How I Live Now

Book Blogging

I have been reading and reading, y'all - as is my normal raison d'etre. A few I wanted to mention:

Dealing with Dragons
Growing up, one of my favorite books was Dealing with Dragons by Patricia Wrede. I'd mostly forgotten about it, though, until the other day wandering through my library when I came upon it, promptly grabbed it up and brought it home (after telling everyone in the Children's department about the fabulousness of this book). I devoured that book and ZOMG it is just as wonderful as I remembered.

Princess Cimorene is completely bored with all the stupid bits of being a princess (embroidery lessons, curtseying lessons, poise lessons) so she always runs off and forces random members of the household staff to teach her interesting things until her parents find out and make her stop (which is why she's only moderately good at fencing - and they git her away from the cook when she'd pretty much only mastered Cherries Jubilee). When her parents engage her to this utterly boring prince, she runs away and becomes a dragon's princess. Contrary to popular opinion, dragons don't eat princesses, they keep them as very useful servants and Cimorene thinks this sounds just lovely so she organizes Kazul's library (I think this may have been where my desire to be a librarian started), makes Cherries Jubilee, and in general has a grand ole time with the dragons. There's more - there's much more, but really I'd suggest reading it. It's awesome.

SO ANYWAY - I was in the living room playing with the Kins when the husband walked in with a confused look on his face and he asked "why are you reading Dealing with Dragons?"

"Because," I replied, "it is the BEST BOOK EVER! It was my favorite when I was knee high to a grasshopper and just remembered about it and had to reread it right away."

"But it was MY Favorite book growing up."

I KNEW I loved this man for a reason!

The Graveyard Book
Y'all probably already know that I am absolutely in love with Neil Gaiman. That man makes my heart go pitter pat! I was slow, however, on reading his newest The Graveyard Book because he had done the audio version himself and he's an amazing storyteller and I was waiting patiently for my turn at the library copy because audiobooks are super expensive I was being cheap ...

I'm buying the audio version now. It's that good. I need to own a copy of that man reading that book for the rest of my life. That's just how it works.

I don't think I can properly tell y'all about this book. Sometimes when a book is very much loved by me, I have problems explaining it to other people because I have trouble sifting out the important from the unimportant. When I stop and think about it logically, I know you don't need me to spend forever telling you how great the first sentence was and how the hand was in the DARKNESS and it held a KNIFE and do you understand how beautiful a way it was to open this story like that and don't let that wondrous first line make you shy away from this book, afraid it might be a dark dark book because yes the story begins with three murders but ZOMG Then you get to the graveyard and in that graveyard Bod finds LIFE and he LIVES and he GROWS and he BECOMES and then I pass out because I haven't taken a breath or ended a sentence in FAR TOO LONG. So I'm not going to tell you about The Graveyard Book but fortunately you don't need me to because this happened! I'm sure you can find another review somewhere else. (:

It was funny - at my library there are two people who I work with and adore who just really don't like Neil Gaiman and had really disliked this book. There were two of us who had loved The Graveyard Book and were quite passionate about it. Most everyone else was still waiting their turn for a copy. (OY the hold list this book had on it!) I was watching ALA Twitter the awards as they came in (because the American Library Association is all about 2.0) and the twitter feed F-ING BROKE RIGHT BEFORE THE CALDECOTT AWARD WAS ANNOUNCED!!! So I was running around trying to figure out where I could see who had won the two awards that most people care about (because while more people SHOULD care about things like the Coretta Scott King awards and the Siebert Awards etc, the Newbery and the Caldecott are what people ask about) when suddenly this came through my twitter feed which was quickly followed by this. Yes, he may be an over-rated foul mouthed yahoo", but I love him.

There were a ton more books I was going to post about tonight, but for now this is all you get. Sleep is required. I'm still getting over a cold.

Also - I'm sorry. I know this post is probably riddled with typos and whatnot. I read it through once to try and figure out where the typos are and discovered that I'm way too sleepy to do that sort of thing. If spell check hasn't found it, it'll just have to wait!