Wednesday Words Favorite Things: Books

Today we’re talking about our favorite books.  Asking me to do that is like asking a parent which is their favorite kid… aka very hard!  I kind of have ADD when it comes to listing my favorite things.  In random conversations I can rattle off my faves easily, but when someone asks me to make a list I’m all, “Uh… well… you know…”  Then afterward I’ll suddenly remember everything when the time has passed. Like the other day I was having dinner with friends and one of them asked me who I liked to read.  I couldn’t list them.  I read all the damn time and I couldn’t make a list!  I was like, “I read a lot of YA, vampires and stuff.”  Seriously?!  Geesh…

But yeah… my favorite books (that I can remember at this moment, LOL).

Ohhh this book!  This book broke my heart and made me laugh at the same time.  I’ve only ever had two books make me cry and this wasn’t one, but I was definitely touched.  I read this book in two sittings and it’s calling me to read it again.  That alone means that I loved it because I rarely re-read books.  I did figure out where the plot was going to go early on, but I think maybe that’s just the writer in me.  I try to figure out what’s going to happen and think about how I would make it go if it were my book.  This was the first book by Green that I’ve read and I just fell in love with his writing.  I’ll soon be reading all of his books.  Oh and, 29 days til the movie! I can’t freaking wait for the movie! 🙂

This was one of my favorite books growing up.  It’s so cute and sweet Grover is so clueless you can’t help but love him. 🙂  If you haven’t read it, do so.

I had to read this for a book club I used to belong to.  I was too busy at the time to sit and read so I got the audio book from the library and holy cow it was amazing.  The dude who read the book did different voices and accents for people and just did a phenomenal job.  Then of course there is the story itself which is all kinds of awesome.  I’m so pissed that the movie didn’t get much publicity (so little that it came to and left the theaters without me knowing) because it looked like it was going to be great too.  I’m sure it’s a great read, but I highly suggest getting the audio book for this one.  🙂

I’ve been looking through my goodreads history for five star books to put on this list.  Every single one of Jen’s Blood Ties books have five star ratings from me and I read them years before I met her in person and started hanging out with her.  So yeah, I’m a fan!  I remember reading these books and thinking, “Cool! They’re in Michigan!”  “Cool! The author is from Michigan too!”  “Son of a bitch, she’s younger than I am and has already been published!”  LOL  I adore Jen’s writing.  She has a way of pulling me into books that I never would have thought I’d liked.  For example, I’m not a big fan of historical romance, but I’ve read some of Jen’s stuff that she’s written as Abigail Barnett and have loved it.  Basically, Jen rocks and if you haven’t read her books you need to. 🙂

Neil Gaiman rocks my socks.  I have loved every novel of his that I’ve ever read.  I got turned on to him though through Backstreet Boys fanfic, believe it or not.  A friend of mine was writing this amazing fanfic that blended the Boys with the Endless and as I read the fanfic I was like, “I need to read this series…”  So I started buying the twenty dollar volumes slowly and totally fell in love with the series. I own the whole set and it’s the only graphic novel series that I’ve read from start to finish.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt is supposed to be trying to bring it to the screen and holy wah, if he gets it done I’ll love him even more than I already do!

This and A Light in the Attic are books I read so much as a kid that I memorized a bunch of the poems and page numbers.  I recently got my Where the Sidewalk Ends out to share with my youngest nephew and it just warmed my heart to see him enjoying the poems and pictures as much as I do. 🙂

 

Sarah Addison Allen is brilliant.  I’ve loved every book that I’ve read that she’s written.  When I read her books I think to myself, “I want to write like her when I grow up!”  She’s just, magical.  In fact, she has a new book out that I need to get badly. 🙂  It was sold out the last time I was at the book store though.

Last but not at all least… Lara Zielin.  I’ve read all of her books and loved them all but this was the first one read thanks to Bronwyn’s suggestion.  It’s wonderful.  Lara herself is all kinds of amazing and she’s a Michigan author so yay for that!  She just quit her job to write full time too so yay for more wonderful Lara books!

There are tons of other books that I love, but I can’t simply name (or remember) them all. 🙂  I’m curious to know if any of these are books that you love!  Let me know in the comments, then check out what favorite books my girls have on their lists!

Bronwyn Green | Kris Norris  | Jenny Trout

Gwendolyn Cease | Jessica Jarman |Tess Grant | Leigh Jones

More Shades

People are probably getting sick of my 50 Shades of Grey posts, but guess what? I don’t care.  This issue is near and dear to my heart and those of us who see the truth behind this book need to keep speaking up.

Yesterday my buddy Jennifer Armintrout whose 50 Shades recaps I’ve mentioned several times posted something that broke my heart.  It’s exactly why I feel so strongly that these books are doing a diservice to women and the media is only making it worse.

I beg of you, go read Jen’s post.  Another 50 Shades PSA.  Now with added author breakdown.

Then if you haven’t read her chapter by chapter recaps, have a look at them.  Even if you liked the 50 Shades books, you can’t possibly read these recaps without seeing them in a different light.

Review: American Vampire

American Vampire by Jennifer Armintrout
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I kind of forgot that I didn’t post an actual written review of this yet. My bad. 🙂

So this was my first book by Armintrout that I read that wasn’t part of the Blood Ties series. I knew I’d probably enjoy it because I’ve enjoyed her vampire goodness in the past. And to be completely honest, I totally judge books by their covers and this one is damn sexy… as soon as I saw it I knew I had to read the book.

I really enjoyed this book. I’m a sucker for series, so it’s hard for me sometimes to read a book knowing that it’s a stand alone. But Armintrout, as usual, pulled me in and right away I was caught up in the world of these characters. I simply ADORED the main character! He was funny and sexy all rolled into one. I get so sick of the tortured vampire that everyone seems to write lately where the vamp is all “woe is me” about having to drink blood to live. Graf totally wasn’t like that and I loved it. His inner dialogue about how soon he might eat someone always made me giggle.

Great stuff and totally worth reading. 🙂

View all my reviews

Review: Long Relief

Long Relief by Abigail Barnette
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The only reason this book didn’t get 5 stars is because it was shorter than I wanted and I needed more! I’m a Cancer… I fall in love fast, especially when there are great characters in front of me. Despite the fact that the book was short, it was great and I’m told that the series will continue so that’s awesome too.

It’s pretty clear that I’m a sucker for Michigan writers and Michigan stories. This book was, of course, both. I absolutely loved all of the details that Barnette put into the book without it being overly descriptive. For example on opening day of the season the fans in the crowd had mittens on. That’s a total Michigan thing and it’s not rare for it to actually snow on opening day around here. Little tidbits like that were thrown in throughout the book and made it great.

The relationship between the two main characters was adorable. What girl wouldn’t love to be faced with a childhood crush once she’s all grown up? I adored the way Barnette wrote Chris’ character too. He’s an aging baseball player who is aware he’s getting older and his body has limitations it didn’t use to have and yet, he’s still extremely sexy and knows it. (Damn it… I totally didn’t mean to reference LMFAO there. But hey, it’s true!)

I can’t wait for the next installment of the Hardball Series!

View all my reviews

50 Shades of Domestic Violence

I haven’t been shy about my dislike of the book 50 Shades of Grey and the message it’s sending.  If you follow me on twitter you’ve heard me bitch about it even more over there when I get on one of my rants.  There are many, many reasons why this book just plain pisses me off.  Shitty writing, shitty fact checking, shitty editing, barely making an effort to change it from AU fanfic before publishing it… I could go on for days.  But honestly, the thing that bothers me the most about this book is that it is so incredibly full of universal red flags for Domestic Violence (DV) and women all over the world are eating this book up like it’s cake. 

BDSM is not domestic violence if both partners fully consent to it.  That’s not by any means what I’m getting at.  I think that when the DV term is thrown out there people automatically assume that you mean physical violence.  That’s not at all what I’m talking about here.  So let me give you my social worker rundown real quick.

Domestic Violence is not about anger management or just about physical abuse.  It’s about power and control over another person.  That can be physical control in the form of beating the shit out of someone, or emotional control through threats, isolation, and mind games.  As someone who has lived through emotional abuse I can say that it royally sucks and it’s just as awful dealing with someone emotionally beating you up as it is getting physically beat up.

An alpha can be an alpha without being an abuser.  Someone can assert themselves and be in control without having to control you.   The person who beat me never touched me physically.  But that person crushed my spirit, made everything bad in the world seem like it was my fault, blamed all of their problems on me, and kept me in this fucked up world where I actually believed that I was the problem.  But I wasn’t.  That is what domestic violence is about; having power and control over someone else and making them believe that they’re doing it for your own good.

I enjoyed the Twilight books and movies.  I’m not a Twilight hater by any means.  But the books were very hard for me to get through because of the little things that Meyer put in the books that screamed of DV.  I mean come on, step away from your love of Edward for a moment and think about it.  He would crawl through Bella’s bedroom window at night to watch her sleep and started that before he even was her friend.  He was nice to her one moment and then mean the next.  He got mad at her for tripping on the field trip to the greenhouse.  When he saved her life and she wanted to talk about it he blew her off and said she had hit her head.  He told her that he could kill her and how everything in him wanted him to.  Even Bella’s mom says to her in the second book how Edward is so clingy.  

Check this out and think about Bella and Edward’s relationship: Power & Control Wheel.

I can honestly point out something in nearly every spoke of that wheel that Edward does to Bella in the Twilight books.  I’m not the only one either, there have been plenty of articles about DV organizations pointing out the red flags in Twilight.

Even though Twilight is full of red flags, I was able to separate it as fantasy and just enjoy it.  Unlike when I rewatched Phantom of the Opera as a social worker and could not stop obsessing about how creepy the Phantom suddenly was! 🙂  But then we come to 50 Shades.  A story that is not about vampires even though it was written about Twilight characters.  A story that women all over the world are eating up and saying how bad they want a man like Christian Grey in their lives, how they wish their husbands were more like Grey.  That, my dear readers, is where I have a really big fucking problem with this book’s success.

Photo-A-Day May 5 & 6

Bird

I’m not the biggest fan of birds but our house seems to be Bird Heaven.  We live in an old brick farm house so the birds love to make nests in areas where the brick is broken.  This bird is part of a family of doves who are very loud and not at all shy.  They’ll walk along the window ledge with one of the dogs or cats going nuts on the other side of the window and totally aren’t phased.  This picture is of Kia stalking the Birdie Friend yesterday.

 

You

 

I love taking super macro photos, so for today’s challenge of “You” I pulled out nearest book and found the word you to snap.  This happens to be from the most awesome book American Vampire by my homie Jennifer Armintrout.  🙂 Photo edited with BeFunky.com

The Problem with Fanfic

There’s a lot of talk going on about fanfic lately. In fact, I think more people suddenly know what fanfic is than ever before. Sadly though, it’s because a series of Twilight fanfic stories have been published and despite how awful the writing is (and the fact that it’s fanfic) it’s selling like crazy. Yes, I’m talking about 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James.

I will start this rant by saying that no, I haven’t read the books in their entirety. Frankly, I don’t plan to read them because the bits of the books I have seen make me want to vomit. I’m all for people getting published… I really am. Just like any writer I want to have bestselling books that inspire movies. I want people talking about my books all over the world on talk shows. But I have a serious problem with the 50 Shades book and its subsequent spawn, and it’s not because I’m jealous.

Let me also say that I write fanfic. I’ve been writing fanfic for over a decade now and without it I wouldn’t have fallen in love with writing like I have. Without fanfic I wouldn’t have groupies readers all over the planet who have read my books. I love fanfic and I love being a fanfic author. My distaste of the success of James is not because I’m a stodgy jerk who doesn’t understand the world of fanfic.

There are different types of fanfic though and I feel like with all of this new media coverage of fanfic people don’t understand the difference. One kind fanfic could possibly be turned into a standalone book without seeming like a total fucking rip off, and another kind walks the line of plagiarism, stealing, shadiness and just wrongness.

The fanfic that I write consists of using a person who exists in real life as a character in a fictional story. For example taking oh… let’s say a Backstreet Boy and throwing him into all sorts of drama (and hopefully lots of hot sex) in the form of a novel or short story. This is the kind of fanfic that in my humble opinion could be turned into publishable work. Names can be changed and although you might be able to draw similarities, it’s still fiction. In other words, it’s original. The characters are mine and as I see it, these stars are just the actors in my book. I have a book (which ironically is named Shades of Gray) that if I were to go through and take out the references to actual people and perhaps do a little tweaking of certain details, it would stand alone as a book about a chick who falls in love with a guy in a band.