Monday Muse: What Catches Your Eye?

An original creation by BLT

What catches your eye when you are browsing the library/bookstore?

Books with dark covers?

Is it books with colorful covers?

Funny covers?

Mysterious covers?

Sad or serious covers?

What catches my eye at the library or bookstore are either mysterious covers with great pictures or clean, serious covers with neat fonts like Hold Still. While those kinds of covers draw my attention, however, I always see books with the dark covers. If an author want's to draw lots of attention to her book, the safest bet is a dark cover.

In My Mailbox (8)

IMM meme is hosted by The Story Siren.

This week I two books in the mail, and the other two I received last week. Since school started, I have been pretty busy. I've been reading lots of books, but my reviews have gotten piled up!!! :\

As you might have noticed, there's been a few changes to the blog. Please let me know if there's any problems with loading the graphics. Thanks :)

Hope everyone has a great week....

Last Week for Review:

Hate List by Jennifer Brown (Little Brown/Sept. 1)

Fade to Blue by Sean Beaudoin (Little Brown/July)

This Week for Review:

Breathless by Jessica Warman (Walker/July)

Fever Season by Eric Zweig (Dundurn/Oct. 24th)

Cover Stories (2): Hardcover vs. Paperback

Hardcover (US)

Paperback (UK?)

The hardcover captures the realistic and historical side of the story, whereas the paperback clearly captures the humorous side. I think both covers are great, but when I saw the paperback version, I thought it was so cute! If I bought How the Hangman Lost His Heart I would definitely try to get ahold of the paper edition. Which cover do you like?

How the Hangman Lost His Heart by K.M. Grant

Alice Towneley is the daughter of a nobleman and the niece of a traitor. Dan Skinslicer is a hangman who is very good at what he does. And Uncle Frank's head is about to throw them altogether. With their own necks at stake, Alice and Dan dodge soldiers, hide in laundry baskets, and creep inside enemy lines just to get Uncle Frank's head out of London intact. When a young solider is accused of helping Alice escape faces Dan's own noose, can Alice choose between them? Do hangmen really have hearts, or can friendship go as deep as love?

........

Filled with humor, vivid historical detail, and a risky love triangle, How the Hangman Lost His Heart is the story of one girl's mission to save her Uncle Frank's head and make a few friends in the process.

I read this book in one sitting and had fun reading it. It wasn't extremely pleasant because of constant talk of hangings, be-headings, and [ugh] heads, but I would definitely say I learned a lot about 18th century English culture. (I'm so glad Americans had the dignity to not publicly behead people.)

Besides blood and guts, How the Hangman Lost His Heart was pretty entertaining and even had a little romance.

The characters were all very lovable-even Dan Skinslicer, whose personality was way too sweet for a executioner. The writing, however, seemed a bit choppy and the character's personal emotions where hidden within the chaos of the London streets. For me, I don't mind reading emotions between the lines, but I can understand that some find this irritating or dull. Thus, this choice of writing style can be risky, but I think Grant pulled it off-and if you make it to the end, you'll never forget How the Hangman Lost His Heart.

The part where Grant explains that this book was based on the true fact that her family did have an Uncle Frank whose head was chopped off really got me! I love it when authors include real family legacies in their books, it creates an even deeper feel for family history and books alike.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this story of love, friendship, and runaway heads; I think fans of Grant's de Granville trilogy will enjoy this 18th century adventure.
Hangmen really do have hearts. :)

K.M. Grant is the author of the de Granvill Trilogy and the Perfect Fire Trilogy for young readers. How the Hangman Lost is Heart is a fictional take on her ancestor Uncle Frank who was the last man to be hung, drawn, and quartered in England. For generations Uncle Frank's head was passed down until he was reunited with his body after World War II. She lives in Scotland.

Pages: 256 Year Published: 2007 Publisher: Walker

Genre: Historical, 1700s, Age Group: YA, ages 12+

Content: Detailed description of blood, executions, etc.

Enjoyed It: 5/5 Rating: (based on content)

Blogger Appreciation Week 2009

It's Blogger Appreciation Week and guess what!? BLT was nominated for both Best General Book Review Blog and Best YA Blog!!!!! In order to evaluate my blog, I'll will have to pick 5 "special posts" for both nominations. Boy to I need your help with this one! If you have any favorite posts here on BLT- please TELL ME! The deadline is tomorrow at midnight, so check back soon for links:

UPDATED!

I was also nominated for Best Blog Name!

Best General Book Review Blog submissions:

1. The Straits

2. A Sweet Disorder

3. The Parliament of Blood

4. Bored Outta Your Gourd

5. Voyage of the Kon-Tiki2.

Best YA Blog submissions:

1. Shadowed Summer

2. My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters

3. The Entomological Tales of Augustus T. Percival

4. Holocaust Booklist

5. Premiere Saturday Author Interview

Sideshow edited by Deborah Noyes

Molly is a bearded girl who joins the circus, only to find that her former tormentor faces a far hairier plight. Tia claims that her lamented mom is a three-thousand-year-old mummy, but is it really an act? Cody sets out to foil a pop psychic, but the shocking result is not what he planned for. And Tiffany’s grandma sees something wild in her future, but is the girl prepared for the powerful shape it will take? Whether the sideshow touts a two-headed rat or a turn-of-the-century American jargo, whether the subject discovers an odd kind of miracle or learns that the real freaks are outside the tent, these stories and graphic tales are by turns humorous and insightful, edgy and eerie, but always compulsively entertaining. - from amazon

......

From magical shapshifters to bearded girls and other illusive creatures, Sideshow is a stunning and whimsical collection of stories is sure to bring the circus freak out of anyone.

I really enjoyed reading this collection of short stories, even if some of them were just a touch too "odd" for me-still, I can't help but think how Candlewick publishes some of the neatest books. My favorite story was The Bread Box by Cecil Castellucci, a bizarre yet charming tale of a living family heirloom, or The Bearded Girl for it's unusual message of acceptance. My favorite comic was Jargo! end of story. It was funny and enchanting-the perfect way to end a truly a magical book.

Complete with eerie and intriguing stories alike, fans of fantasy, paranormal fiction, and all things unusual will certainly be delighted by Sideshow. Circuses, fairs, carnivals, and magic shows have captivated us for hundreds of years; why not bring the hidden side of the circus to life!

"There are some strange things in this world...."

Deborah Noyes has edited the acclaimed story collections The Restless Dead and Gothic! and is the author of The Ghost of Kerfol. She lives in Massachusetts.

Sidshow contains the following short stories and comics:

"The Bearded Girl" by Aimee Bender

"Those Psychics on TV' by Vivian Vande Velde

"Year of the Rat" by Danica Novgorodoff

"The Mummy's Daughter" by Anette Curtis Klause

"When God Came to Kathleen's Garden" by David Almond

"The Shadow Troupe" by Shawn Cheng

"Cat Calls" by Cynthia Leitich Smith

"The Bread Box" by Cecil Castellucci

"Living Curiosities" by Margo Lanagan

"Jargo!" by Matt Phelan

Pages: 240 Year Published: July 2009 Publisher: Candlewick

Genre: Fantasy, Paranormal Age Group: YA, ages 12+ Content: None

Enjoyed It: 5/5 Rating:

Many thanks to Marie at Candlewick Press for sending me this neat book!

Back to School

Welp it's back to school for me! Now, not only will I have my face stuck in a novel, but school books as well......Algebra II, geometry, geography, physics, English 102 (college level), and American literature (my favorite subject, if you haven't already guessed).

And I thought my sophomore was busy.

BLT wishes you a great school year and keep up the reading!

School Year To-Do List:

* Read Shakespeare

*Start a book club

*Complete a short story!!

Book Gorge - A Brief History

Book Gorge is an original creation by BLT.

Gorge - Though it may wrong, rude, or a terrible habit, we do it a lot. The lady who works on the 3rd office floor pops chocolates into her mouth about every two minuets. The guy who works at the local ice cream joint looks like he's taken advantage of his job one too many times. And when your best friend throws a swim party, you eat way too much pizza-you know this because you never sunk to the bottom of the pool before. We tend to gorge ourselves with food, yes, but what about the other kind of food?

Is it possible to gore on words?

The girl at the bookstore proves this theory. She's a walking string bean, with her green dress, her black rimmed glasses, and the ribbons in her hair. For breakfast she eats Shakespeare, for lunch she has Mark Twain, for dinner Jane Austen is a favorite, and dessert is always Tennyson. Is it possible to gore words? Yes, I believe so, and did I also mention that words will always be a 100% fat free?

- "Book Gorge" by Morgan copyright ©2009

Book Gorge is a list of "to-be released" books I'm looking forward to reading. This is a great opportunity to grab a pen and jot down these books! Till next week, wish big and happy reading...

This week's books either have an historical theme or have something to do with the past. I'm especially excited to read either A Brief History of Montmaray or The Brother's Story, but I'm definitely going to try to read them all!

Newsgirl by Liza Katchum (Viking/Sept. 3)

The Goldsmith's Daughter by Tanya Landman (Candlewick/Sept. 8)

(The Goldsmith's daughter was published last year in Britain)

A Summer of Silk Months by Margaret Willey (Flux/Oct. 1)

A Brief History of Montmaray by Michelle Cooper (Knopf/Oct. 13)

Medina Hill by Trilby Kent (Tundra/Oct. 13)

The Brother's Story by Katherine Sturtevant (Farrar, Staus, & Giroux/Nov. 10)

On Viney's Mountain by Joan Donaldson (Holiday House/Nov. 15)

Winners of Summer Chills & Thrills Contest!

The winners of BLT's Summer Chills & Thrills contest are:

Kristen

is the winner of Shadowed Summer

"Shadow of Wonders"

is the winner of a signed copy of Skeleton Creek

I have already emailed you, so please send me your mailing addresses! If the winners don't respond within one week, I will draw new winners.

Didn't win? Don't be sad....be on the lookout for another contest hosted by BLT!

Now that the winners have been announced, would you like to hear my scary story?

It happened in the late afternoon on a summer day about seven years ago (I just a little girl then). We had promised to feed our neighbor's kitten while they were away, so we walked over there, opened the garage and fed Puppy (yeah, a cat named Puppy). We took him out on the drive way and played with him for awhile. I have no idea what prompted me to do this, but I stopped playing with the kitten and stood up. I remember feeling prickles on my skin-the kind you get when you know someone's watching you. Frantically look to the left, to the right, and all around. Nothing.

My mom suddenly asks, "What wrong with you"? I don't answer, I just keep glancing around. The wind whistle amongst the trees and I remember following the breeze to the left (east). As I gaze over at the pasture surrounding my neighbor's house, there, to my horror, I suddenly see two big green eyes coming towards me in the swaying grass.

I freeze. The two green eyes are followed by a long flicking tail. One word goes through my mind at this point. Panther!

I can't speak because I'm so scared, but I managed to point. Frantically my mom jumps up. "What? What is it?"Now the creature is perched on a fallen tree and is staring directly at us, crouching. We grab the cat, run into the garage, and close the door down. We all run to the nearest window and lookout. I don't remember if we saw anything, but when we finally crept out of the garage, there wasn't a single sign of the panther anywhere.

I'll never forget those green eyes nor the screams in the night I heard only a few weeks later. I never ventured out into the pasture again, or went down to the river alone. I have never seen another panther (a panther is a small black version of the sandy colored mountain lion-we have both where I live) since then, nevertheless, they are out there. Everytime I go with my friends down to the river's edge, I'm watching, listening. I make my friends very jumpy.

Kiss Me Kill Me by Lauren Henderson

When 16-year-old Scarlett Wakefield transfers from St. Tabby’s to Wakefield Hall Collegiate, she is relieved that no one knows her dark, haunting secret. A few months ago, Scarlett was invited to an elite party with a guest list full of the hottest names in British society, including Dan McAndrew. Before the party, Scarlett had only imagined what it would be like to have her first kiss with Dan, but on the penthouse terrace, Dan leaned in close and she no longer had to wonder. Their kiss was beautiful and perfect and magical, and then . . . Dan McAndrew took his last breath as she held him in her arms. No one knows how or why Dan died, and everyone at St. Tabby’s believes Scarlett had something to do with it. But now that she’s safely hidden away at Wakefield Hall, Scarlett would rather forget that it ever happened. Only she can’t. Especially when she receives an anonymous note that will set her on the path to clearing her name and finding out what really happened to the first and last boy she kissed. - from book cover

.........

One thing that I can difiantly tell you about this books it that it's hard to find! Well....at my library at anyway. With it being a paperback, naturally I searched in the YA Paperback section. Nothing.

Okay, maybe the librarian stuck it in with the hardcovers. Zilch. Finally, after like seven library-trips of searching, I finally found a copy in the section where they stash the Paperbacks of Unusual Size (i.e books that can't fit in those little paperback holders that turn.)

You've got be kidding.

To be completely honest I was expecting Kiss Me Kill Me have more mystery within it's pages. Instead, it kind of fluttered around talking about how Plum and her followers treated Scarlett or how much she missed Dan. It didn't actually pick up the scandal/mystery about Dan's death till the end of the book. (I'm assuming that was the publishers and author's devious plan. LOL)

At first I liked Scarlett's character, but when she skipped out on her friends and got caught up with Dan's death, she became just like the rest of St. Tabby's cookie-cutter, elite girls. And what about the magical first kiss? [Cough] More like two crazy teenagers expressing hormones. First kiss? Special. Scarlett's "first" kiss? Um, was it really her first kiss?-because it sure didn't seem like it.

Not all of the book as cliché though. The scenes with Scarlett and her new found friend, Taylor, were fun to read: spying, climbing up drain pipes, dodging snooty teachers, etc.; and the prestigious school background was interesting enough to keep you captivated. Still, this book didn't have that genuine mystery feel to it. Despite my negativeness, I will probably read it's sequel Kiss and Lies in order to find out what happens to Scarlett. Maybe after reading the second book, I can make my review more complete.

I neither recommend nor discourage you from reading Kiss Me Kill Me because it depends. If you were expecting a mystery novel or something grand and exciting like the cover, I wouldn't scour the library like I did. If you like the silly scenes of high society teenagers and scandals, then be my guest-but don't say I didn't warn you.

Pages: 272 Published: 2008 Publisher: Delacorte

Genre: Contemporary, teen romance,teen drama, British

Age Group: YA, ages 14+ Content: Language, kissing, sexual references

Enjoyed It: 3/5 Rating: (based on content)

Monday Muse: Design Your Own YA Novel

If you were a author, what would your debut novel look like? What would the title be? This is kind of a neat little thing do to and I had lots of fun design my book cover. Follow the steps below:

1 – Go to “Fake Name Generator” or click http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/

The name that appears is your author name.

2 – Go to “Random Wor

d Generator” or click http://www.websitestyle.com/parser/randomword.shtml

The word listed under “Random Verb” is your title.

3 – Go to “FlickrCC” or click http://flickrcc.bluemountains.net/index.php

Type your title into the search box. The first photo that contains a person is your cover.

4 – Use Photoshop, Picnik, or similar to put it all together. Be sure to crop and/or zoom in.

5 – Post it to your site alon

g with this text.

Just a little photoshopping.....and here's what I came up with:

Monday Muse is an original creation by BLT.

And Then Everything Unraveled by Jennifer Sturman

Delia Truesdale has no idea her life's about to change forever. She's too busy enjoying the California summer. Her internet mother, T.K. Truesdale, is out of town and that means Delia can spend all of her time at the beach surfing. That is, until everything unravels. Her mother suddenly goes missing, and everyone thinks she's dead-except Delia, who knows T.K.'s way too organized to simply disappear. But Delia's still sent to New York to live with her two aunts-a downtown bohemian and an uptown ice queen. And in case that's not bad enough, she also has to deal with a snooty new school and trying not to fall for the wrong guy. Oh, and finding her mother. As she delves deeper in the triangle of conspiracies and lies surrounding T.K.'s disappearance, Delia begins to suspect that the wrong guy may be the right guy....and that some secrets-especially the dangerous ones-were never meant to be unraveled. - from the book cover

......

And Then Everything Unraveled is a great little read, perfect for summer vacations. At first I excepted it to be a light romance/mystery mix, but this book defiantly went a bit deeper than that. In fact, I was rather thrilled to read something new, something that was based on a much bigger scale, and not just a simple disappearance. In anticipation, you watch as Delia uncovers clues, love, and danger all at once; there is never a boring moment!

Delia was a courageous spunky protagonist and I really enjoyed her aunt Charley's humor. There was a colorful array of characters and a variety of settings which made the book even more fun to read. The only part (which was still a small part) I didn't care for was when the physic told Delia some things about her mother's disappearance. I thought it took away a lot from the mystery and cut some corners. Despite that one little flaw, did I enjoyed the added scenes about Quinn and his family; I think it gave the mystery an even greater appeal to it-especially when it came with a few stunning surprises. Overall, And Then Everything Unraveled was a great read-couldn't put it down–it left me dying for a sequel!

And Then Everything Unraveled is was released July 1st, 2009.

Jennifer Sturman is a graduate of Harvard College and has written several adult mystery novels including: The Pact, The Jinx, The Key, and The Hunt. She now lives in New York City a few blocks from Delia's aunt Charley.

Pages: 244 Year Published: July 2009 Publisher: Point

Age Group: YA, ages 12+ Content: None

Enjoyed It: 4/5 Rating: (based on content)

Special thank you goes to Jennifer, Aimee, and Point publishing for sending me this book!