Boston Books

It seems that since coming to Boston I've been a little behind on book reviews, so here I go.

The first awesome book I read was finished in one sitting at the Newbury Comics store in Faneuil Hall. Flight Volume 7. I love the Flight series. Every time I read a new volume, I think it's the best collection of short story strips ever. This time is no different. There are some very talented artists and story-tellers that contributed to this book. If you haven't picked a Flight book before, I sorely suggest you do. It's a fantastic reading experience. I'm not sure how many Flight books there will end up being, but I hope Kazu Kibuishi keeps printing more!

I finished this book next. Another collection of Calvin and Hobbes. We got it from the library. So adorable. ^_^ What a hilarious dynamic duo those two are.

The library that we go to in Boston is awesome! It has a big teen section with LOTS of graphic novels, and comfortable chairs to read them in. I've probably whiled away hours reading GNs, but this book, Earthboy Jacobus, is one I remember the most and I think most deserves mention and review. I once read another book by the same author called Tommysaurus Rex, but that was before I wrote a book blog. I liked the familiar art style, and the story was intriguing. It was about a boy from some kind of alien parallel universe who somehow ends up on Earth, and an ex-army guy adopts him and raises him like his own son. The boy, Jacobus, has a weird black mark on his hand. There is some coming of age and a big alien battle near the end. For me, it was a good story, and I liked it.

This is a book I checked out from the library. It's a collection of 15 short stories from the author of Howl's Moving Castle and House of Many Ways. I haven't finished it yet, though I only have a few more stories to go until I'm done and can give it a proper review. But for now I really must say that Diana Wynne Jones is quite the creative writer. I love reading short story collections like this. They give me so many ideas, and lots of inspiration. They make me want to do better than just writing poems. I can probably write a decent short story, if I only set my mind to it. Anyway, I highly recommend this book. It gives you such an inspiration boost. Look for a review of this very soon.

Oh! Wait, wait! I almost forgot to mention something important! In less than 2 weeks, on August 31st, I'm going to be meeting another famous author! The amazing Suzanne Collins, the genius behind the Hunger Games trilogy, is coming to our library to promote Mockngjay, which is coming out in stores very, very soon, I believe. I am very excited for this event. How incredibly fortunate that I'll still be in Boston at that time. ^_^

The only thing is that it was mentioned that Suzanne won't exactly be signing books, per se, because something's wrong with her wrist, I think. But she'll be stamping each book, and I believe she'll allow pictures to be taken, so that's great. I can still prove I met her. ^_^ The event will be "First come, first serve" though, so I don't know how early I'll have to go to insure that I get to meet her. I hope I can talk to her and ask her questions. Shaking her hand will be awesome, at the very least.

That's it, I guess! Until next time, my fellow book lovers. ^_~

Books I haven't blogged about

Hi. Sorry I haven't been book blogging an awful lot lately. ~,~ I'm not going to make any excuses here. I haven't read a lot of books lately, and whatever books I do finish, I keep postponing sitting down to write their reviews. It's really a problem. But enough is enough. I've got a lot of books reserved in the library, two of which I've picked up now, so I need to clear my head and get these books out of the way so I can write reviews later. I'll be very brief with each book, promise.

So the first book I finished that I didn't post about, but definitely should have (=P), is In Her Shoes, by Jennifer Weiner. Now, this book is kind of outside my genre preference (fantasy, sci-fi fiction is more my read, and this was more of a chick-flick. No magic, just a story based on real, grown-up life that could possibly happen to actual people), but I'll admit that this was a pretty good book. Of course, it did take me a long time to actually finish it. I read some of it back in Boston, but the beginning really didn't interest me a lot. Then we came home to Florida and we saw the movie version of In Her Shoes (starring Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette and Shirley Maclain), and I thought the story after the part I was at got pretty good. So I got back to the book and finished it pretty fast after that.

I'm not sure whether the book was better than the movie, but it did have certain plot elements that didn't make it into the film, so I guess you can say it was better. Okay, brief story synopsis: There are two sisters. One is a stressed out but responsible lawyer, and the other is really attractive but doesn't have a lot of brains. This is Cameron Diaz's character, Maggie, btw. Basically she drinks and has sex and gets into trouble a lot, so her sister has to take her in, and Maggie is a big pain. She steals money and shoes (the sisters share the same size) and doesn't have a job. After Maggie does something totally unforgivable to Rose (her sister), she gets unceremoniously kicked out, and then later moves in with a grandmother neither of them knew about, blah blah blah... so the story jumps between sisters and both of them learn life lessons that make them balance out their personalities and Rose gets married and everyone lives happily ever after. That's all I'll say. If you have any interest in the specifics, read this book yourself.

The next book I finished was a graphic novel I read in a Barnes and Nobles in one sitting, Amulet, Book 2: The Stonekeeper's Curse, by Kazu Kibuishi. That's the guy who drew my favorite comics in the Flight series. A pretty cool story. It seems that it'll become a Bone-like series. I really like Kazu's drawing style! Graphic novels rock. ^_^ If you want to check this series out, you ought to start at the beginning. The first Amulet book is The Stonekeeper. I don't remember when I read that, but it was probably last year, because I would have posted about it if I'd read it this year.

After that I suppose I didn't read much else, but recently I tackled this huge, literally encyclopedic book that I think I read in just a couple days straight. It's called Iconic America, by Tommy Hilfiger. There are hundreds of colorful and really neat pictures of famous American inventions, sport stars, foods and restaurants, works of art, famous songs and musical groups, dates and events people will always remember, celebrities, brand names, movies, and other things that have reached iconic status today. This book is a seriously educational history lesson that was fascinating and fun to read! It sure makes you feel good to be American. ^_^

Okay, last book. I promise. Last night I finished this really cute picture book that was adapted from the spectacular Stephen Sondheim musical, Into the Woods. The story is very accurate and the artwork is wonderful, but I definitely think the play version is a ton better. The book version can't possibly compete with actually hearing the music, or with the characters singing the songs, or with the comic acting abilities of the actors, or even with the laughter of the audience when there's a funny scene. Also in the book, the characters aren't able to give the narrator over to the Giantess, because how can you take away the story-teller in a book? So the musical was definitely funnier and better in every way. Therefore, my advice if you still would like to read this book is to see the play first, and then appreciate the adaptation later.

There! I am done with my task. And now you are done with your task of reading this post! Congratulations. ^_^

9-29-09 ~ Edit: I'm sorry! It seems I've left a book out! Well, actually I suppose it's not really a book anyway, because it's purely virtual, but I still didn't write about it! It's been a while now, but I've finished reading Midnight Sun, by Stephanie Meyer. A wonderful masterpiece that will sadly never be completed or published. As one can see from my reviews of all the books from the Twilight Saga, I was totally in love with the story and its characters, so to further explore that world was just a must for me. I read it quite sporadically, over a wide period of time, but I eventually finished it. I'm sorry to say that I forget exactly when, but I'm sure it was very soon after we came home from Boston! So here's the scoop: Midnight Sun is the story of Twilight as told by Edward Cullen's point of view, instead of Bella's, so while the story is very much the same, there is a whole other incredible dimension to it. Even though it ends very abruptly and I wished dearly I could continue reading the story, I really enjoyed reading Midnight Sun and I think other Twilight fans will too. It's very easy to check the story out if you're interested. Just click the link above, for Midnight Sun, and you'll go straight to a PDF file that has all 12 chapters. Of course, Stephanie Meyer obviously meant this to be slightly a rough draft, so I can spot some errors, but it's Stephanie Meyer, so I forgive her. ^_^ Really, I don't think you'll be sorry. Thank you for indulging me.

Flight # 6

It's really been too long since I posted about a book. Especially since I'm home and nothing is really distracting me. Well, truth is I'm reading a bunch of books at the same time, but I don't have my heart in finishing them. This Deepak Chopra book (you ever hear of this guy? He's Indian and he's a big spritual teacher, I don't know), and that classic Huckleberry Finn. I don't know, Huck's adventures are much too episodic for my taste. You know the kind? Like, too many pointless adventures and not enough driving plot. I guess a lot of books in those days went like that. That's why I don't really like reading classics, but I look forward to when I find the next Jane Eyre style classic.

But let me get back to the book I'm supposed to be reviewing. I went to Borders yesterday (finally! ^_^) and I was trying to "hunt" for The Hunt for Dark Infinity (ha ha. Play on words). Buuuuut I couldn't find it in the end. ~,~ The first 13th Reality was on the shelf, but not the second. I was disappointed. I really wanted to get more ahead in that particular story. It's sooo good!

So I had to find some other books to pass the time with. I found Fablehaven 2, (which I once started on a library shelf) and I enjoyed reading a couple chapters of it. Brandon Mull's writing style is pretty cool. For some reason, I think it reminds me of my own. Hmm. Well, when I got to Chapter 5 I decided to give Fablehaven a break for another time, and I looked for the graphic novel section to see if I could spot any attractive covers. And I found this! The 6th (last?) edition to the awesomely random Flight series. I can hardly believe that I started reading this series just this year...

Well, I read the entire thing in one sitting, and I loved it! The cartoons were all funny, as always. I really wonder how those comics writers do it, weaving the story and pictures so seamlessly together. My favorite cartoon was the first one, about the fox. Strange that it came in every book after it's debut. I guess because it always said, to be continued..., so they did. Well, at the end of this cartoon, there was no to be continued..., so I guess it really was the end. Maybe that means it's the end of the Flight books too. I hope it's not. But I'm going to assume it is. Since this book came out this year, we'll probably have to wait a long time for the hypothetical Flight #7 anyway. So 6 might as well be the last.

This series is awesome. I read this in just one sitting. All the previous books are just like this. I highly recommend Flight for those who haven't tried it. Since they're all cool pictures and comics, they won't take too much of your time. ^,^

Flight # 5

Man, this Flight series is awesome. The comic stories are funny and cool. Short and simple. My favorite cartoon is the "Rex saga," the one that usually comes up first and keeps continuing? It's been in the Flight series since #2 and it's about this little brown fox character who looks so sweet and has all these strange adventures on this alien planet. There's no dialogue, so the faces say it all. Very cute.

The only too bad thing was that before I finally got the book, I cheated and got a preview of each cartoon in the book from online. The Flight website. Yeah. So I already knew about half of every story. Still, it was nice to see how they ended. But that's a good lesson for me. No cheating if you want full enoyment from a story.

You guys have got to check out this series. Especially if you're comic lovers. They've got all different types of styles of art. I think there's going to be a sixth one sometime soon in the future. I promise not to get a preview of that, so I'll be completely surprised.

Flight 3 and Flight Explorer, plus Pendragon: Before the War #3, by Walter Sorrels

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I kind of forgot to say that I finished Flight #3 a couple days ago. I finished it so fast that I didn't think it meant anything. But it was really a good graphic collection. That fox cartoon on the other Flight post? That continued in this. That little guy is my favorite character! Now I'm all caught up with the Flight series and just have to wait until Flight 5 is in my sights.

In the meantime, yesterday I went to Borders (one of my favorite place in the world!) and read Flight Explorer. This is related to the Flight series, in that it's a collection of comics made by some of the same artists that contributed to the regular Flight books. I think it' supposed to get the kids into comics, because there's a lot fewer stories in it. Still, I liked it. This whole graphic series is definitely something to get into, I can tell you.

I was a little sad in Borders, because I'd been hoping to find James Dashner's Dark Infinity and read as much as I could of it straight out of the store. Only I didn't find it. You know, I don't even think they carry any of his Jimmy Fincher books? I'm really curious about this early series of James's, but they weren't there. Oh well.

I whiled away the rest of my bookstore stay reading almost the rest of the third Pendragon: Before the War book. I think if I'd been given enough time, like another half hour or something, I might've had a chance of finishing it, but we had to go. I read the first two stories, about Loor (Zadaa) and Siry Remudi (Ibara), and was well into Patrick Mac's story. I believe I'm on page 159. I don't want to lose my place. I'm not sure whether I've gotten a good impression of Third Earth thus far. It sounds more like a utopian Veelox so far. I really liked the Third Earth that MacHale described in Pendragon #3, the Never War. (You know, come to think of it, I wonder why it was called Never War in the first place?) Anyway, I quite enjoyed the book, but I don't think it's my favorite out of the prequel Pendragons. It's a very good thing #10 is just around the corner. I can barely wait for that! Now that book I would buy.

Flight: Volumes 1, 2 and 4

These books are the first two and 4th in an awesome graphic- novel series, or an anthology as they're called. Each book is a compilation of many short comic stories, in lots of different styles. Each little story might have a tiny something to do with flight, like the main character likes flying or planes or something similar, but not all of them have to do with flight. I found that most of them in Volume 2 and 4 had nothing to do with flight. But all the comics were cute and engaging. I like graphic novels. Unless they're obviously heavy on manga or anime or whatever. But comics are a wonderful story-telling medium. I especially liked the few comics that didn't have any words in them, so you have to infer the meaning from the story. For example, here is one of my favorite strips from Volume 2, the first one that was in it (which did have flight in it, I guess.) It's not the whole thing, but it's still cute and tells part of the story.

It's too bad I had to skip Volume 3, but hopefully it'll come out from the library soon. Turns out that there are a couple more volumes of these graphic novels. I believe there only used to be four, but I think a fifth one was turned out very recently, and a sixth volume is rumored to be in production. I hope there turns out to be plenty more.

This is a good series for those who simply appreciate comics, like cool artwork, or enjoy a nicely weaved short story. It's also great if you happen to not exactly like reading regular books, because this is mostly pictures. I went through them very quickly. Doesn't mean you will too, but they are speedy reads.