
Simon, Baz, Penelope, Agatha and Shepard. Let’s see how this all ends.
It’s that time of the year.where we all take a moment and look back at all the books that we read this year and try to narrow it down to our favorites. I read 42 books this year which is actually less then normal but that’s okay. It’s quality over quantity right? How do you pick a favorite? Do you go by the book that you just coulnd’t put down? The one you wanted to reread as soon as you finished? The one that gave you the most feels good or bad? All of the above? It’s really hard to choose but I will do my best.
The list is in the order I read them this year as I’m chickening out in saying which one if my favorite favorite. It was too hard to choose.
What were your favorite books of 2019? Comment down below and let us know what books we need to add to our stacks.
The last couple of days I’ve been home sick with a bad cold and while that sucks it has given me time to think about what books I’ve read would make good movies or TV shows. Why I was thinking this I don’t know. I guess I was looking through all the options you can watch TV and movies now. Netflix, Hulu AppleTV, DisneyPlus, traditional cable, etc. It seems like there is an endless number of places that need contact to fill so why not give a few suggestions.
So there are few books I think need to get the big or small treatment. What do you all think> What book or book series do you want seen into a movie or TV show?
So what happens after the hero vanquishes the villain and wins the heart of the fair maiden? They live happily ever after right? Well do they really? Anyone who has ever seen the Musical Into the Woods knows that yea, fairy tales don’t always live happily ever after. A better comparison might be the Play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, that doesn’t exactly portrays Harry in the best light. I mean seriously, no Harry kinda grows up to be a dick but I digress. Simon Snow didn’t really believe he would survive the HumDrum but he did and to so he gave up his powers and has wings and a tail. He moved into a flat with Baz and Penelope and went to college. Baz and Simon are together and Penelope is still her best friend. Agatha is off living the good life in California. Everything should be good. They won! So, why is everyone unhappy. Penelope’s solution is a road trip. She thinks that Agatha is in trouble and what better way to get everyone out of their funk then go on a mission to save her and drive across the Great US of A. The problem is they have no idea how big the US really is or how things work here. It seems the US is kinda like the wild west of the Magical world. Anything goes and no real formal organization. Our heroes found themselves in so funny situations thanks to cultural clashes and well underestimating how weird the US really is. One of the funniest scenes is when they stumbled on a Ren Faire in Omaha and our flabbergasted to see people dressed up in Medieval garb as it’s regular wear. I guess they don’t have Renaissance faire’s in Britain? Along the way, they meet my new favorite character, Shepherd who is just too nice and too curious for his own good. I love him and I can’t wait to read more of them. In a way Penelope is right, they needed this road trip. Baz discovered that there is more to being a vampire then he knew. Simon still had fight left in him. Penelope is still a clever but maybe not as clever as she thinks and needs to learn to trust others and Agatha was in trouble but she also was the damsel in distress this time. She ultimately found a way out and helped save them all. When I started it, I didn’t realize that there was going to be another book. Rainbow Rowell doesn’t right series. This is actually her first sequel but when the book ended on a pretty big cliffhanger, I screamed there better be another one! Thank goodness their is. I can’t wait to read what happens next. This series is just too much fun to let go.
Hello and welcome to October! I talked Beth into a read along of sorts for this month. It is the most wonderful time of the year! It’s Autumn! Halloween approaches! Break out your books with wizards and vampires in them because this month I’m reading Carry On and Beth is reading the sequel Wayward Son both by Rainbow Rowell!
No surprise that most of the content that people object to have to do with sex and LGBT lifestyles. Violence and offensive language is also a big one but nothing seems to get people uptight then their poor innocent children reading about having sex or Gay people. THE HORROR! So who are challenging. THe ALA has another infograph to help us out.
And what are the most challenged books of 2016?
Out of 323 challenges recorded by the Office for Intellectual Freedom
Let’s not forget that books like Harry Potter, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and Where’s Waldo? have all been on this list before. So go read a banned book. Don’t let ideas go to waste.
In July, one of favorite authors, Rainbow Rowell announced her next project would be writing a new series of Marvel’s Runaways, we were intrigued. True I was hoping she would be releasing a new novel. It’s been over a year since Carry On came out. I wasn’t all that familiar with Runaways. I knew of them from all the years shelving graphic novels while working at Barnes and Noble but never really paid much attention. Well, the Runaways are having a moment. Not only are they being revived by Rowell but next year Hulu is premiering a TV show based on them. I’m a big fan of Rowell’s. I enjoy her writing so for the first time I’m going to read issue by issue instead of waiting for Trades to come out because let’s be honest, even with a star writer and an only cult following there is no guarantee that they will come out in trade. I didn’t even know you could pre-order comic books like you can book books! It’s a whole new world for me people. I’ve decided that even though Rowell’s Runaways is a reboot so I don’t need to be a fan to runaway, I would go ahead and read the previous stories. So far, I’ve made it through the original series by Brian K. Vaughn and artist Adrian Alphona (2003-2004) and they are delightful. I can see why so many people latched on to them. It follows a group of teenagers with seemingly nothing in common except for once a year they are forced together as their parents get together to catch up and fund raise for charities. Alex, Nico, Karolina, Gert, Chase and Molly discover that their parents are not who they think they are. They are in fact super-villains and they call themselves the Pride. They runaway as they try to figure out what to do next. They also discover that some of them have powers of their own. Molly is mutant with super strength. Karolina is actually from another planet and has the ability to fly and glow. Nico is a kind of a sorceress who can cast spells. Gert has a psychic connection to a dinosaur. That’s right a dinosaur! Being a teenager is hard enough but being a teenager on the run from your evil parents while trying to figure out how to use your powers is down right stressful! It’s a full cast of diverse characters with different backgrounds and different personalities. I’m quite enjoying them. Now on to the next series.
Our Mom is visiting me in Brooklyn this weekend. When she comes I always look for things that we haven’t done before so when I finally realized that BookCon was going to be at the Javits Center while she was going to be here we decided to go. Both of our parents inspired our love for reading. Mom has already 81 books in 2017. Putting my 25 books to shame. She’s never been to anything like this before and my only convention experience was at BookRiot Live. Which was tiny compared to this. The Javits Center is huge. Not surprising since this is also the home to New York Comic Con. We decided first to explore the vendors as we got our bearings. Pretty much every major publisher was there with a mini store and most a signing area. Now there were signing areas that you had to sign up for ahead of time and then smaller ones that you had to line up for. It was kind of confusing what was what. Also, we seemed to always miss all the free giveaways the publishers were handing out but that’s ok. I’ll live. After we had a quick bite to eat we headed to hear Rainbow Rowell talk. I’ve read all of her books but Mom hasn’t. Before the talk began, Mom asked if any of her books would make her cry and I was like yes but I’ll lend her Attachments because of all Rainbow’s books that seems to have the less tears. I think. She was just a delightful as I imagined her to be but the one comment that stuck me was talking about Eleanor and Park and sad it is that having a fat female protagonist was somehow revolutionary. We all know someone who is overweight. We have seen them in relationships, married and have kids so why wouldn’t they have their own love stories? After Rainbow, we went back to the vendor floor. We each bought a few books, tote bags and shirts before heading down to hear Jeffery Tambor. The Arrested Development star has a new memoir coming out and after seeing him I want to read it. He was funny, smart and completely honest. We then went to our final panel of the day with Maggie Stiefvater, Kami Garcia, Laini Taylor and Marissa Meyer about Magic and World Building moderated by Daniel Jose Older. I adore all these authors books (Mr. Older’s book are on my to read list) so it was interesting to hear how they all go about crafting their stories. The most interesting part was talking about you are always building a world no matter if you are making a world from scratch or drawing from the real world. I’ve never thought of that. Maggie said that authors talk about how if they were to assign each of them to write about this room they would all write it differently because they are writing from their perspective their view and how that is reality but not completely real. It was an interesting talk. It was then that we decided to leave as it was a full day of books and fun. I’m glad we did it because it was something new and different. My one complaint was that it would have been better if they had clearer signage of where things were because it was kind of hard to figure out where things were. We had to wander around to find things. Either then that it was a fun day.
This year it was hard to narrow it down to just 10 books as there were so many books I really loved this year. So to narrow it down, I had to ask myself which ones was I still thinking about even after I started reading the next book? Those are ones I choose for the list. (These are really in no particular order
There was two books that I enjoyed so much that I read the other books in the that were out in the series this year too. So I thought they would get their own category.