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Showing posts from January 29, 2012

Dystopia's Umbrella

In September of 2010 I wrote a post called The Problem with Dystopia where I addressed some of the issues with the term as a definition and a literary term. In it I said, "Dystopian literature is gaining momentum, especially in the young adult market, yet no one seems to have a grasp on what words to you use to define, understand, and categorize dystopia." And the interesting thing is that nothing much has changed. People are still struggling to pin down what makes dystopia dystopian. Yet, we have also come to accept the word into our speech patterns. We use it without being overly concerned with definitions. The more we try to pin down our understanding of the term and concept the more variations of it emerge. This is both confusing and amazing. I am curious if and why people feel they have a firmer grasp on understanding dystopia than they did in the past. What has changed? I guess we all have that moment when dystopia is defined for us and whatever words were used in

PREVIEW - Starters by Lissa Price

I had the pleasure of meeting Lissa Price at a Mysterious Galaxy meet and greet in San Diego during the World Fantasy Convention. I wasn't able to attend WFC but I had a great time at the Mysterious Galaxy store seeing Cindy Pon again and meeting TONS of other great authors. It was a wonderful experience, full of surprises. Meeting Lissa was definitely one of those surprises. When I went to this event at the Mysterious Galaxy bookstore I hadn't been keeping up with forthcoming books so when Lissa told me she had a dystopian novel coming out I was REALLY excited. We had a great time discussing the genre and she told me to get a sample chapter booklet out of the store. The first thing that struck me about Starters was the cover. I have seen pictures of it online and it just doesn't show all the amazing detail that you can really see in person. I begged Lissa to sign it for me and she was more than happy to. I was instantly in love. The cover was overwhelming me, Li

How I Turned a New Page

Fantasy novels have been the bane of my existence since the creation of my blog. Why is that? you ask. Well, maybe bane is a bit over reaching but when it came to fantasy novels I had a huge road block keeping me from reading them. For me fantasy novels are often challenging because of the level of trust a reader must leave in the hands of an author.  The world can be so unknown with character names that are spelled weird and names of places that are insane to pronounce. It is odd, because at it's core, there is something inherently appealing about fantasy concepts. What little girl doesn't go through the unicorn stage, or love fairies? But I often found that what I was reading didn't match the pictures on my wall. Or if they did, I couldn't read long enough to get to those parts. And since then I have tried to avoid fantasy books. I even resented when people recommended them because I was so convinced that these books weren't for me and never could be. I can