Excelsior, fellow book lovers!
Sometimes I wonder why my books haven't asked for my parents' blessings yet.
You don't need to know who I am. Only that I like things. Like books. I am also a bookseller, which is why my hands are so dry to the point of them peeling off like snake-skin.
This blog is meant to be as ridiculous and funny as it is serious. I love books, reviewing them, discussing them, and analyzing them, but I'm also a fan of awesome things that make me laugh.
This does not include cheesy romantic comedies or lemon-flavoured candies. These are neither laugh-worthy (usually) or awesomely yummy (ick).
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Dan Brown’s newest much snickered-at mega-blockbuster novel hit shelves this week, and all the ensuing publicity for the author should be reminding you of something: Dan Brown is a really, really w…
Everyone stop what you’re doing and listen to Dan Brown’s soft, soft voice.
I am shitting myself.
LOL. Basically.
#451 #69 #91 #at #author #best #bradbury #days #dead #deadmau5 #fahrenheit #fiction #illustrated #literacy #man #old #ray #read #sad #science #sexy #stroke #veldt #fuck #meThis is a note for the new souls reading my reviews for the first time; there are always spoilers.
Author: Meadows, Jodi
Title: Incarnate
Keywords: Self discovery, identity, new soul, no soul, god, Janaan, religion, creation, dragons, sylphs, science, teen fantasy, love, romance, masquerade, reincarnation.
Recommended For: 13+
Rating: 
Sentence: I sentence Jodi Meadows to those awkward running-on-the-spot moments, in dreams, where you can’t seem to move away as fast as you’d like.
Review: So this book is not about a girl in a dystopian society being a butterfly. Points for surprising me Meadows, I actually had no idea what I was getting into. Well, I did hear a rumour about dragons, but then assumed some sort of Eragon business was all up in this (whatever this is).
That being said, this does not qualify as a DYSTOPIAN or POST-APOCALYPTIC read, unless everyone else who read this was reading some alternative version of it. Maybe a version where Meadows reveals something to indicate this takes place post-our-kind-of-humans rather than beginning of our-kind-of-humans with a million immortal assclowns to rub it in our faces.
But I’m digressing from the matter at hand. Ana: abused, soft-spoken, clever, too honest, easy to read, and a newbie at life, apparently. She’s like a child that’s been given too much candy and is crashing, all the time.
Yeah, she’s pretty fucking boring. I mean, come on, her favourite things are music (like the music that hasn’t been created yet, in her head) and eating honey from the pot. Oh bother, Ana’s not a newsoul after all, she’s hipster Winnie the Pooh.
And Sam is like a justified pedophile. Damn those teenage hormones and him being attracted to only individuals of his physical age (as clarified by Ana when doing some research on, big surprise, not her own origins).
Now it may seem like I’m overly criticizing a book I gave 3.5 plums to (so more than my “meh” rating), but I actually genuinely enjoyed the writing; the funny bits that weren’t really jokes so much a contemplation of the hilarity of it all; and the story, which is new and still getting started, much like Ana.
I could focus on what’s great about the this story: it’s different for teen fiction and fantasy; there are dragons and other mythical creatures; Sam may have taken Ana under his wing, but she actually doesn’t want to have to depend on him for everything; although attracted to each other almost immediately, Ana and Sam fall into like first and are comfortable doing friend things; matching souls (in love) are not always the same age and can be the same sex (not a planned or fated feel); Sam is afraid of dragons and not all that brave; and Ana, for all her fast learning and cleverness, is impulsive and sometimes the stupid kind of brave when Sam is in danger. But I’d rather touch on the things that I disliked or that drove me crazy.
First off, I’ll start with Ana leaving her Janan-forsaken “mother” at the age of 18. I feel like it’s an ad for porn/Girls Gone Wild (“I’m Ana and I’m 18 years old”). Everything that happens after that has to be legal, after all she’s of age. Though I suppose those rules don’t apply on this strange one-city-world. I understand there’s always been a million reincarnated souls, but it isn’t really clear whether they’re all in the Range and Heart. But I suppose that would be too densely populated.
Secondly, what is up with the pulsing wall and why is no one acknowledging it? I really do not understand. Can only newsouls see it? Which brings me to my next issue on how Ana fails at research. She doesn’t even begin with her own background, she must first familiarize herself with Sam’s. Then, when her parents’ journals are missing she doesn’t think to look at the books scattered all over the floor of Sam’s bedroom. Really? Please let’s be less ADD about this and focus on the task at hand. That last sentence is actually pretty hypocritical since I went searching for a funny “focus” picture and ended up browsing Pinterest for an hour. So, no funny pictures for you.
Anyway, Ana does not discover how she is created on her own. She is told by her father who happens to be stalking her because he pretty much is obsessed with creating more newsouls. Creepy. But what’s really annoying about all this is that there really isn’t an explanation for how Menehem tainted the temple or what Janan really is (certainly isn’t a god if it’s imperfect, by human definitions).
I’ll admit that Jodi Meadows had much world building to do and some explanation, so I’ll allow the slow beginning, but then the story picked up and everything happened all at once and it ended. And I was so frustrated (mostly in a why-haven’t-they-had-sex-yet way).
If I had to make suggestions for the next book I would include: Ana and Sam have sex (because they’ve been living together for weeks, the least they could do is pretend that not being all over each other is hard); more page time with other characters (there is too much of Ana and Sam, even when Ana and Sam aren’t together); and Ana standing up for herself more. She doesn’t know what or who she is and yet she is growing into an identity that readers can recognize. But she needs to stand up for herself, figure out things on her own rather than be handed answers and getting distracted by Sam.
Ugh, who am I kidding? I thought it was all kind of sweet. Especially when she uses her bluntness and honesty as a weapon of getting shit done. It must be the week before that time of the month.
Okay, I seriously can’t focus on this review anymore, so I’m just going to list a bunch of quotes I found hilarious for one reason or none.
“He had feminine underwear too, but that was too weird; I left them.”
“Sam must have been taller than me as a woman, and bustier.”
“Going after someone unknown in the dark and cold and almost-snow—that wasn’t brave. That was exceedingly stupid.” Says the girl who climbed on top of a not-quite-dead-dragon.
“I hadn’t meant my curiosity to cause so much pain.
Before I could find an apology good enough, he said, ‘I think last week wouldn’t have been so dramatic if I hadn’t already been killed by dragons not twenty years ago.’
That was before I’d been born, but it probably felt recent to him. ‘What happened?’” And she asks even though she knows she can read about it/NOT ask him to cause him pain.
“I can’t do this in-between stuff. Either we kiss or we don’t.” Yes, Ana telling it like it is. I kind of admire her bluntness.
“I want to tell you something.” (282) and then “Can I tell you something?” (283) Janan, this must be important. ”When I went north in my last life…” (284-285) Seriously? He was so eager to tell her a frakking story? He really is like an old grandfather.
“And, even though I knew better, I checked on the stairs. They were gone. I doubted I could trust anything to stay where I’d left it.”
#2012 #adult #author #awesome #book #butterfly #challenge #cute #debut #fiction #guilty #incarnate #literacy #man #masquerade #mtv #much #nosoul #old #on #pleasure #reading #reads #romance #science #sex #teen #trial #video #youngThe “Real” Author of Harry Potter
It’s actually kind of funny. But at first I was like
Then, after cooling my head it was all good. But I don’t get what he gets out of this.
I’m kind of proud of what’s happening now.
And also Phoebe North, I do not know you, or your writing, but I really like you. I feel like we could get along. Those guidelines are extremely fair and should be incorporated, for reals, in the idealistic world of authors and bloggers.
Many people were really offended by Julie Halpern’s blog-rant about a “negative” review, which actually wasn’t so bad. But to be fair, she said she wasn’t bitter about losing the baby a few weeks into her pregnancy; I’d say she didn’t know she was bitter and pissed at the unfairness of it. She probably took it out on the first “negative” review she saw. No, seriously, hormones people. And her uterus is/was tired. I would be pissed too. Not that I’m trying to give her excuses, but when my grandfather died (though I had him in my life for 12 years) I was pissed at the world too. Also when I bake intensely (like Cake Pops), I get irrational. E.g. me yelling at my sister to “STOP STOMPING AROUND”, when she’s actually just sitting down. Stress sucks.
But the fact that authors are responding to the reviewers’ distress tells me a lot. It tells me just as much as it should tell them, when we review their work (even if the review is negative). It tells us (and them) that they care enough to stand up for reviewers (against inappropriate behavior), just as we care enough to assess their work, out of our sheer love of literature.
I mean, that’s the point, isn’t it? The common denominator is that we love literature. Reading, writing, reviewing, arguing, whatever! At least, I hope that’s the point.
Post-update: I, for one, would like to admit that when I write a negative review, I recognize the possibility of the author actually reading it and being hurt by it. I also would like to admit that that has never stopped me before, nor will it stop me in the future. Mostly because if I were an author (which I would love to be), I would not just look forward to those great reviews, but also those very creative negative reviews that actually kinda cut. It’s not the worst that could happen to me, right? And maybe I can use this to improve my writing somehow. Or maybe it will even provide some sort of inspiration.
#books #book #review #reviews #reviewer #phoebe #north #veronica #roth #divergent #cool #authors #author #goodreads #good #read #reads #reader #drama #GR #julie #dan #krokos #agents #pr #public #relations #guidelines #pledge
Because I can.
#debut #author #challenge #goodreads #gr #2012 #authors #books #book #bookphilia #novel #reading #readings #read #reads #reader #tumblr #story #siren #link #fun #because #i #can #boredSo, a lovely author named Hannah basically summed up how things on GR go and the drama involved.
Hannah’s Blog: Dear Readers/GR Reviewers.
But apparently this differentiation between appropriate author behavior and inappropriate behavior is non-existent for some (to the point of asking fans to up the good reviews to make them look better, srsly). Here is what one author, Leigh Fallon, had to say about a reviewer on GR:
There is the stupid cow from Goodreads who has been real nasty and keeps doing up really bad reviews of Carrier, then gets her friends to go in and ‘like’ her bad reviews so that that review will be pushed up to the top of all the lists. Now she’s put it up on Amazon! She is a disgruntled old cow who doesn’t like me and how I got published. There’s no point in saying anything about her or responding (she loves that) but what we can do is push her review back down the list by bringing all the good reviews back to the top. How do we do this? Well at the end of each review there is a little button where you can say whether you found the review helpful. Click YES on the good reviews. The more reviews you click YES you click on the good reviews the further down the list that bitch will go. If you leave a comment on the good reviews, that helps too. She’s already got over 20 of her buds to YES her review so we will need to find more people than that to YES the good reviews. There are about 8 pages of reviews (that’s about 7 reviews or something like that) so we can bury this horrible toe rag down the very bottom if you help me out.
As far as I’m aware, you don’t have to have bought anything on Amazon to get your vote to count. You just need to be a registered user. It only takes about 5 mins to go through all the reviews and YES the good ones. I’m not asking to dickie with the system or anything, it’s just moving a horrible review from the top spot. It’s so long, you have to scroll for ages until you get to the good ones. I’d really appreciated it help on his. I’d also love if you could maybe gets some friends or family to do the same.
Thanks a million, guys. You’re the best.
Leigh
You know what I have noticed though? The pattern is YOUNG ADULT/TEEN authors. I’m sure they’re exactly like Charlize Theron in the movie Young Adult, since apparently asshole is now a personality trait of some teen authors. And it’s too bad it’s giving other YA authors a bad rep., because there are so many brilliant YA authors out there.
#goodreads #good #reads #read #books #book #reviews #review #drama #lol. #wtf #what #is #life #authors #author #writer #behaviour #behavior #readers #reader #literacy #bad #gr #leigh #fallon #dan #krokos #awful #youngNeil Gaiman & Amanda Palmer (A Prelude to an Evening with Neil Gaiman & Amanda Palmer)
(I have tears in my eyes from laughter.)
