Throwback Thursday (July 26) – Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb

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!

My Throwback this week is…

Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb

A few weeks ago I featured Assassin’s Apprentice, which introduces us to the Farseer world. However, Ship of Magic, while still set in the same world, kicks off an entirely new trilogy complete with (almost) entirely new characters. Therefore, while I still would recommend you read the Farseer books first, it’s absolutely not necessary to really enjoy this book.

Ship of Magic follows the Vestrit family. Althea Vestrit is the daughter of a Bingtown Trader and rightful heir to her family’s Liveship, Vivacia. However, when her father dies, the ship is passed to her hateful brother-in-law, Kyle, instead of to her.

Kyle forces his son Wintrow to accompany him to sea, in spite of the fact that Wintrow was training to become a priest. Wintrow struggles aboard Vivacia, trying to cling to his beliefs in spite of his father’s constant cruelty.

Meanwhile, Althea enlists the help of her father’s former first mate, Brashen, in a risky endeavor to reclaim the ship. At the same time, the ruthless pirate Kennit seeks a way to seize power and make himself King of the Pirate Isles.

Yes, that is a very complex plot, and I haven’t even begun to touch on all its twists and turns. One thing I love — love — about this series is that it alternates perspective between a ton of characters, and it works. Althea, Wintrow, Brashen, and Kennit are all narrators, and it doesn’t stop there. It’s the best example of alternating perspective I think I’ve ever read, and it helped me become completely and utterly absorbed in the world.

And as for the story, it’s one of the most vivid fantasy books I’ve read. Everything from the descriptions of life on board the ships to the somewhat stifling life lived by families in Bingtown is completely engrossing and fantastic. You really feel like you’re there with the characters, experiencing their (often frustrating and infuriating) lives. Oh, and speaking of infuriating, this book is also a fabulous example of a story where I started out passionately hating certain characters, and by the end of the series, I loved them. And that is no small task.

If you are a fan of fantasy, pirates, adventure, magic, and — oh yeah — dragons, this is a must-read.

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



Throwback Thursday (June 28) – The Hobbit

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!

My Throwback this week is…

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

I know what you’re thinking. Hasn’t everyone read The Hobbit? Why on earth would I feature a book everyone’s already read?

Well, the answer is twofold. One, everyone has not read it (gasp!). I know. It’s amazing, but true. I’ve even met some of them.

And second, even if everyone had already read it (which they haven’t), it’s still worth featuring, because it’s so old that no one features it anymore. Everyone just assumes everyone else has already read it.

If you’re living in a hole in the ground* and don’t know what The Hobbit is about, it is the story of Bilbo Baggins, who lives a quiet life in his Hobbit hole in the Shire, right up until a wizard named Gandalf and a group of dwarves show up on his doorstep and ask him to take part in an adventure.

What follows is a truly fabulous adventure, full of elves, goblins, trolls, and magic, as Bilbo and his companions journey through Middle Earth to rid the dwarves’ home in the Lonely Mountain of the fearsome dragon Smaug.

The Hobbit is a beautiful sweeping fantasy featuring a host of amazing and wonderful characters. It is in turns humorous, exciting, touching, and frightening.

It’s also a much easier read than the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien’s language is simpler, and the story isn’t nearly as broad or complex, so it can be understood by people of all ages.

As a matter of fact, my husband recently started reading it to our 6-year-old daughter, and she loves it so far. Especially the rhyming dwarf names.

If you’ve never given The Hobbit a chance, I urge you to try it. It’s a beautiful and enchanting story.

And if you have read The Hobbit (as I suspect most of you have), now would be a perfect time for a re-read, just in time for the movie to be released in December! Look, here’s the trailer, and it looks awesome.

*Yes, that was just a Hobbit pun

Link up your Throwback Thursday post below!

Feature & Follow (June 22) – Book I’d “Unread”

Welcome to the Feature & Follow Hop, hosted by Parajunkee’s View and Alison Can Read!

If you’re new to my blog, welcome! I’d love it if you could follow via one of the options in my sidebar (LinkyFollowers, Networked Blogs, email or RSS). Be sure to let me know your follow method in the comments so I can return the favor!

I’ve also got a snazzy button you can grab. If you wanted to put it on your blog, that’d be groovy.

Today’s question is:

If you could “unread” a book, which one would it be? Is it because you want to start over and experience it again for the first time? Or because it was THAT bad?

Okay, this question was oddly hard for me. I started to approach it from the “book that was so bad I’d want to unread it” angle, but honestly, I’m pretty picky in what I read. I don’t read a lot of bad books. And those I do read are not so bad that I completely regret the time I spent reading them. Normally, even when I don’t like a book, I’m still glad that I read it to know I didn’t like it.

So I’m going to come at it from the angle of awesome. What book was just so amazing that I wish I could re-read it again, for the first time? (BTW: The obvious answer here is Harry Potter, but I’m going to try to think outside the box).

I tried to think of a book that I not only thoroughly enjoyed the first time through, but that contained an element that simply could not be experienced the same way in a re-read. A book that managed to knock my socks off and make me yell or jump or stay up way past my bedtime because I needed to finish.

And this is a pretty recent release, but it meets all of the above qualifications. In spades.

The False Prince by Jennifer Nielsen is the first book of the Ascendance Trilogy. It’s a mid-grade fantasy about a group of boys reluctantly training to impersonate a prince. And it’s phenomenal.

I was happily enjoying this book the first time I read it, and then all of a sudden it blew my mind. And while I wanted to re-read it again immediately after finishing, the experience wouldn’t have been the same as that first time.

[VAGUE SPOILERS FROM RANDOM OLD MOVIES TO FOLLOW]

 

 

 

It’s like knowing that Malcolm was dead the whole time.

It’s like knowing why Andy wanted the rock hammer and the poster.

It’s like knowing who Keyser Söze is.

It’s like knowing what’s in the box???

It’s like knowing he never left the bank.

It’s like knowing that he is Tyler Durden.

 

 

 

[END VAGUE SPOILERS]

It’s just not the same the second time.

For my full (glowing) review of The False Prince, go here.

Thanks for stopping by, and I’m excited to see what you picked as your “unread” book (either so I can have the awesome first-time reading experience, or so I can avoid it like the plague, depending on how you approached the question).

(Bonus points if you can name all those movies)

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? (June 18)

 

Hello everyone, and welcome to another It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? post, hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. Last week I skipped my Monday post because I was so dreadfully behind. But I’m finally catching up to where I want to be. So here’s what I want to attempt for this week, keeping in mind that my anniversary (NINE YEARS SAY WHAAAAA????) is on Wednesday and so I may not have quite as much time as I think I do.

We’re going to go to Chili’s, because although there’s absolutely nothing cool about Chili’s, for some reason we really like it. I think it’s the chips.

And we are going to go see Snow White and the Huntsman, because although it’s receiving kinda lukewarm reviews, it is my husband’s most anticipated movie this year, other than The Hobbit. Yes, I am married to a man who anticipates Snow White and the Huntsman more than The AvengersThe Dark Knight Rises, Spiderman, The Bourne Legacy, and all the other comicy/actiony/geeky movies that I personally am excited about this year.

Don’t get me wrong, he still wants to see those too. But the Snow White and the Huntsman trailer has gotten into his blood, and there is no cure other than seeing it in all its CGI and K-Stew glory. (Disclaimer: he in no way wants to see it because of K-Stew.)

Anyway, I think I just digressed quite a bit. So. Here’s the books on my plate for this week:

First up, finishing Graceling and Fire by Kristin Cashore. I’m enjoying Graceling so far and am guessing that Fire will go pretty quickly once I get to it. I don’t have Bitterblue or the means to acquire it yet, so I’ll just have to wait on that one.

Once those are finished, I am going to exercise some self discipline (fancy that!) and start hacking away at my NetGalley list. I have a bunch of books waiting for me to read, and I keep putting them off, not because I don’t want to read them, but because I tend to give precedence to physical books. I just enjoy the reading experience more with paper.

I don’t know why. It’s just how I roll.

But release dates are creeping up, so I need to get a bunch of these NetGalley titles knocked out. So first up will be:

One Moment by Kristina McBride. This is a contemporary YA, which is not my usual fare, but the synopsis intrigued me. A mysterious death and a case of amnesia? I want to know what’s going on!

The Girl in the Clockwork Collar by Kady Cross. Okay, I’m going out on a limb with this one, because I have not read The Girl in the Steel Corset, which is the first book in this series. I don’t normally plunge into Book 2 without reading Book 1 (actually, to my recollection, I have never done this), but I’ve heard such good things about these books and the cover is so pretty and the book was right there and I couldn’t resist.  I do have TGitSC on hold at my library, so I will eventually get the whole story. I just didn’t want to put this one off any more, since it’s already been released.

So that’s my week! We’ll see how I do 🙂 What are you reading?