Systematic Student [learning as a lifestyle] 

The Book Vixen is hosting a YA of the 80s and 90s Challenge.

It's pretty flexible in terms of which books, how many etc, as long as they were originally published in (duh) the 80s or 90s. I've decided to try for 15-30 (a new book for me if I reach 15, a new book for one of you if I reach 30, so recommendations are welcome, and remembered!)

A lot of the books on my list right now are re-reads that I've been meaning to revisit for a while, but haven't gotten around to. Who knows if I'll make time for them all, but it's nice to know they are on there.

Here is my tentative reading list: (I'll add more later...)
~1. After the Rain ~2. The Moorchild ~3. Yolanda's Genius ~4. One-Eyed Cat 5. Ramona Quimby, Age 8 6. The Mists of Avalon 7. Beyond the Chocolate War 8. Goodnight Mr. Tom 9. The Wright Brothers: How they Invented the Airplane ~10. December Stillness *11. Midnight in the Dollhouse *12. When the Dolls Woke *13. Homecoming *14. Dicey's Song *15. A Solitary Blue *16. The Runner *17. Come a Stranger *18. Sons from Afar *19. Seventeen Against the Dealer *20. The Hero and the Crown *21. The Blue Sword 22. Volcano: The Eruption and Healing of Mt. St. Helen's ~23. The Golden Compass ~24. The Subtle Knife 25. Howl's Moving Castle 26. Sabriel 27. In the Forests of the Night 28. 29. 30.
*marks re-read ~marks owned

I was thinking about how many love triangles I've noticed popping up in YA literature lately, and whether or not I like them. And, it occurred to me that I cannot think of a single instance of a love triangle involving one boy and two girls. In my experience, it is always one girl deciding between two guys. I was trying to figure out why that is, why there were no cases involving two girls and one guy when I realized that as a general rule, we consider guys who are leading on two different females to be a player or a (insert string of long curse words here).

So why is it then okay for it to be a girl deciding between two guys?!

I'm sure every one, at one point or another has come across someone, either in literature or real life who is upset or affected by the gender stereotype/double standard that a boy who has many sexual partners is a stud, but a girl is a slut.

I've heard a lot of people get really up in arms over the above stereotype, both in real life and in literature, but I've never heard anyone talk that way about the reverse (love triangles).

So, what do you think? Why is it that one double standard is so offensive to people, but the other totally acceptable?

Whether you like reading love triangles or not, what are your thoughts on this?

Sirena by Donna Jo Napoli is a retelling of The Little Mermaid that ties in the Sirens from Greek Mythology. It is, without a doubt, my favorite of all the Napoli retellings I am familiar with. In this story, Sirena is a mermaid and a siren. All sirens have the opportunity to earn immortality, but they must know the love of a human man. And so, they sing, luring sailors with their enchanting voices to their deaths, desperate to find a man to love them. But Sirena cannot live like this. She does not like the death and the killing and so she leaves her siren sisters and lives on an island alone. Until the day a man is left for dead on the beach of her island and she decides to save him.

Sirena may not agree with the way her sister sirens lure men to their doom, hoping to earn their immortality, but she does crave that give of eternal life. But she refuses to seduce a man with he songs into forgetting what and who she is. When Philoctetes is abandoned on her island, she knowingly risks the wrath of Hera to save his life. She is drawn to him, and as she cares for him, trying to heal him, they form a bond and become friends. She hopes that they might fall in love, but wants that love to be real, to be pure, untainted by her siren's song.

This story reads like a fairy tale combined with a Greek Tragedy and it is all the more magical for it. Napoli pulls darker elements into this tale, as she does with all her stories and no where do her intricate and unique combinations work better than here. The Greek Gods are a vengeful lot, unforgiving of mortals and those who interfere in their dealings with mortals. Hera sent the serpent that bit Philoctetes, the bite that would have killed him, if Sirena had not interfered. For a long while, it would seem that the Goddess would overlook this infraction, overlook this insult, but all too soon, the consequences of interfering with the punishments of the Gods are manifest. And those consequences are all the more painful, more damaging and hopeless because it they are not catastrophic tragedies. They are small slights and refusals that eventually might destroy them.

Sirena is a story that catches at you. It's been a while since I read this book, although I did reread much of it to prepare for this review, but a lot of the story stuck with me. And what I didn't remember came back clearly and vividly as I began to reread the story. We are privy to Sirena's thoughts and so we are able to feel her indecision, share her hesitation and her heartache and accept that which can have no other outcome. If you only ever read one Donna Jo Napoli story or one retelling of The Little Mermaid, please, make it this one.

I love Read-a-Thons, and I haven't participated in one for a while. So, when I heard that The Bookish Type and Book-Savvy were hosting a Read-a-Thon, I knew I wanted to sign up. So, head on over to their blogs to participate in the Out with a Bang Read-a-Thon!

Here are the details, as listed on their sites:
The Readathon will run from December 29 — 31 and participants will be reading as many books as they can during that time! This Readathon is mainly to finish off the fabulous debuts for the Debut Author Challenge, but participants don't have to focus on that category if they have non-debut books that they would like to finish before 2010 ends.

And, if you need an extra incentive to participate, we'll also be giving away tons of swag and books during the Readathon (and a lot of it will be signed!)

Several awesome authors have been kind enough to donate items! I will do a special thank you post once we have all the details so that I don't miss anyone!

Heather and I will be hosting giveaways during the event, and there will also be fun daily Mini-Challenges, hosted by the following fabulous bloggers: (see their sites for the list)

The free-verse poetry is as powerful as even, invoking images and emotions within the reader easily. I've read several authors who use verse to tell their stories, and none of them are as powerful writers as Hopkins. The intensity she writes with with astound you. It is painful, stark, real. This much honest emotion in a story takes my breath away, even as is breaks my heart. None of these children have had an easy time with life and the legacy Kristina has left for them is heartbreak, addiction and destruction. Not very hopeful, is it?

Life is never all about you. There will always be other people hurt or affected by our decisions, and I think it is important to realize this. You are always able to chose your own actions, but you do not get to chose your consequences for yourself or those around you. I once again commend Hopkins for an amazingly powerful story, one that will stay with me for a long time.

It's Friday again, which means that both Parajunkee's View and Crazy for Books are hosting their weekly blog hops. I think it's a lot of fun to participate and love meeting new bloggers and finding new blogs! (And, I just have to say how totally excited I am that it's Friday the 13th. It's like... Awesome!)

If you are new, Welcome! Please leave me a comment with your blog URL so I can return the favor! And, please, enter my current giveaway for Samantha Bee's hilarious memior, I know I am but what are you?. You can find it HERE.

Jennifer asks us a question each week. Today's question is How many books are on your TBR Shelf?
Well, if it was a shelf of books that I actually own needing to be read? Almost 200. However, if it's all the books that I want to read and think, I need to read that someday? Then the number is actually closer to 1400.:) I love books!

Thanks again for dropping by!!

Looking for Alaska by John Green is a story of friendship, betrayal, grief, happiness, hope, despair, laughter, tears, and growing up. I could go on and on about how many facets of life this book embodies, but I think you get the point.

Miles, Chip and Alaska were perfectly drawn characters. We were able to see both their strengths and their weaknesses, their perfections and their flaws. These characters each have so many dimensions to them, it's hard to believe they aren't actually real. Sometimes they get along, sometimes they make good choices, and other times they act recklessly, with a complete disregard for the rules and their own well being.

This is definitely not a perfectly wrapped story, decorated with ribbons, and wrapped with a bow, so if that's the story you're looking for, look elsewhere. However, if you are interested in reading a story that is going to alter the way you view your world, I highly, highly recommend this book.

The characters in this story are really stupid at times. But they learn. Miles went to boarding school, searching for his 'great perhaps'. He's lived a fairly boring life, nothing exciting ever happens to him, and he's looking for something, but he doesn't know quite what that something is. When he gets to school, he meets his new roommate, Chip, and one of his best friends, a beautiful and exciting girl named Alaska.

John Green shows an amazing talent for writing with this story. He manages to create in Miles a character who is intelligent, and able to think deep and philosophically without talking over the reader, or condescending to them. Miles thinks a lot about what he's learning, especially in his world religion course, and because he is our narrator, we hear a lot about what he's thinking and feeling. But, I never once felt preached to or overwhelmed.

This is a story about the hard parts of growing up. It's a story about those things every parent wishes didn't happen. But these things do happen and to ignore them, brush them under the rug and act as if they are not real is doing everyone a disservice. I makes kids feel like they are alone and that no one else has ever felt the way they do. But this story lets us know that there are other people out there who can relate to us, and that it's okay to hurt, okay to cry and okay to move on.

John Green, I think you are a brilliant man and I cannot wait to pick up your next story.

Today we are pleased to have joining us Marissa Meyer, author of Cinder, a futuristic retelling of Cinderella. Guys! Be excited! Cinder is a 2012 debut, and a little birdie on the inside tells me (Misty) it's fabulous! Make sure to stop back on Friday for a guest post from Marissa!

Now let's get down to business. "Serious" Questions:
~Can you tell us a little bit about Cinder and the series?Gladly! CINDER is a young adult futuristic retelling of Cinderella. In it, Cinder, a 16-year-old cyborg mechanic, must piece together her mysterious past in order to protect her country from an impending war. It's the first in a four-book series, each of which revolves around a different fairy-tale-inspired heroine (Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Snow White), as they join forces to save the world and find their happily-ever-afters. CINDER is scheduled to release in early 2012.

~Why fairy tales? What is it that calls to you, personally, as a writer, and why do you think readers connect to them the way they do?
I’ve always loved fairy tales. When I was growing up, I loved them for the romance, the magical kisses, the dresses, the princes in their fancy castles. Now I’m drawn to them for their timelessness—these are story archetypes that have been retold and recycled in 8 billion different ways, yet authors and artists and movie directors are still coming up with new ways to tell them. And because they still relate to issues that every society deals with, whether it’s childhood neglect a la Hansel and Gretel or just wanting to improve your social status a la Cinderella—these stories hold as much meaning for us now as they did in the time of the Grimm Brothers.

~What’s your favorite scene you’ve ever written? EVER ever? Gosh, that’s a lot of scenes. Can I say every single kiss? I’m a big fan of kissing scenes. The fun part of writing a four-book series with four different heroines who have four different romances is that there’s lot of opportunity for great kissing! Book 2: SCARLET (Little Red Riding Hood) will have some particularly smoldering ones.

Quickfire, Silly and Random stuff:
~Rapunzel is named after lettuce; what odd thing would you be named after if you were in a fairy tale? I love this question, because I was tempted at one point to call my Rapunzel character “Arugula”! I ended up settling on “Cress” though, which is also a type of lettuce. If I were in a fairy tale, I think my odd name would be something geeky and literary, like maybe Pencil or Comma.

~ Using that name, give us a line from your life as a fairy tale: The fairy godmother waved her magic wand and Pencil found herself with this a real live book deal—a dream come true! She was about to retire to Hawaii and do nothing but lie on the beach and drink fruity cocktails for the rest of her happily ever after... when it occurred to her that she still had to write the rest of the books. And back to work the princess went.

~Best fairy tale villain and why? I’m partial to Rumpelstiltskin. He’s sly, crafty, can actually spin straw into gold (quite the feat!), and goes after what he wants. I also love that the story leaves open a big mystery: why does he want the queen’s firstborn at all? It could be very cruel and awful (maybe he plans to eat it!) or more sympathetic (maybe he just wants a family).

~Favorite tale from childhood? Favorite tale as an adult? Least favorites? I always loved The Little Mermaid—it was my favorite Disney movie as a kid, and I only fell in love with it more once I read the Hans Christian Andersen version and learned how truly tragic the story was. It has so much depth to it (pun kind of intended). As for now... it’s so hard to choose! Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty are probably neck and neck for my all-time favs. As for least favorite... I don’t know that I really have one, although something about the end of Hansel & Gretel always bugged me. I felt like the dad got off way too easy in that tale!

~If you could be any fairy tale character, or live through any fairy tale "happening," who/what would it be? Cinderella’s ball! I love big beautiful dresses and dancing and food!

~Would you rather:
- — live under a bridge with a troll, or all alone in a high tower? Tower, definitely! Just think how much reading you’d get done.

- — ride everywhere in a pumpkin carriage (messy) or walk everywhere in glass shoes (uncomfortable)? I’ll take the carriage, with hopes that the fairy godmother had the sense to scrape all the guts out of it.

- — have a fairy godmother or a Prince Charming? Between getting engaged and getting my book deal for CINDER both in the past few months, I think I already have both!

Thanks so much for the fun interview, Ashley and Misty! Oh course! We were happy to have you, and can't wait for Cinder! Thanks for stopping by! So who else is super excited for Cinder? *raises hand* Stop back on Friday for a special guest post from Marissa Meyer. And don't forget to leave her some love in the comments!

Today is my first actual Memory Monday post, and I'm pretty excited about it! If you missed what Memory Monday is all about, you can read this post here for a more detailed explanation.

I thought for a while about which book I want to start with, but couldn't really settle on one book. Two of the books I read this week happened to be fairy tale retellings, and I have quite a few (a lot) more on my read and to-read lists, so I decided I would start my Memory Monday postings with the reason I love fairy tales so much. And that reason is:

Grimm's Fairy Tales as written and collected by The Brother's Grimm!

Have any of you read their collection of fairy tales?! It's wonderful!

I first read this when I was 10 years old. We were spending a week or so visiting my grandparents, and I was bored. I love my grandparents very much, but at 10 years old, just being in the same house is usually enough. I'm sure you can all relate...

Always having been a reader, I was looking for a book. They had a few picture books, a lot of plays (my grandfather and that whole side of my family is very big into theater), and a bunch of non-fiction — biographies and the link. When you are ten, all of that equals one big BLAH.

I can't tell you how much time I spent searching their shelves just hoping that something interesting would appear and give me something to read. There are only so many times you can play "River Wild" in the hammock. (That's another long story...) Ahem...

As I was searching the shelves, my grandpa pulled an old copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales from the bookcase and told me to give it a try. I was skeptical at first but soon because deeply fascinated by these dark and often morbid tales. Disney never told me that Cinderella's bird friends pecked out her evil-stepsister's eyes, or that Snow White 'dies' two or three times before finally eating the apple, and that it's the dwarf's who save her the first times. There were so many more tales that I had never heard of before and they were all so fascinating. Not all of the heroines are helpless, waiting for their prince to come. A lot of them are ultimately the ones who save their princes and even the tales that have a happy ending are not nearly as peaceful getting their as the current tales would have you believe.

I overheard my grandpa remarking how impressed he was with me to my parents because of my reading. I was sitting on the couch while my brothers were watching cartoons when my grandpa walked through the room. He assumed we were all watching TV, but was impressed and pleased to find me tuning out the TV and little brother noises to focus on my book. I was, as my grandma says, tickled pink. I remember that day, and I remember that book. I loved the stories so much that my parents got me my own copy that Christmas which I promptly sat down and read again, and would use night after night to read bed time stories to my younger brothers. I have such fond memories of these stories, and I love reading them in their original form and retold in new and unique ways.

Because of this book, I also read The Complete Tales of Hans Christian Anderson, and although there were a few favorites there (namely The Little Match Girl and Thumbina) the stories of the Brother's Grimm are most definitely the favorites. (Do you know that HCA has a fairy tale (no lie) about a dung beetle? Ya, I thought it was weird too).

The Brother's Grimm had a very definite impact on me early reading, and what interests me today. Do you have any old favorites? I'd love to hear about them! Leave me a comment telling me about your childhood favorites, or linking me to your blog post, or telling me about your experiences with Grimm's Fairy Tales! I'd love to hear from you!

So, Princess Bookie is hosting a contest craze full of books and prizes and challenges and all that good stuff. I don't normally post about stuff like this, and I haven't, as yet, participated in any of the Waiting on book memes or things like that, so I figured that I'd add my comments this time.

She is asking for us to name our Top 5 books of 2011. I've run across enough 2011 releases lately that I'm willing to add what I'm waiting for. It should be fun. So, the top books I'm waiting for are:

1. Where She Went by Gayle Forman. The sequel to If I Stay, one of my favorite 2010 reads, this will be released in April and after the blog teaser tour a few weeks ago, I'm going crazy waiting to read this book.

2. Delirium by Lauren Oliver. I read Before I Fall this year and I loved it. When I realized Oliver was coming out with a second book, and a dystopian one at that, I was thrilled! It comes out in February.

3. Bitterblue by Krisin Cashore. I just finished reading Graceling and Fire and I loved them. Cashore is a great writer, and I've loved the world she's created. It's tentatively planned for April, but I'm not sure if that's official yet.

4. Cloakedby Alex Finn. I love fairy tale retellings, and I've enjoyed Finn's other modern retellings (Beastlyand A Kiss in Time) There aren't a lot of retellings about the Frog Prince, and I'm pretty excited to read this one.

5. Entwined by Heather Dixon. As I mentioned, I love fairy tales and their retellings and The Twelve Dancing Princesses has been my favorite as long as I can remember. Plus, if you look on Goodreads, the cover for this one is beautiful.

So, at the moment, these are my 5 most highly anticipated releases of 2011. What are yours?

*Disclaimer: I received this book through One ARC Tours.

Losing Faith by Denise Jaden is a story of life and death, pain and hope, and friendship. Brie hasn't been close to her sister Faith for several years. Their parents are deeply religious, and Faith is a fervent believer as well. Brie is more interested in whether she really wants to spend alone time with her boyfriend than listening to people talk God, and it's caused some tension between family members.

Then Faith dies. Brie feels like she's losing ground, and there's no one for her to talk to. People at school don't know how to deal with her (what do you say to someone who's been that close to death?) her boyfriend is more interested in her body and her parents are so wrapped up in their own grief there is no room for Brie.

Then, Tessa starts talking to Brie. She's the tough chick, always dresses in black, scowls at everyone and seems more than willing to beat you up. Brie's always been terrified of her, so she's definitely wary when Tessa starts being, almost... nice. Turns out, there's a lot more to Tessa than meets the eye and she's the only one there for Brie as she starts getting closer to the answers about why her sister died.

The characters in this novel were amazing. I was so impressed with how Jaden wrote these characters. Because they are real. I believed in them. They didn't always act how I wanted them to, but I never felt that anything they did was really out of character. The only character I didn't fully believe was Faith, but I won't tell you why because that would spoil the book, and she's dead most of the time, so I can overlook that. Tessa is tough. She doesn't take crap from anyone, and because she's been so isolated from people for so long, she's really abrupt and doesn't really know how to communicate. And she stayed that way. Too often in books we have the tough guy/girl who just needs that one friend to open them up to show that, Hey! They really are totally great after all. But, most people who have gone years without much in the way of interpersonal communication have a lot to learn about being with other people, and it's definitely not something you learn overnight.

The only character I wasn't satisfied with was Pastor Scott, the youth pastor. I really felt that Jaden did him a disservice in her description. Maybe the problem is with me, but I totally kept waiting for it to be revealed that he was a creep of some sort or another, and every time he was mentioned, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. But, even though he's described in a way that makes me feel like he's creepy, he isn't. He's actually pretty minor.

The characters in this story were all developed really well, and their relationships with each other were intricate, and believable. I'm sure it's not surprising, given the nature of the YA coming of age novel, but there was a lot of growing up done in this book and it wasn't a disappointment. They grew as people in a believable way, enough to leave you satisfied that these people will continue to develop into great people you'd actually want to spend time with, but not so much that it leaves you disbelieving it actually happened.

The story also makes you think about what people are like inside. It's scary when you realize that someone who seems normal and likable is all kinds of crazy underneath. This is realistic fiction — something that could happen to any of us, but also something that I wouldn't wish upon anyone. It's definitely a book to make you think, to make you wonder, and one that I'll be thinking about for a while yet. And, I'm very interested in what Jaden does next.