In my last two Saturday Snapshots, I shared photos of celebrity sightings at the Wizard World Convention. No more celebrities this week, but I have been promising a picture of my completed Doctor Who scarf being worn…and since I wore it all day at Comic Con (and never tripped!–so proud), it was a perfect photo opportunity too.
Visit West Metro Mommy for more Saturday Snapshots–and have a great weekend!
It’s a busy week in the blogosphere, with Carl’s spring Once Upon a Time reading challenge starting on the 21st! As a fantasy reader, I have some books lined-up…and as a fantasy writer, I have another fun idea for celebrating fantasy in the spring. Since this is a What Are You Reading post, shall we start there? (And if you just want to know about the give-away, scroll on down to the second picture.)
With fantasy and fairy tale retellings on my mind, I’ve just started Hero by Alethea Kontis, sequel to Enchanted. Cramming together massive numbers of fairy tales, I look forward to picking out the different threads! I also have the last book in Diana Wynne Jones’ Chrestomanci series to read, The Pinhoe Egg, a fantasy novel that will finish my rereading of the series.
Mixing things up with some non-fantasy, I have Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness. I finally read The Knife of Never Letting Go a few weeks ago (a few years after it exploded all over the blogs I follow), went promptly on to the sequel, and am looking forward to the final installment of the trilogy. And in marked contrast to that dystopia read, I’m also midway through the nonfiction Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, all about how the mind works and why the things we expect to make us happy don’t–and vice versa.
Some nice variety, and a nice start to Once Upon a Time. And speaking of which…I decided to celebrate the fantasy reading season by also offering a give-away of my fairy tale retelling, The Wanderers. One winner will receive a signed copy of the paperback!* If you don’t already know you want to enter, here’s a little about the book:
You might recognize the landscape. You may think you know the rules. But you’ve strayed beyond the tales. Come join a wandering adventurer, a talking cat and a witch’s daughter as they fight monsters, pursue quests, and learn that sometimes, rules are no help at all.
The give-away will run from NOW until April 30th, so if the winner wants to read the book during the Once Upon a Time challenge, there will still be time. But how can you be that lucky person? 🙂 I’m doing this raffle-style, so you can enter multiple times, and multiple ways…
1) Leave a comment anywhere on my blog with the hashtag #WanderersGiveAway, for ONE entry per comment
2) Tweet using the hashtag for TWO entries per tweet
3) Mention the give-away on your blog (and send me a link) or on Facebook (and send me a screenshot) for FIVE entries
And if you want to comment during the next month without entering, I’ll just assume you already have a copy and ask no questions. 🙂
I think that covers all the bits of business today…don’t hesitate if you have questions, and don’t hesitate to enter! Now onward to the reading…
*Note for International Readers: Due to prohibitive shipping costs, I can’t mail a book outside of the United States–but I don’t want to bar my lovely readers from the UK, Canada and Australia (and if you’re from somewhere else, I’m sure you’re lovely too!) so if you win, I’ll send you the book direct from Amazon, and mail you a signature you can paste into it (or sell on eBay…whichever!)
In my last Saturday Snapshot, I shared some photos of celebrity sightings at the Wizard World Convention. This week I have photos of one more very exciting guest…
Billy Dee Williams, who you may recognize as Lando Calrissian from Star Wars. Maybe it’s the influence of the Star Wars books I’ve read (more on that in a moment), but to me, Lando seems just about as exciting as anyone else in the Star Wars universe.
Billy Dee Williams is on this season of Dancing with the Stars, and his dance partner was a surprise guest.
She dressed appropriately for the venue. 🙂
I posted once already about my souvenir from the convention, but I’ll share it again…I suspect that The Lando Calrissian Adventures contributed greatly to my excitement at seeing Billy Dee Williams, so it’s beautifully fitting that I got him to sign my copy–and it’s much more unique than an 8×10 photo!
One more photo from Comic Con next week…in the meantime, visit West Metro Mommy for more Saturday Snapshots!
My favorite reading challenge of the year is back again! Once Upon a Time, hosted by Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings, is a celebration of fantasy reading, especially with a fairy tale bent. As Carl put it in his launch post this year…
“…that still small voice is calling, “Come away…”
It is that voice that beckons us to Middle-earth and Newford, that calls out from the gap in the village of Wall and from the world of London Below. It is the voice that packs so much promise into four little words…
“Once upon a time…”
The “challenge” is low-key (hence my quotation marks) and focused more on the fun. No participation is too small, no pressure is involved! This will be my fourth year participating (!) and it’s begun to feel like a little reunion of bloggers every year, as old friends come out to share their posts. The “challenge” runs throughout spring, promising lots of good fantasy reading in the next three months.
Some years I’ve gone into this with a long list of books (and possibly a tall stack somewhere in my apartment) but this year I’m feeling a little more freeform. I’m hoping for some impetus to read more fairy tale retellings, a plan for this year that I haven’t fully pursued yet. Along those lines, I have Cress by Marissa Meyer on reserve at the library–#47 in line, so hopefully it will come before the challenge ends!
Beyond that, I want to finish up my rereading of Diana Wynne Jones’ Crestomanci series, and start a rereading of her Dalemark Quartet. And beyond that…I will see where the spirit moves, and expect to get many good ideas from what everyone else reads!
And if I might shamelessly self-promote for a moment–may I suggest that my novel about a wandering adventurer and a talking cat, adventuring through fairy tales, would be a perfect read for this challenge? 🙂 (Edited: And you may also want to investigate my give-away…)
Happy voyaging, wherever your reading takes you!
I’ve been seeing Enchanted by Alethea Kontis float around book review blogs for a couple of years, and it’s been on my To Be Read list all that time. So have a lot of books, but I should have got to this one sooner, seeing as I have this thing about fairy tales…
The plot is, well, complicated. Sunday is the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter (with three brothers besides). One day she meets a talking frog named Grumble. From there it’s “The Frog Prince,” which, upon Grumble’s restoration as Prince Rumbold, morphs into “Cinderella.” Plus there’s a wicked fairy, a couple of different threads relating to “Tam Lin,” a bit of “Snow White,” a changeling child, and did I mention there are pirates? Also a giant beanstalk, and a house shaped like a shoe…
According to the author’s note, and the evidence of the plot itself, Kontis set out to write a novel with as many elements of fairy tales as possible. She seems to have succeeded…creating a plot that is a very fun ride, although at times you do have to just throw up your hands and go with it.
Mostly I didn’t find that too difficult, and I was willing to roll with all the new developments. I mean, it’s an endless string of fairy tale elements. That’s fun!
I have to confess I had a little more trouble with the romance and some of the characters’ choices. Sunday and Grumble the frog fall in love very, very quickly. Then when Grumble turns back into Rumbold, he doesn’t tell Sunday that he was the frog…for reasons I never quite understood. There’s bad blood between their families, he thinks she won’t love him as a prince…so he invites her to three balls, which pretty much just shoves his princeliness in her face. I don’t quite understand that decision either. And yes, of course, Sunday falls in love with Rumbold very quickly too.
But, but, but–if you can suspend disbelief a bit, it is a fun ride. And very fast romances are a particular pet peeve of mine, so you might be far less bothered. Even I wasn’t bothered enough to not enjoy the book anyway. I mean, endless fairy tales references! Fun!
Author’s Site: http://aletheakontis.com/
Other reviews:
Fyrefly’s Book Blog
Charlotte’s Library
Katie’s Book Blog
Anyone else?
Buy it here: Enchanted
Tales of the Marvelous 