Sunday Update

Okay, so on Sunday I am leaving for Japan, I am super duper psyched!!!!
One of the things this means is that my other blog, Vegan in the Land of Frog Legs and Cheese, is going to have to change names. I haven't come up with anything interesting yet, but I've decided I want it to be a name that I will be able to keep even when I am not in Japan. Suggestions, anyone?

The other thing that this means is that I will not have access to the internet until April 5. I've got a ton of reviews of books I've been reading written up in a notebook, but I'm not sure yet if I will have time to type them up before I leave. I wouldn't mind not having a post for 5 whole days, but I've just got so many reviews written that it seems silly to have such a long hiatus. So I will do my best to type some up, but if not, well, sorry.

I also apologize in advance for the lack of comments in your blogs over the next little while. Even once I have internet, I'm pretty sure that getting settled in Japan is going to be hectic. Wish me luck!

Anyhow, that's all for now, I guess. I hope everyone is having a fabulous week, and I look forward to regular blogging again once everything gets dealt with in JAPAN!!!!

Happy reading, everyone!

French Friday (19)

French Friday is a weekly feature hosted by Charlotte at the Book on the Hill. We both live in France, so French Friday is a meme to write about Frenchy bookish things.

Once again, French Friday is happening on Saturday. Sorry! Yesterday was moving out of hte apartment and into the boyfriend's parents house for the few days I have left before Japan day. I don't think I even turned on the computer. But since this is potentially my LAST French Friday (I might do one again next week), I couldn't miss it!

This week, I decided we'd do another cover comparison, this time looking at books of my favorite author of all time, Neil Gaiman. Man,I love him!

First, we will look at one of my absolute favorite Neil Gaiman books, also known as onz of the top 3 greatest books of all time, American Gods.




I adore the American cover of this book, and the French one kind of makes me laugh. What's with the coke looking thinbg and the George Washington on the cover? I don't know why, but it just seems SO wrong for the book to me. Maybe it appeals more ot French people? Maybe they were trying to go with the comic book style cover because the French were, at the time, more likely to know Neil Gaiman as a writer of comics.

And speaking of George Washington on the cover, let us now look at the covers for Anansi Boys:




What is with the French and George Washington? Anyhow, I love the US cover of this book, but I think the French one, which almost seems silly to me, actually contains more of the book content. I oddly can't seem to find anywhere on the internet cover of the book that I have. If I had it with me, I would take a picture. It's definitely my favorite of the covers.

Now, since we can't look at ALL of his books, as he is very prolific, we'll take one last look at Neverwhere, a book I absolutely ADORE!




I'm super attached to the American cover, almost out of some weird sense of loyalty, but in the end, I actually think I PREFER the French cover. Which is weird because it just seems so, well, FRENCH to me. If I had seen the cover and not known it was the French cover, I would have guessed. I am continually shocked by how culture can change the sort of book cover that will appeal to someone. The French covers are often so different from the American ones, and while I find the American ones more appealing, I'm guessing the typical French person must find the French ones more appealing. It's weird how that works.

Anyhow, I also think it's slightly odd that the majority of Gaiman's books have the same names in French and English. U've been thinking about why that might be, and I just really can't figure it out. Ideas, anyone?

Anyhow, I hope that you have enjoyed this week's French Friday on Saturday! Be sure to make your way on over to the Book on the Hill!

Maybe a vendredi prochain!

Blog Tour: the River King's Road by Liane Merciel

Title: the River King's Road

Author: Liane Merciel

Not a Review: So, as usual with the Pocket Book tours, there's been a problem. I STILL haven't received this book. :-( I don't know what the deal is. Theoretically it was shipped at the same time as Demon Posessed, which I did receive. So I'm guessing it must be lost in the mail somewhere. Which is unfortunate, as I have been really psyched about reading this book. It looks AWESOME!

I also always want to read books that people disagree about, and this one has been getting some great reviews and some not so great reviews.
So, if it is lost in the mail, I hope it makes it's way to me sometime soon and isn't forever lost.

Summary: A thrilling new voice in fantasy makes an unforgettable debut with this "intriguingly twisted tale of treachery and magic" (New York Times bestselling author L. E. Modesitt, Jr.). Liane Merciel’s The River Kings’ Road takes us to a world of bitter enmity between kingdoms, divided loyalties between comrades, and an insidious magic that destroys everything it touches...

The wounded maidservant thrust the knotted blankets at him; instinctively, Brys stepped forward and caught the bundle before it fell. Then he glimpsed what lay inside and nearly dropped it himself.

There was a baby in the blankets. A baby with a tear-swollen face red and round as a midsummer plum. A baby he knew, even without seeing the lacquered medallion tucked into the swaddling—a medallion far too heavy, on a chain far too cold for an infant who had not yet seen a year.

A fragile period of peace between the eternally warring kingdoms of Oakharn and Langmyr is shattered when a surprise massacre fueled by bloodmagic ravages the Langmyrne border village of Willowfield, killing its inhabitants—including a visiting Oakharne lord and his family—and leaving behind a scene so grisly that even the carrion eaters avoid its desecrated earth. But the dead lord’s infant heir has survived the carnage—a discovery that entwines the destinies of Brys Tarnell, a mercenary who rescues the helpless and ailing babe, and who enlists a Langmyr peasant, a young mother herself, to nourish and nurture the child of her enemies as they travel a dark, perilous road . . . Odosse, the peasant woman whose only weapons are wit, courage, and her fierce maternal love—and who risks everything she holds dear to protect her new charge . . . Sir Kelland, a divinely blessed Knight of the Sun, called upon to unmask the architects behind the slaughter and avert war between ancestral enemies . . . Bitharn, Kelland’s companion on his journey, who conceals her lifelong love for the Knight behind her flawless archery skills—and whose feelings may ultimately be Kelland’s undoing . . . and Leferic, an Oakharne Lord’s bitter youngest son, whose dark ambitions fuel the most horrific acts of violence. As one infant’s life hangs in the balance, so too does the fate of thousands, while deep in the forest, a Maimed Witch practices an evil bloodmagic that could doom them all...

In the meantime, since you won't be getting my review today, be sure to check out the author's website. You can actually read the first two chapters there, so if you're interested, it's definitely worth a look-see.

Also, be sure to check out the other reviews on the blog tour, as I'm guessing most of them did receive their book on time.

Pam’s Private Reflections: http://hip2bhomeschooling.blogspot.com/
Book Junkie: http://myfoolishwisdom.blogspot.com/
Cheryl’s Book Nook: http://cherylsbooknook.blogspot.com/
Steph the Bookworm: http://www.stephthebookworm.blogspot.com/
Readaholic: http://bridget3420.blogspot.com/
The Bibliophilic Book Blog: http://www.bibliophilicbookblog.com/
I Heart Book Gossip: http://juniperrbreeeze.blogspot.com/
Jeanne's Ramblings: http://www.jeannesramblings.com
My Book Addiction and More: http://mybookaddictionandmore.wordpress.com/
Book Gardens and Dogs: http://maryinhb.blogspot.com
Taking Time For Mommy: http://takingtimeformommy.blogspot.com/
Thoughts In Progress: http://www.masoncanyon.blogspot.com/
Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer: http://ramblingsofacoffeeaddictedwrter.blogspot.com/
Books And Things: http://melissawatercolor.blogspot.com/
She Reads: http://mandyfish-reads.blogspot.com/
Blog Business World: http://www.blogbusinessworld.blogspot.com
Carol’s Notebook: http://carolsnotebook.wordpress.com/
Crazy Books & Reviews: http://www.lindsayphotobook.blogspot.com/
Books Gardens & Dogs: http://maryinhb.blogspot.com/
Just One More Paragraph: http://tweezlereads.blogspot.com/
Rundpinne: http://www.rundpinne.blogspot.com/
Drey’s Library: http://dreyslibrary.blogspot.com/
My Life In Not So Many Words: http://www.ziarias.blogspot.com/
Geek Girl Reviews: http://www.geekgirlreviews.com/
Starting Fresh: http://startingfresh-gaby317.blogspot.com/
Poisoned Rationality: http://lastexilewords.blogspot.com
Temple Library Reviews: http://templelibraryreviews.blogspot.com/
The Wayfaring Writer: http://moonsanity.blogspot.com/
Booksie’s Blog: http://booksiesblog.blogspot.com/
See Michelle Read: http://seemichelleread.blogspot.com/
Genre Reviews: http://genrereviews.blogspot.com/
My Book Views: http://my-book-views.blogspot.com/
Wendy’s Minding Spot: http://mindingspot.blogspot.com/
Book Tumbling: http://booktumbling.com/
Literarily Speaking: http://literarilyspeaking1.blogspot.com/
Books R Us: http://www.booksrusonline.com/
Brenda Loves Books: http://brendalovesbooks.blogspot.com/
Lucky Rosie’s: http://www.luckyrosiescreations.blogspot.com/
You Wanna Know What I Think? : http://www.kballard87.blogspot.com/

Review and GIVEAWAY: the Bird Room by Chris Killen

Title: the Bird Room

Author: Chris Killen

Rating: 1/2

Who Should Read It? I don't really know how to say. It's an interesting book. I guess if you like black comedy this will appeal to you.

What I Have to Say:
I thought that maybe putting a little time between the end of this book and my review would give me more clarification on how I felt, but nope. I still think that it was just weird. Did I enjoy reading it? Yes! Did I LIKE it? Maybe yes, maybe no. Because really, it was just plain weird.

My favorite thing about this book was that I absolutely adored the writing style. It was one of those books where you sort of feel like the main character is talking to you while at the same time feeling as if he doesn't care about you at all. It just sort of plods along, if that makes sense, and yet the story itself is completely non-linear. It goes back and forth and back and forth while at the same time slowly and succinctly moving forwards. In a way, this caught me off guard, and yet it was also a pleasant surprise. I love books that are written like this.

This book is also extremely interesting in that you never actually get to know any of the characters, which could come from the fact that they never really get to know each other, and yet it is very much character driven. Who is Will, who is the other Will, who is Alice? None of this is really important, as they are only important characters inasmuch as they are important to the first Will. They are all so flawed and confused.

While the style of this book makes it easy to read, the content does it. It's an intriguing look at the sex-lives of adults, at our perception of love and sex . It's an intimate look at relationships, and it's so real. While I didn't relate at all to the relationships in the Bird Room, as I didn't relate at all to the characters, the ideas presented through their relationships did make me think a little bit about the relationships in my life. And how real they may or may not be.

Will (the first) disgusts me, and he absolutely deserves everything he gets. I would NOT deal well with having a person like him in my life. And yet, the book is narrated from his point of view, and I absolutely ate it up. He made me laugh, he made me think, and he almost made me sad while at the same time shunning him.

So it's a good, well-written book, but it will not make you feel good. It might even depress you. And you may like it without actually liking it's content. It's GOOD while at the same time. . .leaving you unsure as to what exactly there was about it that you liked.

Summary (from Amazon): Painfully average and introverted Will finally has a bird. Her name is Alice. She's smart, sexy, and much to Will's surprise, she is in love with him. But the course of love never did run smooth, and soon devotion—and its uglier manifestations—lead Will to a dark place within himself.

Elsewhere in the city, Helen is an actress—or she will be some day. For now, she finds work as a "model"—or whatever her online acquaintances need her to be. Her real name is Clair, but she desperately wants to be someone new, someone glamorous and real—someone worth something.

A love story with a twist, this exuberant and funny debut novel brings Will and Helen's lives together in a tale as tight as a rope and as black as tar. Sharp, playful, and brimming over with wicked comedy, The Bird Room heralds the arrival of a major new literary talent.

Cover Story: I actually love this cover. It's like it examines every part of this beautiful girl. It fits with the book in a weird way.

I'm so excited that I have one copy of this book to give away! Just click here to fill out the form.
(Sorry - I tried to embed the form, but there were some issues; the colors weren't showing up right, and you couldn't see the words.) Be sure to comment on my review before you click to fill out the form!

Disclosure: This book was sent to me by the publisher for review.

Interview: Peter Bognanni, Author of the House of Tomorrow

As those of you that read my review know, when I read Peter Bognanni's the House of Tomorrow, I absolutely fell in love! Which is why I am more excited than ever that Peter agreed to answer a few questions for Brizmus Blogs Books. Let's get started!

Brizmus Blogs Books: Hi Peter! Thank you SO MUCH for taking time to answer a few questions for Brizmus Blogs Books. I absolutely ADORED the House of Tomorrow, and I am so excited to be hosting an interview with you. My first question is just this: Buckminster Fuller? He just seems like such a random basis for a book. Could you please talk a little bit about your relationship to him, how he came to be such a major part of the book.

Peter Bognanni: To be perfectly honest, I started the book knowing very little about Bucky. I had seen him on a postage stamp once (great stamp by the way) and I knew a little about geo-domes. But everything started after a conversation my wife had at a party. Someone at this party told her, pretty much out of the blue, that he lived in a dome with his grandmother. My wife related the conversation to me in the car on the way home, and the next day I started to become dome-obsessed. I must have looked at domes for four hours the next morning. This obsession led me to R. Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome. And the more I read about him, the more I became fascinated. Such wild ideas. Such enthusiasm. Such large glasses! He wanted to encase all of Manhattan in a giant climate-controlled dome. He wanted humans to live in floating dome cities that would migrate around the globe. He firmly believed in telepathy. How can you not love this guy? I started to imagine what it might be like for someone to grow up living Bucky’s principle to the fullest. That’s how the protagonist of my book, Sebastian, was born.

BBB: Where did you get the idea to write about a boy who had had a heart transplant? Was it something that just happened over the course of the book because you needed Jared to be sick, or did you set out with this idea in mind?

Peter: Jared was actually a character that I kind of air-lifted from another novel that was going exactly nowhere. He’s loosely based on someone I knew growing up, or at least the detail of the transplant is. I really knew a chain-smoking transplant recipient. Only he played the drums, not guitar. Jared’s personality is much different though, a kind of amalgam of a lot of funny and caustic people I hung around with in high school. I never really thought of the transplant as a “fictional device” per se; it was just always the way I envisioned the character. But from the beginning, I liked the idea of writing this enigmatic person who was both vulnerable and abrasive at the same time. Also, I think his affliction allowed him to be both delightfully immature, and wiser than his years, sometimes on the same page.

BBB: I read that you were in a (bad) punk band in high school, and I’m very curious about this. What were you called, did you ever record anything, and is Jared and Sebastians‘s punk band experience based on your experiences?

Peter: The band I played with in high school had about ten different names, if memory serves. We could never decide on one. And it might be unfair to call us a punk band. We were more a play-as-loud-and-out-of-tune-as-you-can-until-you-get-tired kind of band. Some ungodly brand of noise rock, I suppose. But if you’d asked us if we were punks, we might have nodded. And yes, that experience acted as an influence on Sebastian and Jared’s band. Undeniably so. I can still remember learning my first power chords, plugging into an amp for the first time, and many other small moments that pretty much ended up in the book wholesale. Despite my lack of talent, music was enormously important for me growing up. It was a way to imagine other lives, other selves. It was transformative. And it made me feel better about my bad haircut and large dental apparatus.

BBB: Are you working on anything else right now? Can we expect more YA from you in the future?

Peter: I’m working on two things right now and they are currently battling for supremacy in my laptop. As far as YA goes, this book is being cross-listed as adult and young adult and I love the idea of reaching both readers. I really like writing teenage characters, so I’m sure they’ll continue to appear in my books, but I might go a little older with my next protagonist. I turned 31 this year. I probably have an expiration date on my ability to write from the perspective of a profane teenager. But it helps that there’s one locked inside of me.

BBB: Okay, last question! Give me some quick one-word answers!

Favorite geodesic dome: The Botanical Center in Des Moines, Iowa. This is a clear geodesic dome in my hometown. I went to a Homecoming Dance here and suffered humiliations similar to those of my characters.

Favorite punk band: The Buzzcocks. I can’t get enough of them. They’re funny. They rock. They make me feel angry and bemused simultaneously.

Literary Idol: Ah, torturous question to answer. I absolutely devoured Kurt Vonnegut in high school, and no matter how many more literary heroes I have and will amass, I always feel a little dishonest when I don’t mention him. He made me want to be a compulsive reader. Which, in turn, made me want to be a writer.

Favorite music to listen to while writing: Can’t really do this. Too distracting. I’ll start writing the lyrics of a song right into the prose. The night was like a…Blitzkrieg Bop. For this book though, I would stop here and there to listen to songs I was writing about. It’s nice to take a break from trying to write something literary only to listen to a Ramone shout about sniffing glue.

Favorite food to eat while writing: Get ready for the least Punk Rock answer of all time. You ready? Yoplait Yogurt. That’s right, I said it.

BBB:Back to me now - what a GREAT interview! Again, thanks SO much Peter for answering a few questions for me, especially with such fabulous answers! I laughed on more than one occasion. For those of my readers that haven't read Vonnegut or listened to the Buzzcocks, I highly recommend you do so now!
I also highly recommend that you check out this awesome trailer for the House of Tomorrow.

Not an IMM

No In My Mailbox post for you this week, as I (THANKFULLY) didn't receive a single book. Seriously, I don't know what I would have done with it had I received a book, as I've already got pretty much everything packed to go to Japan, and there is no room for ANYTHING else. Not even another book.

BUT, I just wanted to let you guys know that you should check back tomorrow because I am going to be posting an AWESOME interview! Seriously, this is one that I am SUPER excited about. I actually did a happy dance when he agreed to answer some questions for me. And his answers - well, let's just say I laughed a lot.

Anyhow, I won't say who he is, because I want it to be a surprise for tomorrow, but do be sure to check back. You won't be disappointed!

French Friday (18)

French Friday is a weekly feature hosted by Charlotte at the Book on the Hill. We both live in France, so French Friday is a meme to write about Frenchy bookish things.

I guess this week it's actually French Saturday. Or maybe even really French Sunday, as it's presently midnight exactly. It's been a long day of packing and moving, and this is actually the first time I've been on the computer all day. Still, yesterday I promised a French Friday on Saturday, and given that I might not have too many French Fridays left, it's a promise I really wanted to keep. So here we go!

And this week, I want to do some cover comparisons. For books by an author that I absolutely LOVE - Sophie Kinsella.

The first is for Confessions of a Shopaholic - Confessions d'une accro du shopping in French, and it translates pretty much exactly.



Guess who likes the French cover better for once? Yeah, that would be me! (and oops, I just made the covers really big, but I really don't feel like going back and changing that - sorry!). The US version is so, well, boring, for such a fabulous, girly, fluffy book!

Next, we'll look at the Undomestic Goddess. In French, it's Samantha, bonne a rien faire, which means Samantha, Good at Nothing (it sounds nicer in French, I think, but I'm still not sure about this title).



Here, it's hard for me. I like them both, but I think I'm going to have to go with the US one. The French one makes it look like there's magic going on, and as there's no magic in the book, it's sort of misleading.
Also, I always thought that I would be PERFECT for the part of Sam if ever they make a movie, and I don't really look like that girl on the cover.

Last one, Lexi Smart a la memoire qui flanche (Lexi Smart's memory is giving out) aka Remember Me? What is up with French titles having the name of the main character in them. It doesn't really jive with me, that.



Even though the girl sort of looks as if she might be nude in the shadow, I absolutely prefer the French cover. The flower on the US cover is pretty, but the French cover is fun and scattered and wonderful!

Anyhow, that's it for this week. Sorry this was so late, but I hope you enjoyed nonetheless. I'd love to know what you think. :-)
Don't forget to check out Charlotte's French Friday at The Book on the Hill.

Now, good night, I'm off to read!