All tagged Jennifer Donnelly

Recommendation Roundup: July 2014

Recommendation Roundup: July 2014

Sarah Moon
Recommendation Roundup

Better late than never, right? I had a staggeringly good reading month, which included a couple of much-anticipated surprise sequels: Just Call My Name and Sinner. 

I also finally read Chuck Wendig's Under the Empyrean and and am retroactively mad that I waited so long to get to it--I'm currently listening to the audio of the sequel and it's even better, if you can believe that. I've been hitting my local library (have I ever mentioned that my house is on the same street as the library?) pretty hard and discovered a fun older Meg Cabot novel that's a great example of the epistolary format, if that's your jam, Boy Meets Girl. 

In other news, Sandra finally fixed her enormous oversight in never having read A Northern Light, and has rave after rave for the new Michael Koryta novel, Those Who Wish Me dead. And, Laura listened to the fabulous audio edition of The Coldest Girl in Coldtown--be sure to snag that if you're an audiobooker. 

Onward to the recommendations!

 

The Official 2013 Clear Eyes, Full Shelves List of Awesome

The Official 2013 Clear Eyes, Full Shelves List of Awesome

Sarah Moon
Listorama, Recommendation Roundup

Each year, we here at Clear Eyes, Full Shelves put together a list of books that stood out to us over the last twelve months as particularly full of awesome. Last year's list had a whopping 24 titles.

Let's see if 2013 can match up, shall we?

The One Sarah Recommends to Anyone & Everyone:
Nowhere But Home by Liza Palmer

“The red light blinks. Welcoming me home. What’s the exact opposite of blaze of glory? I look around my dusty Subaru, cut-off jeans, and think: me. This. This is what the exact opposite of a blaze of glory looks like.”

 

Links + Things: Semi-Short & Sweet Edition

Links + Things: Semi-Short & Sweet Edition

Sarah Moon
Links + Things

Just a semi-quick roundup of links this week, since I'm on a semi-vacation at home this week and next. So, just bulleted news, cover art and some good deals on books in this edition. We'll be back to our regular programming shortly.  

Recommended Reading

Historical Fiction Done Right - A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

Historical Fiction Done Right - A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

Sarah Moon
I Love, Books

I've been doing a lot of reading lately that doesn't really feel necessitates a formal review. This is partially because I intentionally don't read all books with reviewing in mine. When I plan on reviewing a book, I stop, take notes, highlight, all that stuff. At the pace I read, that's overwhelming to do that for each and every book.

However, sometimes I still want to share my thoughts on ​some of these books.

That's the long way of my saying that this isn't a "review" of Jennifer Donnelly's A Northern Light. Instead, it's more a few impressions of why this historical novel worked for me when so many others have not. 

The crux of the story set in 1906 upstate New York (around Utica and Cortland, in the Adirondacks) and centers around two converging stories. The first is 16-year old Mattie's life on a farm, where her aspirations of a bookish life and college in New York City collide with the economic realities of caring for her sisters and helping her father on the farm, as well as the expectations for a girl her age to marry and establish a household. The second story is a mystery around the death of young woman staying at the hotel where Mattie works who's body is found in ​the lake. (This is drawn from real events, and also inspired the Book An American Tragedy and the film A Place in the Sun.)

A number of things distinguished A Northern Light for me, but the aspect that stands out the most is the approach to placing the novel in its historical context.

List-O-Rama: Thinking About Summer Reading

List-O-Rama: Thinking About Summer Reading

Sarah Moon
Listorama

Summer reading tends to be feast or famine for me.

My work schedule gets a bit weird, so I alternate between no free time and loads of it. As a result, I tend to be a bit more random with my reading choices (which is saying something, since I specialize in random and don't keep a reading "schedule" like many folks do) and binge on series or authors and try a lot of stuff out that piqued my interest that I previously passed up due to business, etcetera.

Here are a few (actually, a whole lot) of books I'm thinking about tackling this summer.

Darkest London Series by Kristen Callihan

I picked up the third book in Kristen Calligan's Darkest London Series at ALA earlier this year, not realizing that it was part of an ongoing series (I started reading Winterblaze and was promptly confused). I find myself more and more intrigued by historical fantasy (is that what the sub-genre is called?) and this one while having pretty trashy covers, comes highly recommended by several folks whose taste I trust.

Amazon | Goodreads

The Paranormal YA Series Enders

I have a weird habit with series endings: I kind of hate them. There's so much pressure for series to end "right" and in the case of paranormal YA, since there's not a lot that I love, love, love, with Jeri Smith-Ready's Shade trilogy, Rachel Vincent's lengthy Soul Screamersseries and Kim Derting's Body Finder quartet, it's not just series ending stress I'm facing--I'm also looking at not having a lot left in the genre that intrigues me.

Shade Series on Amazon | Goodreads
Soul Screamers on Amazon | Goodreads
The Body Finder on Amazon | Goodreads

List-O-Rama: Let's Get Musical

List-O-Rama: Let's Get Musical

Sarah Moon
Listorama

This past week, I started and finished reading Jennifer Echols' July release, Dirty Little Secret (which is so, so good). I enjoyed so much about this book, but the stand-out element for me was the way music played such an important role in both the plot and in developing the characters. 

I'm kind of a doofus when it comes to music: I play the ukulele poorly and was a flutist in marching band in high school until I quit band to protest the ill-fitting polyester pants. (That was super-effective.) Because of my musical doofusness, I really admire people for whom music is so ingrained in their lives. I realized that as a result of that, I tend to gravitate to novels featuring music or musical people. Sometimes, much like books featuring sports, the music is just window dressing, but when it's feels real, it's so very good. 

Here are a twelve (!!!) of my recommendations for musically-infused novels you'll want to check out.​

Adios to My Old Life & When the Stars Go Blue by Caridad Ferrer

​Caridad Ferrer is one of my favorite authors you're probably not reading. Both Adios to My Old Life and When the Stars Go Blue are infused with passion for music and the arts in general. (Interestingly, both of these could easily be considered thematically as "new adult.") Adios to My Old Life is focuses on an American Idol-style singing competition, while Stars follows the structure of the opera Carmen and features an incredible touring marching band. 

Amazon | Goodreads

I Love... YA

I Love... YA

Laura
I Love

One of the titles on my profile is “YA Evangelist.” A few (ok, maybe none) of you might wonder what that means.

The thing is, couple of years ago, I found myself in a bit of a reading funk. I’d been an avid fantasy fan for years because I loved being immersed in these other worlds and cultures, and they made me consider my own world and culture and how they came to be. (Hey, I’ve always claimed to be a nerd, ok?) But I found myself burned out on their tendency to turn into Never Ending Series.

I was also over my pretentious phase that most people go through during college involving meta books by authors such as Richard Bach and James Redfield. And Very Serious Literature, the kind of books I was supposed to be thoughtfully reading as a 30 year old…bored and depressed the freakin’ hell out of me. I settled for random books that I found on my library’s staff recommendation table that spanned all genres, but there was no denying that the volume of my reading had decreased immensely. Instead of reading at least 50 books a year, I was down to 15-20 (of which I liked/loved maybe 5). Which for me was sad and unacceptable.

Around the same time, I joined twitter to see what the whole “social media” craze that I had thus far avoided was all about (I still refuse to join the facebook). I soon found myself following fellow Blazers fan Sarah, due to a hilarious tweet regarding the semantics of the “melodramatic” (see what I did there, basketball fans?) trade that sent superstar Carmelo Anthony to the New York Knicks. Eventually, I noticed a frequent tendency of others to ask Sarah for book recommendations. I was all,

“Hey. I can’t seem to find books I like on my own. I may as well read something that a fellow Blazers fan suggests. Since Blazers fans are so well known for their rationality and savvy and all.”

So, against my better judgment upon hearing the weird title, I picked up The Hunger Games at the library. After reading, oh, a chapter or so, I went online and put the other two books in the trilogy on hold.

I Love... YA - On Clear Eyes, Full Shelves

So, I then began scouring Sarah’s timeline for other recs whenever I finished a book. Eventually, I stopped my silly covert searches in favor of proper stalking by actually tweeting her for a personalized list. On that list was Melina Marchetta’s The Piper’s Son, which I adored. A few months later came Maggie Stiefvater’s The Scorpio Races, which made me—ME!—late for work. Twice.