All tagged Maggie Stiefvater

Kicking Off Podcast Season 3: Episode #27, "Hug It Out"

Kicking Off Podcast Season 3: Episode #27, "Hug It Out"

Sarah Moon
Podcast: Season Three, Podcast

Hi folks! Welcome to season three of the Official, One and Only Clear Eyes, Full Shelves Podcast!

Apologies for the long hiatus, but we had reasons. We've both done a lot of reading and watching television/movies during our time off, and we kept circling back to the idea of the way family relationships are portrayed. More often than not, it's hard for both of us to see familiar patterns and resolutions that feel "real." Obviously, as we mention in this episode, we only have our own experiences to draw on, but we also know we can't be alone. 

Remember, if you want to get your new episodes early, subscribe in iTunes, the show drops there about a day earlier than it does here. 

Enjoy!

Listorama: 10 Favorite Fictional Couples

Listorama: 10 Favorite Fictional Couples

Sarah Moon
Books, Listorama

It’s been ages since I’ve posted one of my beloved “List-o-Rama” posts, and I can’t for the life of me recall why I quite creating them. In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d revitalize Listorama and bring a few of my favorite fictional couples.

Some of these are from straight up romances, while others are from novels with significant or memorable romantic elements. No worries, though, all of these picks have either a happy ever after or a happy for now ends--no one gets hit by a bus at the end in an attempt to make the novel appear to have more literary significance. 

Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater Tarot Tour & Giveaway: The Strength Card

Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater Tarot Tour & Giveaway: The Strength Card

Sarah Moon
Books

You know how much I adore Maggie Stiefvater's novels, especially her current series, The Raven Cycle, which is like nothing else I've read. 

Gansey thought of how strange it was to know these two young men so well and yet to not know them at all. Both so much more difficult and so much better than when he’d first met them. Was that what life did to them all? Chiselled them into harder, truer versions of themselves?

The third and most recent installment, Blue Lily, Lily Blue, published last month and left me impatiently tapping my fingers for the final installment of the series. We've talked a lot about this series on CEFS, and everything we've said before holds true for Blue Lily, Lily Blue. There's magic infused in this series, but the real magic in found in the complex dynamics of Blue and the Aglionby boys, Ronan, Adam, Noah and, of course, Gansey. 

Recommendation Roundup: Oct. 2014

Recommendation Roundup: Oct. 2014

Sarah Moon
Books, Recommendation Roundup

We're back with our monthly roundup of recommended reads!

My picks this month really demonstrate my weird, er, eclectic taste, I think. I'm recovering from a killer month, schedule-wise, so I'm hoping to get in some more writing about some of these books, because I read some interesting ones in October. 

In Which I Bake November Cakes

In Which I Bake November Cakes

Sarah Moon
Bookish Finds, Books

It's a known fact that Maggie Stiefvater is cool as hell and that her books are pretty damn outstanding. It's hard to pick a favorite--and I won't--but there's a special place in my heart for her lone standalone novel, The Scorpio Races, which has a unique connection to the month of November, 

It is the first day of November and so, today, someone will die.

In addition to the month of November being when the novel's titular races take place, there's a special cake Finn and Puck eat in the novel, November Cakes. 

Finn finds my left hand, opens my fingers, and puts a November cake in my palm. It oozes honey and butter, rivulets of the creamy frosting joining the honey in the pit of my hand. It begs to be licked. Someone nearby screams like a water horse. My heart goes like a rabbit’s.

Maggie created a recipe for this fictional cake (though, read through to the end and you'll find that it's not so fiction for me), and the first of November seemed like the perfect time to bake them. I generally followed her recipe, though I bake like a champ, so I made some adaptations on the fly to suit my tastes. 

Recommendation Roundup: September 2014

Recommendation Roundup: September 2014

Sarah Moon
Recommendation Roundup

Read any good books lately? We've got a few recommendations for you, if you're in need. (And who isn't, if we're going to be honest.)

My best read of this past month was hands-down RIck Yancey's The Infinite Sea. Man oh man, was that a killer sequel. It's been interesting reading the reviews of it, because it's a slow-paced novel that's not working for everyone. Laura, lucky girl that she is, has already read the next installment in The Raven Cycle and loved, loved, loved it. I think it's up next for me. And, Sandra recovered from her anger about the second book in Barry Lyga's I Hunt Killers series enough to read the final novel and grudgingly admits that it was pretty good. 

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!

 

Big-Ass (Belated) 2014 Summer Reading List

Big-Ass (Belated) 2014 Summer Reading List

Sarah Moon
Books, Listorama

I started writing this post in May. Oops.

I always like to put together a highly-aspirational list of the books I'd like to read over the summer. My schedule is a bit more flexible, in theory, and so I hope for chunks of time to read. I don't really think there's a particular type of book that makes a "summer read," though I know for a lot of folks that's not the case. 

My list of 20 books (I'm so not getting to all of these--let me know if you've read any of them so I can prioritize) and my comments are below. 

Click on the book cover image for more info.

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.”

 

Photo Essay: Seattle Field Trip (Maggie Stiefvater at University Bookstore Edition)

Photo Essay: Seattle Field Trip (Maggie Stiefvater at University Bookstore Edition)

Sarah Moon
Photo Essays

On Friday, we all piled into the car for a day trip to Seattle for Maggie Stiefvater's event at University Bookstore. 

Sure, Maggie was going to be in Portland the next day, but it was an appearance at Wordstock, and the organizers of that even couldn't be bothered to announce their schedule in a timely manner (and were not very friendly when asked for details about the schedule back in September), so we drove three hours instead. 

It's all good, though, because a trip to Seattle always means fun things like Backstreet Boys singalongs and the chance to kidnap the lovely Mindi Scott for some adventures. 

Since I don't write recaps as a matter of principle (said principle being that I try not to do things that bore me), I thought I'd share some snapshots from our day. 

Read the rest--> 

Five Thoughts on Maggie Stiefvater's The Dream Thieves

Five Thoughts on Maggie Stiefvater's The Dream Thieves

Sarah Moon
Listorama, Books

The second installment in Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Cycle series, The Dream Thieves, is out today and I've been pondering just how to write about it. I've come to the conclusion that this series is so very complex, while also being subtle, that it's nearly impossible for me to "review" the books in this series in a traditional sense. 

In lieu of an actual exhaustive review of The Dream Thieves (you can read our not-review of The Raven Boys here, by the way), I thought I'd completely cop-out and provide you with a list of five things I'm still pondering after reading The Dream Thieves.

 

#1 The Dream Thieves is even more dreamy and atmospheric that The Raven Boys.  

It was mint and memories and the past and the future and she felt as if she’d done this before and already she longed to do it again.

These novels are rooted in their atmosphere, intricate mythology and tangled relationships that they're going to either work for readers or leave them wondering what the hell they just read. And I mean that in a good way--I adore this series and believe it's different from anything else on the shelves at the moment. Reading this series feels more like I'm experiencing the story, rather than reading a book--it's just that immersive. 

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

Links + Things: Literary Rape, Loneliness, Teen Death Novels and More

Links + Things: Literary Rape, Loneliness, Teen Death Novels and More

Sarah Moon
Links + Things

There were so many intriguing/interesting/irritating things on the internet this weekend, guys--It's hard to pick just a few!

Links

This is a Post About Literary Rape (Maggie Stiefvater)

What I want is for there to be less gratuitous literary rape. 
I’m not talking about books like Speak. I’m talking about novels where the rape scene could just as easily be any other sort of violent scene and it only becomes about sex because there’s a woman involved. If the genders were swapped, a rape scene wouldn’t have happened. The author would’ve come up with a different sort of scenario/ backstory/ defining moment for a male character. Really, this sort of rape is such a medieval, classical way to tell a story. Need to establish some stakes? Grab a secondary character and rape her. Possibly with a god or a mythological object if you have one handy. 
And that starts to feel a lot less like realism and more like a malingering culture of women as victims. And it starts, especially when the author is male and the rape scene is graphic, to feel suspiciously like the goal is titillation. It starts to feel like the author believes the only interesting sort of GirlAngst is sexual abuse. 

Maggie Stiefvater writes one of my favorite author blogs. Even when I don't agree with her (like her take on what is and is not a review), I respect that she puts hers thoughts out there in the world in an unapologetic way--so many authors avoid anything controversial because there's risk involved with wading into big issues. 

Last week she wrote very eloquently about the problem of literary rape, how rape is constantly used as a plot device, often with no purpose. Go read Maggie's post on the subject--she's 100 percent right on all counts.

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.

List-O-Rama: Eleven Memorable Settings

List-O-Rama: Eleven Memorable Settings

Sarah Moon
Listorama

I read two great blog posts this week about the idea of setting. 

The first was from the ladies at The Readventurer who put together a fantastic post about settings from books they’d most like to visit. There are some awesome ideas—though most of them terrify me because I am not adept at hand-to-hand combat (or any other combat, if I’m going to keep it real). The second great post about setting was from Molly Backes who wrote a guest post on Stacked about the importance of setting in contemporary young adult fiction. 

Both posts got me thinking about setting in books and what works for me and what doesn’t—and why some books have such memorable settings, sometimes even overshadowing the characters and plot. And my conclusion is that when setting is strong and memorable, the place almost serves as a character itself. Think about Dillon, Texas in the Greatest Television Show Ever aka Friday Night Lights. The characters would not be who they are if they didn’t live in Dillon—and when they leave Dillon, they’re transformed too (i.e., Tyra and Jason). 

Earlier this year, I went up to Seattle for an event featuring Stephanie Perkins, Gayle Forman and Nina LaCour. Stephanie said something that’s stuck with me, that (I’m paraphrasing) she thinks about character first, setting second and plot last. As a reader, that’s the order I think about books too. I can’t buy into a plot if the first two don’t work.

Here are a few books or series with memorable settings.

The Mercyverse - Mercy Thompson; Alpha  & Omega Series
Author: Patricia Briggs
Setting: Pacific Northwest (Tri-Cities, Washington) & Rural Montana

I love the world Patricia Briggs created over seven Mercy Thompson books, numerous graphic novels and three books in the spinoff Alpha & Omega series. What strikes me most is that Briggs has taken a very ordinary place and made it quite extraordinary with an eery underworld. When the books shift to Montana for the Alpha & Omega series, the deep cold woods of the region looms large. 

 

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