Po(sey) Sessions

“Normal people didn’t perceive the otherworldly that hover in this world. It’s a Darwinist safety switch in the mind, something to help keep humans from screaming at shadows.  But deep in our souls, or our collective unconsciousness, we know those things we hesitate to define are there, walking among us.  We know, even if we don’t see.”  –  Page 114 of Hunger   The concept of Hunger is like no book I have ever read before. It is genius and basic at the same time. The idea of the apocalypse has slipped from the pages of the Bible into common knowledge and while people know varying details of what they expect to come, there seems to be a sort of acceptance, if only on a mythological level.  Jackie Morse Kessler has found a way to tap into our basic understanding of the apocalypse to create a unique and compelling story.  With all the dystopian fiction I have read, it feels quite refreshing to find something that is different. Hunger feels new...

Well, I am extremely pleased with the events of my weekend. Besides an unfortunate migraine or two, it was all pretty amazing.  I had a very busy week at the school working on my reading program.  The Accelerated Reader program is finally off the group and people are starting to get excited about it.  All last week and this upcoming week I am going into the classrooms and reading the students How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World .     This book is absolutely adorable, ties in with our theme for the year, and has an AR quiz.  The kids seem to be enjoying sharing it with me.  I am starting to build a relationship with them and many students will come up to me and tell me what they are reading or how many points they have earned.  After prepping and distributing all the supplies and reading to 7 classes I was ready for a relaxing weekend.   Well, relaxing wasn’t really what I got. On Saturday I got up early to go to a swap meet...

My day was a lot busier than I had expected and I have not been sleeping well, all of this makes for a late review and I need to apologize to Raz at Eco-Libris for that. I was supposed to have this review up several hours earlier but sometimes life just gets in the way. I was supplied with The Carbon Diaries 2017 by Saci Lloyd by the publisher for the 2010 Green Book Campaign. I am honored to be a part of this event in the blogosphere (even if I did mulligan my portion of it.)  I was excited to read a dystopian book for this campaign because many environmental issues go hand in hand with dystopian fiction.  The environment is a major cause for many dystopian societies.   Reviewing a book in a series can be difficult because I never know exactly how much I want to say.  There is almost no way to talk about this book without spoiling the first one. I am going to talk about some of elements of the Carbon Diaries series as a whole.   The concept of the s...

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...