Entry tags:

job! why do you vex me so!, sunday book coveting

Once again, Sunday comes and Sunday goes and I work and come home exhausted! Perhaps I should rename this to "book coveting...sometimes, maybe, when my job hasn't gnawed on my soul".

In happier news, I am hosting a giveaway for five paperback copies of Suite Scarlett over at YA Fabulous!. It's five copies, there have been five entries so far, it's looking like really good odds. XD



1. Gunpowder by Joe Hill: I loved Hill's Heart-Shaped Box, and have his horror collection, but haven't read it yet. This is a science fiction novella, about a group of bio-engineered children on a far-away planet. Of course, it looks like it's really hard to come by so who knows if I'll ever get to read it. I am not a big fan of horror, which is why I think I haven't been able to get into 20th Century Ghosts. Heart-Shaped Box was a fluke, perhaps, a fluke that was awesome but I'm not going to lie, the representation of women in that novel is like chewing on some glass and washing it down with battery acid, so I have been hesitant to continue reading his horror because maybe it's just me but for all the men in horror novels I read, men don't get killed as gruesomely as some women. I am afraid Joe Hill is going to be one of those! Am I crazy? Am I inventing things with my assumptions about a genre I don't really read? Am I allowing the derision I aim at horror movies to leak into books? I am curious! This is kind of why I want Joe Hill to bow to my whims and just come write SF with horror elements.

2. Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater: I have seen this title all over but never bothered reading the summary. I wish I had! This story, about a girl who is watched by a wolf, seems like it's everything I wanted from New Moon, but was destined to never be given because of Bella and Edward's true love (I will also point out I was denied Edward/Jacob fic, too, so it was like a double whammy). I will give this one a shot. On the plus side, there seem to be several giveaways for it going on. Perhaps I will get lucky!

3. Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson: I am really not sure how to describe this one. It's set in the United States of the future, a country that is new and reformed. It's this line from the summary that sold me:

Over a century after the Efflorescence of Oil, after the Fall of the Cities, after the Plague of Infertility, after the False Tribulation, after the days of the Pious Presidents, the sixty stars and thirteen stripes wave from the plains of Athabaska to the national capital in New York City. In Colorado Springs, the Dominion sees to the nation's spiritual needs. In Labrador, the Army wages war on the Dutch. America, unified, is rising once again.

I am wary of how the title might treat atheism and women (Plague of Infertility? Does Wilson have a dog-eared copy of The Handmaid's Tale?) but it plays right into what I love to read about: the future!



4. The Map of Moments: A Novel of the Hidden Cities by Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon: I have heard great things about Christopher Golden and the other book these authors wrote together Mind the Gap. This story is set in New Orleans, and uses the city to fuel the plot. I've never read any books about New Orleans proper, and all the reviews for this look excellent. It's a post-Katrina story, too. So, New Orleans reborn in the aftermath of Katrina, maps, and magic of the city. It's pretty irresistible.

5. Green by Jay Lake: It's not like Graceling has made me hungry for books with kick ass female narrators or anything. I saw this over at SF Signal and had to add a copy to my wish list. Lake is a new author to me. I really don't know if it's me or if it's something else, but it's funny to me the differences between YA SF/F and adult SF/F. Women authors feature more prominently in YA SF/F while I note more male authors promoted in adult SF/F. Hmm. Maybe it's my browsing patterns?

6. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead: Now for something completely different! It's a mystery with letters. A girl notices weird things happening, like her best friend not speaking to her, and then she begins receiving letters that know too much, and sometimes even things that are impossible because they haven't even happened yet. I have heard Newbery buzz about this one already, and it sounds really neat.

I have not been reading. It's been a $dayjob thing, a home life thing, a collection of small stresses that add up to me not able to settle down with stories. This feeling hit my writing last year and has finally reached my reading, taking both of those outlets away from me; it's very disconcerting. I have ideas on how to solve the problem, but those ideas take money, and lack of money is what's causing the depression. Life is strange. Hopefully I snap out of this soon, so I can have my stories back.