April's comments (member since Apr 28, 2009)

April's comments from the Wild Things: YA Grown-Up group.

Cat. 2 Let It Snow Three Holiday Stories by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle

I have a book to push! (BTW Hi everyone, I miss you all I'm currently drowning in a sea of lesson plans and papers to grade) Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, I just finished it like two seconds ago and want to say if you put one book on your Christmas list or want to gift someone with a book, get them this one. It's well-written, has a male narrator, a fantasy/paranormal element, a great backstory, believable characters, and I could go on and on!

Hey, so I already posted this on TNBBC, but since there is a special YA prize pack, I figured I would post this here is well. Unfortunately, my contest is only open to US and Canada because of shipping.

I am currently holding a contest on my blog for two prize packs. There is a YA prize pack and an adult books prize pack. Basically you need to be a follower of my blog to enter which is easy, you just click the follow button LOL. Here is the link:http://readingisthespiceoflife.blogspot.com/2009/09/these-are-few-of-my-favorite-things.html
Here are the books I am giving away:

Martin The Warrior by Brian Jacques
The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
Castle In The Air by Diana Wynne Jones
Fade to Blue by Sean Beaudoin
Chalice by Robin McKinley
Wings by Aprillynne Pike
Strange Angels by Lilli St. Crow
Eyes Like Stars by Lisa Mantchev
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Benny & Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti
Bending Toward the Sun by Leslie Gilbert-Lurie
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Stand by Stephen King
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Awakening and Selected Stories by Kate Chopin

I really like Susan Juby! Alice, I Think was fantastic! Thanks for posting this I will definitely add it to my miles high TBR.

Hahaha, I sympathize with everyone who has a bursting shelf. I mean, I don't need anymore books, I have enough to last me a year or two, but I just can't help buying more despite the fact that my house may collapse with the weight of the books, LOL! :-D

Shannon, I just added that book to my TBR because of your posting the fabulous cover!

My boyfriend is zombie-obsessed. We've got World War Z, Patient Zero, and those other books I mentioned. We have a ridiculous amount of zombies movies.

It's nice having him around at least for that purpose LOL

I plan on reading the Forest of Hands and Teeth as well as PPZ and if I have time I have a compilation of zombie short stories - The Living Dead. I tried watching Dawn of the Dead last night but wimped out, it was too scary LOL. Maybe I'll try and watch some MST3k zombie movie and do highlights from it LOL. I also have to fit in two books that have nothing to do with zombies, thatI was sent for review, fun times.

Misty, are you participating in zombies week?

I'm currently read 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson. It's great so far. I'm playing the rest of the week by ear, but I hope to read some zombie related books since it's zombies week in the blogosphere.

I think I'm team Peeta. I think Katniss and Peeta do compliment each other. I see Peeta as being perhaps more open and sensitive than Katniss, whereas Katniss is the strong, guarded one. But at the same time, I don't know if I can judge that because we didn't get enough of Gale.

Can I also say I'm really impressed with the dicussions this month, comparing it with other groups' group read discussions it's very lively and active and utterly fascinating.

Fiona wrote: "Jewish people do not eat pork do they? They see it as an unclean animal. I think choosing to portray them as pigs is quite a loaded decision - rather then because they were familiar cartoon charact..."

I didn't even think of the pork thing, how insightful, Fiona.

I just want to interject on the Poles as pig topic - many of the Poles (not all) were very into giving up the Jews to the Germans. They saw the Jews as being others, especially the Orthodox Jews, because as you know, they dressed and looked differently so they could tell if someone was Orthodox (much like Hassidic Jews). Many were jealous of the economic success of the community Jews, today we know they were successful because they were educated, but many rural Polish did not realize that. I think many people have this vision of the Holocaust being over as soon as the concentration camps were liberated. This was not so, many Polish Jews returned to their homes to find them occupied by Polish Aryan families, families who did not want to leave their new homes and were prepared to kill in order to keep their home.
Also, not only do we have Aushwitz in Poland, but there were also the ghettos such as Warsaw and Lodz,which if you've seen The Pianist, you'll "know" or at least have a feel for how bad they were. Auschwitz certainly was not the only concentration camp in Poland, there was also Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek, Belzec,Plaszow.
Perhaps Speiglman felt the complacency of the Poles towards the Holocaust warranted their depiction as pigs, since it's not like the Holocaust was a secret, people definately knew. Also, please don't think I'm pulling this from my ass my source is A History of the Holocaust by Yehuda Bauer, we had to read it for my History of the Holocaust class.

Or perhaps he portrayed the Polish as pigs to represent the Nazi ideology of all non-Germans being subhuman swine.

I want it. May have to order this after a few paychecks!

Becky wrote: "And if loving Harry Potter means I worship the Devil, then hand me a pitchfork and some SPF 5000.

*really bows back out* :D ♥♥ "

HAHAHA, me too girl, me too!

Wow. Just wow. To say South America deserved annihalation at the hands of the conquistadors is fairly harsh. FYI there were many contributions from the Latin Americas. The Incas revolutionized terrace farming and also had an excellent infrastructure as well as organizing things in tens thus having an efficient beauocracy. Sites such as Machu Picchu, perched in a saddle 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) high between two Andean peaks, gives an idea of what Inca urban planning must have been.The Mayans had the concept of zero and their own special calender.

Also how are the Mayan/Aztec/Incan human sacrifices any different from the Romans who sacrificed Christians to the lions, or the Salem Witch burnings?

I understand the point about human violence towards other humans being terrible, but it's not just the South Americans.

Also, on the whole land thing, how would you like it if somebody knocked on your door carrying a gun, said get out, and claimed your house for themselves? I think it's a myth to see those lands as unpopulated. Prior to the age of exploration, millions upon millions of Native people were living in North and South America, to see it as empty land for the taking is to propgate a falsity.

Sorry, maybe my blood level is up because I've been sitting in history teacher seminar all day. That being said I would be interested in possibly doing a multicultural reading of The Thirteenth Child, just to compare it with my knowledge of history which is pretty extensive LOL. Again, just making some points with the knowledge that I do I have, I may have a little more expertise than some because I've spent four and a half years studying to be a history teacher. LOL, please please excuse my curmidgeonish-ness.

Not to mention she named it Columbia after Columbus tried to subjugate the Arawak tribe, and murder those who made bad slaves, which can be seen as a bit insensitive. I found this quote online which is far more eloquent, and educated-sounding than I am, "In a Northeastern Indian magazine, writer John Mohawk wrote, “The obvious fiction of a ‘discovery’ of lands occupied by millions of people for tens of thousands of years underscores the ethnocentrism evident in most historical accounts” (qtd. in Yewell 15). This rise to defy Columbus shows the bitterness still left in the mouths of the forgotten peoples of the Americas."
"To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to deemphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves -- unwittingly -- to justify what was done."

and this one
"My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all) -- that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth. We have learned to given them exactly the same proportion of attention that teachers and writers often given them in the most respectable of classrooms and textbooks. This learned sense of moral proportion, coming from the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is accepted more easily than when it comes from politicians at press conferences. It is therefore more deadly." -My personal hero, Howard Zinn

Please don't take this as being confrontational, I just wanted to contribute to the discussion.

Becky wrote: "I don't go to that detail when I review! I start typing and whatever comes out is what my review says. LOL "

I'm jealous of your articulation. I feel like I can't write good reviews unless I plan them. By the way, I love all of your reviews, they are always so intelligent and well-worded and you really get your feelings and views across.

It only changes my reading experience in that I feel pressured to read the book faster. I don't feel that reviewing a book is going to change how I feel about the book.

Honestly, I do somewhat rate as a read, but I don't write reviews as soon as I finish a book. Typically when I finish a book, I jot down a few thoughts on paper, and then go shower (epiphanies happen in the shower LOL), and think about what I want to say in my review. I then outline the review, and then go and type it out.

Knowing I will be reviewing a book absolutely does not affect which books I pick up. I will pick up books I've heard are good, books which catch my eye, and books which have been pushed on me ( YOU KNOW WHO YOU ALL ARE!!)

I only rate books on goodreads, and that is mainly for others, so you know, hey this book is worth reading, or this book sucks. If I see a book on GR without stars, I just assume it's terrible.

I don't rate books on my blog. I started a blog, first because I thought Kristin's was awesome (shoutout to BookWormingInThe21stCentury), second of all, because I wanted a place that was my very own to review books, and do other bookish things, (don't be sad, I am still in LOVE with GR), and third, to network with other people out there. I'm trying to improve my reviews, if you go back and check them out from the beginning of the year, they were just a sentance, with no qualifiers. Now, I am trying to write about how a book made me feel, why I loved, liked, or hated a book, what the book was about, how I connected with the book, and touch on what the book was about. I think it's a work in progress and in time, I'll fit better in the role of a reviewer.

Elizabeth wrote: "Sweet! And I'm LOVING North and South, it's actually painful to not be reading it right now."

Yayy! Isn't Thornton just a babe/hunk/whatever it is the youth say these days?