Blogger Interview: Melissa from Harley Bear Book Blog
THE INTERVIEW
What makes your blog unique?
I made up some features that let me show my personality:
- Pashion for Bookish Fashion:I make outfits for whatever book I’m reading using Pinterest.
- Review & Recipe: I do a mini review of a book and then a recipe that I created or modified that goes with it.
- I also like to do fun posts like this flow chart I made to help people pick their next book.
What have you just finished reading? What are you currently reading?
I just finished Belonging by Karen Ann Hopkins. It had a crazy cliffhanger! I’m starting Elixir then Apollyon by Jennifer L. Armentrout tonight!
What advice do you have for new bloggers?
My advice is to build relationships with other bloggers. Meet people on twitter, visit blogs regularly, and participate in readathons like Bout of Books. Basically, just get involved and don’t be shy!
What are your hobbies outside of reading and blogging?
My favorite thing in life is dancing. I used to be on dance teams, but now that I’m out of school I just take Zumba classes! I also like shopping and baking (hence the features on my blog)
If you were the heroine of a novel, what genre book would it be?
That’s a hard question. I’d like to think I’m as smart or brave as Katniss, but I think I’d probably be in just a contemporary romance book. Maybe one of Sophie Kinsella’s books because I’m always embarrassing myself in front of cute guys.
What book would you most like to be the cover model for?
One with a pretty dress like The Selection!
What is one thing on your bookish bucket list?
I actually did a whole post on a bookish bucket list that you can read here. My favorite is probably attend BEA or meet Sarah Dessen.
FAVORITES
- Board Game: Does Apples to Apples count? or Mall Maddness from when I was a kid
- Dessert: CHEESECAKE!
- Movie Based on Book: Perks of Being a Wallflower
- Sport: football
- Television Show: Gilmore Girls
FIND MELISSA
- Blog: Harley Bear Book Blog
- Twitter: @HarleyBearBooks
- Facebook: Harley Bear Book Blog
- Pinterest: Harley Bear
Top Ten Tuesday (56)
Top Ten Tuesdays is a meme hosted by the Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is
Top Ten Words/Topics That Instantly Make Me Pick Up a Book
1. Shakespeare: Literary criticism, retelling, or simply a book with a character who reads Shakespeare–I’ll look at your book if his name is somewhere on the cover.
2. the Renaissance: Historical fiction or nonfiction–everything’s fair game. Mention the Tudors or sordid personal lives, however, and I’ll probably put the book back down.
3. Dante: Can I suggest some more historical fiction dealing with Dante? The amount of literary criticism is staggering, but I’d love to see more stuff like Kimberley Heuston’s Dante’s Daughter.
4. Dragons: They’re fairly popular right now, but I still can’t get enough of them.
5. Bookstores and/or Books: A book about books? Cool!
6. Fairy Tale References: I’ll look at the summary for any book that mentions it’s a retelling.
7. Science: Scientists aren’t portrayed enough in literature. It’s common for protagonists to be aspiring writers or English professors or basically anything people who like to read tend to identify with. Where are my chemistry heroes? My biologists? Mention science and I’m there.
8. Architecture: I know nothing about it, but buildings are pretty cool. I’ll read a book about buildings.
9. Spain: So much history and it’s beautiful.
10. Italy: See #9.
April Recap
Books Reviewed
(Covers Linked to Reviews)
Author Interviews
- John A. Heldt (The Mine)
- Laura Lond (My Sparking Misfortune)
- Alethea Kontis (Enchanted)
Features
May Preview
So Yesterday by Scott Westerfeld
Goodreads: So Yesterday
Source: Purchased
Official Summary: Ever wonder who was the first kid to keep a wallet on a big chunky chain, or wear way-too-big pants on purpose? What about the mythical first guy who wore his baseball cap backwards? These are the Innovators, the people on the very cusp of cool. Seventeen-year-old Hunter Braque’s job is finding them for the retail market.
But when a big-money client disappears, Hunter must use all his cool-hunting talents to find her. Along the way he’s drawn into a web of brand-name intrigue-a missing cargo of the coolest shoes he’s ever seen, ads for products that don’t exist, and a shadowy group dedicated to the downfall of consumerism as we know it.
Review: Hunter will draw in readers from the opening pages with his quirky narration and down-to-earth personality. He may be a “cool hunter,” absurdly talented at finding awesome fashion details that will be the country’s next biggest trend, but he is also a teenage boy who finds it awkward relating to his parents or interacting with girls. He is cool, but he is also approachable, and he will charm readers.
The setting of the book is equally alluring, and appropriately New York City. Hunter helpfully describes each neighborhood of the city he enters, painting a vibrant picture for readers who might never have visited. The descriptions are clever and apt enough, however, that even New York residents will not find them boring.
Hunter, and his new friend Jen, lead readers on a wild chase throughout the various districts of New York, introducing them to cramped apartments and luxurious celebrity parties in turn. The pace is fast, as Hunter and Jen have a limited time to test their amateur detective skills and discover who kidnapped Hunter’s boss and why. Readers will keep turning pages.
The book’s only potential flaw? Its premise. So Yesterday is about what makes something cool. The book’s heroes are seeking a way to make coolness more organic, something that arises naturally when people see things they like, instead of something so heavily defined by companies and advertisements.
This is interesting food for thought, and readers will have a lot to consider. Why do they think things are cool? Because they like it or because they see it everywhere? Do they fall for ads and fads? Who does get to decide what’s cool? Ultimately, however, the book’s cause falls a little flat. Changing the definition of cool is unlikely to be a priority for many readers when there are arguably more important problems in the world. So Yesterday is fleetingly captivating, but its message is not urgent.
So Yesterday is both entertaining and very real. The protagonists are charmingly unique, intelligent, and flawed. Their struggles will help readers think about how they define who they are, as they follow Hunter’s and Jen’s journey through the exciting world of fashion.
Published: 2004 (Razorbill)
If You Like Faeries, Then Read….
If You Like, Then Read is a feature where we offer reading suggestions based on books you already like, scheduled once a month. If you have more suggestions, feel free to tell us in the comments! You can check out the rest of these lists here.
Today’s “If You Like, Then Read” is a special guest post from Anne from Creativity’s Corner. Anne founded her blog in 2010 in order to promote discussion about books and is hosting the 2013 Book Bingo Challenge. She currently works as a Cataloger for her local University Libraries.
Faerie Wars by Herbie Brennan (MG/YA)
When Henry Atherton’s life is falling apart around him, he takes refuge by helping to clean at Mr. Fogarty’s next door. But instead of the cranky old man he’s expecting, he finds a new friend: Pyrgus Malvae, crown prince of the faeries. Pyrgus’s world is full of faeries, demons, and danger – and he needs Henry’s help if he’s going to defeat the Faeries of the Night. (I’ll be co-hosting a read-a-thon for this series in the near future on my own blog Creativity’s Corner and we’d love for you to join us)
Wicked Lovely by Marissa Marr (YA)
Aislinn has always been able to see faeries for what they are, but has made a point of pretending she doesn’t – you don’t want to attract their attention, no matter what. Except, suddenly her rules for dealing with faeries aren’t working, and the Summer King of faeries is determined to have her for himself.
The Doubled Edge and Bedlam’s Bard series’ by Mercedes Lackey (Adult)
In the Doubled Edge series, the fae have seen two possible futures: one with an evil queen who will do everything in her power to cause pain, and one with a benevolent queen whose reign will be known as a golden age. The Seleighe Sidhe must go to war, if they want to save their queen, little Elizabeth Tudor, so she may someday become queen.
The Bedlam’s Bard shares a few characters with the Doubled Edge series (fae are incredibly long lived!) but is set several hundred years later. Eric Banyon, a traveling Renaissance Faire musician, accidentally wakes one of the noble fae who tells him that he is actually a bard – a musician mage – and enlists his help in a war against the Unseleighe Sidhe.
Once Upon a Winter’s Night by Dennis McKiernan (Adult)
A very loose retelling of East of the Sun, West of the Moon. A young woman marries a mysterious prince, only to have him turn out to be someone very different than she thought.
Stardust by Neil Gaiman (Adult)
If you’ve seen the movie, forget all that before reading the book – though the spirit stays the same, the majority of the novel is very different. A young half-fairy boy goes on a quest to retrieve a fallen star and gets much more than he bargained for.
OCD, the Dude, and Me by Lauren Roedy Vaughn
Goodreads: OCD, the Dude, and Me
Source: Purchased
Official Summary: With frizzy orange hair, a plus-sized body, sarcastic demeanor, and “unique learning profile,” Danielle Levine doesn’t fit in even at her alternative high school. While navigating her doomed social life, she writes scathing, self-aware, and sometimes downright raunchy essays for English class. As a result of her unfiltered writing style, she is forced to see the school psychologist and enroll in a “social skills” class. But when she meets Daniel, another social misfit who is obsessed with the cult classic film The Big Lebowski, Danielle’s resolve to keep everyone at arm’s length starts to crumble.
Review: OCD, the Dude, and Me has a fantastically fresh and unique voice. The novel is a compilation of Danielle’s writing—school essays (in a conversational style that drives her English teacher insane), emails, personal reflections, post cards, and more—and the look inside her mind is staggering. Danielle is vulnerable, quirky, and real. She relates what makes her uncomfortable, and the lengths she must go to refind her peace (hiding quietly under a pile of messy clothes!) as readily as she relates what makes her strong. If you were captivated by the distinctive voice of Graceling, you will find a comparable, contemporary voice in in OCD, the Dude, and Me.
Danielle faces a plethora of problems in her senior year of high school, including social awkwardness and boy troubles. Her issues do not read like “book issues,” however, but like ones that readers might actually have. Her dilemma is not that she must choose between two amazing guys fighting valiantly for her attention, but that the guy she likes has a girlfriend and seems unaware that she exists—except when he’s making fun of her. Love hurts at Danielle’s high school. But her correspondence with aunt helps her, and readers, learn how to deal with that.
The moments of raw reality in the book are nicely offset by crazier, beautiful ones. Danielle, for instance, is obsessed both with Romantic literature (I can like her just for that!) and the movie The Big Lebowski. She goes to great lengths to have fun her way, dressing up with her aunt and mother to have a nineteenth century tea date in the garden and commissioning costumes to celebrate Lebowski Fest. She meets a variety of characters as unique as she is, ranging from the other members of her social support group, to a tour guide she meets on a class trip to England. Danielle’s life is invariably interesting.
OCD, the Dude, and Me is an exceptional book, a great choice for those who appreciate fresh voices, authentic takes on the high school experience, or quirky characters. Highly recommended.
Published: March 31, 2013 (Dial—Penguin)
Blogger Interview: Isabel from Sab the Book Eater
THE INTERVIEW
What makes your blog unique?
Wow this is tough! I guess what makes my blog unique is that I basically do/write what I like. I don’t limit myself to posting reviews of just YA books or just NA books. I used to worry about who reads my reviews because I review books like Anna and the French Kiss but I also review books like Bared to You. But then I figured this is my blog so I’ll post what I like. I won’t let anything pressure me or make me do differently. Even with my reviews, I say what I want to say. If I didn’t like something about a book, I say it – even if I like the author, even if I gave it a 5-star rating.
What have you just finished reading? What are you currently reading?
I just finished reading Click to Subscribe by L.M. Augustine. It was a fun short read! Right now I’m halfway through Sweetest Taboo by Eva Marquez. I’ve been really into taboo stories lately so I decided to give it a shot. So far it’s…. interesting.
What advice do you have for new bloggers?
DON’T LET ANYTHING OR ANYONE PRESSURE YOU. There are a lot of bloggers out there who have tons of content up already and plenty of ARCs and who are in contact with a lot of authors – but there’s absolutely no rush. Go with your own pace and do things the way you want to do it because if you don’t it, blogging can become exhausting.
What are your hobbies outside of reading and blogging?
I watch TV a lot. I’m a huge couch potato. I watch a lot of TV series – Modern Family, How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, Pretty Little Liars, Suits, Awkward… among others. When I’m not blogging, I catch up with the many shows I watch.
If you were the heroine of a novel, what genre book would it be?
Paranormal! There are lots of YA books where the plain, ordinary girl falls in love with this impossibly handsome guy and he turns out to be some sort of creature. I want it the other way around – like in Beautiful Creatures only better. Hehe.
What book would you most like to be the cover model for?
Of the top of my head… any book by Jennifer L. Armentrout. She has really cute covers with cute guys on it!
What is one thing on your bookish bucket list?
The item on my list that’s the most attainable right now: to have an entire room just for books. The shelves in my room aren’t full yet so I still have a long way to go.
FAVORITES
- Board Game: Monopoly
- Dessert: Cookies and cream ice cream
- Movie Based on Book: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
- Sport: Basketball
- Television Show: Friends
FIND ISABEL
- Blog: Sab the Book Eater
- Twitter: @sabthebookeater
- Facebook: Sab the Book Eater
Top Ten Tuesday (55)
Top Ten Tuesdays is a meme hosted by the Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is
Top Ten Books I Thought I’d Like MORE/LESS Than I Did
1. Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee: I had already read this and decided I didn’t like it, but then someone else opened by eyes to all the interesting themes raised by the story.
2. A Daughter of the Land by Gene Stratton-Porter: I thought this book would follow the general formula of A Girl of the Limberlost and Freckles. It defied my expectations so, though it was good, I found myself disappointed.
3. Pollyanna Grows Up by Eleanor H. Porter: I might have liked it if I had read it when I was younger, but after years of searching for this book, I found it overly melodramatic and even cliched.
4. New Chronicles of Rebecca by Kate Douglas Wiggin: I thought another Rebecca book would show her grown up, but instead it covers the same time period as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.
5. The Lost Prince by Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden and A Little Princess are classics. I almost cannot believe the same author wrote this book.
6. The Old Man in the Corner by Baroness Orczy: The book is a series of short mysteries solved by an armchair detective. They’re good, but they become repetitive.
7. The Emperor’s Candlesticks by Baroness Orczy: The characterization is the one strong point of this rather predictable story.
8. The Coming of the Dragon by Rebecca Barnhouse: A retelling of Beowulf seemed like the perfect book, but the intended age range didn’t make sense to me and I missed the nuances of the original poem.
9. The Magicians by Lev Grossman: Someone told me it was Narnia and Harry Potter rolled into one, but the characters are disillusioned college students and the book didn’t resonate with me.
10. The Amaranth Enchantment by Julie Barry: I didn’t find this retelling of “Cinderella” very original.
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
Goodreads: Ivanhoe
Source: Purchased
Summary: The young knight of Ivanhoe, disinherited by his father, must prove his worth in order to win the hand of the lovely Saxon princess Rowena. Their lives intersect with a wide cast of characters, including some villainous Normans, a Jew and his beautiful daughter Rebecca, a passionate Knight Templar, King Richard, and the outlaw Locksley.
Review: Even for fans of historical fiction and particularly the Middle Ages, the pacing of Ivanhoe can be a little rough. Scott delights in building atmosphere and showing off his history trivia, so although the book opens with the promise of a tournament, things do not really get exciting until nearly 150 pages in. The pacing continues at this odd pace throughout the novel, though to a smaller degree, as Scott spends more chapters building up to a climatic event than at the event itself.
There are wonderfully exciting scenes in the novel, which is to be expected from a book which has been variously adapted into children’s versions, comic books, and movies. Yet, arguably, excitement is not Scott’s primary concern. Indeed, there is not too much about the plot that is very surprising (beyond an absolutely insane scene near the end, which is hilarious, if not good writing—a note in the Signet edition says to blame the publisher for this).
The focus then, must be on the myriad themes of the novel, including an intense interest in national identity, nation building, cultural identity, the place of the Jew and “others” in English society, chivalry, and women. All these themes are treated seriously and complexly and will provide a lot of material for a thoughtful reader to ponder. Scott seems ahead of his time in promoting ideas of tolerance and modernity, and using a medieval setting to do so!
Ivanhoe will be a slow read for those reading it for fun instead of class, but it should ultimately be a worthwhile one, being both entertaining and profound.
Published: 1819
Author Guest Post: Get A “Twisted Lit” Character Named After You!
In honor of William Shakespeare’s birthday (celebrated on April 23), authors Kim Askew and Amy Helmes, have dropped by with a guest blog post to announce a special contest!
Get A “Twisted Lit” Character Named After You!
We reimagined William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and “Macbeth,” with our “compulsively readable” YA books, Tempestuous and Exposure. Ever since the novels were published a few months ago through Merit Press we’ve encountered a frequent question: Which of Shakespeare’s plays will inspire your next books in the Twisted Lit series?
While we’re currently hard at work putting our own spin on the Bard’s “Romeo and Juliet” we thought we’d look to you, the readers, to help us pick the fourth Shakespeare play that will inspire our next book in the series. Got a hankering for a new spin on “Hamlet?” Love to see “King Lear” get a YA update? Would you make much ado over our take on “Much Ado About Nothing?”
Go to our Facebook page (Facebook.com/Twistedlitnovels) and write on our wall to weigh in on which Shakespeare play you’d like us to revamp next. In doing so, you’ll be entered to have your very own name mentioned in one of our upcoming books (either as a character or some other fun reference). If you’ve always wanted to see your name in print — in a YA novel, no less — now’s your chance! The winner will also receive autographed copies of our first two novels, Tempestuous and Exposure.
We’re looking forward to hearing your suggestions! (And don’t forget to follow us on twitter at @kaskew and @amyhelmes.)
* Winner will not be compensated for use of his or her name, and publication is not guaranteed. Details of plot and character used in connection with the name as it appears in the book are up to the sole discretion of the authors. Contest ends June 1.
Kim & Amy
