Sunday Showdown

Well, this will be a short post, with only two books.  In my defense, I had things to do with my life.  More than that, though, I just couldn't get into the book I was reading this week, so in honor of the new Ally Carter book coming out (on Wednesday, I think), I've decided (as of midnight on Saturday) to speedread through the Gallagher Girls series instead of finishing the books I was reading.



Being Nikki is the second book in the Airhead Series by Meg Cabot.  It was just as entertaining as the first one and I can't wait for the final installment, Runaway.  The books have a quick pace, great characters, and an interesting concept.

My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One Night Stands is a memoir by Chelsea Handler.  She's been recommended to me on several occasions and I've been looking forward to reading this book.  It seems like the kind of thing that would perfectly suit me.  However, I didn't love it.  Some moments were funny, but I'm not going to mention them here because I'd like my blog to be somewhat family friendly.  The narrative didn't seem to go anywhere, I couldn't relate to the writer, and the humor, more often then not, crossed the line into crass.  In the books defense, it was a quick easy read and mildly entertaining.


Like I said, Only the Good Spy Young comes out this week!  So, I'll end with that happy thought.  Also, I've updated my list of books on pre-order, since I've added three (very different) books.  Most of the books I buy on pre-order are for authors who I've read before and bought before and usually end up being the next book in the series that I just have to have delivered to my doorstep the day they come out.  But my last four pre-order purchases are by authors I haven't read before and in three of the cases they are first novels.  But I follow the YA community on twitter and these books have been getting buzz by the writers and agents I respect.  So, The DUFF, realistic, The Replacement, faeries, Matched, dystopian, and Halo, angels.  Check 'em out.

Sunday Showdown

I was thinking to myself that this week had been a light reading week.  But then I kept remember things I read.  And then I thought about how much I read in the non-fiction books I'm reading about writing.  And I'm about to finish a novel tonight that will show up on next weeks showdown.  So really, this hasn't been that light of a reading week at all.

The Maze Runner by James Dasher follows a group of boys trying to find their way out of the maze that they are trapped in.  They know that they are just rats in some lab test, but they don't know how or why because they can't remember anything before arriving at the maze.  My feelings on this novel are very mixed.  I really enjoyed it, even if the main character/narrator was often annoying.  The mystery seemed to leak out painfully slow, but there was enough action to keep my attention.  By the end I still didn't understand the villain's motivation, but I had restored hope that it was there and that I would discover it as the series unfolds.  I didn't cry at the most likable character's unexpected death, but do I plan on reading The Scorch Trials to see where Dashner goes with all of this?  Hell yes.  And now that I've seen the cover for The Scorch Trials, I am even more curious.  It doesn't say "The Maze Runner Trilogy: Book 2".  It says "A Companion To The Maze Runner".  Tithe and Valiant by Holly Black were companion books.  My feeling is that The Scorch Trials is not.  However, The Maze Runner set up the possibility of another story running concurrent with the first book.  It will be interesting to see if Dashner gives us that story, with the final novel in the trilogy being where the first two books meet.  So far, I can't find any jacket copy, just a release date (October 12, 2010).  So I will let you know when I have solved this mystery.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan has been on my list of things to read for some time now.  I follow Ryan on Twitter and her constant back and forth with other YA writers never fails to entertain me.  I read somewhere (I can't remember for the life of me) that when she first started writing, she was told to write the kind of books she liked to read and she liked to read chick lit.  If she had stuck to that advice, she never would have written The Forest of Hands and Teeth.  Yes it's romance (with Twilight level infatuation disguised as love), but it's also a dark story of survival and of the human condition.  It examines how society's grow, how power is maintained, and how human beings act when all of their choices are taken away.  It was heartbreaking and beautiful and The Dead Tossed Waves will be showing up on a showdown in the next couple of weeks.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Predators & Prey is the first graphic novel I've ever read.  It drew me in because I was (and still am) a huge fan of the television series.  The graphic novels continue into Season 8 and what happens after they destroy the town of Sunnydale (at the very end of the TV Series).  Unfortunately, Predators and Prey is somewhere near the end of Season 8, but my library apparently doesn't understand how to catalog graphic novels, so all of them are classified under one listing and there is no way to request a specific volume.  However, it wasn't that hard to pick it up.  Comic books, apparently, are much like TV in that each "episode" stands alone while advancing a series plot at the same time.  The art was fun, the stories were good, and I liked the characters, they seemed to stay very true to the television characters.  Harmony (the dimwitted vampire) made me laugh because she got her own MTV reality TV show and turned the world pro-vamp and anti-slayer.  It was just so true to life and to LA.  The point is, I really enjoyed it and now I'll have to wander from library to library until I find the right volumes.  Although, with the price of gas these days, it may be more cost effective to just order them.

The Book of Bunny Suicides is my new favorite picture book.  It perfectly ties in to my dark and twisted humor.  Sometimes, even at good movies, I can't help but laugh at the violence.  I'm not sure what that says about me, but I'm sure it's nothing good.  In my defense, while most people were watching Pocahontas (my least favorite children's movie) I was watching Sylvester Stallone in Rambo and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Eraser.  When I watched kids movies it was usually The 3 Ninjas or something equally violent.  So it's not my fault if I'm amused by 100 pictures of little fluffy bunnies trying to kill themselves.  It works because it's not totally graphic.  It's mostly clever sets ups and sketches instead of blood and gore.  My favorite was this one:

Two final thoughts to leave you with... One, this is the third week in a row that I've updated my blog thanks to the Sunday Showdown.  Rose Marie may have something here!  Two, completely unrelated to reading, 7-eleven sells SUGAR FREE Slurpees.  Yes.  You can stay on your diet AND enjoy the delights of summer.  It varies by location.  They sell them at the location by my work, but not by my apartment, which is unfortunate, because I've been craving a sugar free Slurpee all weekend.

Sunday Showdown

Another week, another showdown.  I've read two novels this week, Airhead and The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, and a picture book: Not a Box.



Airhead was unbelievably good and I have already requested the second novel in the series, Being Nikki, from my library.  It was a quick fun read that actually asks important questions without you realizing it right away.







Bree Tanner is a short companion piece to the Twilight series.  While the end had no real place in the story--it was basically the end of Eclipse that had little to do with Bree, but satisfied my desire as a Twilight fan--I still really enjoyed the novella.











Not A Box made me wish I had read this book as a child.  It captured my love of imagination and cardboard boxes perfectly.  It made me think about having kids, just so I could share this book with them.  It's so simple,and yet it seemed to reach the core of who I am.







I have also finished David Sedaris's When You Are Engulfed In Flames, a book of essays.  Personal essays have become my new guilty pleasure.  They draw my interest in the same way memoirs do, but in this case I actually enjoy reading.  Maybe there is a great memoir out there that I'm missing, but the ones that I've tried (with the exception of Moose, which I loved) just turn me off.  Next, I'm trying Chelsea Handler, and Sloane Crosley is coming out with a new one this month as well.

On the writing front, I've finished Save the Cat.  It was just as good as I was told it would be.  It was both refreshing and discouraging.  Discouraging, because of how much I had forgotten and the feeling that I've wasted the last two years of my life being unfocused, but refreshing, because I feel that I now have some new and newly sharpened tools at my disposal.  I'm definitely going to be discussing some of the methods I'll be trying.

On the writing front, I am going to re-attack an idea that I've fallen in love with, using Snyder's board method, while I wait for notes on another project that I am hoping to start a rewrite on soon.

Books On Writing

As you may be able to tell, I like to write.  Lately, I've been working pretty hard to improve my craft, which means that, among other things, I've been reading about writing.  I've decided to just briefly share my thoughts on two of the books  I read back in March.

The Elements of Style by Strunk and White (Kalman doesn't count no matter what the picture says, sorry) is a classic.  I'm not going to lie, reading about grammar and writing mechanics is something that bores me.  However, this book is short and will noticeably improve the quality of your writing.  The refresher on grammar came in useful to me both at work and in my personal writing endeavors.  Besides that, the book has some very useful advice on how to use words.  Anyone can write a sentence, but after you read this book you'll be able to write a sentence that will convey a paragraph of information.

The other book I read was a much more enjoyable read: On Writing by Stephen King.  Half of it is memoir, half is about how to actually write, all of it is useful.  I'll probably go back to read it again at sometime in the future, but there were two things that really stuck with me.  I've thought about these two things almost every day since reading this book.

The first, is on rewriting.  King tells about advice he received from an editor on a rejection slip.  It was a formula for the rewrite.  2nd draft = first draft - 10%.  Struck and White say similar things about less being more, and even though I have yet to do a prose rewrite since reading this, it has definitely helped me.  While writing, I am constantly asking myself questions like Is this scene needed? and What am I doing with this scene besides making a joke?  Scenes that I loved the idea of didn't work in the context of the whole.  I saved myself some time by not even writing them when I knew that I could easily and unobtrusively slip the information they provided into the next scene.  I even used this when I was working on my family comedy screenplay--using the idea presented by King, I rewrote the first act about four times.  I knew it wasn't working and it was because I was using too much time to set up something I could do in one or two scenes.  Only once I had the first act where it needed to be length wise, were the second and third acts able to fall into place.

The second piece of advice that I took and applied from King is that he writes 2,000 words everyday.  For those of us who have pulled all nighters writing papers, we know that 2,000 words can seem overwhelming, but can certainly be done in less than twenty-four hours.  He says to set a goal, a reachable goal that can always be amended later if it is too easy, and make sure you reach it every day.  For King, if he loses his momentum, that's when the writing and the word count become difficult.  I tried this with the Family Comedy script I was writing, setting a very easy goal of 2-3 pages a night.  I found that by making a smaller, attainable goal, I had taken the pressure off of myself.  Those pages were easy to write and often I wrote 5-7 pages instead and I finished the script much faster than I normally would have.  I kept up the momentum by going straight into a teen thriller.  Here I increased my daily page count to 5 pages a day and found that I easily wrote 10-15 pages a night.  And while that was a bit intense, I don't think the script totally sucks either.  I allowed myself the freedom to make mistakes and even though the first draft came together quicker than usual, I don't think that it is any worse than any other first draft I've written.

There are a lot of books on writing out there and I have no intention of reading all of them.  But I do have a list of some of the better ones, recommended to me by people who have never actually read them or found on the websites of authors whom I admire.  Maybe I'll write about them in the near future.

While I'm on the subject

While, I'm on the subject, I'm going to update the sidebars.  Since I wrote them over a year ago, I will probably never get around to reviewing any of the books on the left, but I do want to draw attention to the fact that I read them.  Because I desire your praise.

So, from the former books I want to read that I have read:
The Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima - I enjoyed it, and am planning to read The Wizard Heir, in fact I've already bought it, so I'm adding that one to the list while Warrior comes off.
Naomi & Ely's No Kiss List by David Levithan & Rachel Cohn - You can see my thoughts on it here (hint-it's in my top ten of books I read last year).
Tithe by Holly Black - I love Holly Black and am planning on a separate post for her new novel White Cat, which I pre-ordered and read immediately.  I'll probably touch on Tithe when I talk about White Cat.  Holly Black has a very unique voice and a style that I love.
Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris - This series is much more racy than I expected.  I may keep reading, but probably won't talk much about it.  It's basically a trashy romance novel (think Harlequin Extreme Blaze, the raciest ones out there) with vampires.
The 39 Clues: Maze of Bones by Rick Riordan - It's a fun idea, with a different author for each book in the series, that allows readers to, using the internet, participate in solving the mystery of the 39 clues. I may continue reading the series, but honestly, there are only a few series I like for this age group and I mostly prefer the Newbery recipients.
Marked by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast - Think vampires at boarding school (one of my favorite subjects at one of my favorite settings).  I've purchased the second in the series, Betrayed, because they have cool covers (I'm not going to lie, I judge a book by it's cover when I'm purchasing.  I want my bookshelf to look pretty and interesting).  I'd like to keep reading, but I'm not going to be hitting people over the head telling them this is a series they have to read.
Peeps by Scott Westerfeld - Probably my favorite YA vampire novel, because it has a unique take.  Vampirism isn't mystical here, it's scientific.  More specifically, it's an STD.
Pretties by Scott Westerfeld - This series is amazing.  I still can't believe I haven't finished Specials yet, but it is on my shelf calling to me, and it's another one that is being added to the list, while this one comes off.  I'll probably do a post on the whole series when I finish, because Scott Westerfeld is a very thoughtful author and his books beg to be discussed.
Sold  by Patricia Mccormick - A very intense novel in verse about a girl in India sold into prostitution.
Storm Front by Jim Butcher - I loved the Sci Fi television series at one  point in life, and I really enjoyed the first book in the series.  It was a classic detective story with magic thrown in.  Lots of fun, but that's about it.
TTFN by Lauren Myracle - The whole story is told in IM conversation.  I'm impressed with how beautifully it works.

Staying on the list is only one book:  The Mysterious Benedict Society, which has been on my bookshelf for over a year, but that I do still plan on reading.  Hold me to that.

For everything else that I plan on adding... check the side bar.  It's pretty long now.  I've also added a list of books I have on pre-order.

Sunday Showdown

Well, Rose Marie has the Sunday Salon, which I chose to think of as the Sunday Saloon, with beer and prostitutes and gunslingers (it's also in black and white and everyone either smokes or chews).  So at her suggestion, I will update what I have been up to reading/writing wise, every Sunday.  But I get a showdown, because knowledge is power, and really it's very cool to imagine myself in a dusty road, fingers itching to grab my gun first and save the town.  So here we go.

I'm going to come back and write longer on some of these and I'm sure I've forgotten some.  But since the last time I've blogged I've read...
Neverwhere by Neil Gaimon
Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson
White Cat by Holly Black
Audrey Wait by Robin Benway
13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson
Scarlett Fever by Maureen Johnson
The Demon's Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan
and
Looking for Alaska by John Green

Plus I read a book on constellation mythology and am in the middle of When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris.  I am also reading and taking notes on two books on writing.  Creating Short Fiction by Damon Knight on the prose front, and Save the Cat by Blake Snyder for screenwriting.

On the writing front, I've been a little frustrated.  I had built some good momentum, but have lost it.  I'm having trouble hitting the beats in what I wanted to be my next project, and so I've had to table it and wait for notes on my family comedy so that I can work on a rewrite.  I've been trying to beat out a few other ideas for screenplays and have been working on a novel (almost at 18,000 words now) in the down time.  One thing is for sure though... I do not do well if I don't have a project to focus on.

Hey, only three weeks this time.