Library Thing Tuesday (79) + Picture of Emmy

I'm in Kenya right now, so most likely no LT Tuesday today for me. But you still get Emmy and Finn (aren't I generous?).

Our printer broke recently, but at least it is still good for something:

Author Interview and Giveaway: Lauren Bjorkman discusses My Invented Life

Today I have a very fun interview with Lauren Bjorkman,
the debut author of MY INVENTED LIFE which I reviewed recently. Don't miss the last question - it had both Daniel and me ROTFL.

If a drama teacher were to pick another play to put on that showcased sisters Roz and Eva’s talent in equal measure, what do you think she’d pick?
WICKED. Roz would do anything to play Elphaba, the girl who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West. And Eva would enjoy playing Glinda.

Who are those cute fun girls on the cover?
I think of them as the sisters in my story. A few people have told me they thought the cover was racy, so I'm guessing they think the girls are lesbians. One guy asked me if the girls on the cover would be at my launch party! That made me laugh.

In other interviews you’ve mentioned that Eyeliner Andie is your favorite character in My Invented Life and that you’d like to write a novel with her as a main character. Pitch me an Eyeliner Andie dystopian novel.
Cautions and warnings:

Before I start, let it be known that I suck at pitches. More than suck. My nine year-old son can pitch better than me, and I’m not talking about baseball. Also, as someone who wrote a so-called gaytopian novel, dystopian might be a bit outside of my range.

Okay, you’ve been warned.

Eyeliner Andie’s parents die in mall shooting, so she’s sent away to live with her grandparents in Laramie Wyoming. Andie goes androgynous and tries to put on a production of the Laramie Project, a play about a true life event where two homophobic teens tied a gay college student to a fence, beat him, and left him to die. Unbeknownst to Andie, the son of one of the original perpetrators goes to her school.

(Told you so.)

Hmmm...well that might be more in the thriller category, but we'll take it! So, you’re very well travelled, so well that you’ve even been to my dream destination of Bhutan. Can you tell us a travel anecdote from your trip and try not to make me too envious?
So cool that you want to go to Bhutan. Some people think it’s a new scent for men by Christian Dior instead of a small Himalayan kingdom.

When we arrived in the capital of Bhutan, we tried to hitch hike to the village where our friends worked. After sitting by the side of the road for an hour, we discovered there were no private cars in Bhutan. So we rented one. It turned out that it was cheaper to rent a car with a driver than without one. That’s how we met the charismatic Karma Dorje, twenty-four, fluent in eight languages, charming, an excellent guide, and gifted alcoholic. Every night he insisted that we go to a bar together and drink heinous home-brewed alcoholic beverages in unnatural colors. We were his “table friends,” he said. And every night I went to bed with a hideous headache.

Oh, and there was the time when we were at someone’s house that Karma knew, and I had to drink fermented yak butter tea with a dead fly floating on top to be polite.

Still jealous? You should be. I loved every minute of my trip there minus the fly incident and the headaches.

Your cats invite my cats to dinner. What do they serve?
Zorro and Rabbit would usually prepare wounded mole as an appetizer, followed by un-stuffed wild bird in feather sauce for the main course. But after I showed them a picture of Emmy, they changed the menu to meet her obviously refined sensibilities—salmon sashimi with a sesame wasabi glaze, followed by warm goat’s milk sweetened with attar of roses.

LOL! You have Emmy totally pegged :) Thanks Lauren!

Find out more about Lauren and MY INVENTED LIFE at her website.

Lauren is also offering one lucky reader a signed copy of MY INVENTED LIFE. To enter, just leave a comment about the interview or tell me what your cats would serve my cats for dinner (if you have cats). As always, 1 extra entry will be given for posting the link to the contest on your blog (sidebar is fine) or social media site. Just leave your link in an extra comment for it to count.

This contest is open INTERNATIONALLY and will run until November 27th at 11:59 PM CST.

Book Club Report: Author Chat with Kathleen Kent

On Tuesday, my book club had the privilege of chatting with Author Kathleen Kent about her debut novel THE HERETIC’S DAUGHTER. Thanks to Val at Hachette Books for setting it up!

Being that Kathleen is in Texas and my book club is in Germany, we did the chat over speakerphone. Kathleen is an extremely engaging and enthusiastic speaker and she told us some interesting stories. Here are a few of the highlights:

- Kathleen grew up knowing that Martha Carrier (the “heretic” of the book’s title) was her grandmother to the 9th generation and heard stories all her life about the Carrier family and the Salem witch trials.

- Salem in the late 1600s was a village in crisis. Contrary to the pious, Victorian image we have of it, Salem was actually more Elizabethan in character and a “hotbed of misdeeds”.

- Those tried as witches were often “ferocious women” who fell outside the margins of what a woman “should be”, such as the insane, midwives who had lost too many children, and outspoken, strong-willed women like Martha.

- Town folk claimed that the Carriers must be witches because their cow gave golden milk. But if you feed a cow pumpkin, like the Carriers did, it will produce a sweeter milk that is golden in color. Try it out for yourself!

- The “red book” that Martha buried for her daughter Sarah in the novel is a literary device. Kathleen got the idea from a court transcript of Sarah’s trial in which Sarah claimed she became a witch because “My mother put my hands on the red book.” The red book is a symbol of the family’s history and its content will finally be revealed in Fall 2010 when the prequel is released.

- The prequel concerns the life of Martha’s husband Thomas Carrier before he came to America. He is rumored to have been one of the executioners of King Charles I of England, and according to Benjamin Franklin’s paper “Poor Richard” of 1735, he was 7 ft tall and lived to the ripe old age of 109.

If your book club might be interested in a chat with Kathleen, you can send your request to hereticsdaughter@yahoo.com

Find out more about THE HERETICS DAUGHTER at Kathleen’s website.

Where my last 20 reviewed books came from (3)

Yep - that time again (and now especially relevant considering the recent FTC guidelines). Another 20 books have been reviewed, and this is where I got them:

No Time For Goodbye by Linwood Barclay - bought at a discount at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2008
Sometimes We're Always Real Same Same by Mattox Roesch - provided by the publisher after I accepted publicist query
Lips Touch by Laini Taylor - I actually have two copies of this (both signed!). The ARC I got at BEA 2009 and the hardcover I got at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2009.
Amberville by Tim Davys - provided by the publisher after I accepted publicist query
My Invented Life by Lauren Bjorkman - provided by the publisher after I accepted author query
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger - bought
Half Minute Horrors by various - bought
Andromeda Klein by Frank Portman - provided by publisher per my request
Secret Son by Laila Lalami - provided by publisher per my request
The Everafter by Amy Huntley - provided by publisher per my request
The Waking: Dreams of the Dead by Thomas Randall - provided by publisher for book tour
Liar by Justine Larbalestier - picked up at BEA 2009 (signed!)
The Day of the Pelican by Katherine Paterson - provided by publisher per my request
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury - bought
Crashed by Robin Wasserman - provided by publisher per my request
Skinned by Robin Wasserman - picked up at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2008
Swimming by Nicola Keegan - requested as part of the Amazon Vine program
Labor Day by Joyce Maynard - requested as part of the Amazon Vine program
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver -provided by publisher per my request
Fire by Kristin Cashore - provided by publisher for book tour

4 bought books for this time period, but none borrowed. Still heavy on the review copies, but that's not surprising as I try to read my serious backlog of requested and accepted books.

Where are most of your books coming from these days? Any changes to your procurement habits as of late?

Library Thing Tuesday (78) + Picture of Emmy

Today's question from Wendi concerns the LibraryThing Buzz page: Were you aware that Library Thing had a Buzz page? Were you surprised by anything you saw or read on the Buzz page?

Nope! Yet another thing about LibraryThing I wasn't aware of. There are so many fun features to play around with over there, that I have to limit my exposure or be so sucked in that I never do anything else. I skimmed through and saw a few names I recognized, but I didn't read it all. Perhaps I should plot a way to be included as well... Composing a laudatory tweet might be the fastest way to LT Buzz glory....

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The cold front arrived later this year, but it seems to have settled in for good now. And that means it's heater time for the kittehs:

Book Review: No Time For Goodbye by Linwood Barclay

14 year old Cynthia wakes up one morning to find her family has vanished. No one ever finds a single clue to explain what happened to them. Did they leave? Were they murdered? 25 years later, Cynthia is married and has her own child, and the past is about to catch up with her…

Sometimes you just need to read a fast-paced, throwaway thriller, and this one fit the bill. Sure the plot is cheesy, convoluted and improbable, but it’s also edge-of-your-seat fun. I even had a little tear-up at the end. Call me a satisfied reader.

NO TIME FOR GOODBYE is out in paperback now.

Book Blogger Holiday Swap

Calling all book bloggers - come join the secret santa fun! Sign up is at the official book blogger holiday swap website and is open until November 12th.

Thanks to Daniel for designing the button!

Halloween Picture Books

Just a couple of my faves for this spooky day:

Ghosts in the House by Kazuno Kohara

Roaring Brook Press

A girl and her cat go to live in the house on the edge of town that turns out to be...haunted! But the girl doesn't mind, because she's actually a witch and she knows how to make ghosts useful. A clever story with really fun three tone illustrations.

Thirteen O'Clock by James Stimson

Chronicle Books

A different girl lives in a house where the clock strikes 13. And when it does, all sorts of strange creatures creep out the woodwork and head up the stairs to where the girl waits hidden... but it's the creatures who get the scare in this whimsically illustrated tale of a "perky prankster in pajamas".

Only a Witch Can Fly by Alison McGhee, illustrated by Taeeun Yoo

Feiwel & Friends

Yet another girl longs to fly, especially when the moon shines on her through her window. It's a inspiring tale of a girl who tries and tries, failing often, but never gives up on her dream. Written as a sestina, an old form of poetry from the 12th century, the rhythms seem strange at first, but draw you in slowly and firmly, the words entrancing you with their bold imagery.

Hope you are having a happy halloween! What are some of your favorite halloween themed picture books?

Book Review: Sometimes We're Always Real Same Same by Mattox Roesch

Alaska is one of the few states I’ve never visited, so everything I know about it is secondhand. Unalakleet, a remote Alaskan village, sounded like an intriguing place to “virtually” visit, and so I waded into this debut novel. As seen through the eyes of 17 year old LA gang banger Cesar, who accompanies his native Eskimo mother back to live with her family after her divorce from Cesar’s father, “Unk” is a desolate place, full of strangers (many related to him), fish, and not much else.

At first Cesar doesn’t plan to stay, but his fear of what his gang might do to him for ditching them and his fascination with manic-depressive cousin Go-Boy keep him around. Cesar often flashes back to his own buried secrets while confronting those of people in town and minimizes his own feelings of guilt by concluding that everyone in the world has done ugly things.

Cesar’s rationalizations are hard to swallow, and in my opinion, the novel went too easy on him. Perhaps his biggest punishment is his inability to form close relationships with girlfriends, but compared to the imprisonment, suicide attempts, and deaths of people close to him, it seems out of balance somehow.

Despite my overall lukewarm reception of the characters and plot, there were compelling scenes scattered throughout that showed great insight into modern Eskimo culture, my favorite being the funeral/wake at the bowling alley.

SOMETIMES WE’RE ALWAYS REAL SAME SAME is available in paperback. Find out more about it on the author's website.

Book Review: Lips Touch by Laini Taylor

I’ve just read three intoxicating stories about kisses with the power to change destinies.

The first, Goblin Fruit, was my favorite (quite possibly the best thing I read all year) and concerns Kizzy, an “urgent, unkissed, wishful girl” growing up somewhere slightly outside modern day suburbia with her large, odd family of gypsies. Although her grandmother has warned her about goblins – and never tasting fruit out of season – Kizzy is charmed by a gorgeous new boy, Jack Husk, bearing a picnic of likely unearthly delights.

The writing here is so masterly and melodic that I read whole passages aloud, savoring the way the words rolled off my tongue. Here’s a sample passage about the woman Kizzy might one day become:

She was the one who would some day know a dozen ways to wear a silk scarf, how to read the sky for rain and coax feral animals near, how to purr throaty love songs in Portuguese and Basque, how to lay a vampire to rest, how to light a cigar, how to light a man’s imagination on fire.

If she lived to womanhood. (p 24)

The whole story reminded me of a lyric from one of my favorite Tori Amos songs, Cooling:

And is your place in heaven worth giving up these kisses?

I know if I met Jack Husk, I’d have a hard time resisting him….

Story number two, Spicy Little Curses Such As These, is set in India in British colonial times and concerns a deal made between a demon in hell and the earth’s ambassador to hell, an elderly British woman named Estella. In exchange for the souls of 22 children, Estella consents to a curse being put on a newborn girl that if she should ever speak, the sound of her voice would kill all those who heard it.

This is also a love story that very cleverly weaves in the superstitions of the day, peppered with a bit of outsider doubt, to make a truly delectable reading experience.

The prologue to this one is such a sweet tease:

Kissing can ruin lives. Lips touch, sometimes teeth clash. New hunger is born with a throb and caution falls away. A cursed girl with lips still moist from her first kiss might feel suddenly wild, like a little monsoon. She might forget her curse just long enough to get careless and let it come true. She might kill everyone she loves.

She might, and she might not. (p 69)

Story number three, Hatchling, is the longest and the most involved, thanks to its complex mythology involving immortal beings without souls called Druj that long to take part in the human experience. It all starts with a 14 year old London girl named Esme:

Six days before Esme’s fourteenth birthday, her left eye turned from brown to blue. It happened in the night. She went to sleep with brown eyes, and when she woke at dawn to the howling of wolves, her left eye was blue. (p 145)

Esme’s mother Mab is terrified by the change and tries to escape with her daughter and little by little, we learn about the origins of Mab’s nightmares, why you should be wary of one eyed animals, and how a soulless being might possibly patch together a soul…

Hatchling is a more traditional fantasy story but still with a healthy dose of the lyrical language and fairy-tale character that make the first two stories so hauntingly, achingly beautiful.

And added treat is the artwork by Jim Di Bartolo that accompanies the stories.

LIPS TOUCH is out in hardcover now. Find out more about this recent National Book Award nominee on the author’s website.