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Showing posts from August, 2011

Waiting on Wednesday (3)

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Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine where we feature the books we're waiting for! This week, I'm waiting for: PURE by Julianna Baggot We know you are here, our brothers and sisters . . . Pressia barely remembers the Detonations or much about life during the Before. In her sleeping cabinet behind the rubble of an old barbershop where she lives with her grandfather, she thinks about what is lost-how the world went from amusement parks, movie theaters, birthday parties, fathers and mothers . . . to ash and dust, scars, permanent burns, and fused, damaged bodies. And now, at an age when everyone is required to turn themselves over to the militia to either be trained as a soldier or, if they are too damaged and weak, to be used as live targets, Pressia can no longer pretend to be small. Pressia is on the run. Burn a Pure and Breathe the Ash . . . There are those who escaped the apocalypse unmarked. Pures. They are tucked safely inside the

Top 10 Best Settings for YA novels- Part 1

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So this is a post about novel settings. You’ve got to love these books which are set in places that seem nearly magical. By magical, I don’t mean there has to be unicorns or singing fountains, but there has to be the thrill of discovery, of seeing a whole world through a character’s eyes. So here we go with my list of awesome novel settings! Number 1: The World within a World This has to be my favourite of all time. There’s just something about there being a hidden world right in ours! It’s totally fascinating to think that you could be standing at Kings’ Cross between platform nine and ten, on September 1, and that the Hogwarts Express is somewhere just beyond...or imagine suddenly walking into something like a gateway to Faery... This is always amazing because we KNOW the world the character inhabits in the beginning, and the magical otherworld is always just beyond the veil... My Best Books in this Category: Harry Potter, which wins hands down, and Incarceron by Catherine Fisher. Ca

Review: St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

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Goodreads Summary (a bit shortened) : A dazzling debut, a blazingly original voice: the ten stories in St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves introduce a radiant new talent. In the collection’s title story, a pack of girls raised by wolves are painstakingly reeducated by nuns. In “Haunting Olivia,” two young boys make midnight trips to a boat graveyard in search of their dead sister, who set sail in the exoskeleton of a giant crab. In “Z.Z.’s Sleepaway Camp for Disordered Dreamers,” a boy whose dreams foretell implacable tragedies is sent to a summer camp for troubled sleepers (Cabin 1, Narcoleptics; Cabin 2, Sleep Apneics; Cabin 3, Somnambulists . . . ). And “Ava Wrestles the Alligator” introduces the remarkable Bigtree Wrestling Dynasty—Grandpa Sawtooth, Chief Bigtree, and twelve-year-old Ava—proprietors of Swamplandia!, the island’s #1 Gator Theme Park and Café Russell’s stories are beautifully written and exuberantly imagined, but it is the emotional precision behind

Waiting on Wednesday (2)

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Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine so we can all talk about the books we're waiting for! This Wednesday, I'm obviously waiting for The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern , which is a MG/YA novel already being compared to Harry Potter. Really? Harry Potter? I guess I'll just have to wait and see...Since I already did a post on the Night Circus, I'm gonna be focussing on another book, this one by Brenna Yovanoff, whose The Replacement I simply adored because of its fabulous characters and fabulous world. Again, this seems to be a kind of story where the main character is confused between two worlds, as Mackie Doyle was in the Replacement. I think the cover looks really good, although NOWHERE as fabulous as the cover for Replacement, which is on my top best covers ever list. But still, Brenna's writing itself should be enough to get this book upto NYT bestseller list.   The Space Between by enna Yovanoff Br (Goodr

Cover Crazy: 1: The Hair Thing

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Don't judge a book by it's cover, but it's not against the law to judge a cover, is it? Cover Crazy is going to be a new feature on the blog where I discuss covers, mostly seperated into types. This week's Cover Crazy features Hair, mostly, so we'll be looking at some covers with...um...hair. Too hairy? Just read on! 1. Birthmarked Weird cover all over, but the hair and the textures is nice. Wish that yellow hadn't been there though. Why not sea-blue? Synopsis In the future, in a world baked dry by the harsh sun, there are those who live inside the wall and those, like sixteen-year-old midwife Gaia Stone, who live outside. Gaia has always believed it is her duty, with her mother, to hand over a small quota of babies to the Enclave. But when Gaia's mother and father are arrested by the very people they so dutifully serve, Gaia is forced to question everything she has been taught to believe. Gaia's choice is now simple: enter the world of the Enclave to

New Look, New Books, New Pics

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So everyone! How d'ya like the blue, black and white look? It's got a distinctly weird appearance, I know, but that is what I wanted it to be, because right now I'm writing a very weird story! Today, I'm sharing a book I totally want to read. In fact, I'm dying to read this one because it is actually being compared to Harry Potter. It looks totally fun, the art is TO DIE FOR, and I absolutely love the synopsis. So I give you, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to t

Independence Day

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31 states. 1618 languages. 6400 castes. 6 religions. 6 ethnic groups. 29 major festivals. ONE COUNTRY. It's India's 65th Independence Day today. 65 years since a 1947 August 15th, when the tricolor first went up. 65 years of freedom. Through hard patches and rockiness, we have stuck as a nation, despite all our differences. Today I went to the hospital regarding my asthma, and the girl sitting next to me was North Indian. She spoke a language I couldn't understand, wore her saffron-paste differently from the way we wear it, and her mother's sari was draped in an exact inversion of the way my mother usually does it. Despite all that, though, I could see her typing on her phone: a message about India,  about Independence Day, about the 15th of August that anyone who is proud to be an Indian will surely always remember as the day when India first became a nation of her own. India, at least according to me, is not just a nation.  It seems impossible that so many

You, Me, and the Internet.

Yo, guys. You won't believe what horrors I've been going through. If you get a time machine and step back into a time not so long ago, when a net connection meant speed as slow as a sloth, you'll find yourself in my shoes. This connection is KILLING me. So obviously, I haven't posted for a while, and that does not mean I haven't got a truck load of posts waiting for you guys. Followers should probably note that my email account has changed ( I had to get a new one because Google Chrome kept crashing when I typed in the old one!) So anyway. I have a list of things to say. 1) About My Love Affair With Books: This blog is one of the few really awesome blogs I've seen from my region and I was shocked to see that Misha has left blogging. She has her reasons of course, but her blog was the first to tell the world about mine, and I salute her for being such a great support. I'll miss you, Misha. 2) About my writing: The My Writing page you see up there is updated