Phoebe North's Blog, page 17
July 12, 2011
July 9, 2011
Going to Happiness
I used to agree with John Darnielle that relocation, that oft-touted prescription for general life malaise, wasn't nearly as transformative as most young people believed. Like a turtle, we carry ourselves with us, I thought, whether we live in New Jersey or Florida or Spain or Mars. Move to a new place, find a new group of people, find yourself with the same problems over and over again–because you're still the same person.
That was before we moved to Virginia.
I have to say that the DC-metro a...
July 7, 2011
Review: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
Recommended.
I'll be reviewing Patrick Ness's A Monster Calls in greater depth for Strange Horizons a bit closer to its publication date, but I wanted to collect a few thoughts here.
Conor's mother has cancer. His dad is busy overseas tending to his new family. That leaves just Conor, his mum, and the yew tree in the backyard. And then Conor's mom's health takes a turn for the worse, his grandmother comes to visit, and a monster comes to call.
This is a very...
July 2, 2011
Review: Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma
Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma
Recommended.
Sinister.
That's the first word I'd use to describe Nova Ren Suma's young adult debut Imaginary Girls. It's the story of two sisters who live in a weedy backwoods area of New York State. One sister, our narrator Chloe, is considered the quieter shadow of big sis Ruby—a girl who somehow manages to bewitch an entire town into doing whatever she wants, no matter how sinister.
But it's a slow-growing power, made all-the-more creepy by Chloe's obsessive, ...
June 25, 2011
Review: The Girl Who Became a Beatle by Greg Taylor
The Girl Who Became a Beatle by Greg Taylor
This was a very silly book.
I was excited to request The Girl Who Became a Beatle when it came up on swap because it's the first YA novel I've encountered that's dealt with the Fab Four. As a preteen, I was absolutely obsessed with the Beatles—we're talking, plastered-my-room-with-drawings-of-them, purchased-shelves-full-of-books-about-them, had-a-shoebox-full-of-newspaper-clippings, wore-out-my-tape-of-Backbeat obsessed. To this day, I still know a r...
June 23, 2011
Writing Between Worlds: On the Differences Between Litfic and YA
Hi, this is me, taking a moment out of my busy day packing to comment on the latest controversy in the young adult community.
Grady Hendrix and Katie Crouch have done something unique even in the world of blogging in this slate.com article, which is to disparage the worlds of commercial and literary writing in one breath. I doubt this was their intention, but take a look at this paragraph:
Katie, having come out of an M.F.A. background where the rule was that good writing requires rumination...
June 21, 2011
Review: The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab
The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab
Recommended
The Near Witch surprised me. I'm not quite sure what I was expecting—perhaps more light young adult paranormal, with maybe a slight nod to its folk-lore roots but without much depth beyond the love story. This seems typical of a lot of YA—it may promise highly literary content, but the pretty covers often obscure little more than typical romance retreads. But instead, author Victoria Schwab delivers a deep, thorny fairy tale about the cloistered...
June 20, 2011
Fiction! Free (as in beer)! And other stuff!
Hi guys! Remember how I said I'd be busy?
Well, dang, have I been busy.
Both my move and my revisions are well-and-good underway. I'll be out of the old place by Saturday, into the new the week after, and will be staying with my mom for a few days in the interim. I'm hoping to get a review posted tomorrow (of The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab; spoilers: I loved it!), but my apologies if I'm scarce with the blogging-thing over the next few days.
To make it up to you, I'm going to give you some...
June 15, 2011
Game of Thrones and the Art of Infodrinking
So Game of Thrones is pretty awesome.
I'll admit that, despite my fondness for mead and Renaissance Festivals, I'm not usually much of a fan of high fantasy. I'm a bit of an impatient reader, and nowhere do writers lose me quicker than during heavy-handed, action-stopping world building scenes, which abound in most sword-and-sorcery novels. Often these infodumps occur as our brawny hero marches over the pastoral wilderness (which has already been explained to us through end paper maps)...
June 13, 2011
Review: Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
It was a handful of years ago now that I went away to Florida for graduate school. I was going to study poetry, though I already fancied myself a bit of a poet. What I hoped to learn most of all—and I'm not sure I ever articulated this to my peers there, though maybe I did, on some night obliterated by cheap beer and sweat—was control. Being a "master" of an art, I thought, is to tame that art—to control it fully, to have words at your command, to know when to rein t...
