Tea Party Blog Tag

In celebration of their 3rd blogoversary, The Notebook Sisters are hosting a week-long Alice in Wonderland-themed blog party.  To begin the festivities, they've invited other bloggers to play Tea Party Blog Tag.  Check out their blog to learn how to play.


Let's have some tea!

1. Just Alice: What book cover(s) has made you super curious?

Dream Boy by Mary Crockett and Madelyn Rosenberg.  A YA paranormal romance without a girl in a pretty dress on the cover?  Colour me intrigued.

2. Mad Hatter: List the craziest character(s) you've ever read.

I would, but the telling you about the craziest character I've ever read will be a huge spoiler if you ever read the book.

3. Red Queen, Off With Your Head! What book have you felt like beheading?

Vivian Versus the Apocalypse by Katie Coyle.  My review sums up why I hated this one so much.

4. White Rabbit: What books or series have been insanely popular but you've been "late" to pick them up?

I was late to the party for the Daughter of Smoke & Bone series by Laini Taylor.  I still haven't read the second book, even though I loved the first.

5. Caterpillar: What's the most confusing book you've read?

More Than This by Patrick Ness.  It was confusing because I was never sure what was really going on and also because lots of people think it's amazing.  Did I miss something?

6. Dormouse: What was the last book that sent you to sleep?

If a book is that boring, I generally won't even finish it.  However, audiobooks sometimes put me to sleep.  The last one that did was Gossamer by Lois Lowry.

7. Cheshire Cat: Book that made you laugh and smile?

Forrest Gump by Winston Groom.  I read it many years ago, and I still remember laughing out loud.  The sequel is also pretty funny.

8. Knave of Hearts: Most recent character who stole your heart?

I had to go all the way back to last September for this one: Li from The Lake and the Library by S. M. Beiko.

9. Jabberwocky: Best villain you've read this year?

Ty from Stolen by Lucy Christopher.  He was more than just a one-dimensional bad guy, and I liked that.

10. Down the Rabbit Hole: What's the latest book/series/author that's completely swallowed your interest?

I haven't been really sucked in by anything since I read Isaac Marion's Warm Bodies last year.  I'd love to read the prequel and sequel one day.

In My Mailbox (58)

Borrowed from the library:

Alligator Pie
by Dennis Lee

Dennis Lee won the Governor General's Award for poetry in 1972 for his poetic meditation on Canadian identity in Civil Elegies, but he made perhaps his most enduring contribution to Canadian nationalism two years later with a short collection of near-nonsense rhymes written for a much younger set. Alligator Pie, which remains the classic Canadian bedtime book, is written as if Mother Goose had the Latin name Branta canadensis, from William Lyon Mackenzie King, who "loved his mother like anything," to Trois-Rivières, which, of course, rhymes with "eat your hair."

Escape from Eden
by Elisa Nader

Since the age of ten, Mia has lived under the iron fist of the fundamentalist preacher who lured her mother away to join his fanatical family of followers. In Edenton, a supposed “Garden of Eden” deep in the South American jungle, everyone follows the Reverend’s strict but arbitrary rules—even the mandate of whom they can marry. Now sixteen, Mia dreams of slipping away from the armed guards who keep the faithful in, and the curious out. When the rebellious and sexy Gabriel, a new boy, arrives with his family, Mia sees a chance to escape.

But the scandalous secrets the two discover beyond the compound’s façade are more shocking than anything they ever imagined. While Gabriel has his own terrible secrets, he and Mia bond together, more than friends and freedom fighters. But is there time to think of each other as they race to stop the Reverend’s paranoid plan to free his flock from the corrupt world? Can two teenagers crush a criminal mastermind? And who will die in the fight to save the ones they love from a madman who’s only concerned about his own secrets?

The Lake and the Library
by S. M. Beiko

Wishing for something more than her adventureless life, 16-year-old Ash eagerly awaits the move she and her mother are taking from their dull, drab life in the prairie town of Treade. But as Ash counts the days, she finds her way into a mysterious, condemned building on the outskirts of town—one that has haunted her entire childhood with secrets and questions. What she finds inside is an untouched library, inhabited by an enchanting mute named Li. Brightened by Li’s charm and his indulgence in her dreams, Ash becomes locked in a world of dusty books and dying memories, with Li becoming the attachment to Treade she never wanted. This haunting and romantic debut novel explores the blurry boundary between the real and imagined with a narrative that illustrates the power and potency of literacy.

Odette's Secrets
by Maryann Macdonald

For Jews in Nazi-occupied Paris, nowhere is safe. So when Odette Meyer’s father is sent to a Nazi work camp, Odette’s mother takes desperate measures to protect her, sending Odette deep into the French countryside. There, Odette pretends to be a peasant girl, even posing as a Christian–and attending Catholic masses–with other children. But inside, she is burning with secrets, and when the war ends Odette must figure out whether she can resume life in Paris as a Jew, or if she’s lost the connection to her former life forever. Inspired by the life of the real Odette Meyer, this moving free-verse novel is a story of triumph over adversity.

Stupid Perfect World
by Scott Westerfeld

In this future-set novella by bestselling author Scott Westerfeld, Kieran Black lives in a "perfect" world. Disease and starvation have been eradicated, sleep is unnecessary, and it takes no time at all to go from the Bahamas to the moon. But now Kieran has to take Scarcity, a class about how people lived in the bad old days. And as if sitting through an hour of Scarcity every day wasn't depressing enough, it's final projects time. Each student must choose some form of ancient hardship to experience for two whole weeks. Kieran chooses having to sleep eight hours a night, which doesn't seem too annoying.

Maria Borsotti has never thought much of Kieran, but she decides to take pity on him and help him out with his project. Soon, Kieran is sleeping and having vivid dreams, while Maria, whose Scarcity project is to give up all teenage hormone regulation, is experiencing emotions she never knew she had. As their assignments draw them closer together, they begin to wonder if the olden days weren't so bad. Maybe something has been missing from their perfect lives after all?

What was in your "mailbox" this week?


In My Mailbox was started by Kristi of The Story Siren.

Review - The Lake and the Library

The Lake and the Library
by S. M. Beiko
Date: 2013
Publisher: ECW Press
Reading level: YA
Book type: prose novel
Pages: 160
Format: e-book
Source: library

Wishing for something more than her adventureless life, 16-year-old Ash eagerly awaits the move she and her mother are taking from their dull, drab life in the prairie town of Treade. But as Ash counts the days, she finds her way into a mysterious, condemned building on the outskirts of town—one that has haunted her entire childhood with secrets and questions. What she finds inside is an untouched library, inhabited by an enchanting mute named Li. Brightened by Li’s charm and his indulgence in her dreams, Ash becomes locked in a world of dusty books and dying memories, with Li becoming the attachment to Treade she never wanted. This haunting and romantic debut novel explores the blurry boundary between the real and imagined with a narrative that illustrates the power and potency of literacy.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This is kind of a weird review for me.  I'm not quite sure how to rate a book that's so uneven.  Some parts of it were great.  Other parts... not so much.

In the acknowledgements, the author says that she was sixteen when she wrote the book.  On the one hand, I can scarcely believe it because the plot was so good.  On the other hand, I can totally believe it because of the writing.  And it wasn't that the writing was uniformly bad; that's what made it so frustrating.  There were passages that were beautiful and evocative and the author did do a lot of things right:

Finally, something existed just for me in this sterile town where everything was everyone's until it smothered.

But there were also those passages that bordered on purple prose, or that were just plain weird and unnecessary:

Her index and thumb to her temple, stretching her eye upwards, she nodded.

On more than one occasion, I came across words that made no sense in context; it was as if the author liked the sound of the word, though didn't quite know what it meant... but used it anyway, meaning be damned:

Something went off, and everything slowed to a mercurial pace.

This book also featured many, many instances of one of my biggest pet peeves: the "said bookism".  And these "said bookisms" didn't even make sense.  Throughout the novel, characters smiled, grimaced, shrugged, evaded, and stiffened their words (no, I know that makes no sense, and that's why it bothers me):

"Well, okay," he shuffled his feet again.

Aargh.  Sometimes, I think authors are allergic to the word "said".  And what was weirdest of all was that, half the time, this author did use "said"... which only made the other incorrect dialogue tags all the more jarring and annoying.  One other thing I noticed was that there were a few odd shifts in tense.  Most of the novel is written in first person, past tense (with some sections in third person, present tense).  There were a few instances where the past tense was replaced with present tense, but only momentarily... which leads me to believe it was an editing issue more than anything else.  In any case, it was still a bit irksome.

The characters, on the whole, were pretty good, though Ash is arguably a bit bland (probably so the reader can live vicariously through her).  Li (pronounced "Lie", not "Lee"... he's not Chinese, as I first assumed) was everything the synopsis promised, and then some.  We even got two parent characters who actually played a role in the story (fancy that, in YA fiction)!  I did find Tabitha and Paul, Ash's friends, a bit on the weak side at times, but they were necessary.

Okay, then there's the plot.  I really, really liked this story.  The synopsis makes it sound like a contemporary romance novel, but it's not.  It's fantasy.  Li's "indulgence in [Ash's] dreams" is a big hint at where this story goes, but it's more than that, too (and I don't want to say much more and give anything away, because that would spoil the fun of readers discovering things for themselves).  I thought the secondary plot thread -- the bits told in third person -- was a nice addition, and it tied in seamlessly with Ash's story.  And the ending...  Well, I'll just say that books rarely make me emotional enough to shed any tears, but this one came close.  I haven't been that invested in fictional characters and their stories in a while.

So, on the whole, this was a good book with a great plot that had a few moments of great writing, but also quite a bit of bad writing.  With another round of editing, this probably could have been a five-star book.  It's still pretty good, though, and if you don't mind some of the technical issues I mentioned above, you might like this one even more than I did.  I'd recommend it to fans of romantic fantasy fiction.

Plot: 5/5
Characters: 4/5
Pace: 3/5
Writing: 3/5
Editing: 3/5
Originality: 5/5
Enjoyment: 4/5

Overall: 3.86 out of 5