Tune In Tuesday: The Civil Wars
So. There’s this band that I was recently introduced to. *twirls hair around fingers*
They’re called The Civil Wars.
I kind of have a major crush on them.
Like.
MAJOR.
It’s a little out of control.
I am not kidding about that. I’m seriously crushing on this band, and I have NO FREAKING IDEA how I hadn’t heard of them before now, especially since their debut album came out in FEBRUARY.
I feel so behind. *hangs head in shame*
But I am SO SO SO glad that I’ve finally been introduced to them.
If you haven’t heard of them before today, hopefully you’re glad to be introduce to them as well. 🙂
So damn good, right?! RIGHT.
And they are playing the Newport Folk Festival in late July. WHO WANTS TO GO WITH ME?!
Tune in Tuesday is hosted by the wonderful Ginger at GReads! Check her out. She’s great.Â
Review: Die for Me
Title: Die for Me
Author: Amy Plum
Publisher: HarperTeen
Pages: 341
Release Date: May 10, 2011
Format: eGalley via NetGalley (Thank you!!)
In the City of Lights, two star-crossed lovers battle a fate that is destined to tear them apart again and again for eternity.
When Kate Mercier’s parents die in a tragic car accident, she leaves her life—and memories—behind to live with her grandparents in Paris. For Kate, the only way to survive her pain is escaping into the world of books and Parisian art. Until she meets Vincent.
Mysterious, charming, and devastatingly handsome, Vincent threatens to melt the ice around Kate’s guarded heart with just his smile. As she begins to fall in love with Vincent, Kate discovers that he’s a revenant—an undead being whose fate forces him to sacrifice himself over and over again to save the lives of others. Vincent and those like him are bound in a centuries-old war against a group of evil revenants who exist only to murder and betray. Kate soon realizes that if she follows her heart, she may never be safe again.—Goodreads
Everything about this book is romantic: the setting (Paris), the boy (Vincent), and even the concept of revenants (people who died saving someone else and now spend their undead lives continually saving other people) is deeply, desperately romantic.
Unfortunately, I’m not a very romantic kind of girl.
While author Amy Plum does a fantastic job of setting scenes and tone—so much so that I was sitting there thinking OMG SEND ME TO PARIS NOW NOW NOW (There’s a scene involving a tarte tatin that had me looking up the nearest French patisserie/boulangerie to me. Thank God I live in NYC.)—I wasn’t really in love with her characters. The main character, Kate, is a bit of an emotional mess. It makes sense—girl lost both of her parents and then was whisked away to Paris to live with her grandparents—but she honestly spends the majority of the book crying, and not just because she is grieving her parents. I really tried to be sympathetic. I even tried being empathetic. Neither worked. I mostly just wanted to shake her and tell her to stop crying. (Lesson of the day: I am a heartless bitch.)
The love interest in the story, Vincent, isn’t much better. Yes, he’s romantic, and yes, he’s all kinds of paranormal-sexy, and really sweet to Kate, but the instalove is super intense. Like. Twilight intense. And he does that Edward Cullen thing where instead of letting Kate into his life and explaining the dark, complicated parts to her, Vincent tries to keep her on the outside because that is “going to protect her.” That got on my nerves too.
But! Not everything about this book annoyed me! There are three things I really enjoyed, other than the Parisian setting:
1. I really loved Kate’s relationship with her sister, Georgia. Although Georgia isn’t necessarily in the book all that much, her scenes brought a much needed life and energy and sisterly understanding/handling of Kate to the story.
2. Ambrose. He’s another minor character, but…he’s Southern! So I like him on principle.
3. There is a whole bunch of fencing in this book. FENCING!!!
Overall, I wish this book had had less crying, more fencing, and had allowed a little more time for the relationship between Kate and Vincent to grow. Plum obviously has the writing chops and ability to create intriguing, richly detailed, beautiful stories and I loved reading her descriptions of Paris (and the desserts.). I just wish I had loved the characters as much as I loved the setting.
TGIF: And I Quote
For this sort of disgusting, humid, rainy Friday in New York, Ginger over at GReads! has asked:
What are some of your favorite book quotes?
Oh, boy. Do I like book quotes. I’m the crazy girl who is constantly trying to find a scrap of paper or typing furiously on her iPhone whilst reading because I love writing down and keeping quotes that I find from books. But that makes this particular question a little hard because I have SO MANY.
So I will limit myself and only choose four. 🙂
“They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn… —Jack Kerouac, On the Road
I’m a little obsessed with the Beat generation writers—in fact I wrote my undergraduate thesis on them—and this particular quote gives me chill-bumps every single time I read it. Obsessed. But not as much as these people.
“Run mad as often as you choose but do not faint.”—Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
So, apparently I really like the word “mad.” Who knew?! But of Austen’s works, I really, really love Mansfield Park. I love Fanny Price and her wit, and I love the political ramifications of the novel, and I just love it. And I love this quote.
“If I don’t shut down my brain soon, my imagination will take off so far about what could be with this guy, that nothing will ever just be.”—Rachel Cohn & David Levithan, Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist
Holy cow THIS QUOTE. I’m such a planner, but I also have the tendency to get ahead of myself, especially when it comes to relationships. When I read this quote y’all, it was like a freaking siren went off in my room. I felt like it was directed at me, and just so resonated with me. And now, every time I meet a guy, I think of this quote so that I don’t let my imagination get ahead of reality.
“One must always be careful of books,” said Tessa, “and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”—Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
Hooray bookish quotes! 🙂
Alright, so them’s my quotes. Since I am a quote collector of sorts, feel free to share your faves with me in comments!
I hope y’all have all had a fantastic week and are looking forward to a bright, shiny weekend full of FUN!
Review: Girl Wonder
Title: Girl Wonder
Author: Alexa Martin
Publisher: Hyperion
Pages: 304
Release Date: May 3, 2011
Format: Electronic Galley via NetGalley (Thank you!)
From the minute I started Girl Wonder, I felt a bond with the main character, Charlotte. I was her in high school—the smart, hard-working girl who knows she’s smarter than her standardized test scores say she is; the people pleaser whose biggest fear is disappointing others; the girl who desperately wants some social mobility in the hierarchy of public high school popularity; the girl who will do anything to get the attention of THAT guy.
Yeah. I was her. In fact, the parallels between me and Charlotte are a little uncanny. I felt as if I was reading my own high school story, which made it actually kind of hard to get through—I wanted to go into the book, sit Charlotte down, and tell her all the things she should do to “fix” her problems. But since she’s not really real, all I could do was read and sort of re-live all my crazy high school days.
*le sigh*
My favorite thing about this book was actually Charlotte’s relationship with her family. In fact, it’s familial issues that are at the center of her problems—Charlotte is constantly striving to please her father, a newly published author garnering massive critical acclaim for his smutty novel; trying to be more like her mother, a literature professor; and comparing herself to her little brother who is a boy genius. In an effort to better herself, Charlotte feels that she needs to befriend people who will make her better: enter Amanda, the confident, daring, manipulative frenemy and Neal, the perfect, gorgeous, but entirely selfish guy. Charlotte is immediately taken with both of them and works to get close to them; as the self-proclaimed older version of Charlotte, I immediately hated them both with a burning, fiery passion and labeled them both as bad news.
But Charlotte did not label them as bad news. [The high school version of me wouldn’t have either.] She wants so badly to be a part of their group that she puts herself in terrible situations, lets people take advantage of her, and continues to feel horrible about herself. In fact, she’s so obsessed with impressing Amanda and Neal, that she is blind to the incredible guy who is so into her he can hardly breathe. I wanted to shake her. But I could not.
Overall, Girl Wonderis a classic case of girl-gets-in-over-her-head. Charlotte’s life has to completely unravel for her to figure out how to put the pieces back together in an order that is right for her. To be entirely honest, if I hadn’t felt so close to the character, I probably wouldn’t have been as invested in this book—it’s a fairly typical coming-of-age story. However, it’s an accurate portrayal of not only teenagers getting in over their heads, but of the many factors weighing on them—peer pressure to have sex and experiment with drugs, familial pressure to get into the “right” college, and learning how to handle situations that there is no way to control. Debut author Alexa Martin does a great job of showcasing just how hard it is to grow up. If only it was that easy to actually grow up.
Waiting on Wednesday: Withering Tights
Title: Withering Tights
Author: Louise Rennison
Publisher: Harper Teen
Pages: 288
Release Date: July 1, 2011
Wow. This is it. This is me growing up. On my own, going to Performing Arts College. This is good-bye, Tallulah, you long, gangly thing, and hellooooo, Lullah, star of stage.
Tallulah Casey is ready to find her inner artist. And some new mates. And maybe a boy or two or three.
The ticket to achieving these lofty goals? Enrolling in a summer performing arts program, of course. She’s bound for the wilds of Yorkshire Dales—eerily similar to the windswept moors of Wuthering Heights. Tallulah expects new friends, less parental interference, and lots of drama. Acting? Tights? Moors? Check, check, check.
What she doesn’t expect is feeling like a tiny bat’s barging around in her mouth when she has her first snog.–Goodreads
Oh my giddy God, it’s a new Louise Rennison book.
I love her. It’s no secret that her Georgia Nicholson series is one of my favorites of all time.
I still miss it terribly.
But now Miss Rennison is writing NEW THINGS. *squeals*
And it comes out soony, soony, soon, soon. And it sounds GREAT. And I am EXCITED.
[That said, if you are a blogger/publishing friend who has a copy that you either a) want to loan me, or b) want to send me to review, I would appreciate it mucho, and would probably name a stuffed animal after you.]
Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.
Bethany Larson 