Happy 2015!

Happy New Year, everyone!

You already know about January being our Month of Sequels, but guess what? All year, each month is going to be a Month of Something! We won't announce them ahead of time, but every month this year will have a theme, because... well, because we feel like it.

Happy New Year, and here's to 52 more books to review!

Merry Christmas!

I don't have the ability to make my own awesome and adorable gif for Christmas, so I'm borrowing the one posted last year by Pusheen because they're really awesome over there and because cats are super cute. Also, I didn't like any of the book-related Christmas gifs I could find. If you have one you like, share it in the comments!

Give the Gift of Books

This year is weird, you guys. I have far fewer gifts to give this year than I normally do, thanks to doing Secret Santa with my family, an agreement of no gifts (except for the kids) with my in-laws, and Secret Santa with friends as well. So I have a little leftover gift-thinking energy to share with you.

But only a little, so I only have one idea for you: give the gift of books.

If you know someone who has five billion books and you have no idea what they do or don't have, give them a gift card to a bookstore (may I recommend Cassy's employer and my personal favorite bookstore, Barnes & Noble). They have lots of cute gift cards highlighting different series and characters and genres so it still feels a little customized. There's also the "book accessory" category, with so many types of bookmarks, book lights, journals where you keep track of the books you've read and enjoyed or hated, book-of-the-month clubs (are those a thing? if not, I think I found my million-dollar idea), etc.

If you have a kid on your Christmas list, give them books. Any books (as long as they're approximately age-appropriate. I wouldn't recommend Stephen King's Carrie for a three-year-old). Little kids haven't learned yet whether they do or don't like to read. Baby books are super-fun to shop for: bath books, picture books (both classic and contemporary), finger puppet books, touch-and-feel books... so much fun. And it gives you an excuse to play with them yourself. "Oh, I'm just shopping for my kids..."

For the older kids and teens who like books, that's easy. Get them a book they've asked for or a gift card.

For the ones who think they don't like books, prove them wrong. I have a nephew who likes to play Minecraft. There are tons of guides on Minecraft that, while they aren't narrative or particularly educational, they're books, and they're related directly to something he's interested in. Look at lists of books for "reluctant readers" and see if you can find something that might catch the eye of the kid or teen on your list.

For adults, look at coffee table books. My grandfather likes antique cars and hand-lettered signs. My step-mom crochets. My uncle is an Elvis tribute artist. All of these topics (and so, so many more) have at least dozens of coffee table books about them. Alternately, I could find a history of hand-lettered signs, a book of crochet patterns, and an Elvis biography, if they're more inclined to reading.

"Books" doesn't have to be literal, either. For a higher-price gift, look at e-readers or tablets. I'm fairly certain you can gift e-books themselves. Maybe a magazine would be a more appropriate gift for your recipient.

There are also those little humor books that make fun little stocking stuffers and often wind up in a basket of bathroom reading materials. There are cookbooks, novels, travel books... that's the amazing thing about books. There are so many of them, and they're so diverse, there is literally a book for everyone... even the people who think they don't like books.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I don't normally list things I'm thankful for publicly (it feels better to demonstrate my thanks instead of just listing them online) but there are a few things on my list that pertain to this blog, so I'd like to share them with you:

I'm thankful that there are so many great books in the world. And I don't just mean books that I think are great... I mean any book that anyone anywhere thinks is great. (So yes, that indirectly means I'm thankful for the Twilight series.)

Along that same vein, I'm thankful for authors. Without books, there aren't authors. But there can't be books without readers, either, so I'm also thankful for readers.

I'm thankful that I'm literate. We don't talk much about literacy here on the blog, but I plan to talk about it more in the future. Not everyone is so fortunate to be able to read, and I certainly take that skill for granted.

Not to get all sappy, but I'm thankful for my co-blogger, Cassy, because she's a great friend and a great co-blogger and I never would have gotten this far with a book review blog without her.

Happy Birthday to Cassy!

Happy Birthday to Cassy!!!

Hey Comeau, Do You Know a Girl with Hair Like This?

That's me, on the left. This is actually a picture from an afterparty from New York Comic Con, but I'm wearing the same thing tomorrow for Halloween. I'm Ramona Flowers, from this week's review book, Scott Pilgrim! (There's a jacket that goes with it... it was just really warm there.)

If you don't get the reference in the title, watch this scene where Scott is looking for information on this girl (Ramona) and asks his socially connected friend Comeau. I think it's hilarious.

And our friend Beth is in the middle, she's Roxie Richter (one of Ramona's evil exes). The girl on the right is Beth's sister... she is not in costume, but she is adorable.

Favorite Blog Post This Year - Alex

Not to brag or anything, but we had a pretty amazing year on this blog. We picked some incredible books (and some really terrible ones, but more good ones than bad ones), we covered some really interesting topics, Cassy got involved with her local radio station AND managed to get a signed copy of If I Stay to use in a giveaway... plus we both got married. Like I said: amazing year.

So it was really hard to pick an absolute favorite post out of all that amazing stuff, but I finally had to go with:

Word Clouds, from December 4, 2013.

Cassy wrote that one in the wake of NaNoWriMo 2013 (yes, it's almost that time again!) and I just thought it was such a neat tool to use. Sure, I knew what word clouds were before that, and I knew of other uses for them, but I hadn't thought to check my own writing for redundancy with one.

I picked out a few runners-up, though:

- Cassy's post on retelling stories (she's the resident expert on that, after all, since she did a great job doing so for NaNoWriMo).

- Our favorite superpower post, because it was a little different from our normal favorites posts (and because we both chose to illustrate our superpowers with cats).

- And, weirdly enough, a post I wrote almost exactly a year ago about plagiarism and citations. (What can I say? I really love my job.)

Favorite Book We've Reviewed in the Past Year

Oh my goodness, what an amazing year we've had for book reviews! In the past twelve months, we've read some incredible books. And today, we're going to tell you which ones were our favorites (as hard of a choice as that is to make).

As you're well aware, we reviewed a couple of my favorite books ever this year, including The Martian Chronicles and Catching Fire. But I decided that those wouldn't be fair choices, so I limited myself to books I hadn't read until we chose them for the blog.

Before I remind you how much I love Ashes, here are my runners-up, in no particular order: Kindred, Hyperbole and a Half, The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming, and I Am Malala.

So, Ashes. I read the rest of the trilogy immediately because I had to know what happened. It defined "compelling." It is fast-paced and things happen constantly to lots of different people. Plus, it has just the right amount of gore to make me happy. (Fair warning: that's quite a bit, actually.) I loved it, I still love it, and I want everyone else to love it, too.

I loved this book.  I mean, I can not even describe how much I loved this book and how surprised I was that I loved this book as much as I did.  Especially because, while I did like Eleanor and Park (her other book that I read first), I didn't ADORE that book like I did Fangirl.  

I think that this is a wonderful coming of age story.  And I say that because, sometimes, coming of age books can really be hit you over the head obnoxious.  They can be too much and over the top and condescending and so didactic you can't even stand it.  But Fangirl wasn't.  And while the characters in our book had problems, they were problems that were SO out of the realm of possibility.  Alcoholic tenancies in college Freshman?  More common than you'd probably realize.  Parents up and leaving their families?  Pretty damn common.  

I like that the problems that Rowell gives in the story are all problems that work together, that go hand in hand, that make sense.  I LOVE the characters, how they're developed and how they are so incredibly fleshed out.  I have never seen an author have such a knack for character development in my life (seriously.  I've read ALL of her other stuff and I ALWAYS care about her characters.  I mean, always.  It's uncanny.)

If you pick nothing up this year, pick this one up.

However, there are a few other books that were close runner ups to this list, most notably Wonder, which just tugs at my heartstrings, and I Am Malala, which you can't help but love that girl and all she's done and stands for.

Literary Holidays

In this week's review book, Boomsday, the titular holiday is the day the Baby Boomers start retiring. But every time I see the title, I keep misreading it as Bloomsday, because that's a thing, too. It's a holiday based on a book, and there are actually several of those, because readers like to celebrate books. Here are a few of my favorite holidays that wouldn't exist if it weren't for certain books.

Bloomsday

This one is actually coming up very soon: June 16th of every year. It celebrates the life and work of James Joyce during the day Ulysses takes place. There are lots of annual events around the world that celebrate Bloomsday.

Towel Day

Hopefully you didn't miss this one... May 25 is Towel Day, celebrating the life and work of Douglas Adams. To explain, I give you the relevant passage from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels. A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value: you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble‐sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand‐to‐hand‐combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindbogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might have accidentally "lost." What the strag will think is that any man that can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with."

Hobbit Day

Held on September 22 annually (whichever calendar week contains this day is officially Tolkien Week and has been since 1978) this day celebrates Tolkien's most beloved characters: the hobbits. This day was chosen because it's Bilbo's and Frodo's birthday!

Burns Supper

A Burns Supper is a very popular event in the UK (particularly in Scotland) held on January 25 and featuring a certain menu of Scottish favorites, including haggis. The whole affair celebrates Scottish poet Robert Burns, and his poems are read throughout the event. Sometimes you wrap up the evening with dancing.

There are tons of other literary holidays, and holidays about books and other forms of writing. What's your favorite, and how do you celebrate it?

Holiday Gift Suggestions for Readers and Writers

Yep, it's the time of year for holiday gift guides to spring up everywhere, giving you ideas of what to buy for all manner of specialized groups. Well, I'm here to suggest ideas for the reading and writing enthusiasts on your good lists!

E-readers

Is your beloved reader behind the times? Or have they used their e-reader so much, it's in disrepair? Make sure they're the kind of person who would like an e-reader, and would use it (and maybe find out their preference as to which one, too).

Print Books

Or, for the more old-fashioned among us, there's always a print book. There are so many variations to this, too: a first edition of a favorite classic; a signed copy (Cassy gave me a signed Leviathan one year!); a new book you think they might enjoy based on their tastes.

For the writers: a thesaurus, rhyming dictionary, Stephen King's On Writing, a book of names, any reference book related to the genres they write, Elements of Style by Strunk and White... the list goes on forever.

Bookmarks

This is another choice with lots of possibilities. If you're crafty, like me, you can make your own: cross-stitched, felted, paper-crafted, homemade paper, leathercrafted, hand-drawn... I've even seen crocheted and knitted bookmarks!

Or, you can buy nifty ones too: magnetic, book page corners, ribbon, basic paper, plastic, metal... so many bookmarks! These make great stocking stuffers too!

Bookends

There are so many neat bookends out there! Now, be mindful of your recipient here... for most of my life, my bookshelves have been so jam-packed, there's no ROOM for a bookend. But if your gift-getter has room, or could put a special selection of books on top of a desk or other piece of furniture, bookends would be ideal. (I'm actually hoping to get some for my desk at work to hold files and notebooks!)

Book totes

Cassy has given me three book totes as gifts! (One has the blog's name! And one says it's a sewing bag but I usually put books in it anyway. No bag gonna tell me what to do...) You can buy a wide selection of totes with funny/cute/sweet/interesting/smart sayings, or use a service like Zazzle or Cafepress to choose your own!

Book-smelling stuff

There are (as we told you last year) book perfumes! No, not a perfume you spray on your books... a perfume that makes you smell like a book! There are also candles that make the whole room smell like books. (As if you don't already have so many books that this is already a thing for you.)

Scrivener

Unless you're picking out gifts for our contest winner from several weeks ago, your recipient may not have a copy of Scrivener, one of the best writing softwares we've come across. And they might want one! As evidenced by the fact that we could buy a copy and give it away to a stranger, you can pay for it, but use your gift-getter's name, and give them the download/login information. (You could print this information and a little "about" page as their physical gift.)

Magnetic Poetry

I've never used it for writing inspiration, but there are as many writing methods as there are people. Plus, it can just be fun!

Wristwarmers

This one might be just me, because I'm pretty in love with wristwarmers, but I like having them for both reading AND writing. Keeps me warmer while curled up reading, and while typing!

NaNoWriMo Swag

Sure, by Christmas, NaNoWriMo is almost a whole month past, but their store is available all year long! There's also Camp NaNoWriMo to consider, and besides, your NaNo-ing friends will probably still be editing through the winter! They have posters, shirts, and so much cool stuff.

Coffee / Caffeine / Tea / Alcohol

Okay, that's a lot of things to cover. Let's give it a shot. Lots of writers/readers like coffee. I am not one of them, but I get it. There's a wide range of prices you can aim for here: go all-out with a Keurig or coffee grinder, go mid-range with specialty coffees or a French press, or get stocking stuffers like K-cups or a bag of their favorite coffee. Same goes for tea, really. For alternate caffeines, I personally like Bawls, and there are lots of caffeinated candies and drinks (and soap, and other stuff) from Thinkgeek. And there's always alcohol, too, especially if you want to emulate some of the classic greats. Think of the writer's block! Then give them alcohol to break it.

Reading or Writing Space

This is the kind of gift you can't give everyone. Probably only the people you live with, and you know extremely well. But wouldn't it be lovely to give your favorite reader a cozy nook (not a Nook, but that's nice too; see above) to curl up in? And your favorite writer would love a secluded, personal place to sit and write, uninterrupted, however they want.

Book Art and Accessories

There is no end of these things on the internet. Jewelry, purses, scarves, art... You can't let me even get started because I could write a month's worth of posts on this alone! This can be extended to accessories and art that incorporate printing press blocks, punctuation, typewriters...

Experience Gifts

Lots of people like to go the route of giving the gift of an experience, instead of giving stuff, which is a great idea! There are tons of options for reading/writing experiences: conferences, movie premieres, author talks, book readings, book signings...

Shameless Self (Kinda) Promotion

I say kinda, because Cassy in no way put me up to this, but here it is anyway. She wrote a very good book for NaNoWriMo 2012 and it is available for purchase via Amazon. It's an excellent pick for readers who enjoy modern twists on mythology, and/or fiction in a contemporary high school setting. And I'm not just saying that because Cassy is awesome; her book is, too.

When all else fails... gift cards!

While I understand the stigma against gift cards, I don't personally agree with it, because I love getting gift cards! It's like getting money, but with two improvements. (1) When I get cash, I hold on to it forever and don't spend it. A gift card makes me spend it because I know exactly where it's going to be spent! (2) It shows that the gift-giver knows something about you, even if it's just that you like a certain restaurant, or books, or a particular store. (Unless they get you an Amazon card, which means they just want you to pick out something you like instead of feeling guilty about getting rid of something you don't like that they gave you. Or they know you have a Kindle.)

Review Me Twice - The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming by Lemony Snicket

This book was VERY obviously a book by Snicket.  Even if his name wasn't on the cover, you could have easily guessed that it was him.  There was a lot of sarcastically defining things that you obviously knew the definition to (much like his Unfortunate Events books.)

In fact, there was just a lot of sarcasm in general.  Such as, he kept referring to it as a "Christmas Story", but pretty much told you all about Hanukkah and not a lot about Christmas.  Which I thought was fun.  And the illustrations were also really good.  It honestly reminded me of the little towns that my mom puts underneath the Christmas tree every year.

I am not a huge fan of Snicket, but I did like this book and I am always supportive of authors who remind us that Hanukkah is a holiday too and that it's not all about Christmas.

I love Hanukkah. I love latkes and my future father-in-law's brisket and the songs and the story and everything. And now, I love this book, too.

I think Lemony Snicket is hilarious (not in a laugh-out-loud kind of way, but a subtle, English, "you should read this, it's funny" kind of way). And this book was everything I expected from him and then some.

Without giving it all away, we have a latke who, upon feeling the scalding oil he is to be cooked in, hops out of the pan and runs away, encountering numerous symbols of Christmas. It's weird, it's funny, and it appeals to both children and adults. It's a shame I've already started on Christmas presents for all my friends and family, because I would rather go to Barnes & Noble and buy 30 copies of this book to give out.

Favorite Food Book

Since most people's Thanksgivings revolve around food, and Thanksgiving is tomorrow, we're talking about our favorite food-related books today!

There is a whole series of these books by Laura Numeroff. They're considered "circular tales" because, at the end, you come back to what you said at the beginning. If you aren't familiar with If You Give a Mouse a Cookie or any other the others, it goes basically like this: a kid offers the titular cookie to the titular mouse, who requests a glass of milk... then a straw... etc. etc. until he's making ridiculous demands. I always kind of thought the mouse was rude. Like, just be happy with your cookie, dude.

The first several of these books were food related... giving a pig a pancake, and a moose a muffin. Then they expanded out to things like giving a pig a party, and Happy Easter, Mouse! But this is the original, and the only one I remember reading in school.

So mine... sorta counts.  It's not so much about food as it is about a beverage company... but that's ok.

Ok, I will give you that there is a MAD amount of propaganda in this book.  I mean, Schultz is obviously trying to get you to believe that Starbucks is the most super, awesome company in the world.  And while I don't buy into that ideal... it was a good book.

Starbucks has become such a THING in this day and age.  The logo is immediately recognizable and most people buy their coffee from there.  You can even find a large number of people who refer to all coffee in a coffee shop as "Starbucks."

And I will concede that Schultz does run a great company.  They cre about their employees, they care about giving around the world.  They make an effort to have a smaller footprint on the ecosystem, which is awesome.

It was also cool to learn about how so many of the Starbucks staples came to be.  Via, and the exact way that the coffee is made and how Pike Place came to life, and WHY it came to life, is all really fascinating to read about.

You do need to read this book with a bit of a grain of salt, but honestly, I really enjoyed it.  Really, how could anything about COFFEE be bad?

Happy Birthday Cassy!

Today is my co-blogger's birthday! Happy birthday Cassy!!!

By Its Cover: An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving by Louisa May Alcott

This was the cover I had for the book (Alex's may have been different) and it's pretty straightforward.  In fact, it a direct replica of one of the pictures IN the book, just flipped.

However, it gets the point across.  Thanksgiving, family, happiness, all that jazz.  Considering how kind of simply and holiday themed this book is, I think it's a good cover.

Review Me Twice - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving by Louisa May Alcott

Ok, I'm not going to lie: 99% of the reason I chose this book this week was because it was SHORT and it's NANO and in the month of November, Alex and I are just too freakin' busy to do especially long books.

However, it also allows us do find things that are a little different, a little outside the box.  Alcott's book isn't entirely that.  I mean, it's very much like a excerpt from Little Women (her most popular novel).  Big family, mostly girls, old fashioned, country setting that's really big on the family unity.

It's about Thanksgiving, though, which I feel is a widely neglected holiday, especially when it comes to literature.  I mean, Thanksgiving really marks the beginning of the holiday season and it's a holiday that is MUCH more about togetherness and family (after all, all you do is eat and spend time with family.)  So, I like that she really focuses on that.  I like that she really makes it about family time and what the holidays should really be about.

Also, I like the pictures.  Ok, so they're nothing to write home about, but they have this very... comforting feel to them.

I liked the book and I think it's a really great book to read your kids when you're getting into the holiday spirit.

The thing about holiday-themed classics is that they're comfortable. There's not a lot of riveting action sequences or great conflict, and the ending is almost always happy. (Yes, I know, The Little Match Girl doesn't exactly have a happy ending, but... it kind of does. Maybe "warm and fuzzy" ending is a better fit than "happy" ending.)

This book is a great holiday book in that sense. A lot of it is banal fluff, but nicely written fluff, and it sets a lovely scene. Kids rallying together to make a Thanksgiving dinner their parents will be proud of when they return? Such a nice story!

This is the kind of book you could read every year - with kids or not - to give yourself holiday-themed feel-goods.

Favorite Holiday Book

The holidays are coming, folks! Christmas music is on the radio, Thanksgiving foods are taking over the endcaps at the grocery stores, and grinches are gearing up their complaints about how they hate all of that and so much more. So this week, we're talking about our favorite holiday books!

I'd like to tell you about The Polar Express, which we both picked for our favorite Christmas story last year. Or Little Women (which is by this week's author!) but that was my favorite book-to-movie. So instead, I'm going to tell you about my favorite version of Twas the Night Before Christmas.

(Forgive the photo; the best one I could find was from eBay.)

First of all, what kid doesn't like a SHAPED book? Sure, this is an old poem, that everybody hears approximately twenty thousand times each Christmas, with lots of outdated terminology and phrasing, but it's so much more interesting in a triangle-shaped book! Plus? It's pop-up. There are a lot of pop-up books of this story, but I liked this one. Is it because it's shaped like a triangle? Maybe. That just really tickled me as a kid. Here's an action shot:

Omg reindeer!

Picking a favorite Holiday book is a little tricky, especially since, like Alex, we both put the Polar Express as our favorite Christmas book.  The favorite I'm picking this week is A. kind of depressing and B. one that we've actually reviewed.

I don't know what it is about this story that makes me think, "HOLIDAYS!!"  I mean... she dies.  But she dies in her Grandmother's arms and it takes place on Christmas Eve (or... New Year's Eve.  I think Christmas Eve).  Either way it's around the holidays and in incorporates things like big Christmas dinners and family and SNOW. 

It just reminds me of the Christmas season and I think it's a great story and well told.