awkwardness. And they will try their best to make me feel comfortable.

Strangely enough, when I realized this, it was a lot easier for me to just be myself, in all my awkward glory. And it’s been easier since then to interact with other bloggers and authors (on Twitter, of course), because I’ve been initiated and it wasn’t scary and I didn’t die.

Did you hear that, 7th-grade me? I interacted with other humans and the world did not end.  If only I could hear myself.

LtR: Hannah from The Book Votex, Nikki from Books Most Wanted, Marla from Starting the Next Chapter, Me, Shalena from Writer Quirk, Megan from Myth-Illogical

So if you’re new to the world of book blogging, take it from me. People are nice. People are fun. People will not yell at you for being awkward and having no clue what you’re doing.

Or at least, that’s how it works in Tennessee.

Who knows, maybe by next year I’ll have worked up the courage (and, you know, the money) to go to BEA for REAL!

 

This post was brought to you by the Twitter Stalking of the following people:

@bright_soulfire

@Hannah_TBV

@marlastnc

@NikkiatBooksMW

@writerquirk

And of course,

@AmyPlumOhLaLa

@cjredwine

@MyraMcEntire

Armchair BEA: Best of 2012 + Giveaway!

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Today is a fun day for participants of Armchair BEA because it’s Giveaway Day! I know I’m planning on entering bunches of giveaways and winning ALL THE THINGS. Granted, sometimes my plans don’t pan out, but let’s stay optimistic, shall we?

But a plain ol’ giveaway post isn’t a ton of fun to read (it’s fun to WIN, but not to read). So for your reading pleasure, the suggested topic for today is “Best of 2012,” where we will highlight great books we have read in 2012, or books we are looking forward to for this year.

This is a tad tricky because most of the books I’ve read this year have not been new releases or advance copies, but I have read some great 2012 books, and I’d love to share them with you!

I’m going to list them by release date, since I sure can’t list them in order of awesomeness. THEY ARE ALL AWESOME.

Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver (Book 2 of the Delirium Trilogy – February 28, 2012). I loved the loveless dystopian world Lauren Oliver created in Delirium, and found this second installment exciting, touching, and equally engrossing.

My Review

The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen (Book 1 of the Ascendance Trilogy – April 1, 2012). I’m not sure I can stress enough how much everyone needs to read this book. It’s just so ridiculously good, and can appeal to readers of all ages.

My Review

The Selection by Kiera Cass (Book 1 of the Selection Trilogy – April 24, 2012). This is not a deep, intellectual, life-changing kind of book. But it’s fluffy and pretty and fun and sweet and light, and I spent an extremely enjoyable afternoon completely wallowing in sparkly princessy joy.

My Review

The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa (Book 1 of the Blood of Eden series – April 24, 2012). The tone of this book is about as far away from The Selection as you can possibly get. It’s dark and bleak and violent and terrifying. It’s vampire book where the vampires are actually scary. Yet there is a tendril of hope running through it, and I think that’s why I loved it.

My Review

Insurgent by Veronica Roth (Book 2 of the Divergent Trilogy – May 1, 2012).  I liked Divergent, but it didn’t knock my socks off, mostly because of all the little world and plot discrepancies that irked me. However, Insurgent didn’t suffer from the same problems. It was thrilling and jarring and shocking and engrossing, and I loved it.

My Review

Timepiece by Myra McEntire (Book 2 of the Hourglass series – June 12, 2012). Oh, how I loved this book. Hourglass was fun and exciting and amazing, but Timepiece completely blew me away. I adore everything about it. Every last time-slippy morsel.

My Review

Defiance by C.J. Redwine (Book 1 of the Defiance Trilogy – August 28, 2012). I simply devoured this book. Love, love, loved it. I can’t really do a 1-sentence synopsis on it, since the plot and the world are so complex. So I’ll just stop at saying I adored it, and hope that’s enough.

My Teaser Review

And then here are some books (just some of them, since listing them all would be ridiculous)  that will be at BEA that I’m excited about reading, someday. I’m sure this list will get exponentially longer the further we get into the year.

So Close to You by Rachel Carter (July 10, 2012)

The Kill Order by James Dashner (August 14, 2012). I’ll admit, I haven’t even read The Maze Runner‘s sequels yet (although I just purchased them today – woohoo!), but I already know I need to see what happened before The Maze.

The Rise of Nine by Pittacus Lore (August 21, 2012). (I admit the series is a tad on the hokey side, but I’m invested now and I need to see how it ends!)

What’s Left of Me by Kat Zhang (September 18, 2012)

Yesterday by C.K. Kelly Martin (September 25, 2012)

Crewel by Gennifer Albin (October 16, 2012)

Beta by Rachel Cohn (October 16, 2012)

There’s actually a bunch more I could have listed, but then the list would have gotten ridiculous.

And now for the giveaway!

Myra McEntire’s publicist was awesome enough to send me a TON of Timepiece posters in anticipation of its release next week. And while I’d love to give them ALL away, I can’t afford to ship two dozen posters all over the U.S. But I am going to give away TWO TIMEPIECE posters to a couple lucky readers! Just fill out the Rafflecopter below!

Note: These posters aren’t signed, but if you win and you want to be patient, I can GET them signed, because I know where Myra is appearing this summer! I am 95% sure I can do this. Maybe 94%.

Update: Unless something happens to change this event, I can get them signed by June 16, and mail them out shortly after. So the odds of this being a SIGNED poster giveaway are good!

WINNER ANNOUNCEMENT!

Congratulations to the 2 winners! I’ll be getting your Timepiece posters signed by Myra this weekend, and hopefully in the mail soon after.

Winners have already been contacted and confirmed via email.

Thanks everyone for entering! Don’t be strangers!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? (June 4)

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Welcome to It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. It’s time again for me to set lofty reading goals for myself! And maybe kind of achieve them! Huzzah!

Last week I actually read all the books I wanted to read (although I wasn’t able to acquire the two new books. Ran out of moolah. Darn it. Who wants to buy me a present?) so this week I can start all fresh and new. How exciting!

My library finally came through for me this week, and I now have the first books of several series I’ve been hearing tons of good things about. I can’t possibly get through them all this week, so I hereby dub June “Bandwagon Month,” wherein I will finally find out what all the hype is about.

On the docket for this week:

Shadows in Flight by Orson Scott Card. This is not part of Bandwagon Month (although I guess the Ender series could be considered a bandwagon series in the sci-fi crowd). This one’s just for me. I’ve read every other Ender/Shadow book and loved them. Time to find out what’s happening to a very tall Bean in space.

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare. No, I’ve never read the Mortal Instruments books. Yes, I know this is a travesty. Time to take the plunge.

Graceling by Kristin Cashore. I’ve heard nothing but amazing things about this fantasy series, and I’m so, so excited to finally get to read it. I also checked out Fire, which will probably kick off next week’s list.

And three books is probably about all I can manage this week, considering I’m also behind on my reviews, plus I need to allow time for all the Armchair BEA madness. I think it’s going to be a good week.

PSA: I will probably be behind in my commenting for memes this week because I’m on a Commenting Committee for Armchair BEA, and keeping up with that will be taking up a lot of time. But I WILL reply to your comments after the Armchair BEA madness is over. So please be patient! Thanks!