Taven Moore's Blog, page 52

2012 Reading List (as of August)

Following up on my April Post

 May

Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George

A retelling of the 12 Dancing Princesses fairy tale, I couldn’t NOT pick this up. The story starts out strong and takes a rather long route to its final conclusion. My favorite aspect of the book was the historically-accurate portrayal of male soldiers as knitters and the supplemental information about how it was thought to be too manly of a pasttime for women to enjoy.

Paranormalcy by Kiersten White

A fantastic adventure with an immediately likeable main character (how do you NOT love someone who names their bright pink taser “Tasey”?). A very interesting premise, and I adored the romance with the water boy. (KISSING BOOK) A very strong start to a series, even if I didn’t really like the elf-stuff. (I don’t think I was supposed to like the elf-stuff, so that’s not entirely a negative)

The Search for Wond-La by Tony DiTerlizzi

Half sci-fi and half fantasy, this GORGEOUSLY illustrated book is aimed at the younger set. Without the illustrations, I think it would have been a confusing mess, but WITH the illustrations, it was fascinating and fun. I enjoyed this for the art (did I mention the art?) and the fantastic creatures and people she met moreso than the actual story, which felt much more sci-fi than my normal fare.

June

The Magic Thief by Sarah Prineas

I liked this one so much that I immediately followed it up with both of the other books in the series.

That … that says a lot, since I’m not normally so avid. This is a younger young adult novel (no kissing) but the story and characters were so wonderful that I didn’t care that the book was aimed at 10-year-old boys. *grin* The main character’s voice is so … so real, and so compelling that I never got bored. Three books, each a FAST fast read. Really enjoyed these.

Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

Book 2 of the Dresden Files (book 1 is Storm Front). Most people already know what that means, but for those that don’t, the Dresden Files are an urban fantasy series that’s been around almost as long as Urban Fantasy has.  Harry Dresden (wizard) tries to keep balance between the “real” world and the “really real magical” world, often to his own detriment. This one’s got multiple kinds of werewolves and magic and Bob the talking skull and I think the series is still trying to find it’s footing at this point. Even so, it was a fun read that I didn’t want to put down till the end.

July

Academ’s Fury by Jim Butcher

Book 2 of the Codex Alera series (book 1 is The Furies of Calderon). I loved the first one and I loved the second one, and if I could find the whole kit and caboodle for a decent price, I’d probably just buy the whole series and be done with it, because there’s no way I’m not going to love this one through to the end. High Fantasy that actually makes me CARE about the political machinations going on (I am notoriously allergic to political storylines) this series has fascinating characters and exciting action and I cannot wait to find out what happens next.

Playing for Keeps by Mur Lafferty

I adored the premise of this book AND the first quarter to half of the book. After that, things get a little out of hand, but the BEGINNING of this book is just stellar. Keepsie lives in a city with real, spandex-clad superheroes and supervillains doing battle overhead … and making her late for work. She has a power too, but it has been deemed “too useless” and she was sent on her way.

Suddenly, Keepsie’s power becomes the most important thing in the world as both the heroes and villains need her desperately as the line between good and evil blurs beyond recognition.

August

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

This book was amazing, hilarious, and I recommend it for almost everyone (so long as you don’t mind swearing). Honestly? I don’t know how to describe this without ruining some of the fun of reading it. Try it. Really. The author runs a website called TheBloggess.com and if you have any doubts, check there first for a taste of her humor.

The book is even better than the website.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

This book is a very recent fantasy, and is getting a lot of well-deserved praise. This is the story of a girl and a boy, both apprentices to true magic … but their masters have chosen them for a deadly game in which they are the pawns and there can be only one winner. Unluckily for their masters, the boy and girl fall in love, and that’s when things get interesting.

The prose in this book is smart and gorgeous, and it’s fun to read just because it paints such beautiful word-pictures.

Unfortunately, the result of this elevated prose is that the characters themselves are seen at arm’s-length, a distance that kept me from falling in love with them even though I desperately wanted to. In no way is this a negative on the book, mind you. I know the difference between “poorly written” and “I prefer my chocolate to have sea salt in it instead of mint.”

The girl who circumnavigated Fairyland in a ship of her own making by Catherynne M Valente

I did not finish this book, but it wasn’t the book’s fault. The first chapter was cleverly written, interesting, strange, and all the things a first chapter should be. It reads somewhat like a fairytale and would be gorgeous fun to pass a book around and read aloud with friends.

Honestly, with a title like that, it almost doesn’t need pages in order to be a good book. *wink*

However, I had a rather lengthy stack of library books peeping mournfully for attention from my shelf, and although the first chapter was good, it was the sort of good that comes from clever prose and I wasn’t quite in the mood for that.

I have heard many, many people praise this book, including a random passer-by at work when it was out on my desk. I intend to come back to this book someday.

The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden by  Catherynne M Valente

Same author as above, but honestly, it was a total accident. I got the titles as recommendations from two different sites and never even checked the author names. /blush

I am LOVING In the Night Garden.

I’ll likely have finished it by the time this post goes live, but the subtle interweaving of tales within tales within tales is maddening … and then infinitely fascinating as the stories tangle into a bolt of cloth more beautiful than any individual tale could have been.

Many, many reviewers have said you need to give this book time — don’t give up on it in the beginning. Personally, I wasn’t even remotely tempted to stop reading. (Then again, I’m a horse lover, so the early stories sang to my heart).

Written entirely in fairy-tale style, each story still manages to have its own voice and its own narrative style. The stars-who-are-wolves, the great mare and the little fox, the gosling and the firebird, the vengeance of the snake star, the sorrow of the little red raft, the four-then-three dog-headed monks – I love them all. Even if most of the stories contain more sorrow than joy, which is incredibly unlike me.

The end of the book still leaves a few dangling story threads … and I see that there’s another book in the series, In The Cities of Coin and Spice. I might have to pick that one up and see if those lost stories are woven into a larger cloth.

Related posts:

2012 Reading List (as of April)
Reading, For Writers
Writing Status, July 2012

Reading, For Writers

Half Price Books

I grew up reading books that had been well-loved long before they reached my hands.

Stained books with dog-eared pages and cracked spines cost an awful lot less than crisp, modern books. The stories inside didn’t care what the pages looked like. They were magical even in duct-taped bindings.

Ask me my favorite authors and the authors that influenced me the most and I can give you a list that goes on forever … and which includes very, very few contemporary authors.

Half Price Books fostered my love of stories, but I’m going to have to put in a bit more effort in order to be a successful writer.

Writing

As a writer, you should (at least in theory) love the genre you’re writing in.

I can profess my undying adoration for high fantasy all I want, but if I’ve never read or Mistborn, I’m swimming in the wrong pool. If I want to write for today’s fantasy fans, I should probably know the books they’re reading. I may not be required to LOVE those authors … but if I can’t even enjoy them, then I probably don’t need to dip my toes in today’s Epic Fantasy genre.

Same goes for any genre or subgenre, really.

Urban Fantasy writers out there who’ve never read Andrews or Butcher might as well be writing with one hand tied behind their back.

YA Fantasy? Ever read Graceling or Divergent or Kagawa?

(Not sure which of the words I mention above are titles and which are authors? This is also a problem.)

Hard to Find

It’s a strange sort of effort that I’m learning. In the past, I’ve simply allowed books to happen to me. I rarely sought one out. Why buy a pedigreed pet when the shelter is full of lovely, amazing animals in need of a home?

The answer is simple: if I want to write a Best in Show winner, I need to study pedigrees.

I’ve used a few tools to hunt down great books written in the past year or two. Not just because it’s good writing sense … but also because I really and truly love reading these kinds of stories. Why not find try the things people are raving about?

Goodreads Choice Awards are a GREAT resource. They show the fan-favorite winners in many different genres, and I plan on familiarizing myself with as many as sound interesting to me from all the fantasy genres I enjoy.

The Book Smugglers is another fantastic site, focusing mainly on fantasy and sci-fi. They do in-depth reviews and rate books. I’ve scrolled through their recent review lists and added more than a few to my library lists.

Related posts:

An Open Discussion on Reading
2012 Reading List (as of April)
Writers Owing Readers : A Comment

[Perry] Judging a Book by its Cover

Guest Post by The Great and Powerful Perry.

—-

I judge books by their covers all the time.

Every time I’m looking for something new to read in a bookstore, I’ll be looking for either recognizable authors, books that have been recommended to me, or the cover art.

Recognizable authors come first. If a given author has already taken me on a wonderful journey, I’ll be more inclined to give them a blank check to try and repeat the experience. For them, their foot is already in the door to my mind and all they have to do is follow-up on the good impression they’ve already made.

By the same logic, if a friend recommends a book for me and I’ve enjoyed their selections before, I’m more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt.

For the rest of books out there, the cover art’s got to draw me. Not necessarily sell me, but draw me.

If I see a book with a fantastic cover and find out it’s a story about Peter the petulant possum pondering the philosophical philosophies of pineapples, I’m probably going to put that book back on the shelf and back away slowly. On the other hand, if the cover’s great and what little I see of the novel seems interesting enough, I’m pretty much sold.

 Take this image, for example:

This is the cover for Ashes of Candesce, by Karl Shroeder. I saw it in the bookstore and it immediately drew my attention. I was intrigued! Large open space, big sweeping staircases and trees! It struck me as a very elegant image and I wanted to know more about it. I wanted to meet the women languishing by the railing and find out what her story was. What little I found out about it only served to raise my level of interest to the point that I found the rest of the series.

All of that impulse decision-making (curse you impulse!) was made on the strength of the cover art.

If the cover had been a plain black field with just the title and the author, I likely would have passed right by it without a second thought and moved on with my life.

Book covers are important tools as they’re usually the first thing a reader sees. They serve to make that vital first impression on the behalf of the story within and it can be damned hard to draw in a reader with a cover that has no visual hook.

That’s not to say that cover art needs to be elegant and have a minimalist feel to it in order to be effective.

In this wonderful example, we have the cover to Split Infinity by Piers Anthony and indicative of the typical fantasy art at the time (the 80′s), it looks a little ridiculous.

But it’s an intriguing kind of ridiculous, isn’t it?

I mean, when I first met this book, I didn’t know that I wanted to read a story about a half naked man in a hat fencing a black unicorn with two white socks…but once I saw the picture, I was sold. I wanted to know more about this duel and the novel didn’t disappoint me.

Both of these covers follow two very different styles but they both accomplish the job of drawing the eye and getting a potential reader interested enough to at least pick up the book and take a look at it. After that, it’s up to the story to start carrying its own weight.

I kind of see the bookstore now the way I used to see toy stores when I was a little kid. It’s a complete sensory overload. It would have taken me years to play with every single toy in the store so my little brain was forced to compartmentalize, for its own sanity if nothing else.

In the same way, when I visit a bookstore, there’re far too many books for me to wrap my mind around so I don’t even try. I stick to known authors, recommended books, and anything past that needs to jump out from the shelf and grab my interest on its own.

All covers aren’t drawn the same, though.

I’ve found that what attracts me are covers that are fairly clean, with a clear and definable image.

I’m not really drawn to covers with little to nothing on them and in the same fashion, I can’t stand covers that look too busy either.

Looking through the Sci-Fi/Fantasy shelves, I see a lot of cover art featuring huge expansive battles with spell-casting wizards on the left, leprechauns stabbing pixies on the right with a huge aerial dogfight between Imperial Star Destroyers and dragons overhead.

That just strikes me as far too much.

Show me something simple that’ll hook me; give me something clean!

So what kind of covers will convince you to pick up a book?

Related posts:

[Perry] Perry’s Review of The Unremembered
Writing Book Giveaway : Save the Cat!
The Graveyard Book

And The Winner Is …

*drumroll please*

KristenSue!

Thank you to Random.org for your assistance in choosing the winner. The kindle shall be shipped out asahp.

Related posts:

Kindle Giveaway!
Happy Herbivore Cookbook Winner Announcement
Blog Housekeeping

Blog Housekeeping

Perry Wednesdays

Despite *airquote* not being a blogger *end airquote* Perry has managed to rack up quite a few scheduled posts*, so I finally hornswaggled lied cheated gently suggested that he pick up a day of the week.

I typically post on Mondays and Thursdays, and from this week until he actually starts believing me and sets up his own author blog, we’ll be posting Perry Wednesdays.

Yay!

I’m very excited. I LOVE Perry’s writing, and I think he has a lot of really wonderful things to discuss about books (both reading AND writing).

* Granted, this means you guys have read like … one Perry post and I’ve read like seven, but trust me. They’re great.

Kindle Giveaway

The kindle is still up for grabs! Giveaway closes TONIGHT. See the rules here.

I will be contacting the winner tomorrow!

Related posts:

Kindle Giveaway!
Blog Preference Request
2009 Best of the Blog

A New Place For Art

Mooooooving

I’ve been running into space issues on my webserver. To combat this, I’m moving my art from my blog to Flickr.

On the upside, this should give me the first good art gallery that I’ve had since I left DeviantArt. Also, it’s a lot easier to page through the pictures than going through my old blog posts.

I’ll still blog about updates here, but the posts will contain links out to the flickr account rather than holding the art itself.

Clicky, Clicky

The Link >> TavenMoore on Flickr

Related posts:

Free Children’s Book!*
Twitter Poll

Art: Badger’s Imagination

The lovely Marianne (and her [manlier word than 'lovely'] husband) commissioned a companion to the baby badger reading a book (probably about bananas and bears) piece that I did for their baby.

The commission requirements included a slightly-older badger pretending that a cardboard tube was a sword and a book was a shield.

I couldn’t help but add the imagined dragon, as well.

From finished piece to (really pathetic scan of) the initial, approved sketch.

Related posts:

Hipposketches
Art For the Wee Ones

Kindle Giveaway!

Kindle kindle kindle kindle!

That’s right!

I have, in my hot little hands, a brand-new kindle keyboard (not 3G, does have ads).

I came by it honestly. However, as I already have a kindle touch that I adore, I have no need for it.

Entries!

As I noted in my previous post, the ONLY people eligible to win this FREE AMAZON KINDLE are those who have commented on my blog BEFORE TODAY.

Commenting on this post does not count, sorry. It’s not a punishment for new readers, but rather a reward for existing ones. =]

If you want to be entered into this contest, you MUST COMMENT ON THIS POST. Do not comment on facebook or G+ or elsewhere … only comments directly on this post will count.

Doesn’t matter what the comment’s contents are, but if you’d like to tell me, I’d love to hear why you want a kindle! What will you use it for?

A Few Details

I am pretty sure that it won’t matter what country you are in for me to send this kindle to you — if anyone knows for certain that the devices themselves are regional, I will have to regretfully restrict entrants. However, all my current research suggests that although kindle CONTENT can be regional, the devices themselves are country agnostic.

I am not providing a link to the kindle keyboard because the only one available for sale right now on Amazon is the 3G version and I don’t want to get anyone too excited. This looks like it was an old model kept on a shelf for a while, but it still has the safety plastic coating on it, so it should be brand-spanking new.

Dates and Winner Announcement

I’ll do my random number generator magic in order to choose the winner, and the contest will be open for ONE WEEK ONLY.

That means the contest will close on August 27, 2012. I will attempt to contact the winner via their email address (which MUST match the same address on a comment from before today — no pretending you’re someone else!) and set up a delivery schedule.

I will post the winner as soon as I have successfully made contact, and will ship the package out as soon as humanely possible (Yes, “humane” rather than “human”. Humans can be dashedly fast, but sometimes life is not kind enough to allow instant mailing.)

Good luck to all the entrants!

Related posts:

UF Novel Giveaway Winners!
Writing Book Giveaway : Save the Cat!
UF Novel Giveaway!

Pre-Post Post

This is a post to tell you that I’m going to make a post.

(waitwaitwait, please don’t run!)

The next post that goes up on my blog (Monday) will involve an item that I ship to you. I am pretty sure this will be open to worldwide addresses.

(I am not using the obvious word for the giving of a thing because I am deliberately avoiding phishing.)

The ONLY people eligible to enter this … giving of a thing are people who have already commented on my blog.

If I can do a search for your name or email address and find a match in the comments, you are a valid entrant.

What this means is that THIS POST is your last opportunity to de-lurk and say hello so that you have the chance to win … the thing.

(hint: most of you are probably interested in the thing)

You can reply to this post with:

just say hello
or tell me something about yourself
or tell me your favorite book or author
or tell me your favorite piece of fiction that I have written

(Naturally, that last one would be my preference!)

Related posts:

Guest Post at TooManyAnnas
Guest Post on Arrens.net
[Guest Post] Perry’s Review of The Unremembered

Quickie Post About an Art Trade

Hey you! You know who you are. I told you I’d do an art trade with you like … ages ago, and I cannot find our email conversation to reply. If you’re watching this, please contact me again and we’ll get started on that.

(Sorry for being like … a billion light years later than I said it’d be. *blush*)

Related posts:

TeslaCon 2010 Recap 1 (GIANT post)
The Obligatory Cat Post
[Guest Post] Perry’s Review of The Unremembered