Po(sey) Sessions

Ever since I first heard about Inside Out I really wanted to read it. One thing you may remember about me is that I like to know as little about a book as possible.  I read just enough to find out if I’m interested and nothing more.  This can be good and bad. It can be bad when a assume a book is one way and it ends up being absolutely nothing like my assumption.  I am not really sure where this first idea came from, maybe a review or something, but I thought that Inside Out seemed somewhat similar to one of my favorite dystopian novels The Declaration by Gemma Malley. I was hoping this book would be just the kind of dystopian fiction I enjoyed but I worried it would be too light or too romance driven.    A lot of dystopian novels deal with ideas of  class.  Class in the future is almost like the new race, and different books deal with this in different ways.  Orwell has the proles, Malley has the surplus, and Snyder has the scrubs. I think...

While I was pregnant with my first child, who is now 7, I dreamed of being a wonder parent who gave her child every artistic and educational experience under the sun. And that said loving child would embrace every moment of every effort toward the betterment of her mental edification.  But the realities of parenting are quite different from the expectations I set up for myself before I had a baby who would cry, have demands, and even worse, learn the word “no”.   My husband left me when I was pregnant with our second child.  My first daughter was not even two at the time.  And though I had planned out many toddler time activities for the months that she was inside me, I found it harder to execute them as consistently as I would have hoped.  Then my world was flung into chaos and the way that I decided to cope with my misery was to devote myself to creating even more educational material for my almost 2 year old. I would print and color and laminate while she...

I love Simon and Shuster’s GalleyGrab program. I have been able to get the opportunity to read some great titles, and check out books I never would have tried before.  On a whim I decided to grab Can Your Survive the Zombie Apocalypse?   This book releases today, make sure to track down a copy.   Ever since LTUE last year I have had a growing interest in zombies.    I am pretty much a wimp; I don’t do anything that’s scary. Zombies for me are parts of horror films and not in the type of books I like to read, but when I went to the LTUE panels about zombies I loved hearing how they have transformed over the years.  Now Zombies are deeply rooted in ideas of dystopia and the end of the world.    This book by Max Brallier is pretty awesome because it is just like those choose your own adventure books you loved as a kid but this one is for adults.  I was excited to see an adult choose your own adventure because I have been secretly...

I need to first of all thank Lisa of TLC Book Tours for forgiving me about forgetting to post my review of this remarkable book last week like I was supposed to.  When I first heard about this book on Twitter I was immediately interested. Jane McConigal has created a work that in title alone grabs my interest: Reality is Broken – Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World . For me, the interest is two fold. The title connects with my dystopic sensibilities. If reality is broken, what does that mean for us who think they are content living in it? As far as the subtitle goes, I have always been a little bit of a closet gamer myself.  I have played a fair share of hours on various RPGs and MMOs.   If all that wasn’t enough there is something very striking about the cover to me.  When it first showed up in the mail my senses started tingling because of all the ways that this book looked interesting to me.  Of course books are so much more than ...

Two times a year Lenore focuses on dystopia on her blog. And I find it overwhelmingly delightful. Well, it feels wrong to find dystopia anything delightful, but that is just how I am. Every time Lenore focuses on dystopia it just gets better and better. She does some really amazing author interviews. Here is what Lenore has in store for her readers: Here's what I have on tap : Reviews of over 20 dystopian novels, past, present and future - complete with my infamous Zombie Chicken Ratings. (Refer to my index of dystopian reviews for latest updates and past reads)   Interviews with authors of dystopian fiction.   Dystopian Mash-ups - These are fun posts where readers imagine their favorite characters dropped into other books.  Could Elizabeth Bennett survive THE HUNGER GAMES?  Would Katniss be best buds with Frankie from THE DISREPUTABLE HISTORY OF FRANKIE LANDAU BANKS? You tell me!   Previews of dystopian fiction coming out...

1. The Passage by Justin Cronin (audio) - dystopian, post-apocalyptic 2. Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde (audio) - dystopian 3. Wasteland by Francesca Lia Block - young adult 4. Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin (audio) - historical fiction 5. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1 - graphic novel, steampunk? 6. Silver Phoenix by Cindy Pon - fantasy, young adult 7. The New Policeman by Kate Thompson - fantasy, Ireland, young adult   My favorite was Silver Phoenix by Cindy Pon. It is the most amazing fantasy novel I have ever read.  I think this is the type of novel that could make a fantasy lover out of anyone.   Every year I promise myself that I will make sure to blog a monthly list of what I read, and every year I convince myself it will be too boring and that of course I will be able to remember. Which I can’t. So here it is!