ALA Conference 2014

URMAGAWD VEGAS

VEGASSSSSSSSSSSS

The ALA Conference was quite a trip.

I arrived on Thursday and managed to make it back to Michigan on Sunday.

I attended the Conference on Friday, Saturday, and part of Sunday.

I also did some other Vegas things.

The first night I arrived, we went to see the Jabbawockeez show as it was conveniently at the hotel we were staying at. It was an amazing show. I also tried my hand at gambling ($1 bet) and came out with $1.32 - before I tried again and got down to $0.03. The house always wins and I get really bored with gambling (because let's face it, they're not books).

The first day of ALA (Friday) was madness as the exhibits were only open from 5:30pm - 7pm. Not a huge window to get everything done in.

We checked in and waited with everyone else for the doors to open and as soon as they did, the crowd surged forth in a merry WANT BOOKS kind of way.

In the hour and a half, I gathered close to 40 books with the help of a couple of book buddies (which included my sister and a best friend from college).

FIRST DAY HOARD

Now from my past experience with ALA Chicago WHICH YOU CAN READ ABOUT HERE I knew that there would be a post office area to ship books home in (so you don't have to lug them around the plane).

....however, the post office was not open on Friday. All of the books, bags, and book goodies rode in a taxi with me back to the hotel. Not an A+ way to start the conference, but it made sorting easier.

That night, we went to a Cirque Du Soleil show (Zarkana) and called it an evening.

POST OFFICE

We returned to the conference bright and early on Saturday and immediately went to the post office. It was full of other folks who had the same idea and I crossed paths with many cool people as we waited in line. But the lines. THE LINESSS. The preferred method for getting boxes through lines was putting them underneath the barriers and waiting to move them again until you reached that point on the other side. Or...you shoved the box along the floor with your foot until reaching the front (like I did). I really appreciate the post office for being open and there and sending all my books back home.


After the post office, I waited in HUGE lines for books to be signed by the authors. It was awesome to see how many other people care about literature and can get super excited about meeting the creator of said literature.

Shout out to my book buddies, yes the lady creeping
behind us is part of the book entourage.

I definitely appreciated having my book buddies there as we could rotate who waited in what line when so we made sure to get one copy of each book we wanted so we could share them with each other (WINNING!).

As the conference wound down for the day, I sent another box of books out, and headed back to the hotel.

Where I promptly took a nap. Because I'm old and get tired.

We went out to see the Divas show and ride the high roller that night. It was a blast!

The line for Ally Condie was HUGE
(it wrapped around a few booths).

On Sunday there was a lot of grogginess and exhausted noises as we forged through the morning routines and made it back to ALA for one last Hurrah of getting books. I randomly bumped into Scot Westerfeld while waiting to have a book signed and he was very nice.

Sunday was mostly waiting in lines to get books and a few here or there (another box full though - a last trip to the post office was mandatory).

I packed it in, wished my book buddy who was staying a bit longer well, and made my way to the airport.

It was a good trip and I'm very excited for all the books that will be arriving in the mail over the course of a couple weeks (hopefully).

I'm kind of glad that the conference happens only once a year (I know there's a winter meeting but it's my understanding there are less book giveaways and author appearances) as I'm pretty freaking exhausted.

Book blogs are in the near future...maybe in a couple of days so I can catch up with my life outside of books.

Until then, HAPPY READING!!!

ALA Madness

....
....

THERE ARE MORE BOOKS OVER THERE?

This post comes to you from the past! BWAHAHA! [/scheduling post genius]

Anywho, I'm at ALA right now. My face probably looks like it froze somewhere between excitement and panic and questioning why I didn't play Tetris more to maximize book storage space.

Books by day, Vegas antics by night.

I might even be bumping into one of you! I don't know! This is the past!

There will probably be an obnoxious amount of blog posts in the near future because I'll be on a plane for an extended period of time...with books...see what happened there? Productivity!

When I get back on June 30 I'll give you the run down on how ALA went. Maybe take a photo of my hoard. Who knows?!?

Until then, happy reading!

Ruin and Rising

Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo

AT LAST. I HAVE BEEN SO EXCITED FOR THIS BOOK.

This is the third book in the series, I reviewed the first two already:
SHADOW AND BONE
SIEGE AND STORM

...I'm going to hop to the amazon summary to spare myself some pent up excitement, "The capital has fallen. The Darkling rules Ravka from his shadow throne.

Now the nation's fate rests with a broken Sun Summoner, a disgraced tracker, and the shattered remnants of a once-great magical army.

Deep in an ancient network of tunnels and caverns, a weakened Alina must submit to the dubious protection of the Apparat and the zealots who worship her as a Saint. Yet her plans lie elsewhere, with the hunt for the elusive firebird and the hope that an outlaw prince still survives.

Alina will have to forge new alliances and put aside old rivalries as she and Mal race to find the last of Morozova's amplifiers. But as she begins to unravel the Darkling's secrets, she reveals a past that will forever alter her understanding of the bond they share and the power she wields. The firebird is the one thing that stands between Ravka and destruction—and claiming it could cost Alina the very future she’s fighting for.

Ruin and Rising is the thrilling final installment in Leigh Bardugo's Grisha Trilogy." AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE

This was a great follow up book, finish of a great trilogy, and I definitely just read it start to finish in one sitting.

The book begins with the same beginning type of deal as the second book; it creates a nice bridge between the horrors of the last book to the story of the third book.

Alina needs the third amplifier to defeat the Darkling, but she can't do it while she's trapped underground. Alina is weak from battle with the Darkling and under the thumb of the Apparat who parades her around as a saint. He rules her life until one day her friends gang up and manage to get her a scrap of sunlight so deeply underground. Alina takes command of the situation and manages to get them above ground with the aid of Mal.The surviving Grisha that have rebelled against the Darkling make up her traveling group (along with Mal). They set off to meet up with the Prince in the hopes that he survived the battle against the Darkling.

...that's a really rough summary of about a third of the book. I'm going to end there and move on to my overall reaction to the series.

I loved Alina's character because she seemed to be the right balance of strong yet cautioned by her previous experiences. Her character growth and how she came into her own was so refreshing to see. Beautiful.

Mal was pretty fantastic with how he seemed much more focused in the third book. In the first two books he was there, and he was definitely there for Alina, but in the third book I think we get a way better sense of what that really means.

The side characters were precious - I would love to go into detail but I fear admitting who is alive and who is dead is revealing too much about some intricate later plot in the book. All the characters rocked it.

I also thought the world of the book was almost a character in itself with how often the attitude of society and the fear the Darkling wielded motivated so many actions.

The thing I appreciate most is probably the consistency of the story - I came to expect it to be well written, to have a logic of a character stay true to the character, and I also expected to be caught off guard frequently because there were so many little wrenches that could snarl everything up.

It was amazing.

I will probably reread the series by the end of the year.

Happy reading!

Dorothy Must Die

Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Page

This was a hit and miss for me.

There were elements to the story that I was completely gung-ho about (like seeing how warped, twisted, and strange that Oz had become), but there were other elements that I had to leave the book alone for a while as if it were throwing a tantrum (like the narrator thinking).

Confused?

An amazon summary it is, "I didn't ask for any of this. I didn't ask to be some kind of hero.
But when your whole life gets swept up by a tornado—taking you with it—you have no choice but to go along, you know?
Sure, I've read the books. I've seen the movies. I know the song about the rainbow and the happy little blue birds. But I never expected Oz to look like this. To be a place where Good Witches can't be trusted, Wicked Witches may just be the good guys, and winged monkeys can be executed for acts of rebellion. There's still the yellow brick road, though—but even that's crumbling.
What happened?
Dorothy. They say she found a way to come back to Oz. They say she seized power and the power went to her head. And now no one is safe.
My name is Amy Gumm—and I'm the other girl from Kansas.
I've been recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked.
I've been trained to fight.
And I have a mission:
Remove the Tin Woodman's heart.
Steal the Scarecrow's brain.
Take the Lion's courage.
Then and only then—Dorothy must die!" AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE

FIRST, let me say that the back of the book and the book content DO NOT MATCH UP.

The whole 'Remove the Tin Woodman's heart. Steal the Scarecrow's brain. Take the Lion's courage. Then and only then --Dorothy must die!' bit DOES NOT COME INTO PLAY UNTIL THE VERY LAST PAGES OF THE BOOK.

I CAN'T EVEN.

I'm not spoiling anything, THE BOOK ALREADY SPOILED ITSELF.

Seriously, Amy doesn't even know that she's supposed to defeat all of Dorothy's 'friends' until the VERY LAST pages of the book!

Seriously. Why would you market a first book (that will have unknown number of sequels) with the big plot twist that happens at the very end of the story?

WHY.

Courtesy of: http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/why.gif

....seriously.

So, the book begins with Amy having an incredibly crap-tastic life where she's constantly bullied by a girl named Madison and has an absent mother. She's dirt poor and her classmates are jerks.

Amy, wishing she were anywhere as she has had it with all the bogus crap in her life, is whisked off in a tornado to Oz.

In Oz, she finds that it's almost nothing like what the book depicted as Dorothy's Oz. Everything is in shambles; it looks as if a nuclear missile has gone off and taken everything that was once good out of the land.

Amy bumps into a few people from Oz only for the horror of new Oz to be unleashed - one of her first allies is murdered in front of her eyes for an act that shouldn't even be a crime.

Confused and terrible at puzzling things out, Amy is whisked off to the Emerald City where she comes face to face with evil Dorothy who sentences her to prison until her trial (where she will most likely be sentenced to death).

I'll stop there as it's a little harder for me to gauge where to stop before spoilers, but seeing as the FREAKING SUMMARY ruined the REVEAL at the end of the book, I don't know if it really can be spoiled any further.

So things I loathed about the book:

Amy - she was an interesting enough narrator but seemed to come across a lot of 'bad situations' and suddenly have to lament again about how maybe her home life hadn't been too awful, she didn't know who to trust, what had made Dorothy so evil, how do you classify people who are supposed to be good that do evil things, how do you classify wicked people who do good things? Rinse & repeat. It got really boring after a while; I almost gave up on the book during the training sequence that Amy underwent. Barf.

Star - the rat that is Amy's version of Toto and still doesn't have a point. The rat was used once for a plot point....but that was it. Sure, it served as a reminder of Kansas, but with how often Amy thought about home, she didn't really seem to need a reminder.

Dorothy - summary of Dorothy - "BLAH BLAH BLAH, I'M EVIL, BLAH BLAH BLAH, EAT ALL THE MAGIC, BLAH BLAH BLAH I DON'T HAVE A LOT OF SCREEN TIME". ....that's it.

Some things I liked about the book:

Oz - Oz itself was pretty dang cool to read about. I mean, I wanted to see munchkins frolicking around and being the non-candy obsessed version of Ompa Loompahs. What I got was way better - hardened munchkins that wanted to win the war against Dorothy.

Flying monkeys - Maybe it's in the original lore of Oz, but apparently the flying monkeys can be controlled by magic as long as they have their wings. The monkeys that wanted freedom? Cut off their wings. Of all the weird things happening in Oz, that by far was the most FIGHT THE POWER symbolism to me.

Dorothy's distorted friends - It was entirely chilling to see Scarecrow have brain juice inserted directly into his brain, it was shiver-inducing to see the Tin Woodman having no remorse as he killed off subjects of Oz, and the Lion, well the Lion could have had a bit more work. He was scary, but he didn't really seem to be on the other's level of creep-itude (I'm making up words, shhh).

.....

Given the pacing of the story, the reveals that were spoiled, and the whole feeling of "Your Princess is in another castle" at the end; I probably won't pick up the sequel. I don't have a lot of motivation too.

Happy reading!

The Hour I First Believed

The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb

Last month, I blogged about Wally Lamb's book, I Know This Much Is True which can be found HERE.

...there might be a trend developing of slowly starting to read an 'adult' book every so often.

I'm okay with this.

I'd also like to state that my primary reading will always be young adult fiction (because I adore it) but strangely enough, I find myself able to enjoy stories that show a lot of character depth and glimpses into realistic lives.

It's probably why I loved Dubliners by James Joyce so much. It will probably be one of my favorite books for decades because it haunts me so much.

....ANYWAYS.

An amazon summary about The Hour I First Believed, "When high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. When Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right, and further tragedy ensues." AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE

So, The Hour I First Believed packs a wallop of emotion.

The story is about Caelum Quirk, his wife Maureen, and seemingly everything that has ever stood between them.

The book begins with the rocky beginnings of Caelum and Maureen going through marriage counseling and reconciling after Caelum discovered Maureen was cheating on him one day.

The book does a nice job of illustrating their not-so-rosy life but the life they have carved out for themselves none the less.

Caelum receives a phone call that his Aunt Lolly has suffered from a severe stroke and he immediately flies out to Connecticut to see her and set up accommodations for her. Caelum drags himself around his old hometown, bumping into old friends, and visits Lolly in the hospital. There's a touching moment where combs her hair for her before hanging out with her for visiting hours and heading back to the old farmhouse where he was born and raised.

There are a lot of moments where Caelum moves through his previous years of life by reflecting on the belongings he's got and the nostalgia that is festered by the farm.

He wakes to a phone call from the hospital saying that Lolly had a second massive stroke and died. Heartbroken, Caelum calls around and assembles the pall bearers for her funeral before he sees the news. 

Columbine High School had a shooting.

Caelum's friend Alphonsie agrees to handle everything else for Lolly's funeral while Caelum flies to Colorado where Maureen may be dead inside the high school they both worked at.

....

The book is very intense.

There is a lot of symbolism at play throughout the story (and a particularly thought provoking (in the pesky - I WILL FIGURE THIS OUT sense) praying mantis).

There is also a lot of history, a lot of life lessons wrapped into the sheer variety of situations Caelum starts to experience as he and Maureen try to have a life after the Columbine shooting.

Happy reading!