Tag: Books

Book Review: The Wayward Children Series

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews1 Comment

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire, Book 1 of the Wayward Children series, was one of the final books I got out of the library before everything shut down due to pandemic.  And the subsequent books in the series were the very first ones I requested once the library moved to “curbside pick-up” options.  Because this is an amazing series.

The series centers around Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, a boarding school for children (or teens, really) who have returned from magical lands.   Stories like Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz focus mainly on the adventure and end when the child gets home.  This series picks up what happens next, when children try to fit back into a world where no one believes their stories of where they’ve been.

I love virtually everything about this series.  It gets a little gruesome for me in spots and I don’t love that – but I love everything else.  The concept is brilliant; I always love stories that take a new angle on something familiar, especially an angle that is somehow both new and obvious.  As soon as it’s said, I don’t know why it hasn’t been thought of before – but it wasn’t.

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Friday Face-Off: Light and Dark

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations2 Comments

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It’s time again for the Friday Face-Off meme, created by Books by Proxy, with weekly topics hosted by Lynn’s Book Blog.  The idea is to put up different covers for one book, and select a favorite.

This week’s theme is: Tunnel – ‘At the end of every light, is a tunnel of darkness.’

So I totally failed to think of any book with an actual tunnel on the cover…so I decided to play with the light and dark idea instead.  And I thought of the Wayward Children series that I’ve been reading recently and loving. Because they’re recent books with only one cover each, I’m going to further stretch things and put up covers from the whole series.  And they kind of have a tunnel-ish look to them…

 

  

   

I’m torn when it comes to choosing a favorite!  I really like #3 and #4, both quite magical and intriguing, and I like #6 a lot too.  #6 looks like a book I’d really like to read, but it doesn’t look like it’s necessarily a magical book about travel between worlds.  I really like the way #4 uses lighting to suggest magic around a door in a tree (and it’s also totally accurate to what happens in the book, which I always appreciate).  I’m going to ultimately give the edge to #3 though – the bright colors are both appealing and just a touch weird (in a good way) and I like how the door is actually cut out of the sky – very visually interesting.

Also, the series is AMAZING.  I’ve really got to get on top of reviewing… 🙂

Can you think of any books with tunnels on the cover?  Or rave about the Wayward Children series, that kind of comment is welcome too!

Blog Hop: Popular, Yet Disappointing

On By cherylmahoneyIn Blog Hop3 Comments

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Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is:  What books got a lot of hype but were a disappointment for you?

There’s definitely been some books that were super popular that I really disliked…and I always feel a little weird criticizing them, to be honest!  It’s a little harder to say “this is a terribly written book” when the cover says “10 million copies sold” or whatever!  But there have still been some that seemed to work for a lot of people but not at all for me.

The first to come to mind was Wicked by Gregory Maguire, which had  “massive number of copies sold” on the cover.  And I…really disliked it.  I found the characters unappealing, the attempt to be shocking kind of bothersome, and the ending especially disappointing.  The musical, on the other hand, is a wonderful delight!

I was quite disappointed by Carrie Fisher’s The Princess Diarist.  I mean, Carrie Fisher’s memoir of being in Star Wars – that sounded amazing!  But it turned out to be more about her affair with Harrison Ford than it was about, well, Star Wars, and that was disappointing.  I still think she was awesome, but this was not the book for me.

I heard about Stephen King’s memoir/writing advice book, On Writing, from a lot of people, particularly other writers, before I finally picked it up.  I ended up skimming great pieces of it, because it was so much about his writing, which I haven’t read (not being a horror reader).  I suppose I should have taken the “memoir” part of the description more seriously.  If I was a King fan, I acknowledge that this probably would have gone better.

Three seems like enough books to criticize in one day. 🙂  Have you read a very popular book that you found disappointing?  I suspect it’s happened to us all…

The Phantom of the Opera Reading and Viewing Challenge – 2nd Update

On By cherylmahoneyIn Phantom Challenge2 Comments

It’s (somehow) July 1st, meaning we are halfway through 2020 already!  It has been a strange and unusual several months, and I hope you all are staying safe and well.  If you’ve been escaping from the weirdness of the present moment by visiting below the Opera Garnier, this post is for you!  At the halfway point of the year, it’s time to share about our Phantom of the Opera reading and viewing so far.

I started the year off with rereading Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera.  In the last few months, my Phantom focus has shifted to getting my own retelling out.  I published Nocturne (Guardian of the Opera Book 1) on June 5th, which was of course very exciting!  I’ve also recently reread Book 2 (which will be out in September!) and am currently midway through Book 3.

I’ve posted quite a few videos on Phantom topics, including a review of the 2004 Phantom of the Opera movie, starring Gerard Butler.  Check out my Phantom videos here.

Lately I also bought a Phantom-themed coloring book, and have been having a lot of fun with that.  Here’s a few photos, just because.

         

That covers my recent Phantom adventures – now I want to hear about yours! If you’d like a refresher on the challenge, check out the launch post here.  And please share in a comment below.  I look forward to seeing what you’ve been exploring this year!

Blog Hop: Off to the Bookseller’s

On By cherylmahoneyIn Blog Hop4 Comments

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Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is:  Do you visit indie and/or used bookstores? Also, have you ever worked in any?

Well, I’m not visiting stores right now because: pandemic, but in general I love a used bookstore.  I used to live in San Francisco, and one of my favorite places was Green Apple Bookstore.  I actually prefer used bookstores to stores selling new books – I like old books in general, and it feels more like a treasure hunt.  You never know when you’ll find some amazing old copy of something.  I also seem to find books I want to buy more often in used bookstores…maybe because I tend to be more interested in picking up old favorites than buying whatever is new and just-published.

I have never worked in a bookstore, though there have definitely been times in my life when I thought that would be a great job.  I don’t enjoy working retail, though, so I don’t know if the fact that it was retail books would actually outweigh the other disadvantages…  I’m currently part of an anthology about magic bookstores that will be out later this year, but that’s the closest experience I’ve had to working in bookstores, and it’s fictional!