Transitive Verve

Valentine's Day is coming, and if you happen to be unattached, you may be looking forward to spending some time with your favorite book boyfriend. Hell, I'm even in a relationship myself, and I will probably end up spending Valentine's Day with a book. (Though, this is because we choose not to celebrate, so don't feel bad for me or anything.) I thought I would take some time to make a list of some of my favorite dudes. These are the guys who make me swoon every time I read, who are just too precious cinnamon-roll-y for the real world, but whom I love all the same. Note: I fully acknowledge that this post is absolutely heteronormative. Also note: For any teenaged YA guys that I choose, that crush is coming from Teenaged Me. Or I'm projecting them forward into adulthood. I am not literally imagining mid-30s me with a teenage boyfriend, because that would be Not Okay. Also ALSO note: Spoiler warnings for all the books listed below. There were MANY I could...

Thoughts at a glance: *** (I liked it) Back in September, I did a write-up of the first three chapters of Soundless , so I'm going to go ahead and link it here , as it contains a summary and my initial thoughts on the setting and world-building. For the people who thought this book wasn't "Chinese" enough - what else were you expecting? Is Mead supposed to drop "won ton soup" and "kung fu" into every other sentence? The characters are Chinese, their names are Chinese, Mead draws from Chinese folklore (and I appreciated that in her acknowledgments, she mentioned that she consulted with people who knew more than she did in order to write this book), she tells  us that they are Chinese, so what else is she supposed to do? Fei and her fellow villagers experience love, suffering, desperation, and fear -  just like other human beings . Are love, suffering, desperation, and fear all white by default? Do Chinese people (or black people, or Latino p...

Thanks to First to Read , I was able to get my hands on the first three chapters of Richelle Mead's new standalone novel, Soundless , which drops on November 10th. (I wasn't able to request the full ARC.) The official blurb is as follows: For as long as Fei can remember, there has been no sound in her village, where rocky terrain and frequent avalanches prevent residents from self-sustaining. Fei and her people are at the mercy of a zipline that carries food up the treacherous cliffs from Beiguo, a mysterious faraway kingdom. When villagers begin to lose their sight, deliveries from the zipline shrink and many go hungry. Fei’s home, the people she loves, and her entire existence is plunged into crisis, under threat of darkness and starvation. But soon Fei is awoken in the night by a searing noise, and sound becomes her weapon. I was really hooked in by what I've read so far, and I cannot WAIT to read the rest of it. And yes, I've already pre-ordered it :) ...

This is my new book blog! How exciting! And what better way to kick off something new than to... dig up old stuff :) Because I want them tagged here, I'm going to link to my book-related reviews and things from my personal blog in this post, just so they can show up in my archives somehow. Because Blogger only lets me have 200 characters' worth of tags at a time, here is part 1 of 2 of my bookish archives, starting with my book reviews: Me effusing about Pride and Prejudice  for its 200th anniversary Thoughts on Vampire Academy  by Richelle Mead Thoughts on Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl  and Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Things I actually enjoyed about the Twilight  series And then a link list of Twilight  snark that I also enjoy :) Thoughts on the mangas based on Gail Carriger's first 3 Parasol Protectorate  books, and the first 4 books of JR Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood  books Thoughts on Gail Carriger's short st...