Bits of Books: Splintered, Cruel Beauty, Bewitching

I've read bad books, and great ones... but what inevitably results from this obsession is a high mortality rate, of books whose characters and plots just haven't rendered lively enough engagement with me, as a reader,  to warrant greater discussion. Still, they're books just the same, and I spent enough time reading them that they deserve to be noticed. So, here's some recent reads I'll take the time to gloss over. 

SPLINTERED 

Alice in Wonderland gets reworked for the Hot-Topic-circa-2004 crowd when high school sk8r gurl Alyssa Gardner starts hearing the voices of bugs and flowers - the same delusions that got her mom holed up in a mental institution - and is thus forced to follow a crazy prophecy down the rabbit hole to a world that feels eerily familiar (and should to everyone). 

I was pretty excited for this one, because A. Hype and B. Alice, which are both kind of hit-and-miss subjects for me that invariably incite a lot of enthusiasm, especially with me having just done a College Fashion post oriented around Wonderland. Unfortunately, a half-baked plot, loose storytelling, ridiculous love triangle, and strangle-worthy characters constantly making bad decisions left me frustrated, and wondering whether the world really needed another Alice adaptation (I'm thinking no).  Goodreads Rating: 2.0. 

CRUEL BEAUTY

Mixing Greco-Roman mythology and Victorian culture with the kind of history-oriented dystopia and world-building that might make George R. R. Martin confused, Cruel Beauty follows Nyx, a young girl cursed by her father's ineptitude, to marry a monster who has cursed her world so that there is no sun and shadows eat people and stuff, and - because, duh, YA - she falls in love with him. 

This book had so much potential, and for the most part, was decent. I wish they hadn't slapped it with the "Beauty and the Beast" comparison, because there wasn't really much to be compared. Everything went to hell in a hand basket on the third arc. Also, what is said to be a "sexy" plot might also be termed by those with a slightly more well-rounded vocabulary as straight up child endangerment (our main character is seventeen). I have absolutely no idea what bloggers are finding so captivating about this "alluring" master. Ick. Goodreads Rating: 2.0. 

BEWITCHING

Flipping Alex Flinn's previous best-seller, Beastly, on its head, is Bewitching, which follows the aforementioned novel's big baddie, Kendra the witch, as she attempts to help out yet another kid's life, and inevitably ends up screwing that up, as well. 

For fans of Cinderella stories and way too much middle school angst comes yet another one of Flinn's fairy tale fairly predictable romances. They're good fun and pretty cute, as long as you don't expect too much from them. Unfortunately for me, I was simply expecting a cohesive story line that stuck with its purported narrator for the duration of the trip. I was mistaken. And not only did we get something that defied those basic guidelines, but the story was so generic that I literally read it a very short time ago, and had to re-look up the plot. Not one of Flinn's best, that's for sure. Goodreads Rating: 2.0. 

Have you read any of these books? What did you think? 

Waiting on Wednesday: Don't You Forget About Me

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature created by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that gives bloggers the opportunity to highlight upcoming releases about which they are extremely excited. 

I definitely had to take a step back from the bookshelves when visiting Barnes and Noble the other day... after sliding my fingers down one too many spines of Stephen King novels I already knew my father probably had collecting dust and spiders in a box in the garage, I eventually managed to remember that Finals were coming up soon, and it would probably be bad for my grade if I started losing sleep. Best wait until summer then... or maybe just June 10th, when Kate Karyus Quinn's Don't You Forget About Me hits the shelves, too! 

From Goodreads: 

"Welcome to Gardnerville.

A place where no one gets sick. And no one ever dies.

Except...
There’s a price to pay for paradise. Every fourth year, the strange power that fuels the town exacts its payment by infecting teens with deadly urges. In a normal year in Gardnerville, teens might stop talking to their best friends. In a fourth year, they’d kill them.

Four years ago, Skylar’s sister, Piper, was locked away after leading sixteen of her classmates to a watery grave. Since then, Skylar has lived in a numb haze, struggling to forget her past and dull the pain of losing her sister. But the secrets and memories Piper left behind keep taunting Skylar—whispering that the only way to get her sister back is to stop Gardnerville’s murderous cycle once and for all." 

Why am I so excited?

Honestly, I've never heard anything like this plot before. Usually I'd immediately pin down the whole "mysterious small town" and "damaged older sibling" tropes and decide this book wasn't worth my time, but damn, if that isn't an intriguing plot! Besides, both this title and Kate Karyus Quinn's previous novel - Another Little Piece - have been well-reviewed for their matching up of contemporary feeling with the creep factor, and I'm definitely feeling the need for some creepiness with these long, comfy summer nights lying in front of me. Bonus points for the incredibly intriguing cover! 

What are you waiting on this Wednesday?

Stacking the Shelves: Week Eight is Great

Stacking the Shelves is a weekly Saturday book meme from Tynga's Reviews, all about sharing the books you've added to your shelves over the course of the week.

Thank goodness I've actually been getting some reading done lately... mainly because I've realized that my attendance record in my Psych lectures has been improving, as long as I remember to bring my Kindle to class with me! Aren't you proud, Dad? 

And yet, most of my purchases this past week haven't been on my Kindle, thanks to a very forgiving Mom and an hour spent wandering around inside my favorite secondhand bookstore in Tacoma, King's Books! Nine new novels, all for under $50 (I'm a very thrifty person; Lord knows my bookish habits are expensive). And I already know that this haul is going to be a light one, as opposed to next week's, when I take a trip down to Portland, OR... Powell's, HERE I COME. 

FROM KING'S BOOKS

Gregory Macguire's Wicked

Steve Martin's An Object of Beauty

Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Angel's Game

Suzanne Young's The Program

Nurakami's Norwegian Wood

Joseph J. Ellis' Founding Fathers: The Revolutionary Generation

The Second Common Reader: Virginia Woolf

The Viking Portable Library: D. H. Lawrence

Agatha Chritie's The Hollow

FOR KINDLE

Ania Ahlborn's The Neighbors

Adelle Waldman's New Year's: Nathaniel P. As Seen Through the Eyes of His Friend Aurit

What did you stack your shelves with this week?

College Fashion Post Link Up: Alice in Wonderland

 I've been such a good little worker bee lately... well, kind of. At the very least, I've been paying more attention to planning more efficiently, and now, I've found myself with about 70% of my College Fashion posts through 2015 all sorted out! No more struggling through new reads or scrambling to find old ones through which I may interpret new trends in fashion. Instead, nothing but blue skies and easy reading... right? Right?

Alas, such smooth seas were never my lot. I had originally envisioned setting out to write my Alice in Wonderland article - something I've been planning on doing ever since I landed the column-writing position in the first place, last November! - armed with multiple sources, plenty of time on my hands, and a lot of forethought going into the development of one of my favorite literary works. Unfortunately what resulted didn't even allow me the oft-sought chance of even rereading the source material. Stale inspiration and a tight writing schedule resulted in not as much enthusiasm as I would have hoped for in translating such a personally important piece to my College Fashion audience.

And yet, for the most part, I'm decently happy with the results. Or, at the less-personally-involved objective level, my younger sisters approved of it, so at least I know the fashion aspect of it is decent. Undoubtably, there are many aspects of the article I would rather have done contrariwise, like take more inspiration from specific characters, or have the opportunity to integrate more Alice-expert trivia and shoutouts into the looks, but at the very least, I'm proud I got something in by deadline that comes even a hare-width close to the look I was trying to give Wonderland (hare-width, get it?). With any luck at all, the article will be a come-from-behind victory for me, and give me a chance to re-do with an "Alice in Wonderland: Part Two," but we'll have to wait and see if that's anywhere in the cards.

At any rate, here's my favorite look from the Looks from Books: Fashion Inspired by Alice in Wonderland article, riffing off of the various height transformations Alice goes through to result in a look that appropriately mixes the tall and large, with the short and small.

Read the rest of the article here, then tell me what you think! 

Waiting on Wednesday: The Vacationers

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature created by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that gives bloggers the opportunity to highlight upcoming releases about which they are extremely excited. 

The sun is out in Seattle, and has been for a week or so now, which is leading me downwards in a summertime spiral which, unfortunately, isn't set to become my home for at least three more weeks. So, while I'm still trapped inside endless Psych lectures, I might as well sneak my Kindle between the pages of my textbook, and dream of summer a little harder, especially because in eight days, on May 29th, 2014, Emma Straub's The Vacationers is published! 

The Posts are in a celebratory mood, as they head off to the beautiful Balearic island of Mallorca, off the coast of Spain, for a vacation with their friends and relatives honoring not only their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, but their daughter, Sylvia, and her graduation from high school. Everything is set for the perfect European adventure for the elite, complete with tapas, tennis courts, blue beaches, and a stunning lack of the Manhattan skylines beneath which tensions have been simmering at home. 

Unfortunately, the friction they've attempted to escape follows them to this idyllic new place, and over the course of the vacation, secrets are exposed, childhood tensions reemerge, and even old wounds are torn open again. As the Post family celebrates their present, they find themselves striving to evade their past, while this unwelcome conflict may be just the thing that allows them a new kind of future. Those glittering waters to which they've journeyed may just allow them to emerge from their vacation renewed in a different way than they imagined. 

Why am I excited?

Well, let's kick it off with the basest of my emotions in regards to this book, and let me say, I'm just excited to see a novel with an American family taking a European vacation, where no one ends up dead, murdered, or involved in some kind of unnecessary foreign espionage (or, on the flip side, with anyone falling in love in the Italian countryside. That one deals less with actual trends in fictionalization, than my mother's attempts to induce me to study abroad next year). Second, DAT COVER DOE. Talk about giving me vacation pains, those waters are glorious. Get me out of school, stat! 

What are you waiting on this Wednesday?

Bits of Books: Under the Never Sky, Wentworth Hall, Pushing the Limits

I've read bad books, and great ones... but what inevitably results from this obsession is a high mortality rate, of books whose characters and plots just haven't rendered lively enough engagement with me, as a reader,  to warrant greater discussion. Still, they're books just the same, and I spent enough time reading them that they deserve to be noticed. So, here's some recent reads I'll take the time to gloss over. 

UNDER THE NEVER SKY, by Veronica Rossi

A sci-fi dystopian romance, that finds pampered Reverie-dweller Aria winding up in enough trouble to warrant her expulsion to the unlivable wastelands, where she meets hunky savage Perry, and decides to strike back against the government that controls their world, to the expected degree of success in this sort of thing. 

A pretty basic YA dystopian with way too much romance and teens gifted with ridiculous getting-out-of-trouble ability, this novel just couldn't get me invested in either the lead characters or the trouble they were up against. Maybe this was an example of the hype killing off any perspective likability of a book, because the main point of decision-making for even making this Kindle purchase was how much everyone else and their mother seemed to love it... but I remained uninterested and unconvinced. Decent world-building, though. Goodreads Rating: 2.5.

WENTWORTH HALL, by Abby Grahame

A period social drama following the lives of the members of the Wentworth Hall household, a.k.a. "Downton Abbey" for those lacking sense of subtlety or attention span. 

I would be a 100% liar-liar-pants-on-fire if I didn't give the explanation for this Library choice as "an Anna Godberson-esque cover and Downton Abbey references in the description" kind of decision. I could see it from a mile away that this would be a YA foray into hopping on a pop cultural bandwagon, but I had high hopes for it anyways. There were certainly interesting elements within the novel - the integration of a newspaper society satire combing through the family's deep-rooted problems for tabloid fodder, evil twins with money staying as house guests, a mysterious nanny - but none were successfully accomplished. Ended up skipping to end just to say, "Oh, duh. We all saw that coming." Goodreads Rating: 2.   

PUSHING THE LIMITS, by Katie McGarry

Kind-of amnesiac and resident popular-girl-turned-social-pariah Echo Emerson finds her safe haven in the arms of foster kid and bad boy Noah Hutchins, teaches him to love. All we're missing is an unplanned pregnancy and Tori Spelling as the guidance counselor, and we could sell this to Lifetime right now. 

Once again, went in with high hopes, seeing as though most people I've heard pimping this YA romance have said it goes beyond the tropes of its kind to really drive home a message of acceptance and possibility to overcome your circumstances. I'm glad someone's finding solace in this novel, but the entire situation is not only contrived, but one of the most unlikely things I've ever read... and I do fantasy in a big way. If anything, it made me glad that I've managed to get the hell out of high school, because this one turned cafeterias into some kind of proving ground. Goodreads Rating: 3. 

Have you read any of these books? What did you think?

Character Carry-alls: The One

*CAUTION: SPOILERS FOR THE SELECTION AND THE ELITE AHEAD*

Just wanted to forewarn you that the content ahead serves as a spoiler for some of the events of The Selection and The Elite, from The Selection series by Kiera Cass, so if you're invested in potentially reading that series at all, then stop where you are! 

So, recently, I finished Kiera Cass' The Selection trilogy-ender The One, and while I didn't necessarily enjoy it, it is indisputable that my mixed-up brain must have liked at least something, due to the fact that I read the whole damn series with a rather exponential amount of urgency upon the publications of each installment. However, the series is over now, and despite the fact that the review is written and the only work I have left are some meager novellas I don't think I'm going to read, I can't seem to let this one go just yet. You see, I've had a new feature idea I've been meaning to try... 

Y'all know my background isn't just in books... I'm a style writer, as well, having written the "Looks from Books" column on College Fashion for about a year-and-a-half now! So, in looking for a new way to explore fiction and fashion, I thought to myself, what do our favorite characters carry with them, as they're living through all these adventures? Hence, "Character Carry-Alls" was born! 

So, in celebrating Maxon's four favorite girls at the center of the intrigue of The One, let's take a peek into their purses! 

First up, CELESTE lives for the attention afforded by being one of the final four, so why not give her a behemoth of a bag, in the form of a gold Valentino snakeskin studded tote. A sparkling Jimmy Choo wallet and Louisa Viaroma sunglasses add luxe touches to an already luxe girl, while smudge-less brick red lip tar from Obsessive Compulsive cosmetics brings the drama. And, of course, homegirl packs her own copies of her precious magazines, and the lifestyles popularized by Vogue and Town & Country would probably remind her of home. 

Second, our heroine AMERICA is one more for the understated look, which is why a regular-sized white chain crossbody from Guess would suit her just fine. Never one for getting over-complicated, a pair of sleek aviators and cherry-flavored Chapstick are all America needs to complete her going-out necessities. A snarky phone case brings out America's rebellious side, while if there's anyone on the Elite who would pack a pair of sensible shoes in her purse, it's the girl who asked for a pair of jeans her first day in the castle. 

Lovely KRISS has always been one for a sunny disposition and cheery demeanor, so a pink and gold embellished bag highlights her girlishness. Packed with a watermelon Lancome Juicy Tube and a pack of super-fresh Orbit gum, Kriss preps for winning over the public with her smile, while a Vera Bradley notebook is perfect for writing about daily life in the Castle. While the other three opt for shady sunnies, Kriss highlights her bright eyes with Bobbi Brown's "Pretty Powerful" mascara. 

Finally, understated and sophisticated ELISE makes wearing your heart on your sleeve so last season, and her no-nonsense demeanor easily translates to a patent black Vivienne Westwood top-handle bag. Prepared for everything that comes her way, Elise comes equipped with large-and-in-charge tortoiseshell sunnies, YSL shimmery nude lip gloss and Butter London's "All Hail the Queen" nail polish for quick touch ups on the go, and, naturally, an emergency pair of statement earrings... just in case. There's honor in looking good for everything. *wink* 

So, what do you think of this new feature? What do you think Maxon's girls carry in their purses? And whose purse do you want a peek in next?