My time in the Children's Department has opened my eyes to all kinds of books I didn't know existed. I mean, we all know that Obama wrote a children's book. But did you know that Taye Diggs did, too?

Chocolate Me! by Taye Diggs

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At the National Book Festival here in DC I met Sherman Alexie! We basically talked for three seconds because there were a gazillion people in line to get their books signed. But still.

Earlier this week Elizabeth Brokamp came into the bookstore for a signing event. Because she writes Children's books and I have no children I didn't actually know who she was. But she is a local (DC) author and it was really fun talking with her about the creative process, the ins and outs of publishing, and the publicity events that go with it. Meeting authors is fun!

Have you met any authors? Who? And who was the most fun to talk to?

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The other day while I was working at the cash register a large man with a thick accent (French? German? I'm horrible with accents...) made small talk with me and I handed him is change. He looked at me for a second and very magnanimously handed the nickel back saying,

"You keep it. For ze American economy."

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So. The American Civil War has been raging for twenty years. Yes, I know this is not True Life but that is why fiction is so great! Anyway, our stalwart heroine, Mercy Lynch, is in quite a predicament- she's a Southerner working in a Confederate hospital married to a Union soldier. This causes a modicum of internal conflict and a plethora of external conflict. Add to that a sick father in Tacoma, a wild ride on a massive war machine, a Texas Ranger, and zombies and you get one very fabulous book.

I loved this book even more than Boneshaker. Mercy's Southern accent was totally believable (you won't believe how many bad Southern accents I've read), Mercy herself was a great character with all kinds of bravery, inner turmoil, and a little bit of silliness. I recommend this book to history buffs, people obsessed with surviving the zombie apocalypse, Southerners, and steampunk lovers.

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Becoming Jane Eyre by Sheila Kholer

The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin

Dark Angels by Karleen Koen

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffery

Dragonquest by Anne McCaffery

Dreadnought by Cherie Priest

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

Fire by Kristin Cashore

The Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

The Gospel of Ruth: Loving God Enough to Break the Rules by Carolyn Custis James

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

Heart of Iron by Ekaterina Sedia

The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran

The Heroine's Bookshelf by Erin Blakemore

Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns

Hood by Stephen Lawson

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher

The Isles of the Forsaken by Carolyn Ives Gilman

Love Wins by Rob Bell

Married to Murder by Jennifer Oberth

Maximum Ride by James Patterson

The Passage by Justin Cronin

Plan B by Pete Wilson

Poison Study by Maria Snyder

The Power of Half by Kevin and Hannah Salwen

A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver by E.L. Konigsburg

Radical by David Platt

The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff

The Revisionists by Thomas Mullen

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Talking about Jane Austen in Baghdad by Bee Rowlatt and May Witwit

The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaressen

Vivaldi's Virgins by Barbara Quick

Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's Guide by Frederick Buechner

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• Met (and spoke with!!) Sherman Alexie at the National Book Festival
• Trained to be a volunteer at the Library of Congress
• Finally finished Goliath by Scott Westerfeld
• Discovered the true genius of Cherie Priest (author of Boneshaker and Dreadnought)
• Learned that the DC Public Library now supports downloads in Kindle format!
• Got a job at a bookstore!

What have you been up to?

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The Bronte sisters led pretty awful lives, I'm not gonna lie- lots of death, loneliness, and oppression. Sheila Kohler imagines how these elements influenced their literary writing. Charlotte Bronte is the main narrator, however, perspective shifts between her sisters, her father, a nurse, and family servant. The writing style is gothic and dark. It evokes the tone and style of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, etc. I love how Kohler ties in specific events in the sisters' lives to their works- often quoting directly from the novels themselves. Here's an excerpt in which Charlotte is writing Jane Eyre.

She invents a bully, a fourteen-year-old boy, John Reed- drawn from her days as a governess...He has sallow skin and two spoiled sisters. How she has suffered at the expense of spoiled children whose doting parents could find no fault in them! She makes her heroine small for her age, delicate, and, like herself, plain.

Anyway, the book is wonderful. It's slow-paced but beautifully written. Read if you like classics, historical fiction, or the Bronte sisters.

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I feel like this is THE BOOK to read this year. The publicist did a great job because I saw this book EVERYWHERE- blogs, stores, etc.

It was good. All the classic YA distopia elements were there- world building, lots of action, a love interest, etc.

Beatrice "Tris" Prior lives in a world divided into five "factions" dedicated to a particular value: Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Erudite, and Dauntless. At age 16 each citizen chooses which faction he or she will join. Tris faces many trials- from her initiation into Dauntless to an escalating conflict between factions. Throughout all the action, Roth does a great job of developing her characters; Tris struggles to define herself as well as understand the world around her. It's not Hunger Games but its still good fiction- entertaining, compelling, and believable.

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Courtesy of Rotae at devantART http://rotae.deviantart.com/

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• The series is full of characters, so many that it's very difficult to remember them all.
• It has been made into a TV series called The Game of Thrones which is the title of the first book in the series.
• If you decide to read these books remember that George R. R. Martin kills lots of characters, even the ones you love (even IMPORTANT ones!). Its very sad. It's also why there are so many characters- he kills them and then replaces them with new ones.
• The books are very long and very intense fantasy- dragons, made- up countries, etc.

Important things to know about Dance with Dragons, specifically:

• Book 4 ended with an author's note explaining that Martin ran out of room and couldn't finish the book so Book 5 is really the last part of Book 4 until about 70% of the way through.
• Most of the chapters are narrated from the perspective of one of the characters. Martin is great at making each character distinct. Despite the fact that he has at least 15 narrators (and gazillions more supporting characters), the character development is awesome.

Book 1-4 were GREAT. Book 5 was less awesome because of these things:

1) Characters that I liked died. Violently.

2) Traveling. So many characters were traveling places in the book- it was kind of boring. I think maybe the  amount of characters finally caught up to Mr. Martin so the plot was a little unwieldy.

If you really like fantasy or really long books or lots of characters then this is for you!

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In case you missed them:

Harry Potter must truly die
By the hands
of the Snow Queen tonight

snowy new england
jo march: swears, burns her dress but
friedrich bhaer was old

Romeo lost his true
Love Juliet, and then his life.
All's well that ends well.

Dogs, death and the moor
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Watson without Holmes

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Don't you just love a great haiku? Sweet, simple, and so vivid! While haikus are traditionally about seasons, let's write some literary haikus. They can be about books, libraries, a favorite author, genre, etc.

Write a (bookish) hiaku and leave it in the comments. We'll pick a winner and you'll get a donation made in your name to coreluv.org- an organization that provides basic needs to orphans in Haiti.

Rules:

1. Entries will be taken starting now until Saturday at 3:00pm (EST).
2. Community voting runs from 4pm Saturday to 8pm Sunday (EST) & you will VOTE on the most creative and literary answer.
3. 8am (EST) Monday = I announce the winner!
4. The winner gets a donation made in their name to coreluv.org

Can't remember how to write a haiku? Find help here and here.

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Flow charts are the best!

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I loved this book so much. In an effort not to write a super long review that no one will read, I'm limiting myself to only telling you THREE great things about it:

1) Character Names. The main character's name is Briar Wilkes (but when she was married it was Briar Blue). Her son is Ezekiel "Zeke" Wilkes and her husband is Leviticus Blue. Not only people had cool names- there were machines like Dr. Minnericht's Doozy Dazer (Daisy for short) and a Sonic Gusting Gun. Best of all is the titular machine, "Dr. Blue's Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill."

2) Zombies! Yes, in this case the zombie element is actually a positive thing. In Civil War era Seattle a poisonous gas leak has turned part of the population into putrefying zombies or "rotters". Cherie Priest describes them like this,

The noise of the rotters outside was muffled until it was almost absent, and she could almost forget they were out there, loudly waiting and demanding her bones. But not quite. Their arguments vibrated in her ears and tugged at her attention, no matter how hard she tried to push them out. Behind her eyes she remembered too clearly the peeling, gray fingers that had clung disembodied to the ladder-- persistent to the very last.

3) Steampunk. Airships, the 19th century, and alternate history. Also, mystery, maternal love, and murder (though of course those things aren't specific to Steampunk).

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With a smart, sassy heroine, there was no way I wasn't going to like this story. Jennifer Oberth does a great job of developing the main character (which is not always the case with short stories). Additionally, the plot moves along quickly, the dialogue is realistic, and the mystery is, well, mysterious. Dontcha hate it when you figure out the end waay before the character does? Fortunately, this story isn't predictable or trite in anyway. I enjoyed reading it and so will you if you enjoy mysteries, Mrs. Marple, or female law enforcement officials.

You can find it here on Smashwords for only 99¢

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*uh, I mean, welcome!

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