La Panda Rouge

So I did the amazing Cannonball Read this year but was a total wastrel at posting reviews.  Some books were a revelation, some were popcorn (could not read the Weather Wardens and Stephanie Plum fast enough, almost as if I was trying to speed to the finish line), some a reminder (I think I’m too old to read Meg Cabot, and that’s okay).  

Here, however, is the list of books read (in no real order):

1.      Farenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury

2.      Ill Wind (Weather Warden #1) – Rachel Caine

3.      Heat Stroke (Weather Warden #2) – Rachel Caine

4.      Chill Factor (Weather Warden #3) – Rachel Caine

5.      Windfall (Weather Warden #4) – Rachel Caine

6.      Firestorm (Weather Warden #5) – Rachel Caine

7.      Thin Air (Weather Warden #6) – Rachel Caine

8.      Gale Force (Weather Warden #7) – Rachel Caine

9.      The Rose Garden – Susanna Kearsley

10.   Outlander – Diana Gabaldon

11.   Saga (vol. 1) – Brian K Vaughan, Fiona Staples

12.   Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs

13.   The Ruby in the Smoke – Phillip Pullman

14.   The Shadow in the North – Phillip Pullman

15.   The Tiger in the Well – Phillip Pullman

16.   Timeless – Gail Carriger

17.   One for the Money (Stephanie Plum #1) – Janet Evanovich

18.   Two for the Dough (Stephanie Plum #2) – Janet Evanovich

19.   Three to Get Deadly (Stephanie Plum #3) – Janet Evanovich

20.   Four to Score (Stephanie Plum #4) – Janet Evanovich

21.   High Five (Stephanie Plum #5) – Janet Evanovich

22.   Hot Six (Stephanie Plum #6) – Janet Evanovich

23.   Seven Up (Stephanie Plum #7) – Janet Evanovich

24.   The Hedgewitch Queen – Lilith Saintcrow

25.   The Bandit King – Lilith Saintcrow

26.   Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

27.   Cinder – Marissa Meyer

28.   Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer

29.   The Sisters Brothers – Patrick deWitt

30.   Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan

31.   Jinx – Meg Cabot

32.   Insatiable – Meg Cabot

33.   Airhead – Meg Cabot

34.   Being Nikki – Meg Cabot

35.   Runaway – Meg Cabot

36.   Heart of Steel – Meljean Brook

37.   Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? – Mindy Kaling

38.   Wolf Brother (Chronicles of Ancient Darkness #1) – Michelle Paver

39.   Spirit Walker (Chronicles of Ancient Darkness #2) – Michelle Paver

40.   Soul Eater (Chronicles of Ancient Darkness #3) – Michelle Paver

41.   Beautiful Ruins – Jess Walter

42.   Matched (Matched #1) – Ally Condie

43.   Crossed (Matched #2) – Ally Condie

44.   Reached (Matched #3) – Ally Condie

45.   The Fallen (Nine Lives of Chloe King #1) – Liz Braswell

46.   The Stolen (Nine Lives of Chloe King #2) – Liz Braswell

47.   The Chosen (Nine Lives of Chloe King #3) – Liz Braswell

48.   How to be a Woman – Caitlin Moran

49.   The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkein

50.   1Q84 -  Haruki Murakami (trans. by Philip Gabriel)

51.   Beautiful Creatures – Cami Garcia, Margaret Stohl

52.   Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn

Were I to list the top 3 books of my year I’d have to go with Saga, How to be a Woman and 1Q84.  All three were refreshing and thought provoking in their own ways.

That’s it.  I’m exhausted just thinking about all these words I’ve crammed into my brain.   

Hello there, my name is Mandy and I’m a comic book reader.  

(Hi Mandy)

My love for “funny books” started when I was younger, stealing my brother’s Amazing Spiderman and reading them.  But it wasn’t really until college and my exposure to books like Transmetropolitan and even the goth girl fantasy, Sandman that I became a true believer. Meeting and consequently marrying a true lifelong devotee to graphic literature sealed the deal. Now the real issue is what can we buy that will fit into our already over-stuffed bookshelves.  Life ain’t bad.

Like any true nerd-girl I picked up and devoured the amazing Y: The Last Man years ago and when I saw that the talented Brian K Vaughan was writing a monthly book again I immediately started reading the floppy in-store (the Second issue, the first had already sold out several times, according to my comic guy, Gabe).  It’s funny, strange and crazy readable.  

I just finished the first arc of this story and I am an unabashed super fan-girl for it now.  I have a copy of the first chapter on my coffee table that I have been handing to people nearly upon entering my domicile, thus ensuring that they too become hooked (I just give them the taste, and then they can go buy their own subsequent issues, suckers).  

The story follows the whirling catastrophe of two people having a child and escaping from a war zone.  They just both happen to be from the two different sides of said war.  There are bounty hunters, robot princes, ghosts, and a brothel planet called Sextillion (possibly now is a good time to mention this may not be suitable for all ages). The art of Fiona Staples is amazing, incredible, mind blowing, sharp, fierce, exciting, and more adjectives.

Please, if you have any vague interest at all, go to you local comic store and see if you can get a copy of it (the first arc is being released whole cloth next month, so you could wait, I guess, but what’s the joy in that?).  This is the sort of thing that should be applauded and bolstered by anyone and everyone that can get behind it.  

I am really good at reading (for lack of a better term) trash novels.  It may be one of the things that I am best at (and I say this knowing I make a mean fajita and can belt Loveshack like a mutha).  But I read this book along with 4 others over the weekend. The other four being my first foray into the Stephanie Plum series.  

I even got outside to enjoy the lovely weather Seattle was having.  Magic.

But Cinder contributed to the ease with which I read by being a fully readable book.  The re-telling of Cinderella left me constantly on the look out for similarities between the tales.  I am a complete sucker for fairy tale re-tellings.  Whoever did the marketing magic to figure out this would sell was a genius, I watch Once Upon a Time and I bought this book on spec.  

The story itself was possibly a little anemic for me.  I can’t tell if that’s because Marissa Meyer has big dreams for her world-building trilogy or not.  I felt like there was possibly too much exposition in the attempt to flesh out why things are the way they are leaving less time for us with the characters.

But what a world she built.  A post-apocalyptic society where a fatal plague is striking down the citizenry blindly and very little hope for a cure.  A massive city built on Beijing where towering apartment complexes and markets crowd all the scenery. I think very much about Blade Runner when I’m reading the opening lines.  Who doesn’t want to read Cinderella set in Blade Runner?

But truly the greatest bone I have to pick with the story telling is the end (which I will not ruin).  I will just say that, if this novel sounds interesting to you, you might wait to read it until there are more in the series. Since we’re given the ol’ ‘Wait until next time!’

Goodreads tells me that the next story ‘Scarlet’ won’t be out until next year (I’m guessing this one will be about Little Red Riding Hood).

I know we shall be happy.  I know the summer will pass happily away.  I mean never to be later in rising than six, and from that time until dinner I shall divide every moment between music and reading. I have formed my plan, and am determined to enter on a course of serious study. […] By reading only six hours a-day, I shall gain in the course of a twelve-month a great deal of instruction which I now feel myself to want.

This was the last book in my attempt to read all Jane Austen has to offer (a slim library, I know, like she had anything else to do).  I’ve enjoyed the project and, at one time or another, professed my new and undying love for any one of her novels.  Seriously though, Persuasion is gorgeous and Northanger Abbey is a treat (until the final act, but you can ignore that in light of the scathing satire the first 75% has to offer you). Don’t bother reading Mansfield Park, watch the movie (first, last and ONLY time I’ll ever write those words) you’ll actually come away liking any of the characters (Jeezie Creezy is Franny Price insufferable in the book, the undiluted worst).

But Sense & Sensibility is why we are gathered here today.  I’ll confess to having seen this movie roughly one hundred times before picking through the pages and I think it may have been my first touch of Austen (though, obviously, my heart belongs to Darcy). So for better or worse the characters that danced in my head as the story played out were acted by Kate Winslet, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. 

The story of a mother and her three daughters cast down from their comfortable life into one dependent on the good will of others with very little of their own has always been captivating to me. The two eldest Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne are night and day in their personalities and Austen doesn’t judge either of them for us (until perhaps the end). We as reader are left to see what may be best for women in this time - unfettered emotion or restrained temperament. Neither sister comes away unscathed in relation to the way they interact. Underdogs as they are, it is easy to connect with them and wish their happiness in either case.  Austen’s stories are about the people that inhabit them and this is no exception.  You’ll find any number of weak ninnies, surprising heroes, and unlikeable idiots as you would in any good piece of satire.

We see the world through the eyes of a spinster who sees her in England as a place where women go off into that great beyond of freedom once married (to someone they love).  It’s sweet and sad when you consider all of her writing in this context. If you’ve read any Austen (just one would suffice here) then you know it’s not particularly spoiler-y to figure a ‘good match’ in the end for one or both of them.  But I think the story in this one does a fantastic job of making us understand that love doesn’t always trump everything, where I think in most of her other stories, it does.  I’d love to have read this book not knowing it’s characters beforehand, wondering how it would play out because there is a constant upheaval in its story but c’est la vie, at least I read it picturing Hugh Grant in breeches.

On my newly acquired Austen-Scale I’d rate this story better than Mansfield Park (garbage), Emma (seriously wanting), Lady Susan and Northanger Abbey.  Still, it rates below Persuasion, and Pride & Prejudice (never forget your first real love). Four out of five stars.  Would do business again.

So, here it is.  

My last post on my beloved Tumblr was over a year ago. I cannot call myself a writer (nay, worse, a blogger) unless I actually write more than one thing a year.  

My resolution here includeth:

To write write write. Crappy stuff. Short stuff. Musings. Et cetera.

To read the Cannonball IV. Starting this weekend.  And post about the books I read herein.  

To actually put the time and effort into the things I’ve wanted for myself in reference to the writing (i.e. the aforementioned blogging, lit reviewing, and finally sitting down and trying to compose that story floating in my head).

It’s really not that difficult to try.  And I just haven’t (now you know it, world, I’ve not really tried). I cannot harp on the mister when he doesn’t fulfill his writerly/artistic/producer-type ambitions if I completely fail to work on mine.  And I’d just hate for the creative center of my brain to shrivel up and die (you’ll know it’s happen when I insist on voting Republican…zing!). And it’s really awkward to share your resolutions publicly and then renege on them, so let’s hope my ego keeps me in drive. 

I hope to make you sick of me (in the best way) in 2012.

xoxo

m

Helga Viking Lens, Pistil Film, RedEye Gel Flash, Taken with Hipstamatic

Lucifer VI Lens, Pistil Film, No Flash, Taken with Hipstamatic

I love game night

Oh my god, I just typed my married name.  

The first one I printed out had my maiden name, but I realized that wouldn’t be true anymore….

As Keanu says, “Woah.”