A Look into My Schedule at BEA

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So, I wasn’t planning on doing this post, but then I decided why not? Let’s meet up. So here are some of the events and signings I will be going to during the conference.

 

Thursday:

11:30-12:30 A.S. King Signing for Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future

1:30-2:00 Kathleen Duble signing for for Madame Tussaud’s Apprentice

2:30-3:00 Boris Fishman signing for A Replacement Life

3:00 Galley Drop- The Queen of the Tearling

3:30 Bloomsbury secret YA giveaway

 

Friday:

12:00- 12:30 M.J. Signing for The Collector of Dying Breaths

1:00-2:00 Meg Wolitzer Signing for Belzhar

1:30-2:00 Amy Zhang Signing for Falling into Place

1:00-2:00 Sandy Hall signing for A Little Something Different

2:00- 3:00 Jane Austen Signing for In Her Own Hands

3:00- 3:30  Lily King In Booth signing for Euphoria

3:00-4:00 Kat Yeh Signing for The Truth about Twinkie Pie

3:45-4:45 Scott Westerfeld Signing for Afterworlds

 

Saturday:

10:00 AM Macmillian YA panel

Galley Drops- Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer

Falling into Place by Amy Zhang

Egg and Spoon by Gregory Maguire

Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld

I’ll Give You The Sun

Pennyroyal Academy

The Accidental Highway Man

11:30-12:30 10 Word Love Story Panel

3:30-4:30 John Green Panel

 

There you have it. Where will YOU be? Will I be seeing you somewhere? Only two days and I’m very, very excited!

 

Where’s Waldo? How to Find Me at BEA

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Hi everyone!! It’s only ONE day until the Bloggers’ Convention. I am super excited. I decided to do a little piggy back, copy cat post from the good people at the blog Read. Sleep. Repeat. where you introduce yourself to make yourself easy to find.  I decided to do it close to the day so I am fresh in your mind. 🙂

 

Self-portrait

Now, let’s start with a little bit about me. The book. I am currently writing a novel. So, when I took this picture at my local coffee shop, I grabbed this book as the perfect prop.

I am a little on the Petite side at 4’11. And I NEVER wear heels. I stand tall and proud with my ballet flats.

I am pretty approachable, if I don’t approach you first. I have a habit of starting conversations while in line. I have no problem talking to strangers. So, if you don’t talk to me first, or are shy, chances are I may talk to you first. I am just that friendly and out going.

Business cards will be readily available. ASK for one. They are cute and I have too many. I’d be more than happy to give you one, or twenty. Maybe not twenty, fifteen maybe. 🙂

I will be attending the Bookrageous Bash and the Bloggers Picnic. If you don’t know what they are, or want to find out more, just message me and I will fill you in. They sound exciting. I really want to go to many events after the conference each day. So, I am open to suggestions! I may stop at the Teen Carnival on Wednesday before the Bookrageous event, but I don’t know. They may be too far from each other.

I will be getting to BEA late on Thursday and Friday around 11:30 or 12, the latest, due to work. THen, I’m ready to mingle and get my books!

I am really excited! I hope you are, too! See some of you soon! Only TWO more days.

Happy reading!!

Fun Things Are Around the Corner…

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Hi everyone!! BEA is coming in just a couple of days. And, so I will be disappearing for a few days. Then something exciting is happening. On June 1st, it will be my one year bloggiversary!!! One whole year of blogging, reviewing, and doing all sorts of bookish things. To celebrate, I will be doing a week worth of anniversary inspired posts with one BIG giveaway with THREE winners. There will be books, swag, and lots of surprises.

The following week will be all posts dedicated to my experience at the expo. WE will have fun, share experiences, and memories.

I hope you stay with me through this fun time!! Happy reading!!

Searching for the Great Perhaps in: Looking For Alaska by John Green Book Review

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Looking for Alaska

By: John Green

Published: December, 2006 by Speak

Length: 221

Genre: YA Realistic

Rating: Five Stars

Acquired: Gift

 In searching for “The Great Perhaps” Miles “Pudge” Halter finds himself at boarding school with a new life, new friends, and Alaska Young. It all comes to Alaska. The taken Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

Miles Halter grew up in Florida with very few friends and a limited existence. It isn’t until he is attending Culver Creek Boarding School in Alabama that his life starts to change. He goes there, inspired to find his “Great Perhaps” the famous last words by poet François Rabelais. Obsessed more with famous people’s last words and biographies, Miles doesn’t know know how to really live until he meets Alaska Young. Alaska Young is beautiful, smart, well read, and completely unattainable. She is moody, careless, reckless, and fun. She is your A-typical Manic Pixie Dream Girl. And Miles “Pudge” Halter is in love. But, there is more to Alaska than he, and even her closest friends, know. 

Split in a before and after an event you don’t find out about until the end of before, Looking Up for Alaska is John Green’s debut novel about a boy learning the ins and outs of growing up, falling in love, and what it all means. It’s a well written story that deserves every ounce of the acclaim it has received. Part humorous, part heart-warming, and part heartbreaking, John Green crafts a universal story of what it means to grow up. How hard it can be at times. And, when something happens, who you can count on. The event that happens is somewhat surprising and somewhat expected. How Green handles it is metaphorical beautiful. It’s all in the title. If I ever have a child, my teen is receiving this book from me hands down. It’s universal. Teaches you about friendship, love, and letting go. Even Miles’s obsession with famous last words was great.

There are two major themes/questions in this book both based off of famous last words. The first, of course, is the Great Perhaps. I loved this immensely. Especially through the eyes of a teenager. You are always looking for something, at that age. It’s not always philosophical,  but it’s something. The depth Green added worked. It was convoluted; nor, was it too heavy to understand or believe. It was perfect. The second major theme was more of a question that was asked by Alaska Young, through the possibly fictional words of Simon Bolivar, ” How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?” That question, which Alaska often repeats and becomes central to the plot, `perfectly sums up her. She forever thinks she is living in a labyrinth; but, she is also one to everyone she knows. You never knew what Alaska you would get that day; what wall you would hit that day. Green crafted her well.

I cannot recommend this book enough. Although The Fault in Our Stars is still my favorite book of his, and Paper Towns was more adventurous, this was more realistic and philosophical. It surprised me. I connected to it more than Paper Towns. And, I can see more of a universality to it. This is definitely a book not to miss. I agree with the hype. Maybe not to the whole extent, but to most of it. It leaves you with something. A good something.

 

Waiting on Wednesday BEA Style

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Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine, where we can share upcoming releases that have us excited!

For my Waiting on Wednesday, that I normally never do, I am doing it BEA style and will be listing the top six books I am hoping to snag a copy. I need to clear some shelf space for all the books I will hopefully be getting for myself, not including those I am picking up for friends.

Here goes nothing.

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  1. Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer: If life were fair, Jam Gallahue would still be  at home in New Jersey with her sweet British  boyfriend, Reeve Maxfield. She’d be watching  old comedy sketches with him. She’d be kissing  him in the library stacks.

    She certainly wouldn’t be at The Wooden Barn, a therapeutic boarding school in rural Vermont, living with a weird roommate, and signed up for an exclusive, mysterious class called Special Topics in English.

    But life isn’t fair, and Reeve Maxfield is dead.

    Until a journal-writing assignment leads Jam to Belzhar, where the untainted past is restored, and Jam can feel Reeve’s arms around her once again. But there are hidden truths on Jam’s path to reclaim her loss. 
  2. 20306804

Falling into Place by Amy ZhangOn the day Liz Emerson tries to die, they had reviewed Newton’s laws of motion in physics class. Then, after school, she put them into practice by running her Mercedes off the road. 

Why? Why did Liz Emerson decide that the world would be better off without her? Why did she give up? Vividly told by an unexpected and surprising narrator, this heartbreaking and nonlinear novel pieces together the short and devastating life of Meridian High’s most popular junior girl. Mass, acceleration, momentum, force—Liz didn’t understand it in physics, and even as her Mercedes hurtles toward the tree, she doesn’t understand it now. How do we impact one another? How do our actions reverberate? What does it mean to be a friend? To love someone? To be a daughter? Or a mother? Is life truly more than cause and effect?

3.                                                                                                                  18465503

Dark Aemeilia: A Novel of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady by Sally O’Reilly:  The daughter of a Venetian musician, Aemilia Bassano came of age in Queen Elizabeth’s royal court. The Queen’s favorite, she develops a love of poetry and learning, maturing into a young woman known not only for her beauty but also her sharp mind and quick tongue. Aemilia becomes the mistress of Lord Hunsdon, but her position is precarious. Then she crosses paths with an impetuous playwright named William Shakespeare and begins an impassioned but ill-fated affair.

A decade later, the Queen is dead, and Aemilia Bassano is now Aemilia Lanyer, fallen from favor and married to a fool. Like the rest of London, she fears the plague. And when her young son Henry takes ill, Aemilia resolves to do anything to save him, even if it means seeking help from her estranged lover, Will—or worse, making a pact with the Devil himself.

 

4.                                                                                                        11373953

Green Girl by Kate ZambrenoGreen Girl is The Bell Jar for today—an existential novel about Ruth, a young American in London, kin to Jean Seberg gamines and contemporary celebutantes. Ruth works a string of meaningless jobs: perfume spritzer at a department store she calls Horrids, clothes-folder, and a shopgirl at a sex shop. Ruth is looked at constantly—something she craves and abhors. She is followed by a mysterious narrator, the voice equally violent and maternal. Ruth and her toxic friend, Agnes, are obsessed with cosmetics and fashion and film, with boys, with themselves, and with each other. Green Girl is about that important and frightening and exhilarating period of being adrift and screwing up, a time when drunken hook-ups and infatuations, nervous breakdowns, and ecstatic epiphanies are the order of the day.

5.                                                                                                     17453303

Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future by A.S. King: WOULD YOU TRY TO CHANGE THE WORLD
IF YOU THOUGHT YOU HAD NO FUTURE?

Graduating from high school is a time of limitless possibilities—but not for Glory, who has no plan for what’s next. Her mother committed suicide when Glory was only four years old, and she’s never stopped wondering if she will eventually go the same way…until a transformative night when she begins to experience an astonishing new power to see a person’s infinite past and future. From ancient ancestors to many generations forward, Glory is bombarded with visions—and what she sees ahead of her is terrifying.

A tyrannical new leader raises an army. Women’s rights disappear. A violent second civil war breaks out. And young girls vanish daily, sold off or interned in camps. Glory makes it her mission to record everything she sees, hoping her notes will somehow make a difference. She may not see a future for herself, but she’ll do everything in her power to make sure this one doesn’t come to pass.

 

6.  18498569

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton“There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed…”

On a brisk autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman arrives in Amsterdam to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt. But her new home, while splendorous, is not welcoming. Johannes is kind yet distant, always locked in his study or at his warehouse office-leaving Nella alone with his sister, the sharp-tongued and forbidding Marin.

But Nella’s world changes when Johannes presents her with an extraordinary wedding gift: a cabinet-sized replica of their home. To furnish her gift, Nella engages the services of a miniaturist-an elusive and enigmatic artist whose tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in eerie and unexpected ways . . .

Johannes’ gift helps Nella to pierce the closed world of the Brandt household. But as she uncovers its unusual secrets, she begins to understand-and fear-the escalating dangers that await them all. In this repressively pious society where gold is worshipped second only to God, to be different is a threat to the moral fabric of society, and not even a man as rich as Johannes is safe. Only one person seems to see the fate that awaits them. Is the miniaturist the key to their salvation . . . or the architect of their destruction?

It’s Almost here! My 2014 BEA Resolutions

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It’s coming! It’s coming! Are you ready?

I was inspired by folks at Good Books and Good Wine idea to write out resolutions for The 2014 BEA. I have been thinking a lot about this. So, here are my top 5 BEA resolutions.

  1. Introduce myself to as many publishers as I can: I have been trying to get into the publishing industry for the past two years. This will be the first year I will be here for all the days; and, I will use that opportunity to make as many connections as I can.
  2. Meet as many bloggers and make new friends: For the past year *gasp June 1st* I have blogged and responded with many of you. Now, I want to meet you in person and make ya mah friend 🙂 And, meet new bloggers, of course!
  3. Get all the books I have on my wishlist: I have 58 books on my mind. Is that a feasible number? Boy, I hope so. I have a lot to do. I made a top 25 list, but hopefully I can get all my books. I am also trying to get books for some friends, as well. Oh my.
  4. Go out to as many after party events as I can: *hint hint* I want to socialize. I will be going to the bloggers picnic and Bookrageous Bash. My goal is just to go out. Socialize as much as I can.
  5. HAVE FUN!!!: Enough said.

 

What are YOUR resolutions?

Only ONE week left!!! I can feel the excitement in the air. I am very excited. I can barely contain it.   

Laudanum and Arsenic: The Devil in the Corner by Patricia Elliott Book Review

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The Devil in the Corner

By: Patricia Elliott

Released: March, 2014 by Hachette’s Children’s Books

Length: 400 Pages

Genre: Young Adult– Gothic/ Historical Fiction

Rating: 3 and a half Stars

Acquired: via netgalley

 After a terrible run as a governess, poor, orphaned Maud Greenwood can’t keep the nightmares away without some Laudanum at night. When she moves in with her cousin by marriage, Miss Juliana Greenwood,  her need begins to take over. Then, there is issues with her cousin; all is not what it seems. She is needy, persistent, and sees her as an unpaid nurse rather than family and a companion. Suddenly, as an event shakes the town, the “Devil” begins to take over. Part love story, part Victorian Gothic story, The Devil in the Corner is engaging and enthralling. Has the Devil really come?

The Devil in the Corner is a compelling story told by two narrators, Maud, and John Shawcross, her love interest who is a local artist set to restore the Doom painting in the local Church. Their love story often gets in the way of what really is happening; the relationship between Maud and Juliana, Maud’s Laudanum addiction, the visions she sees and imagines, the rumors and accusations brought forth against her. Although John offered a different perspective, full of love and want for Maud, his story was one that could be expendable in this 400 page novel. It was what happened to Maud that was the most interesting.

In this novel, there is an underlining theme of good and bad; with the “Devil” appearing later on. The painting John has to restore is of the Judgment which later becomes one of the central themes in the novel. In the begin, Maud keeps thinking she sees shadows and that someone is following her, thus assigning this to the Devil. She also believes she has heavily sinned, as she tries to tell John who does not believe in any religion. He believes in Darwinism. Which also becomes a conversation piece, however brief.Then an event happens that shakes the town and its beliefs. I won’t say what happens because, spoilers, but it’s big.

I liked how Elliott approached the idea of divinity and good and evil. The symbolism was strong. The way she used the Devil throughout her novel was really good. She didn’t throw it in the reader’s face. She approached it slowly, then sped things up at a nice, progressive pace. The plot twist was great. I enjoyed it immensely. It was unexpected, new, and kept me engaged. The chapters were often short, and left me wanting more. I rather breezed through this relatively long book that did not feel like 400 pages long. I really lost myself in the characters and plot. Juliana was the right amount of bad and needy. Maud was the right amount of scarred.

I would definitely recommend this book. It was an enjoyable read that I didn’t put down often. The Gothic aspect was very well written. The only issue I had was the love story which can be easily bypassed. It’s not that it’s cheesy, it’s just that it should take third chair to all the action that Maud sees. I hope you give this book a look over. Don’t be thrown by the pages, it’s shorter than it seems.

 

 

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