Po(sey) Sessions

From the moment I found out about the Teen Author Festival I knew I would be going. Provo is a bit of a far drive for me, so we sent a friend to the library when the tickets for the Scott Westerfeld keynote became available. Unfortunately, he was told the tickets to the free event sold out in 2 hours.  So no guaranteed seats for us, we were told there would be a stand by land and we planned on parking our butts into it an hour or so before show time.   Saturday morning came and I wasn’t feeling a 100%. Mr. X and I scrapped our early departure plans for a more relaxed morning.  We were running late but weren’t entirely sure we would have made it into the keynote address so we weren’t particularly worried. It was going to be a fun day and there were lots of authors to meet, and I had a bag full of books waiting to be signed.   Somehow Mr. X and I were both under the understanding that keynote started at 11am, but we were both blatantly wrong and arrived just i...

The almost-snow reminds me of a line from a poem we studied this year in Language and Literacy: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” It is one of my favorites of all the Hundred Poems, the ones our Society chose to keep, back when they decided our culture was too cluttered.  They created commissions to choose the hundred best of everything: Hundred Songs, Hundred Paintings, Hundred Stories, Hundred Poems. The rest were eliminated. Gone forever. For the best , the Society said, and everyone believed because it made sense. How can we appreciate anything fully when overwhelmed by too much? - Matched , page 29   Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gi...

Long time, no blog! I know, but life has been super busy. And I am considering that a good thing. Today was a very good day. There are so many things to tell you about that I just don't have time to explain them all right now. One of the highlights of my day was definitely meeting Jennifer A. Neilsen . Have you ever heard of her? She is a Utah author whose middle grade book recently released. She explained the book to me as Series of Unfortunate Events meets The Spiderwick Chronicles , and really that sounded right up my alley. I have some great pictures that I took of her, but for the moment they are stuck on my camera. I guess it would help if I told you the title of this book, wouldn't it? First, go get a pen and paper. Really....go! *waits* Okay the title of Jennifer A. Nielsen's book is Elliot and the Goblin War . This book is the first in a series and has some amazing illustrations by Gideon Kendall . There is so much more I want to tell you about my day. For now ...

My sleep has gotten a little bit wacky over the past few days. I have not been getting enough sleep at night which leads to weird nap times and then staying up too late again. So here I am, basically wide awake at 5:30 in the morning. The only saving grace is the fact that it is Sunday and not a more active day of the week. I have a lot of stuff to get done this week and I am trying to relax and be productive at the same time. I think that may be a conflict of interest. The silver lining to this sleeplessness is that I have been steadily making my way through the audio of The Windup Girl . After it’s recent success and all the interest from many of my friends, I was beyond eager to read this book, but now I am trying to read it and I cannot get into it. The book is different from what I expected, though I am not sure what exactly it was that I was expecting. Usually when I am reading dystopian/science fiction books they connect with my own world. There are a lot of science fic...

I am once again stuck in the middle of several books. Some of them are even the same books I was in the middle of last time this happened. I definitely need to schedule myself some computer free reading time from now on.  I have too many books I want to read, too many reviews I want to write, too many challenges I want to participate in.   I have been doing a lot of book lists to see what I have been reading and what I should be reading. Here is one I write a few weeks ago. Rae by Chelsea Swiggett (currently reading) FINISHED Boneshaker by Cherie Priest The Dead Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan (started) Book I haven’t finished yet ( Cherry Heaven , Never Let Me Go , The Iron Heel ) FINISHED Never Let Me Go Grimspace by Ann Aguirre (need to track down) Perdido Street Station by China Miéville (audio, saving for steampunk challenge starting Oct. 1) Incarceron by Catherine Fisher (started) Epic by Conor Kostick Exile by R. A, Salvatore...

“ Now that I have found the way to fly, which direction should I go into the night ?” Matched , first line The book fair is over and I feel like I have a few moments to myself. For more than a week I have been dreaming about reading Matched by Ally Condie, but I haven't been able to find the time. I have set this weekend aside as a way to recover from the hours of work I put into the book fair. I am at a cabin on the lake to relax for a day or two. It is nice to feel apart from the world, to feel like I am getting away.  Especially since my dystopian reading has fallen to the wayside for a few moments while the rest of life frantically demands my attention.   It is interesting to be at a place like this and think about concepts like utopia and dystopia. When there are just a few people set apart from the world like we are here, it is easy to believe that utopia is attainable. Both utopia and dystopia play with the idea of hope, they both try an conceptualize...

Well, I had a set budget for the book fair and I kind of splurged a little. All I can say for myself is that it IS a fundraiser so I it is going to a good cause. The hardest part about working at the book fair is that all the book lovers congregate around the cases and start reading the backs of books. You hear, “This sounds good!” “Did you see this one?” No, no, no! My budget doesn’t want to hear that!   My co-chair pointed out two books to me that I would have definitely looked over otherwise. We both love to read, especially YA and MG books, but we mostly focus on different genres. Which is nice, because we tend to fill in each other’s gaps. She like fantasy, ghost stories, and other Halloween/horror type books. I, on the other hand, focus on science fiction and more general fiction than she does. Overall, we generally end up looking at most of the books and know what they are about.  The two books in particular that she pointed out to me caught my eye as well, but look...