Book Thoughts: The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson

So, The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson. This is less of a review, in that you probably won't get much of the plotline, and more of me just discussing some points. If anyone would like the basic plotine added, I can always find the book description and just throw it on here.

It started off a bit slow (though the prologue-like begining drew you in instantly), and it was as if the author wanted to keep it all mysterious what Rory (no, not like our dear Rory the Roman, short for Aurora) had that was special, but didn't realize that her readers would probably get it quite quickly and so slowed the revelation down enough that the action had a hard time blossoming.

Also, despite it being set in London, you can't tell when reading that all the characters,other than our heroine who's Louisianan, are British. I think that's just a personal thing, but for some reasons I could only hear one character's voice in my head as having an English accent, Boo, and she didn't show up till later.

I still have a hundred pages or so left (the book is only 300 and something), and for the most part I am enjoying it (despite my criticisms). I think the whole concept of the book, a possible "otherworldly" Jack the Ripper copycat, is fascinating and the details and knowledge of the previous murders are quite on point and woven in well. Unfortunately, Johnson manages to make it so that, even though there's so much going on (or so much that could be going on), it feels like that action is trying to wade through quicksand. Also, there's an attempt at romance that should have been either worked on or completely eradicated, it felt awkward and not thought out.

So far, my curiosity at how this will develop and my interest in the converging of YA Paranormal fiction with historical details and mystery/thriller has kept me going, but I'm hoping the ending can help redeem the book.

David Tennant's face of the day

Source: timevictorious.tumblr.com

Just finished reading the Hunger Games series. It's 3:00am. I might or might not have shed a good number of tears during the last chapter or so. I really need to sleep because I have a project to finish and a quiz to study for.

In the home stretch

So I wanted to come back to all of you lovelies last night, but blogger was down...soz!

As of 5:00 PM today, everything to do with my undergraduate career will be done. I still have the actual graduation process to go through, but I have nothing more to submit, no more homework or classes or deadlines. This is it.

I'm frightened out of my mind.

I love the internet...

I mean, the things you can come across from just idle browsing and clicking are absolutely mind blowing. That's how I found the TARDIS Jewelry and that's also how I found this:

Source: tombolguid.livejournal.com

          This person is making a pop up guide/book of Supernatural! And the pictures that have been put up are absolutely fantastic. I'd buy this in a heartbeat. I'm seven at heart which means that pop up books are my thing. It's true, I have a 'all about pirates' pop up book and one on dragons...I haven't acquired the faeries one yet, but I will one day. This is just such a brilliant idea and I'm so glad someone is not only attempting it, but is also doing it extremely well from the looks of it. The detail is amazing. Good luck with this project!

Pals in Peril

So for work I’m currently slugging the first paperback pass of blues for M. T. Anderson’s “Agent Q, or the Smell of Danger!” and I think I might have found a new author/series to get into. I’m fully aware that it’s technically a kids series, so there wont be any epically moving/heart wrenching plots that cause me to exclaim “NO!” to the heavens as tears stream down my face due to a character which I had become emotionally involved in being gunned down as they were about to reconcile with the one they loved, but it’s a light, easy, and highly ridiculous and entertaining read.
          Thought I can’t speak for his other books, I expect that the rest of the books in this series are about the same style, so I can tell you that it’s filled with utter ridiculousness, frequent breaking of the fourth wall, completely unnecessary footnotes, and even a mini flipbook and random drawings flittering about the pages. Also there are spies and gadgets and action sequences you’d never see in movies because they just make you go ‘wot?!’ I think that might be my favourite part of going through the book, the constant “wait...did that just really happen? *flips back* Yes...yes it did.” 

          I’m only supposed to technically be checking that the first and last word of each page is consistent in both the hardcover and the first pass, and that the pictures are in order, little things like that...but I got drawn in to the story about halfway through when I actually started paying attention to the word instead of just quickly glancing to insure consistency. It was the sentence “The lobsters went right back to playing solitaire, as if nothing had happened,” that reeled me in, and the weird just kept escalating.

On Nostalgia

I’ve always thought of nostalgia as a bittersweet feeling that everyone should, and would, inevitably experience, something innocent and personal that was a natural part of growing old. Reading Luc Sante’s Low Life though, gave me a different perspective of the word and of the feeling.

“The common word for this kind of distortion is “nostalgia.” This word can be generally defined as a state of inarticulate contempt for the present and fear of the future, in concert with a yearning for order, constancy, safety, and community---qualities that were last enjoyed in childhood and are retroactively imagined as gracing the whole of the time before one’s birth.”

“Past decades come into vogue at regular intervals, at the point at which people who experienced those decades as children and adolescents attain positions of power in the world. In their years of struggle they primarily looked to the future; having both achieved their goals and failed to realize their fondest wishes, they have the rue and leisure, the complacency and dissatisfaction to look backward, and the means to broadcast and idealized version of the remembered past, from which, however, the grime of history cannot entirely be washed. Then the tales, the legends, the styles and prejudices and assumptions of those decades are transmitted to younger generations, and these pass along the lore in further fragmented form to their successors.”

- Luc Sante, Low Life (Preface xi-xii)

[Note: Yes, I read the prefaces of books. I’ve been given weird looks when mentioning that in the past, so I thought it should be clarified and reiterated.]