On the Grapevine: News

Catton is the youngest person to ever win the  Man Booker prize, which, by the way, will be opened to non-commonwealth countries next year. The novel, The Luminaries, sounds like a right bit of fun, being described as such:

 "The Luminaries centers on a man named Walter Moody who comes to a New Zealand prospecting towin in 1866 and finds himself immersed in a web of saloons, seances, and skulduggery."

I'm sure many can relate to the last line of the article, relating to the book's 832 pages:

“Those of us who didn’t read it on e-readers enjoyed a full upper-body workout,” Macfarlane said

Good to know!

I also heard about a book called The Clockwork Scarab by Colleen Gleason on The Story Siren's stop on it's blog tour. Sounds interesting...

I love the 'clockwork scarab' on the cover, the colours all gel really well too!
The stakes are high - punny! (see blurb below)

Evaline Stoker and Mina Holmes never meant to get into the family business. But when you’re the sister of Bram and the niece of Sherlock, vampire hunting and mystery solving are in your blood. 

And when two society girls go missing, there’s no one more qualified to investigate. 

Now fierce Evaline and logical Mina must resolve their rivalry, navigate the advances of not just one but three mysterious gentlemen, and solve murder with only one clue: a strange Egyptian scarab. 

The stakes are high. If Stoker and Holmes don’t unravel why the belles of London society are in such danger, they’ll become the next victims.

I sped through The Rook by Daniel O'Malley, which was amazing! One of my favourite books - ever! 

Awesome. Review coming soon. And an interesting introduction to the concepts from MTV Geek.

"The body you are wearing used to be mine." So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all wearing latex gloves. With no recollection of who she is, Myfanwy must follow the instructions her former self left behind to discover her identity and track down the agents who want to destroy her.

She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-ranking member of a secret organization called the Chequy that battles the many supernatural forces at work in Britain. She also discovers that she possesses a rare, potentially deadly supernatural ability of her own.

In her quest to uncover which member of the Chequy betrayed her and why, Myfanwy encounters a person with four bodies, an aristocratic woman who can enter her dreams, a secret training facility where children are transformed into deadly fighters, and a conspiracy more vast than she ever could have imagined.

Filled with characters both fascinating and fantastical, THE ROOK is a richly inventive, suspenseful, and often wry thriller that marks an ambitious debut from a promising young writer.

Ever So 'Umble: Uriah Heep and 8 other Dickensian characters with a medical record.

Dickens' writing.

I found an interesting slideshow on the online Encyclopaedia Brittanica, about Charles Dickens and his penchant for inflicting various symptoms upon his characters...

"English novelist Charles Dickens had a knack for expertly portraying the symptoms of medical conditions. He also had a tendency to slip those descriptions into his works in subtle terms, such that historians and physicians have made it something of a hobby to interpret them medically and attempt to diagnose afflicted characters. In some cases, Dickens’s descriptions actually predated those offered by medical doctors, revealing his skill for observation. "Dickensian diagnoses" ascribed to nine of the novelist’s characters are explored in this list." - Kara Rogers

You can read the article here - meanwhile I am going to start reading Great Expectations...

Tumblr!

I just thought I would let y'all know that I have branched out to include tumblr!


I hope to be posting all kinds of cool stuff on it, so if you like, you can check it out here!


At the moment, there is a Great Gatsby theme, and you can read about why I started the tumblr here.

That time of the year...

That time of the year has come around again.
You book lovers know what I am talking about - BEA. Book Expo America. I am once again devastated that I cannot attend (the fact that I live on a different continent is not a factor!), and am envying the goodies that are being displayed in the blog world. On her blog, author Elizabeth Norris talks about some great looking books in her BEA giveaway posts, which can be found here, here, here.. and here.

Some of the ones that I picked up on were:

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

"Bono met his wife in high school," Park says.
"So did Jerry Lee Lewis," Eleanor answers.
"I’m not kidding," he says.
"You should be," she says, "we’re sixteen."
"What about Romeo and Juliet?"
"Shallow, confused, then dead."
''I love you," Park says.
"Wherefore art thou," Eleanor answers.
"I’m not kidding," he says.
"You should be."

Set over the course of one school year in 1986, ELEANOR AND PARK is the story of two star-crossed misfits – smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you’ll remember your own first love – and just how hard it pulled you under.


Just Like Fate by Cat Patrick & Suzanne Young

I love Cat Patrick, she is always involved with interesting concepts, and Elizabeth Norris siad that it's "like a Sliding Doors for Teens". Sounds good, no?

Caroline is at a crossroads. Her grandmother is sick, maybe dying. Like the rest of her family, Caroline's been at Gram's bedside since her stroke. With the pressure building, all Caroline wants to do is escape--both her family and the reality of Gram's failing health. So when Caroline's best friend offers to take her to a party one fateful Friday night, she must choose: stay by Gram's side, or go to the party and live her life.

The consequence of this one decision will split Caroline's fate into two separate paths--and she's about to live them both.

Friendships are tested and family drama hits an all-new high as Caroline attempts to rebuild old relationships, and even make a few new ones. If she stays, her longtime crush, Joel, might finally notice her, but if she goes, Chris, the charming college boy, might prove to be everything she's ever wanted.
Though there are two distinct ways for her fate to unfold, there is only one happy ending...



Parasite by Mira Grant
A decade in the future, humanity thrives in the absence of sickness and disease.

We owe our good health to a humble parasite - a genetically engineered tapeworm developed by the pioneering SymboGen Corporation. When implanted, the tapeworm protects us from illness, boosts our immune system - even secretes designer drugs. It's been successful beyond the scientists' wildest dreams. Now, years on, almost every human being has a SymboGen tapeworm living within them.

But these parasites are getting restless. They want their own lives... and will do anything to get them.

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

I first learned about this new YA novel by Rick Yancey when I stumbled across the first trailer in a series of four. Based around the premise of the novel, each trailer depicts one of the first four 'waves' that aliens are using to destroy the human race. Apart from the lure of this clever marketing technique, I found the trailers well directed and produced. This only enticed me more into reading the book. I watched the vlog on 365 Days of Reading, and decided it had to be my next read.  

The Passage meets Ender's Game in an epic new series from award-winning author Rick Yancey. After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one. Now, it's the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth's last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie's only hope for rescuing her brother--or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.

The alien, sci-fi genre not really your thing? Don't worry, me neither, but I have heard that it's not really about that anyway. In an interview with the Yancey, he assured:

"RICK YANCEY: Because it isn’t! It’s about us after a devastating, species-threatening event...The 5th Wave is sci-fi, but I tried very hard to ground  the story in very human terms and in those universal themes that transcend genre. How do we define ourselves? What, exactly, does it mean to be human? What remains after everything we trust, everything we believe in and rely upon, has been stripped away?"

from Entertainment Weekly 

   

   

What do you think?? I am super excited. Must. Read. Now. Or Else.