Links of the Week

File this under things that delight me: the return of The Baby-Sitters Club! I absolutely loved the BSC and read all of the original series, plus all of the mysteries and super-specials, plus nearly all of the Little Sister series, PLUS the California Diaries because I loved Dawn. Oh, and I had the computer game. And probably some other BSC stuff that I can't even remember now. Love!

Here are some interesting thoughts on culling your book collection, from people who would know. My favorite bit of advice is near the beginning: "If a country, like Czechoslovakia, no longer exists, it’s unlikely that you’ll want to take the travel guide along with you when you go." (via Omnivoracious)

If you're instead looking to buy more books, check out the Book Sale Finder site, which lets you click on a state and find all of the upcoming book sales there as well as big sales in nearby states. I probably shouldn't have clicked on this link; anyone want to come to a book sale with me? (via She Is Too Fond Of Books)

This list that stereotypes readers by their favorite author isn't exhaustive — I couldn't find an author I'd consider a favorite — but it is certainly entertaining. (via kottke.org)

I'm not sure if I could bring myself to use these pencils, but I wouldn't mind becoming them.

I love the title on this post: Big Box Retailer Refers Customers To Indie Bookshop, Earth Shifts on Its Axis. (via The Book Bench)

The Secret of the Old Clock, by Carolyn Keene

Man. I don't think that getting through 56 of these books is going to be very difficult; I tore through this in less than two hours! I've requested the next one from the library in audiobook form; it'll take longer to get through but I'll be able to listen to it on my commute! Genius!

I mentioned on the Twitter that "I swear the Nancy Drew books were less hokey when I was six," which is obviously not true but it certainly seems that way! Take, for example, the first two paragraphs of this little book:

"Nancy Drew, an attractive girl of eighteen, was driving home along a country road in her new, dark-blue convertible. She had just delivered some legal papers for her father.

"'It was sweet of Dad to give me this car for my birthday,' she thought. 'And it's fun to help him in his work.'"

Oh, dear. Luckily, once I remembered that I initially read these books starting when I was six and that therefore I could not expect terribly complex writing, I was mostly able to ignore how formal/stilted/duh the narrative was.

If you've never read this (shame on you!), the story is thus: Nancy Drew, an attractive girl of eighteen, has a lawyer father who lets her help out with some work he does. One day, after delivering some legal papers for her father, she rescues a girl who has fallen off a bridge (no, really) and returns her to her guardians, who, in 1930s fashion, are delightful and hospitable and go telling all their business to random teenagers who rescue small children. Nancy learns that the family was thisclose to getting some inheritance money, but the will they thought existed never turned up and some bratty rich family is getting the entire estate instead. Nancy, ever the optimist, sets out to see if the dead guy, Crowley, really did write another will.

That's... pretty much the whole idea. Nancy finds some clues, goes looking for a clock, gets locked in a closet, finds the clock, and [spoiler alert?] saves the day. It was exciting when I was six!

I wish I could have read this book in the original 30s version; I know that the books were rewritten in the 60s much like Goosebumps and the Baby-Sitters Club books are being today and it would be interesting to see what the "real" Nancy Drew is like. But definitely this Nancy is a decent female role model — although her outfits and appearance are often mentioned for no apparent reason except to tell us how pretty she is, never in this book is she derided for being a girl or for being too young. She helps out several families and interacts with the police on a few occasions, and everyone just goes right along with it. I love that. What's crazy is that according to Wikipedia, which knows all, people felt that the "real" Nancy was much more outspoken and authoritative. How do I get my hands on one of those, outside of finding a will conveniently hidden in an old clock?

Rating: 8/10
(Nancy Drew Challenge, A to Z Challenge, Flashback Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Booking Through Thursday — Christmas Gifts

Today's Booking Through Thursday asks, "What books did you get for Christmas (or whichever holiday you may have celebrated last month)? Do you usually ask for books on gift-giving occasions or do you prefer to buy them yourself?"

I was really excited for books this Christmas, but I only got two: The Eyre Affair (delightful!) and Gaudy Night (which I hope is delightful!). This leads into the next answer: I got them because I asked for them.

This Christmas was all about getting what I asked for; my parents got a GPS for me and Scott to go geocaching with, and my younger brother the elder got me the books. The little one got me a purple wooden hanging thing that says "All-Star Sister" and has a soccer ball on it, which I didn't ask for, but I guess the Holiday Shoppe is still limited in its selection.

However, I am signed up for several of those points-earning websites, and two of them came through for me just a couple of weeks ago, so soon I will have $15 to Borders and $25 to Barnes and Noble which will get spent basically as soon as I have the money in my hands. :) It's like a Christmas bonus!

For more thoughts on people buying me books, check out this Musing Mondays post from November.

The Knife of Never Letting Go, by Patrick Ness

I'm not sure what I want to say about this book. Right after I finished it (in practically one sitting), I was like, "That was pretty darn good," but now I'm more like, "Eh, that was all right, I guess." I think it's telling that I have the book right next to me while I'm writing this because I am not entirely sure I could tell you what happened in the book without looking some of it up.

But! What happens is that we're on another planet, sometime in the future, and we're following along with the last boy in Prentisstown, Todd Hewitt. He's the last boy because a Noise germ wiped out the female population of the planet a while back and also made it possible for all of the men to hear each other's thoughts, all the time, no filters, no way to stop yourself from giving up your thoughts to everyone else.

Todd is just a month away from his 13th birthday, when he will finally become a man like everyone else in Prentisstown, when he stumbles across a patch of quiet out in the swamp. A patch of quiet that moves, even. By the time he gets home, the whole town knows what he's found, and his adoptive parents are shooing him out the door with a rucksack, map, and instructions to go back to the swamp and run.

I liked how Ness worked the idea of information overload into his story... until he made it incredibly explicit. And I was really intrigued by the backstory to Prentisstown, especially after I found out there were other towns on the planet and that Todd clearly didn't know anything about the reality of Prentisstown, but the reveals came way too late in the story, especially the one from Todd himself which should have made, I think, at least one of his actions a lot different. And the whole last fight/battle/argument/something scene between Todd and the church leader made approximately zero sense to me, probably mostly because just reading the descriptions of the fighting was taking up all of my attention. Finally, I was so close to loving the ending, which was so close to being ambiguous and enticing me to read the sequel, but then someone showed up and ruined it all for me.

So I guess, in the end, I only just liked this book. It was certainly entertaining, and it had a good premise to it, but I was just not a fan of Ness's execution of said premise. As with The Hunger Games, I think I'm going to wait for a few more reviews of the sequel before I decide if it's worth my time.

Rating: 7/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2008, A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Library Queue
Medieval Bookworm
Persnickety Snark
books i done read
things mean a lot
Blogging for a Good Book

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

First Lord's Fury, by Jim Butcher

-pout- So it turns out that this is the last book in the Codex Alera series. After the last book I was all, oh no, I'm going to be caught up and then I'll have to wait for books, but no, there's no waiting, 'cause it's OVER. Blast.

I'm sort of miffed at how the series went out, though. From that last book link above, you know that the big vord fight hadn't really ended and I was miffed then; well, if you're looking for a really long novel that's all about a big vord fight, this is the book for you. Seriously, nothing else happens in this book. Tavi's fighting the vord with his troops and the Canim, Bernard and Amara are basically leading the rest of Alera to fight the vord, Isana and Araris get kidnapped by the vord but still manage to be fighting them... everyone is fighting the vord except a few freemen who surrender early so as not to die. The book is 400-plus pages of various people fighting the vord in various ways.

Now, the fighting is as well-written as any other fighting the series has seen, so it's good, I'm not against that. But a lot of what I liked about the series was getting to know the characters, and there is just no character development at all in this book. Everyone pretty much ends up the same way they started, but with some extra babies thrown in and some new neighbors as well. I guess we get to learn more about the vord queen, but not enough to make me really care about her or [spoiler alert? probably not] the fact that she gets all killed and stuff in the end.

All in all it was a good, engaging, entertaining novel, and if you've read the rest of the series you pretty much have to read this one, but I'd say don't spend hardcover money on it if you do. The library is your friend!

Rating: 6/10
(A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Musing Mondays — New Year's Resolutions

Today's Musing Mondays question is... "With the New Year here already, do you have any reading resolutions or goals (challenges aside) for 2010? Perhaps a new author? Genre? Want to read more non-fiction? Write more reviews?"

My main New Year's Resolution (or new semester resolution, really) is to get more library science posts up in here. I've done a few sporadically, but I'm going to try to do at least two per month this semester, which should be easy since I'll have four classes and a research assistant positon from which to draw inspiration.

I've also neglected the Links of the Week posts I used to do, mostly because I haven't had a lot of good links to put up lately! Perhaps I'll get back to doing those as well.

The other thing I think I'll be doing is sprucing up my stats in each wrap-up post I do, though I haven't decided how yet. If you have suggestions, let me know!

Year in Review

Hello, 2010! You're looking nice today. Can I call you "oh-ten" for short? No? Blast. Well, I'm glad you're here anyway; I've noticed that every year just gets better and better so I'm expecting you to be pretty darn spectacular. I mean, just look at what 2009 gave me:

First, I managed to read 131 books. That is simply ridiculous. In 2008 I was all, "I want to read 60 books in 2009!" Ha. Take that, wimpy 2008 self. Of course, that reading activity was strongly helped by five months of unemployment that involved spending my days looking for jobs and reading and another seven months of being a library science student but still not having a job and therefore spending my days going to class, doing homework, looking for jobs, and reading. Now that I've got a job, at least through August, I'm guessing that that reading thing might fall a little bit by the wayside, but I'm going to try not to let that happen. My goal for you, 2010? Just 100 books. But they'd better be spectacular.

Second, I did read a lot of wonderful books this year. My favorites: I absolutely loved the first two books of the Moon series, which answer the question you never asked about what would happen if the moon moved just a titch closer to the Earth. Answer: Um, lots of bad things. I can't wait for the third one to come out this year!

Elantris was a total surprise love for me; it is a wonderfully written and perfectly fantastical look into the dilemmas of culture and religion. And there is magic! You can't go wrong with magic.

The Old Man's War series didn't get my highest ratings as individual books, but I would definitely put the whole series in the "Go read this now. Why are you still looking at your computer? I'm serious. Go read this now." category. It's humorous military science fiction, which sounds ridiculous but is amazing.

And lastly, I want to highlight The Manual of Detection, a book that I read in March but which I am still in awe of today; that trade paperback is MINE as soon as it comes out. Berry's writing is spectacular and his story of a Watson-turned-Holmes is delightful. (My other top-pick books can be found under the rated 9-10 tag.)

Third, etc.: I managed to complete eight reading challenges of awesomeness, participated in Book Blogger Appreciation Week, and read six books in 11 hours for the Read-a-thon. Oh, and I started an online book club with a couple of dear friends and have had a lot of fun yelling about bad books, though if we could get some excellent books going that would be great, kthx. :-D

And now, by the numbers!

2009, in review
Days spent reading: 295
Books read: 131

...in fiction: 118
...in speculative fiction: 25
...in fantasy: 22
...in mystery: 18
...in humor: 8
...in thriller: 8
...in short stories: 7
...in classics: 4
...in historical fiction: 3
...in memoir: 2
...in non-fiction: 12
...in popular science: 2
...in young adult: 29
...in children's: 13
...in graphic format: 3

New favorite authors: John Green, Mary Doria Russell, John Scalzi, Susan Beth Pfeffer
Authors I'll be keeping an eye on: Jedediah Berry, Maureen Johnson


Month by Month

January
Books read: 11
Favorite: Old Man's War, by John Scalzi (Review) 8.5/10

February
Books read: 9
Favorite: Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson (Review) 9.5/10

March
Books read: 13
Favorites: The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak (Review) 9/10
and The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry (Review) 9/10

April
Books read: 8
Favorite: An Abundance of Katherines, by John Green (Review) 8/10

May
Books read: 9
Favorite: People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks (Review) 8/10

June
Books read: 10
Favorite: Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow (Review) 9/10
and Woman With Birthmark by Håkan Nesser (Review) 9/10

July
Books read: 15
Favorite: The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster (Review) 9/10

August
Books read: 13
Favorite: The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger (Review) 10/10

September
Books read: 10
Favorite: Life As We Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer (Review) 10/10
and The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, by E. Lockhart (Review) 10/10

October
Books read: 13
Favorite: The Dead and the Gone, by Susan Beth Pfeffer (Review) 10/10

November
Books read: 9
Favorite: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon (Review) 10/10

December
Books read: 11
Favorite: Shutter Island, by Dennis Lehane (Review) 9/10