Book Haul, or the One In Which I'm Very Eco-Friendly

No print books this week! All electronic, baby! I am singlehandedly saving world. Climate change will soon be a thing of the past, all thanks to me, obviously.

For review:

From Hought Mifflin Harcourt:



A Death-Struck Year by Makiia Lucier

I've already read this, and it's a pretty solid historical novel dealing with a subject matter I haven't seen much of in YA: the Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1918. Also, I keep mistyping that author's name as Makiia Lucifer, which is kind of a problem.

From Simon & Schuster:



Falls the Shadow by Stefanie Gaither

YES. I love this cover and this concept so much that I actually clapped when I saw I got approved for this. Pleeeeease be good!

100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith



Double yay! I really enjoyed Grasshopper Jungle, Smith's absolutely bananas and hideously green novel that just released from PenguinTeen. I hope I enjoy this one as well.Or that I at least have a smoother journey than that poor horse.

Servants of the Storm by Delilah S. Dawson



O_O Good God, that cover is creepy. Um... I requested this? Me, the marshmallow who categorically refuses to watch horror movies? I have no memory of this, but that sure was brave of me. Gulp.


In addition to listing the books I got this wekk, I'm also going to start doing a recap of my bloggy week (a weecap? weekap? weekcap?) on my haul posts. So, yeah. Here it is.

Weekcap:

On Sunday, I posted a new 'Ship Shape installment discussing how painful it is to invest in a sinking ship.

On Monday, I reviewed Better Off Friends by Elizabeth Eulberg.

On Tuesday, I got in the Valentine's spirit and listed the books that make me swoon. I also made graphic thingies for the very first time.

On Wednesday, the blog tour for A Mad, Wicked Folly by Sharon Biggs Waller stopped by the blog. I loved this book so much, and I'm so happy PenguinTeen asked me to be a part of the tour!

On Thursday I reviewed the weirdest book I've ever read, Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith, and hopefully explained why weird was good!

And on Friday, I showed you guys both my geekiness and my drawing skillz with my YA Bookentines (there's a giveaway here, too)!

And now your weekly dose of Ginger:

 "HUMAN HUMAN noooo why are you reading instead of paying attention to meeeeeeeee human look at meeeeee"

(And yes, she really does sit that way.)

Bookentines: Valentines Featuring Your Favorite YA Couples + Giveaway!

Happy Valentine's Day, awesome nerds! Now, maybe you have a significant other with whom to spend this holiday, but for me, the steadiest relationship in my life is the one between me and my ships (surpassed only by my relationship with my dog and my relationship with food). I also helped put together a really cool post over on Gaby's blog that you should definitely go check out.

I might have mentioned once or twice that I have a lot of YA couples that I swoooon over. What you might not know is that, besides this blog, I've also got a fanart Tumblr of my own drawings--and they're pretty much all sketches of my favorite fictional people making out or holding hands or generally being adorable. Whatever, every artist has a theme. For this Valentine's Day, I made some YA Bookentines to celebrate the love between a girl and her fictional characters. I mean, the love between fictional couples. So I can live vicariously through fictional people in possession of far more exciting love lives than I. WHATEVER, I HAVE MY DOG, OKAY?

I tried to figure out a way to make them printable, but that is far beyond the realm of my talents, so instead they'll just be going up on Tumblr like usual. So they'll be rebloggable, which... is kinda like 21st century printing. It's the eco-friendly version.

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The first Valentine is about Anna and Etienne from Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins. So I made them kiss. Frenchly.

 

 Cath and Levi from Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

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Celaena and Chaol from Throne of Glass and Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas

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Cress and Thorne from Cress by Marissa Meyer. This is kind of like a pre-meeting, Cress-has-a-crush-on-Carswell-Thorne-because-who-doesn't fantasy moment. If you've read Cress, you'll know what I mean.

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Eleanor and Park from Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

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Percy and Annabeth from the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan

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And lastly, Ron and Hermione from the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, which I guess is me coming down decisively on one side of the Great Shipping Wars of Our Time.

So yay! Bookish couples! And you know what's even better? Giveaways! There will be two winners: one international, and one US only. The international winner gets to choose any of the books above. The US only winner gets to do the same, but they'll also win an ARC of Elusion by Claudia Gabel and Cheryl Klam.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Note: Please don't forget to attribute all of these images to me and my Tumblr! Reposting without attribution is super lame. You don't want to be lame, do you?

Other note: One of the giveaway options is to reblog one of the Bookentines on Tumblr. I'll be uploading them onto Tumblr periodically throughout the day and then posting the url back here, so you might have to wait a little bit.

Review: Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

Review: Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith
Goodreads 
Release date: February 11th, 2014
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile (Penguin)
Series: No
Source: ARC from the publisher
Rating: WHAT THE HECK EVEN WAS THAT AND WHY THE HECK DID I LIKE IT I think my brains are on the floor



Sixteen-year-old Austin Szerba interweaves the story of his Polish legacy with the storyof how he and his best friend , Robby, brought about the end of humanity and the rise of an army of unstoppable, six-foot tall praying mantises in small-town Iowa.

To make matters worse, Austin's hormones are totally oblivious; they don't care that the world is in utter chaos: Austin is in love with his girlfriend, Shann, but remains confused about his sexual orientation. He's stewing in a self-professed constant state of maximum horniness, directed at both Robby and Shann. Ultimately, it's up to Austin to save the world and propagate the species in this sci-fright journey of survival, sex, and the complex realities of the human condition.


The end of the world began at about 2:00 a.m., around three-and-a-half feet away from a discarded floral-print sleeper sofa infested with pubic lice in Ealing, Iowa.

I read a lot of books. The more I read, the easier it is to review them. I become accustomed to formulas. I learn to recognize cues. The elements that go into judging and analyzing a novel are far simpler for me to dissect, because almost all fiction adheres to the same basic roadmaps. I feel quite comfortable driving my readerly car through their bookish towns, following the author's directions, taking notes as I go.

And then Andrew Smith directed me to Ealing, Iowa. And he took away my car and gave me a giant fucking praying mantis to ride and decided to drop a nuclear bomb in my path. And then he cut my parking brakes and decided that maps had no business being here, because here, in the utter drugged-up mindfuck lunacy of Grasshopper Jungle, all the rules go out the window on page one. 

There are things in here: Babies with two heads, insects as big as refrigerators, God, the devil, limbless warriors, rocket ships, sex, diving bells, theft, wars, monsters, internal combustion engines, love, cigarettes, joy, bomb shelters, pizza, and cruelty.



This book is a teenage boy's wet dream written as directed by an indie film director on the worst kinds of drugs. This book is a vintage horror B movie mixed with high literary introspection regarding personal legacy and sexual orientation. This book is hilarious and vile and vulgar. It is the strangest goddamn collection of sentences I have ever encountered. This book has a million things happening, and every single one of them is important. This book is about smalltown America, homophobia, and friendship. This book is about the private inner struggle of a boy in love with both his female girlfriend and his male best friend. It about the global scale of the apocalypse, as led by giant fucking (literally) praying mantises. It is about I don't even know the hell what.

Like, I literally don't even know what a book is anymore. I thought I knew. Now I'm pretty sure they're just pointy paper things with words in there somewhere.



Will you like it? I have no idea. No, I really could not tell you. Austin, our narrator, is both a budding historian, focusing on the minutiae of his own life and family past, and a sexually obsessed teenager who gets turned on by nearly everything. He is thoughtful, crass, incredibly funny, and absolutely the weirdest first person narrator I have ever inhabited. But I cared about him, his girlfriend Shann, and about Robby Brees, while also hoping they'd just become a bisexual threesome already, which is clearly what Austin wants. I really, really, really loved the LGBT aspects of this book, and they are probably where the bulk of my enjoyment stemmed from.

This book pulls no punches on any topic. It's sexual and it's violent and... well, there are giant fucking preying mantises! Literally fucking! And the world ends! And things happen! The whole thing is a careening snowball of ever-expanding lunacy! And I loved it! I don't even know. I didn't think this book would work for me, but it did.There are... oh, possibly twelve other people who will get as big a kick out of this book as I did. The writing is almost as bizarre as the premise, thought it's fascinatingly insightful and laugh-out-loud funny, even if at times it needed a bit of cleaning up or veered towards the oddly formal (sometimes Austin would forgo contractions). You won't recognize the plot or its development as anything resembling anything you've seen before. There are so many elements that it's hard to say whether or not they truly all coalesce by the end.

It's just weird, really, and it's about discovering whether Grasshopper Jungle is your flavor of weird or not.



If you want to give this book a shot, go in forewarned. It's certainly a unique read, and you'll only know you'll like it once you've actually tried and liked it. In fact, it wasn't really until I finished it, and I realized I was laughing and experiencing a surprising amount of feelings, that I came to the definitive conclusion that yes, I enjoyed my breakneck journey through the cracked out masturbation fantasy of a rabbit hole that is Grasshopper Jungle.

Read the first couple of pages, get a feel for the writing, and see if you can stomach its explicitness. It's a book that deserves all the stars for completely being its own insane and insanely creative thing, even though I'm still staring at my ARC of it, all green and pointy on my bedside table, because I'm still not even sure what it is. And I'm half-convinced it will turn into a freaking insect and eat me.

Blog Tour: A Mad, Wicked Folly by Sharon Biggs Waller

I'm so happy to be part of the blog tour for one of my favorite reads of the year, A Mad, Wicked Folly by Sharon Biggs Waller, a historical and romantic tale full of feminism, art, and fighting for what you want. I loved it with the power of a thousand suns (as evidenced by my gushing review), and I'm honored to have the author invade the blog for the day and tell you about all the research that went into recreating Edwardian London.

There was so much research that went into A MAD, WICKED FOLLY. I think just about every paragraph in the book has some research to it! I'd stop and think, what kind of dessert would a working class person eat? Then I'd go look it up. Plum duff! That's what they would have eaten.



[Gillian: Apparently this is a plum duff. Working class life in turn-of-the-century London looks delicious.]

I really wanted to bring the Edwardian era to life, so I had to know everything, from the fashion, to the way people spoke, to how they travelled, how they danced. I love research, so it wasn't boring for me. I'm really nosy so I like to search around and get all the details, it drives my husband crazy sometimes. I bought over 30 books for FOLLY and I filled five notebooks with handwritten scribbles.

Source

I went to England twice to research the suffrage movement and to walk in Vicky's footsteps. I got to meet with the curator of the Museum of London and look through all the suffragette collection. They actually have a loaf of bread from Holloway Prison. And the gag and funnel from force-feeding.

A Mad, Wicked Folly Synopsis:

Welcome to the world of the fabulously wealthy in London, 1909, where dresses and houses are overwhelmingly opulent, social class means everything, and women are taught to be nothing more than wives and mothers. Into this world comes seventeen-year-old Victoria Darling, who wants only to be an artist—a nearly impossible dream for a girl.
           
After Vicky poses nude for her illicit art class, she is expelled from her French finishing school. Shamed and scandalized, her parents try to marry her off to the wealthy Edmund Carrick-Humphrey. But Vicky has other things on her mind: her clandestine application to the Royal College of Art; her participation in the suffragette movement; and her growing attraction to a working-class boy who may be her muse—or may be the love of her life. As the world of debutante balls, corsets, and high society obligations closes in around her, Vicky must figure out: just how much is she willing to sacrifice to pursue her dreams?

Goodreads | Barnes & Noble | The Book Depository | Amazon

About Sharon Biggs Waller:

Sharon Biggs Waller is a novelist and award-winning non-fiction writer who lives on a 10-acre sustainable farm in northwest Indiana with two horses, four dairy goats, four cats, two dogs and 60 laying hens. She is a dressage trainer who for many years was a Civil Service Club instructor at the Royal Mews in Buckingham Palace in London. Visit her at http://sharonbiggswaller.com or on Twitter @Sbiggwaller.

Top Ten Books That Will Make You Swoon

Hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

You probably get really tired of hearing me say this, but this TTT topic was nearly impossible for me. I reach books because of the swoons. I love books because of the swoons (most of the time. As in, almost all of the time). So choosing just TEN books I swoon over when quite literally ALL of my favorite books are swoony is so hard. My entire archive of read books to choose from is swoony, really. But I did the best I could.

The Distance Between Us. Pivot Point. Both have incredibly wonderful, swoony, cuter-than-puppies romances. I hear there's an additional swoony couple in Pivot Point's sequel, Split Second

HER BOOKS. Anna and the French Kiss. Lola and the Boy Next Door. Gillian and the Bookish Boyfriends.

Another recent read that had me literally, physically swoon. I swear at one point I clutched the book to my heart and sort of sagged sideways across the couch.

Chapter Fifty-Five. And Fifty-Eight. And all the chapters. And oh my god if Mafi ever wrote a New Adult novel the world would just burst into flames of swoons and lust.

WES AND MAC. The cutes! The swoons! The slow build! The partnership! The trust! The cute moments!

Jase Garret, you can crawl onto my roof any day. Any time. He and Sam are so adorable together, and reading about their love story makes me swoon.

The thing I love best about Tammy's book are the ships. I mean, besides magic and plots and shenanigans and kick ass female heroines of all kinds. But you know me; I read for ships, and I'm not ashamed of it. Tamora Pierce has written three of my all-time OTPs, not to mention the most seminal kissing scene of my childhood.

LEVI AND CATH MAKE ME SWOON SO HARD. I can barely even talk about how much I adore reading about them come slowly, sloooowly together in Fangirl. Rowell writes scenes that are so damn cute they make your teeth ache, but they also hurt your heart because of all the LOVE and the PAIN, especially the pain, and especially in Eleanor & Park. Her couples are just so prefect and their connections are so pure.

Nobody brings the contemporary romance like Katie McGarry, and Dare You To is my favorite of hers. Ryan and Beth are so different, but their romance makes so much sense, and THE SCENE IN THE BARN. I went weak in the knees reading that scene.

Percabeth Percabeth Percabeth. Percabeth Percabeth. Percabeth.

It's a way of life.

"The kiss obliterated her.
It was like coming home or being born or suddenly finding an entire half of herself that had been missing."

Asdfjhfkhskjdfhslkdjfh

 I guess crowns are just really sexy to me. Or maybe it's just HECTORRRRRR.

This is a liiiitle bit of a cheat, since I've only read Catching Jordan, but I completely adored Catching Jordan and have heard nothing but the best and swooniest things about her other books from friends whose swoony tastes line up with mine.

Ohhhh, do I ship the ship in Scarlet and Lady Thief. I recently read and LOVED Lady Thief, book two, and trust me, this is where the swoons really come in to play. The kissing scenes... I can't even.

Review: Better Off Friends by Elizabeth Eulberg

Review: Better Off Friends by Elizabeth Eulberg
Goodreads 
Release date: February 25, 2014
Publisher: Point (Scholastic)
Series: No
Source: ARC
Rating: Cute and funny, if insubstantial.



WHEN HARRY MET SALLY . . . for teens, from romantic comedy star Elizabeth Eulberg.

For Macallan and Levi, it was friends at first sight. Everyone says guys and girls can't be just friends, but these two are. They hang out after school, share tons of inside jokes, their families are super close, and Levi even starts dating one of Macallan's friends. They are platonic and happy that way.

Eventually they realize they're best friends -- which wouldn't be so bad if they didn't keep getting in each other's way. Guys won't ask Macallan out because they think she's with Levi, and Levi spends too much time joking around with Macallan, and maybe not enough time with his date. They can't help but wonder . . . are they more than friends or are they better off without making it even more complicated?

From romantic comedy superstar Elizabeth Eulberg comes a fresh, fun examination of a question for the ages: Can guys and girls ever really be just friends? Or are they always one fight away from not speaking again -- and one kiss away from true love?


This book is so adorable it will make your teeth ache and brighten even the most rotten of moods. I read it nearly straight through on a cross-continental plane ride, and it certainly made for a pleasant and entertaining trip. This book won't end up being very memorable to me, though, and that's because it doesn't quite go deep enough. It doesn't dig into the characters the way I like, nor does it have much of an overarching plot besides, "Let's watch these really cute people who are obviously meant to be finally come to be." And trust me, that's one of my most favorite plots out there, but Better Off Friends certainly suffers from a few problems. And yet it's really cute. LIke really, really, really cute. And it made me happy.



These aren't serious problems, mind you. There are no rage-inducing issues, and the romance, like, I said, is just so insanely cute. Levi and Macallan (minus points for silly name) are best friends nearly from the moment they meet in seventh grade. Levi's just moved to small town Wisconsin from Los Angeles, and he doesn't exactly fit in. (Obligatory mini-rant about how it seems to be impossible for authors not from LA to write a convincing LA character. Levi had some eye-rollingly cliche bits right at the beginning that annoyed me, seeing as I'm a Los Angeles native, but most people obviously won't object to these things, and most of my issues resolved themselves).

Macallan and Levi are awesome and supportive platonic best friends. They see each other through heartache and grief and hormones (oh lord, the scene where poor Macallan first gets her period...). Each chapter ends with a dialogue-only chat scene between Macallan and Levi, and heck if those aren't the most hilarious things in the whole book. They obviously have chemistry, and everyone around them, including their tight-knit families, seem to think they belong together, but... do they? Is it romantic chemistry they have? And if so, will acting upon their feelings ruin a friendship that means the world to them?

The picture of post-coital, just-ruined-a-friendship regret.

Tangent: WHYYYY did I never have an adorable straight male best friend growing up whom I could easily transition into loving? There is no justice in the world. Macallan, you lucky bitch.



It took me a while to put my finger on what it was about this book that prevented it from being perfect, and I think it might be the time frame of the novel. Better Off Friends encompasses quite a few years despite being only 288 pages. Most of the action is told in summation, meaning it gets skipped over and then recounted to us looking backwards. It caused me to be one step removed from the action, like I didn't get to fully invest in and inhabit the scenes. I guess that was part of the problem; I wasn't invested. Don't get me wrong; I was invested in Levi and Macallan because of the cuteness, particularly the cuteness the chapter-ending chats of squee-worthy fluffy adorableness.

Levi and Macallan are good for each other. They geek out over the same TV shows and support each other and help each other out. It's a pure and easy friendship, and it's adorable to read about and super easy to ship as something more. They're pretty interesting characters, though I don't think they're as developed as they could be. We get information on their family, their hopes, and other details necessary for a character to be fully realized, but not quite. 

The plot really yanks you back and forth. At first, the repressed feelings and near-misses are cute and frustrating, but they do become repetitive after a bit. This book is told in alternating first person viewpoints, switching between Levi and Macallan. I thought Eulberg did quite a good job on the two viewpoints. This book is extremely enjoyable, especially if you've been recently traumatized by a heavy book and need something that you don't need to really sink your teeth into. There are five star fluff books out there, of course, but those are the books that not only make me laugh, but make me care. Better Off Friends made me giggle and it made me ship, but it didn't quite find a way into my heart. 

(For the record, I DO believe that boys and girls can be just friends, and best friends at that.)

Here, have a dancing Billy Crystal. You're welcome.

Ship Shape: Picking the Sinking Ship

Welcome to Ship Shape, your home for all things shipping, in which we gush and swoon over our favorite fictional couples and break down just what it is about them that captures out hearts.

Previously on Ship Shape: Elizabeth and Darcy

A couple of days ago, an extremely popular trilogy came to an end. Not only was I looking forward to Ignite Me because I really enjoy reading the Shatter Me series, but because I had to know if my ship prevailed. Okay, mostly I was reading to see if my ship prevailed. And if it didn't prevail, what was I going to do? Eat a tub of ice cream? Rant on Twitter? Send Taherah Mafi angry anonymous notes with letters all creepily cut from magazines?

"Make Juliette pick Warner or you'll never see your favorite pillow alive again!"

This is a spoiler free post, so I'm not talking about what the end result in Ignite Me was, but rather the general phenomenon of investing in the doomed ship. I've talked about this a lot with Molli, fondly known as the Patron Saint of Doomed Ships. If she ships a ship, there is a ninety percent chance that ship is headed to Iceberg City (her most epic shipping failure is her Hunger Games ship, if you ask me). Me, on the other hand? I tend to be very lucky when it comes to picking ships. Call me a ship psychic (I wish). Okay, no, call me canon fodder. I tend to go along with the ship the author ships. Like my brain subconsciously picks up those hints the author's leaving, which somehow gets my heart on board, so I end up shipping the ship I was meant to ship.

But obviously not all the time.

I still ship it. I just ship the part that's falling. I ship the smokestack.

My ship on Gilmore Girls did not prevail. On Gossip Girl the evil writers chose to snatch shipping victory from my hands. I still maintain Luna and Neville should have been a thing. And do not even get me started on Little Women.

 

It's quite an emotional thing to invest in a ship. Sometimes you pin all your hopes on it. Sometimes it's the thing you truly love about a series above all. So the question is, is your love for a book or series diminished when your ship doesn't win out?

The answer can be yes, which is so unfortunate. It can't be helped. But sometimes the author sways you off your ship, or so many elements are at play in the series that the resolution of the ship isn't the most significant factor. But other times... Oooh, is it rough. It hurts to go so deeply into a fictional relationship and come out of it with nothing. I gave you my all, ship! I gave you everything I had, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!

Row, row, row your boat, gently to your death

For example, there's a love triangle set to be resolved this year that I am super worried about, God help me. In spite of myself, I am apparently enormously invested in the romantic outcome of The Selection trilogy. It's strange, because, in all honesty, I don't like this series. I don't like it at all. But I also feel like, if America picks As(s)pen, I will make fire and brimstone rain from the heavens and also punch my copy of The One in its bookish face. (I need therapy.) My enjoyment of that series hinges entirely upon the outcome of that ship.

Maybe I'm spoiled when it comes to ships. I get very cross and crankypants when the obviously correct ship (aka mine) is defeated in shipping battle, and that's possibly because I'm not used to losing in the shipping long run. And in regards to me usually siding with the chosen ship: does this mean I only invest in ships I know are going to be successful? To spare myself the agony of sinking? it's an interesting question, and I don't honestly know the answer.

Obviously I won't stop shipping, because that's crazytalk and honestly an impossible task for me. Shipping is how I read; I can't help it, and I wouldn't want to stop it. Whether the investment engenders a reward at the end or not, the act of giving your heart so fully to a piece of fiction is still a magnificent thing. Sink or sail.

What about you? Are you a Patron Saint of Doomed Ships, or Canon Fodder? Have there been any sunken ships that really hurt you? Bear in mind this is a SPOILER FREE POST, so please be considerate in the comments.

Book Haul, or the One with Kenji, Warner, and Thorne

This was the week all my preorders released and a beloved series end and omg the book boyfriends and then I drowned in a book avalanche and that is a really good way to go out.

Books purchased:



Cress by Marissa Meyer

IT'S SO PRETTY. I was lucky enough to read Cress early, but the finished copy is sooooo gorgeous and smooth and the lettering is raised and I keep stroking it. The blue part is matte, but the red ribbon running through her hair is glossy and unfff, book lust.



Ignite Me by Taherah Mafi

I read this the day it arrived, aka the day it released, and yesss. Also this is super gorgeous in person as well. Very matte and very pretty.



Something Real by Heather Demetrios

I am so excited for this book. So many bloggers I love and trust are raving about this book. It's massive and beautiful and I hugged it when it showed up.

Books for review:



On the Fence by Kasie West

NEW KASIE WEST BOOK. NEW KASIE WEST BOOK. NEWWWW KASIEEEE WESTTTT.



Strange and Ever After by Susan Dennard

Eeeep I love this series, and the cover is stunning.


White Hot Kiss by Jennifer L. Armentrout

I downloaded this a bit on a whim because I'm curious about the author, never having read any of her books. The cover really doesn't look like my kind of thing, but the blurb is certainly intriguing.



Don't Even Think About It by Sarah Mlynowski

I was pre-approved for this on Netgalley, so WHY NOT.

And now for your weekly dose of Ginger: