One of my favorite college classes was an English class taught by a science fiction fanatic. It was a composition class (research papers and whatnot), and we had to watch science fiction movies and read science fiction books. Watching the Matrix was an actual assignment. So, when it came time to write my final research paper I compared the Matrix to Alice in Wonderland. (Seriously, if you have ever read “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There” you need to compare it to the Matrix. The Rabbit hole? Different colored pills that do weird things to your body? The Cohen Brothers were totally stealing from Lewis Carroll when they wrote the Matrix).

“Alice in Wonderland” has always been one of my favorite books. The Disney movie is a little trippy, but I like it too. In fact, I was pretty excited to meet Alice and the White Rabbit at Disney World a few years ago.

Of course, we all know I also love anything supernatural so when I saw, “Alice in Zombieland,” by Gena Showalter I HAD to check it out!

I’ll admit, I was expecting something along the lines of “Price and Prejudice and Zombies” where the Zombies are just carefully added to the existing text of the book. Instead, Showalter’s Alice doesn’t really have anything in common with the classic Alice other than the name. I was OK with that! In “Alice in Zombieland,” Alice has grown up with a father who is terrified of the monsters only he can see. After her families tragic deaths Alice learns her father wasn’t as crazy as she thought. The monsters are real, and someone has to stop them from harming more innocent people.

Alice finds herself drawn to a rough group of kids at her new school. Are they really as bad as people say or are they fighting something more nefarious than other kids? Can she help them rid their town of the ghost zombies that plagued her father?

I LOVED this book. It had everything a nerd like me could ask for. A few “Alice in Wonderland” references, a new twist on zombies, sassy best friends, and a mysterious bad boy. I can’t wait for the second book in this series to come out.

What do you think? Does it sound like something you would enjoy?

Here is a list of books that were passed along to me, so I am passing them along to you:

http://www.macmillanlibrary.com/2013/02/26/books-for-teens-class-of-2013

Have you ever founds yourself so engrossed in a book that you felt like you were there? Have you had that feeling where you could smell the surroundings, like you could reach out and touch a character or an object? Have you experienced that moment where the book is so real you feel like you are truly transported to a new time and place? Well, if you have, you might be a libriomancer.

In Jim Hines book, Libriomancer are men and woman with magical powers can use magic to pull object directly from books. Isaac Vainio is one of these magicians. He belongs to a secret group called the Die Zwelf Portenære (The twelve Porters or just The Porters). Porters can use magic to pull objects from books. Isaac is a cataloguer for the Porters, classifying books that have magical potential. His life is pretty quiet until a group of Meyerii Vampires (AKA Sparklers) show up at his library and demand information on why the Porters and hunting vampires. Isaac finds himself thrown into a weird war between the Porters and Vampires, armed only with his magic, his fire spider Smudge, and the wood nymph Lena who comes to his aid.

There are so many reasons to love this book. Here are the top 7 reasons you should read Libriomancer.

1. It’s set in Michigan – Jim Hines is a Michigan Author and this books jumps from the UP to Lansing to Detroit with other locals in between. It’s fun to read a book where you are familiar with the setting.
2. The Vampires- There are two camps of magical creatures. Those who are made and those who are created. Most of the vampires in the world are the created kinds who rise to being through books. The vampires that initially come after Isaac are relatively new vampires called Meyerii (or Sparklers) which came into being from the Twilight series.
3. The nerd references- Isaac is a science fiction geek. Throughout this book are references to Dr. Who, Firefly, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Sherlock Holmes, and many other great books and TV series. I am a total nerd at heart, so I loved all the geeky references.
4. Johannes Gutenberg- Once again, I am a nerd. In college I took a class called, “The History of the Book,” for fun.  Of course, the history of the book starts with Gutenberg and his creation of a printing press with moveable type. Gutenberg’s invention allowed books to be mass produced far cheaper than previously which allowed books to be more widely distributed. In Libriomancer, Gutenberg is the founder of The Porters and still rules over the magicians. I loved all the references to history and the printing press.
5. Ponce De Leon- Like Gutenberg, this one pulls at my love for history. Most of you will remember De Leon from History as the guy who tried to find the fountain of youth. Well, in this book he not only found it, but used to make himself immortal. Now he’s a powerful sorcerer who doesn’t get along with Gutenberg but is a kind of ally to Isaac. I love the idea of this decades old explorer serving as a magical adviser.
6. Smudge- Smudge is a magical fire spider. He’s like a hairy, eight legged, combustible guard dog. And he eats candy which is just cute.
7. Isaac is a librarian- Ok, this one is a purely selfish reason to love the book. But, as a librarian it makes me happy. My absolute favorite line in the entire book occurs while Isaac is using his librarian skills to find answers the other Porters hadn’t been able to find. “I was a pretty good libriomancer, but I was a damn good librarian.”

If you want to check out the book you can read the first chapter here for free. If you are a total book nerd, you’ll love this one. What would you pull from a book if you were a libriomancer (there are rules- you can only pull something that can fit through the book). Personally, I would be raiding Weasly Wizards Wheezes from Harry Potter. Think of the pranks you could pull with some of those? How about you? What would you pull from a book?

“It was supposed to be the weekend of their lives—an exclusive house party on Henry Island. Best friends Meg and Minnie each have their reasons for being there (which involve T.J., the school’s most eligible bachelor) and look forward to three glorious days of boys, booze and fun-filled luxury.  But what they expect is definitely not what they get, and what starts out as fun turns dark and twisted after the discovery of a DVD with a sinister message: Vengeance is mine. Suddenly people are dying, and with a storm raging, the teens are cut off from the outside world. No electricity, no phones, no internet, and a ferry that isn’t scheduled to return for two days. As the deaths become more violent and the teens turn on each other, can Meg find the killer before more people die?”

I really liked this book.  It was a quick read and I was wondering about how it would end.  It reminded me of the Final Destination series.

Check it out here.

I love the title of this book alone. It seems like an exact contrast to my last post of the Book of Awesome. This version is much more crude and less positive and happy, but still spot on and true. I tried to copy an image of the cover, but that was not working and thus I wanted to punch my computer in the face. You can check out the cover and more information on this book at the link below to our card catalog:

Things I Want to Punch in the Face

I first saw it come across the desk at the library and decided that I had to have a copy for myself. Some of the things listed: pregnancy pictures and many others, made me laugh out loud and nodding in agreement. There is also a blog that doesn’t seem to be completely current, although I am sure that there are still plenty of things to want to punch in the face. You can check out the blog here:

http://thingsiwanttopunchintheface.blogspot.com/

This book is, in a word……AWESOME!

Finding Money in your old coat pocket, when cashiers open up a new lane, hitting all of the green lights, popping bubble wrap, locking someone out of the car and pretending to drive away.  These things are just awesome!

This is a quick read with each “awesome” story lasting only a page or two.  I loaded this book by  Neil Pasricha on my iPad on a whim and was not disappointed.  It was fun to read through these and think of how awesome those things really are and how the little things make our days.

Check it out here.

Or Electronic Version here.

Do you ever read a book and can’t decide if you liked it or hated it? I am totally feeling that way over Tahereh Mafi’s book Shatter Me.

I actually really liked the premise. Juliette has spent nearly a year in solitary confinement because her touch is poison. Anytime she touches someone she causes terrible pain, and can even cause death. Her solitary existence is soon interrupted by a young man named Adam. Adam works for the dictatorship, The Reestablishment. The Reestablishment believes that Juliette could be a weapon in the new world, but Juliet just wants to be a normal girl, and maybe to be with Adam.

I liked all of that. It sounded interesting (even if Juliette’s power was a little too much of an X-Men rip off for my liking, can anyone else say, “Rogue.”) My problem with this book is twofold: 1) Juliette and 2) The writing.

Juliette isn’t really all that likeable of a character. She’s a little whiny. She’s needy, she’s sickly. She is forever falling down or fainting or whining about falling down or fainting. Sure, she’s had a touch love being a Rogue-wannabe and being locked away in an insane asylum for nearly a year, but still she could have a little more backbone.

Then there is the writing. The book is told through Juliette’s diary which is riddled with words sentences that she has crossed out because she doesn’t like what she wrote. At one point there are several pages filled with crossed out words. It made me want to throw the book cook the book in the microwave have a bonfire with the book run over the book with my car until it couldn’t hurt anyone ever again. I hope you can see how annoying that can be. The book is also filled with metaphors that leave much to be desired. Here is one such metaphor: “Hate looks like everybody else until it smiles. Until it spins around and lies with lips and teeth carved into semblance of something too passive to punch.” Really? That’s what you’re purposefully writing Mafi?

Overall, I’m really torn. I liked Adam and the antagonist of the story, The Reestablishment leader Warner was actually a great character. He was well developed and actually interesting. I liked the dystopian aspects of the book too. It’s set in a not too distant world where pollution and climate change and who knows what else have destroyed the world so completely that the people were begging dictators to take it over and make the world better. The premise of this story was pretty good; I just don’t think the end result is worth it.

This is the first book in a trilogy. Book Two, Unravel Me, is due out in February of 2013 and I haven’t decided if I want to read it. What do you think? Have you read this book, other books that you liked/hated at the same time?

I finally have managed to pull together my favorite books I read in 2012. Now, these books weren’t necessarily published in 2012, that’s just when I read them.  Also please keep in mind that I’m sure this list would be much larger if I wasn’t such a slacker with reading this year.  Remember this post? Yeah, that’s still happening. I’ m working on it though, I’m already 2 books in this year, and hope to keep up the trend! Without further ado, here she is:

Top of 2012

Have you ever met an author that you love? A few years ago I was lucky enough to meet the fantastic and talented Maria V Snyder when she came to speak at the Dorsch Memorial Library. Maria has written several fantastic series including the Study Series (read Elizabites Fancy’s review of the first book Poison Study here), as well as the Inside out series (read my review here), and the Glass series- Storm Glass, Sea Glass, and Spy Glass (which I will be telling you all about in a few short paragraphs- be patient!) She was hosted by the friends of the library, along with the book club.

That evening, after her fantastic presentation, our book club held a pot-luck dinner in her honor. It was awesome. It was an evening filled with great food, great friends, a wonderful author, and one very heated argument.

Yes, I did just say argument. You see, at the time the Glass series wasn’t completed, and we were very torn on the course the books should take. So what were we fighting about?

The first book in the series introduces us to Opal Cowan, a young magician-in-training who is also a skilled glass blower. She is asked to help the Stormdancers (those powerful magicians who harness the power of storms and keep the rest of the realm safe from dangerous weather) solve who has been damaging the orbs they create to contain the storms powers. In the first book she meets Kade. In the first book she also meets Devlen.

Kade is a sweet Stormdancer. Devlen is a criminal with a very awful past. As the series progresses Opal finds herself drawn to both men, which brings us to our fight. Kade or Devlen.

We spent a great deal of time arguing over who Opal should end up with by the end of the series. Mary V. Snyder sat and listened to us with a pleased smile on her face and refused to give us any hints. At the end of the evening she told us how great it was to listen to us fight about one of her books.

I love this series. It’s fast paced, light-hearted, and engaging enough to turn grown adults into arguing fools! If you need more convincing that you should read these books- read this excerpt from Storm Glass.

Mermaids. When you see that word what do you think about? I know for me I picture one of my favorite Disney movies of all time- The Little Mermaid.

Anne Greenwood Brown apparently didn’t watch enough Disney. In her book, Lies Beneath she explores the darker side of merpeople, the murderous killer side.

Calder White is a handsome young man. He’s charming, he’s approachable. He also happens to be a mermaid who lives in Lake Superior with his three evil sisters. In this tale Mermaids aren’t able to feel emotions in the same that humans do, so they steal positive emotions from the humans they kill.

Calder and his sisters have one great obsession-kill Jason Hancock. Hancock is man who they hold responsible for the death of their mermother (the word mermother was never used in the book. I just couldn’t resist using it).

Calder is tasked with getting close to Hancock’s family so they can lure him onto the lake. Once Hancock is in the water the mermaids will have the upper hand and they can finally finish their gruesome task of avenging their mother. Unfortunately for Calder, getting close to the family means getting close to Jason’s teenage daughter Lily. Calder quickly finds himself caring for Lily way more than a good homicidal merboy should.

I’ll admit, I didn’t expect much from this book. Merpeople? In Lake Superior? This seemed a little too out there, even for this supernatural loving girl. I mean, really, MERPEOPLE? I might as well be reading a story about unicorns and magical kittens. But I was wrong. This book is NOT unicorns and magic kittens. It’s bloodthirsty shape-shifters hell-bend on revenge.

I’m actually pretty glad I read this book. It is not something I ever would have picked up to read on my own, but my book club was reading it so I planned to suffer through it. Instead, I found a very entertaining book in my hands. Sure, it was about killer mermaids, but it was also a book about finding your own voice and doing the right thing, even when your very nature tells you to do something else.

What do you think? Would you want to read a book about merpeople? Have you ever read something you didn’t think you would enjoy only to find out it was a really great book? Leave me a comment with your thoughts?