Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Pleasurable Reading

Ok folks...this post is coming with a warning/disclamer...it's pretty adult.  This post is gonna be in a bit of a different vein, but for a good reason.  Now don't worry, this is not the direction this blog is going in, it's just a bit of something different that struck me.  The following is for adults, it is sensual in nature, but I feel it relates to reading, especially for me in a very real way.  I know right now that this will not be everybody's cup of tea and I respect that.  For the rest of us, I hope you in enjoy it in the way that it is intended.
Ok now that is out of the way, I would like to introduce you to Hysterical Literature.  It is a series of video's with accompanying stories and essays that feature women reading from a favorite book while being..well...pleasured under a table.  I know it sounds really dirty, but I found it to be oddly mezmorizing and in all honestly I totally understand the connection between books and all different forms of pleasure.  Here are a couple of my favorites (ps NSFW)

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I'm not 100% sure why this particular project stuck with me.  Maybe it's the stories, maybe it's the non pornographic yet still sensual way women are portrayed, maybe it's the books.  I don't know...but there you have it.  If this post is not in your wheel house, fear not I will resume my regular bookapalooza in the next post...until then.  HAPPY READING EVERYBODY!

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Fall Is Here!

AHHHH!!! IT FINALLY FALL!!!!!  Seriously though the weather has finally turned and I am know happily curled up with my blanket and hot apple cider.
This is totally my favorite time of year.  So if anybody needs me, I will be lost in my book.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Friday, September 23, 2016

Job Hunting

Just when I get my life under some sort of semblance of lesser chaos, all sorts of things like to get turned on their head.  What that means for me is back to job hunting...which is so not my favorite thing.  See I find job hunting to be tedious and boring, there are plenty of jobs in my field, its just the lather rinse repeat business of typing all my info over and over, attaching my certs over and over,
staring at jobs wondering if I actually already applied for this job or not...over and over.  To break up the tedium I have made a deal with my self.  For every job I apply to, I get to read one chapter of my book...so far I'm up to 4 applications and about 10 chapters...yeah not so good at putting down the book lol.  Anyways if anybody needs me I'll be the girl with the computer in front of her face and a book in her lap.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Words From Head To Toe

I love shopping, I love reading and I love clothes...here is a way to show my love of all three in an entire outfit devoted to the written word.

Hat Books
Starting with the top, this stylish book hat will let the world know that you love books...and big hats.
Pride and Prejudice Scarf
Wearing this classic scarf not only makes you look elegant...but gives you something to read at the bus stop.
Sherlock Holmes
There are about a bajillion amazing awesome book shirts to choose from...seriously you could wear a different one every day of your life and never repeat...also saves on laundry
Peter Pan Writing Gloves
These gloves will keep your palms and wrists warm and literary while leaving your fingers free to write the next great American (or whatever country your from) novel.
Book Pants
These are the perfect pants to snuggle up and read in...also for the record there are way more books about pants then there are pants with books on them.
Bookworm Socks
I have these, they are awesome, they make everything better, that is all.
Book Lover Shoes
I am loving these shoes that are both stylish and readable!  Just don't get caught out in the rain...

Ok so this should be enough to get you started on your literary wardrobe...just try not to spend to much time reading yourself ok?  Happy Reading Everybody!

Monday, September 19, 2016

A Troll, A Fetch, A Gramophone, And A Wombat Walk Into A Painting

It's FALL!!!! I may have mentioned that before, but I don't care, it makes me very very very happy...now if only the weather would cooperate.  As a sort of fall tradition and needing a special book to break in my new house,  I picked up the second to last book in the Fairyland series, The Boy Who Lost Fairyland by Cathrynne M. Valente.  This one was different because it focused on a not September character and took place mostly in the human world.  Did this at all change my love of this series?  Let's find out shall we?  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!
In this installation of the series we focus not on our plucky and amazing September, but on a troll named Hawthorn.  Hawthorn is taken/conned by the Red Wind to become a changeling and replace a baby boy in the human world.  Hawthorne is taken to the Fairy Post Office and shipped of to Chicago where he takes the place of one Thomas Rood.  Hawthorne has only vague memories of his trollness and Fairyland, but they are enough to make him seem odd to his utterly normal parents.  Hawthorne starts school, and after a bit of a rough start makes friends by convincing them to talk to their desks...because in Hawthorne's memories every thing talks back to him.  This type of "imagination" and the way he gets the other children to follow him disturbs his teachers, prompting them to contact his parents to try and get him to act Normal.  Obviously our poor little troll changeling can never be completely Normal, no matter how hard he tries and his parents, while loving him, have a difficult time with it.  Hawthorne's human mother knits him a wombat who becomes his best companion
through out his strange life.  Hawthorne befriends a girl by the name of Tamburlaine who turns out to be another changeling.  Tam is not a troll however, she is what is known as a Fetch, a girl made of wood.  Her parents kind of know what she is and love her anyways and do their best to protect her.  Tam has the talent of painting and shows Hawthorne a fantastical forest that she has painted on her walls.  One day while visiting Hawthorne, Tam shows him how to work magic.  She shows him Scratch, a gramophone she brought to life using the same magic.  Hawthorne uses his magic to bring to life pretty much everything in his apartment, including the wombat named Blunderbuss that his mother made him.  After bringing to life his baseball...which turns into a tattooed monster, it grabs the foursome and dashes into the piece of forest Tam painted on Hawthorne's wall.  The foursome (Hawthorne, Tamburlaine, Scratch and Blunderbuss) wake up in an incredible forest that resembles the one that Tam painted.  Turns out they are in Fairyland and have reverted back to their troll and Fetch forms.  They are overtaken by the traveling capital of Fairyland, the fabric made Pandemonium.  The current King, King Crunchcrab enlists the foursome to help him quit being king.  They meet up with the human changelings of Fairyland who have been reduced to servitude to prevent them from bringing about the changes that changelings are known for.  They are sent to find a person known as the Spinster who can free Crunchcrab from his Kingship.  The foursome, along with Penny Farthing, who has been removed from her beloved fairy mother and no longer runs with the velocipedes end up serving at the party of a powerful Fairy.  They run into the real Thomas Rood and after a few meta moments gives them the key to the Spinster.  They find the Spinster...who turns out to be our girl September...who was aged by events in the previous book.  The dodo Aubergine gives them an egg that brings lost things back.  As you probably guessed, chaos ensues and all of the previous Kings and Queens of fairy come back.  The crown leaves Crunchcrab and falls to...September...who is know queen.  Hawthorne and Tam get to stay in Fairyland and Thomas returns home to ecstatic parents.   We end with Septembers mother being told by her sister that she knows where her daughter is and how to get there.
I'm gonna revert back to my old school of rambling for this book 'cause I think that I will be able to convey my feeling best in this format.  First of all, the authors trademark ability to make everything wondrous and fantastical was front and center.  The coolest part about this particular installment of the series was how amazing the writer made our mundane human world.  By showing us everyday things through the eyes of a young Fairylander, a dreary apartment in Chicago was made into a vertibal wonderland.  The rules that Hawthorne divined from his experiences in the human world and how he applied them to his life are a great reminder of what it is to be young in unfamiliar circumstances and how an imaginative brain adapts to these scary new things.  The author uses
Hawthorne to not only show us the human world through different eyes, but also a very young person learning and growing.  I did however very much miss September.  I understand what the writer was doing, and the story was very well done...I just really really love September and not having her play a main role in this book made me a little sad.  On that note, Blunderbuss may be my favorite wombat of all time.  Seriously this crazy patchwork marsupial in all it's incarnations made me smile every time she was on the page.  I was not the biggest fan of Scratch...I did not really see what this character contributed to the story other then being proof that Tam could work magic.  The story itself was pretty well done until they came back to fairyland, then I had to work really hard to remember everything that had happened in the last books to try and sort out all of the politics and keep everything straight in my head.  Overall it was a decent installment into a beloved series.  It does not compare to the first two, but definitely holds it's own overall.  I give it 8 out of 10 chain covered coats and recommend it to anybody who is as addicted to this series as I am.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Friday, September 16, 2016

These Boots Were Made For Walking

It's FALL!!!!!  That means time for me to actually start wearing shoes again.  To assist me in my transition back to the land of the shod, Hubbin bought me this spectacular pair of boots!
What does this have to do with books and reading you ask?  Well I will tell you...right after this sip of wine...SLURP...there we go...now where were we.  Oh yes, the connection between shoes and books.  I have noticed that foot wear plays quit a starring role in many books and stories.  A few examples.
Cinderella and Cinderella type stories - In the classic tale of Cinderella, and all the myriads of incarnations that followed.  A glass slipper, or a fur slipper, or some sort of weird yet oddly wearable foot wear is the secret to finding the poor little servant girl.  'Cause you know we won't recognize her with a bit of soot on her face, but slipping a shoe on makes for an unmistakable identity :-)
The Wizard of Oz - Weather the ruby slippers of the famous movie, or the more traditional silver slippers of the book, no one can deny that these shoes caused a whole heap load of trouble on the mythical land of Oz.  For being a sparkly pair of pumps these shoes held power that certain people were willing to kill for.  The slippers offered protection, transportation and a bit of prestige as well...not bad for a pair of shoes.
The Red Shoes - In this horrifying tale of morality, the shoes represent a punishment for vanity.  A young woman forced to dance continually after becoming a bit to proud of her red shoes.  She is forced to dance until she cuts of her own feet!  Anybody who has spent a day in a pair of red stiletto's may be able to sympathize with this poor girls pain.
Seven League Boots - These handy dandy boots that transport the wearer seven leagues in a single step are actually used in many many books and stories.  My personal favorites are The Two Princesses of Bamarre and The Grimm Legacy both of which add a bit of freshness to this classic foot wear.  It would be interesting to try and use these boots in modern times since we now have all kinds of stuff like skyscrapers and car filled roads to run into.
The Twelve Dancing Princesses - In this tale our girls are caught out in their secret dancing by the fact they dance holes through their shoes EVERY NIGHT!  To me this either means shoddy work...cause seriously EVERY NIGHT?!?  Or that these girls are really going to town on the dance floor in a way that was probably never even fathomed in the time period most of these versions are set.  Either way, stupid shoes giving away our girls.

So there you have it.  Shoes and books go together like wine and books...and coffee and books...and chocolate and books...and...well you get the idea.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Books And Fall And Happy

FINALLY!!!!!!  I have finally gotten all my bookshelves up and most of my books up on the shelves.  I have also found all my fall stuff, so yeah my book nook is looking pretty cozy.



Now all I need is a comfy chair, a cozy blanket and a tall dark and handsome man to bring me wine and coffee and all will be perfect in my new little happy spot.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Monday, September 12, 2016

Reading...Cures Everything

Had a ton of things to do on my list today, but woke feeling super crappy.  So instead of getting to work on my gargantuan to do list, I grabbed a cup of coffee, a blanket and a book and read for an hour.
Oddly enough after a couple of chapters I actually felt better.  Now it's back to blitzing through my list which includes unpacking the rest of my books.  See ya tomorrowish.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Friday, September 9, 2016

The Old Ones of Swampsea

Ok...let's see if my mushy brain can pull off a rambling today.  I was gonna wait for when I was more coherant to write this post, but I actually think the inside out state of my head will actually help in writing about this dream of a book.  Wait...I haven't told you what we are rambling about today?  Whoops...sorry about that.  The book is Chime by Franny Billingsley.  The book had been recommended by one of my favorite book blogs and I was super excited to read it.  I'm gonna tell you right now I was not disappointed.  Let's get to it shall we?  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!
Briony Larkin is guilty.  Of what she is guilty of we are not 100% sure, but she is guilty.  We know that she is guilty because she tells us she is.  Briony is on trial for her life, and she just wants it all over all ready. Briony is evaluated by a being called the Chime Child, a person who was born at the minute between midnight.  The Chime Child can see and talk with the Old Ones, but is a human so the feeling is they are best suited to judge whether a person is human or Old One.  Here is Briony's confession.  Briony Larkin, her twin sister Rose and their preacher father all live in the tiny town of Swampsea which borders a broad swamp somewhere in an alternate England.  Briony has been hiding a secret for most of her life.  Briony is a witch, she knows she is a witch because her beloved Stepmother told her she was.  Stepmother however is not of a normal fairy tale variety and she helps Briony keep her powers a secret.  Briony's witchcraft is first revealed when she and Rose were playing on the swings as very young girls and after a bout of jealousy produces a wind that knocks Rose off the swing, causing her to hit her head. Rose is forever strange from that point forward. Stepmother tells Briony that it was her witchcraft that did the deed and that she must learn to control it.  Briony grows up torn between fearing her power and loving the things it allows her to see.  In this world of Swampsea the swamp is full of what are known as the Old Ones.  Old Ones are things like brownies, faries, and other familiar creatures, along with some specific ones such as Dark Muses which feed of male creativity until they are a husk, or the Dead Hand which clamps on your hand and pulls it off.  Briony used to write stories about all of these creatures until one day her power got out of her control and a huge wave swamped her house, breaking Stepmothers back.  Briony after an illness of her own stays home instead of going to school to care for her strange sister and broken Stepmother.  Eventually Stepmother kills herself with arsenic rather then live broken.  Briony has vague memories of this time but she knows two things, one that Stepmother was a kind and wonderful woman who would never kill herself and two she is a witch.  One day, the son of a new arrival to Swampsea comes to live with the Larkin family.  Eldric is a special guy who seems to be able to draw Briony out of her self hatred, allowing her to remember how free she was before her fear of her powers and guilt over her sister and Stepmother overwhelmed her need to talk with the Old Ones and run free in the swamp.  A sickness known as the swamp cough has come to the village and is almost always fatal.  Regardless of her attempts to stay away, Briony is contacted by the Old Ones and learns that the Boggy Man has sent the cough as retaliation for the planned draining of the swamp to allow the railroad to go through.  Eldric continues to help Briony come out of her walled self and eventually she tells him the truth of what she is.  Eldric is much more sympathetic then she thought he would be, and he insists that she is not evil and feels there is more to the story.  Rose continues her cryptic ways and we are starting to feel like Eldric that there is much more to the story.  Briony tries various ways to stop the draining of the swamp all while trying to deal with her feelings for Eldric, her duty to her sister and her guilt of previous events.  It all comes to a head one night when Briony collects the ghosts of the children who have been killed by the swamp cough and convinces the town to stop draining the swamp.  This of course reveals her to be a witch.  We then go to the trial in which this book started.  Rose finally is able to get through what she was trying to say through out the whole book.  We finally find out that Briony is not a witch but a Chime Child and that Stepmother was a Dark Muse who fed off of their father.  Once he realized what she was he stayed away hoping to starve her.  The Dark Muse/Stepmother found a way to feed off of Briony's writings about the Old Ones.  Briony finally realized what was going on and slipped arsenic into Stepmothers food, killing her to save her family.  Briony is absolved of witchcraft as she is a Chime Child, and cleared of murder as a parasitic Old One is not a human.  She, Rose and Eldric find a way to live happily with her father in Swampsea.  Briony realizes that eventually the swamp will be drained so she starts writing her stories again to preserve the lives of the Old Ones.
World Building - The book is set in an alternate England village at the beginning of the Industrial Age.  The world is expertly built with the atmosphere being it's own character.  I felt like I could wander the village of Swampsea and feel the damp swamp air and roam the boggy marshes.  It was phenomenal how completely immersed in this world I got, the author did an amazing job writing a complete world.  I think what helped the most was how ingrained into the actual story the world was so that we were constantly learning about our little area, how it looked, felt, smelled, who lived in it, how they lived and all that great world building stuff with out a bunch of heavy exposition.  Anytime I feel like I can actually enter a book world makes me super happy, a zillion points for world building.

Story - The story was both straight forward and convoluted all at the same time...kind of like my brain right now.  The story itself took a bit of back seat to the intense character of Briony and the overwhelmingly awesome atmosphere of the book.  There was definitely a story and over all it was followable, but it was so entwined with every thing else that sometimes you had to try and remember where and when you were at in the story...but in a book like this I feel that may be part of the appeal.  Some people will love it, some will hate it...I loved it.

Characters - This book is with out a doubt all about Briony.  She is the sole narrator in a first person voice and everything is seen and heard through her foggy memories, self loathing and stubborn and tenacious nature.  This is ok 'cause like I said...it's her book.  That being said the characters were all fairly well done.  I found Eldric to be a mix of awesome and a bit to good to be true with just a touch of over the top emo...but I also feel he had to be all that to match Briony's overwhelming personality stuff...so yeah.  I think Rose was my favorite, with her crypcticness and odd, yet persice way of being.  I'm not sure if she was supposed to be autistic, or just "touched" as they used to say, but I thought the character was well written.

Editing - So...hmmm...This book was a mix of writing styles that were both prose and lyrical...I will expound on that in a minute.  Where this pertains to this category is if it is still readable.  I felt that it was fairly well edited. The story flowed, everything was readable.  If I had any real quibbles in this book it might be that we kept going back to the "incident's" with out adding any extra info or insight.  I think we could have gone back a bit less and had a bit more of a streamlined book.  That being said the editing was over all pretty good.

Writing Style - As I just mentioned, this book was a pretty unique mix of straight logical prose and very dream like lyrical.  I have heard mixed reviews for this style, but for myself I felt that it worked.  I think I liked it because it showed the state of Briony's head.  Briony could be cold, logical and able to do what needed to be done.  She could also be dreamy, muddled and spent a lot of time living in another world.  The mix of the two styles were still consistent in that they both sounded like Briony, they both used her voice and that made for a well blended story.  I found the transitions smooth and the combination of the two styles very quickly merged into a pattern that was perfect for the tone of this book.

The Old Ones - I love love love a good fairy tale, and this book was a great twist on that style.  The Old Ones in this book were a mix of familiar and new ones specific for this story.  The author used the Old Ones to both further the story and add to the world building and atmosphere.  They were well explained and well integrated into this little village by the swamp and I loved it.  Reading this book made me want to go look up all sorts of local legends and brush up on all the various fair folk hanging around the various areas...and that my friends is a sign of a good book.  I also loved how well suited the Old Ones were for the environment that the author dreamed up.  No float elf types here, they were all earthy, swampy types, some were dark, some were innocent, some were wise and some were bad.  Loved it.

Mood Match - One of the reasons I may have enjoyed this book so much is that it was the perfect book for the mood I was in when I read it.  I was in a weird transitional mood and this book is a weird atmospheric book.  It does make me wonder if I would still feel the same about it if I read it during a different mind phase...but I don't really care.  I love it when my mood and book pairings work out so well!

Overall Impression - I have a hard time articulating what I liked about this book.  It was atmospheric, it was convoluted, it was dream like, it was a bit eye rolling, it was different, it was the perfect book for the mood I was in when I read it. I have read a lot of reviews on it and people seem divided between loving it for it's weirdness and well being weirded out by it.  I loved it, I will probably read it again and I recommend it for anybody who likes fairy tales, atmosphere and a different style of book.  I give it 8 out of 10 Mucky Faces.
Happy Reading Everybody!

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Glbbbttasdklfje

Hi Folks, sorry for the lack of posting this week but work is kicking my a$$.  I have been putting in 16+ hour days on the ambulance so...yeah...posting is not happening.  I did find a couple of minutes to buy more bookshelves for the rest of my unpacked books.
Now just waiting for Hubbin to put them together and then try to find a minute or two in between shifts to put the books away.  I will try to do a big girl post tomorrow...but it all depends on my night.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Messy Books

We all know that I am the ultimate bibliophile.  Oddly enough though most of my books are pretty messy and beat up.   I bring my books with me everywhere, to work, to vacation, to road trips, to the bathtub, to the pool...pretty much everywhere.  They get tossed in my back back, under my bed, the back of my truck.  I know a ton of fellow bibliophiles who would never dog ear a page and do their best to keep their books in pristine condition...yeah me, not so much.  I dog ear my pages, I write in
the margins and in the back of books all the time.  There are always drips of coffee or a splotch of rain.  I like my books messy though.  It reminds me of when and where I read them.  When I open up my book from our cruise I smell sea salt and coconut oil and am immediately taken back to a happy place.  My books are a part of my life, they go with me everywhere and I am not ashamed that they are as marked by my life as I am.  Now that being said, I do have some very special and very beautiful books that are cared for as if they are priceless treasures...which to me they are.  These however are the exception.  In summation my books are like me, used, traveled, messy and alive.  So if you ever stop by my bookshelves and start flipping through my books, look for the marks of life on them and know that these books have lived life along with their current owner.  Happy Reading Everybody!