Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 42

Announcing the 9th Annual Tolkien Blog Party

Good morning, lovely friends!  Can you believe it's time to start gearing up for the NINTH Tolkien Blog Party?  Oh my goodness, that number is just so exciting!  Nine is an important number in The Lord of the Rings, after all, what with the nine companions making up the Fellowship and so on.

Tolkien Week this year is September 19-25, so that's when I'll be holding my party.  For a whole week, we will celebrate all things Tolkien together!

Like last year, there will be many, many options for you to...

"These War-Torn Hands" by Emily Hayse

In some ways, I loved this book.  The sweeping visuals of vast open spaces and untamed horizons were glorious.  I loved one character and became exceedingly fond of several others.  The whole idea of retelling the King Arthur legends as fantasy-westerns is very, very compelling to me.  I loved the wild west vibes, and the addition of some magical elements was really nifty, but not overpowering.
My favorite character -- and this will not surprise anyone once I explain what he's like -- was Jack Se...

"Plain Jayne" by Hillary Manton Lodge

I have never really read much "Amish fiction," though I remember when it was the hottest thing in Christian fiction.  But Hillary Manton Lodge has become an auto-buy author for me, and that means not only that I will buy her next book whenever it drops, but that I want to read her earlier works too, like Plain Jayne and its follow-up, Simply Sara.  I was able to find copies of both of them recently, which made me so happy.

Jayne Tate is a motorcycle-riding, alt-rock-listening, story-chasing journ...

"I'm Your Huckleberry" by Val Kilmer

I picked this book up at the bookstore on an absolute whim.  I didn't even know he'd written a book! But it's not shocking that it would catch my eye, since Val Kilmer has long been one of my favorite actors.  I've always thought of him as off-kilter, extremely intelligent, and funny, so I figured his book might be similar.

I was totally right.  This doesn't feel like a memoir so much as spending a couple of days listening to Kilmer reminisce about his family, his career, and his love life.  Happ...

"Christy" by Catherine Marshall

I'd read this once before, back in the mid-'90s when the TV series based on this book first aired.  Which is why I have a TV-tie-in cover, of course.  It was such a BIG deal when that show aired, to the people where I lived right then!  You see, I lived in western North Carolina, only a couple of hours from the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee where this book is set, and where the series was partially filmed.  And if you think that Appalachian mountainfolk weren't simultaneously excited for a big TV...

"A Very Bookish 4th of July" by Kelsey Bryant, Abigayle Claire, Sarah Holman, and Rebekah A. Morris

I enjoyed A Very Bookish Thanksgiving  so much that I eagerly bought this next installment in this series of limited-edition anthologies.  It's a little unusual to find stories that revolve around America's Independence Day, so this was a unique delight in that respect.  Each of the four novellas in this collection tell an original story that takes place on or around July 4, but which also involve some classic book as well.  

Rose of Nowhere by Abigayle Claire was my favorite, but I did like all f...

"The Storm in the Barn" by Matt Phelan

I absolutely love Matt Phelan's graphic novel Snow White , so when I spotted The Storm in the Barn at the used book store, I had to have it.  And it did not disappoint.

The story centers around a boy named Jack growing up during the Dust Bowl in Kansas, 1937.  It's been years since any rain fell on the Great Plains, and his whole life seems to be covered in dust.  The faces on these pages are hopeless, desperate, and lost.  Well, most of them.  Jack has a sister who suffers from "dust pneumonia" b...

"Wait Until Tomorrow" by Jenni Sauer

The Steadfast Tin Soldier and Rapunzel are two of my favorite fairy tales.  So a novella by Jenni Sauer that melds the two, set in the same universe as Rook di Goo  and Yesterday or Long Ago ?  Totally my jam.

Rue is what would have been called a "taxi dancer" a hundred years ago, here on earth.  She works at a disreputable dance hall, paid to dance with the men who frequent it.  Rue is an orphan, alone in the big city, exactly the sort of helpless young woman that others prey on.  She doesn't like...

"Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad

Well, that was weird.
At least now I know where the line "Mistah Kurtz, he dead" from the beginning of "The Hollow Men" by T. S. Eliot comes from, though.  That was literally the most interesting part of the book, for me -- I hit that line and went, "Wait!  I know that!  So this is what that's from!"  That's one of my favorite poems, so it was a really fun moment for me.  I think the title of it might be a reference to this book too, actually, coming from the second quotation below.  Nifty.
So, re...

"Pride" by Ibi Zoboi

I've been intrigued by this book ever since it released.  I really enjoy retellings of classic stories, as you know, especially ones that set a familiar story in a very different time and/or place.  And a present-day Brooklyn hood is definitely different from Regency England!  Outwardly, anyway.  But as Zoboi shows throughout this YA novel, the core values of family, love, and learning to be self-aware are not different now from Jane Austen's day.

Zuri Benitez can't stand the new rich boys who ju...