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  1. Teaser Tuesdays

    Tuesday, October 19, 2010


    Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
    • Grab your current read
    • Open to a random page
    • Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
    • BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
    • Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
    "I'm king here - more king than the man who sits atop the big hill. My people wouldn't give him a word in passing, but they follow my slightest wish."

    From page 61 of Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce.

    I've been revisiting some of my childhood favourites recently. I think I must have been maybe ten years old when I first read this book.

    Terra

      Posted by Terra at 7:15 AM | Labels: , | 11 comments | | |

    • 1. What are you reading right now?
      Food for Life: Lifelong health from the food you eat by Michael Van Straten.
      2. How many books have you read so far?
      This is my first.
      3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon?
      Probably Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as I haven't read it for a couple of years now. Mind, I was just thinking that maybe I should add John Dies at the End to my reading list.
      4. Did you have to make any special arrangements to free up your whole day?
      Nope. It's a glorious work-free Sunday here.
      5. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those?
      Sleep, which I learned last Read-A-Thon is important.
      6. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far?
      That I have run out of pocky. Also, this post not formatting itself the way I tell it to. :(
      7. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year?
      More pocky. Oh, wait. You mean suggestions for the event planners? None. It's great as always.
      8. What would you do differently, as a Reader or a Cheerleader, if you were to do this again next year?
      Maybe go to be sooner so that I'd get up earlier to start reading.
      9. Are you getting tired yet?
      Nope. I'm am now awake and refreshed.
      10. Do you have any tips for other Readers or Cheerleaders, something you think is working well for you that others may not have discovered?
      Sleep is important. So is pocky.

      Terra

      Posted by Terra at 10:25 AM | Labels: , , | 7 comments | | |


    • Read-a-thon! Wait for meeeeee!

      Better late than never I an scrambling to get a start on Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-thon.

      I live in Australia so the starting time was late here and I was already so tired so I figured that it was better to get some sleep. So, here I am, now awake and refreshed and ready to get some ready done.

      In these last twelve hours of the Read-a-thon I will be trying to get through...
      • Food for Life by Michael Van Straten
      • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
      • Hell Island by Matthew Reilly

      If I actually manage to get through those then I will continue on with The Passage by Justin Cronin.

      Terra

      Posted by Terra at 10:03 AM | Labels: , | 0 comments | | |

    • Feed by Mira Grant

      Thursday, October 7, 2010

      Title: Feed
      Series: Newsflesh
      Author: Mira Grant
      Publisher: Orbit
      Release Date: May 1, 2010
      Source: Library

      From the Back Cover:
      The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED.

      Now, twenty years after the Rising, bloggers Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives - the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will out, even if it kills them.

      My Thoughts:
      Four words: New. Favourite. Zombie. Book.

      Feed explores the impact of a zombie rising far beyond the initial fear and chaos, looking at the long term influence on media, politics, security, and medicine. Mira Grant (pseudonym for Seanan McGuire) shows us the world in 2040 - a whole 26 years after the Rising. The panic has passed and the walking dead wanting to take a bite out of you is just another fact of life. The Rising catapulted bloggers into the spotlight as the only reliable news resource during a time when conventional news providers where under the thumb of censorship.

      I fell in love with the cast of characters that Grant put on the page. Georgia and Shaun Mason are siblings by adoption who are closer than most brothers and sisters. They run the news blogging site, After the End Times, along with their friend Georgette "Buffy" Meissonier, winning themselves the career making opportunity of a lifetime - exclusive access to Senator Ryman's presidential campaign. Georgia is the "Newsie" with a passion for truth. Shaun as their "Irwin" brings in the ratings by pulling risky stunts like poking zombies with sticks. As the "Fictional" Buffy writes stories and poems to entertain the masses. Together they create a dynamic team and I enjoyed Georgia's unique voice as the narrator.

      Feed has the perfect balance of political conspiracy and zombies along with plenty of tension, action. humour, and tears that kept me up into all hours of the night unable to set it down. I eagerly await the next book in the series, Deadline.


      Also Check Out:
      The Zombie Hunters by Jenny Romanchuck
      The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

      Terra

      Posted by Terra at 12:19 PM | Labels: , , , , , | 3 comments | | |

    • Teaser Tuesdays

      Wednesday, October 6, 2010


      Technically fifteen minutes into Wednesday... -_-

      Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
      • Grab your current read
      • Open to a random page
      • Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
      • BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
      • Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
      "Actually, I decided to skip the weapons." Picking up the other two kits, I brushed past him on my way up front. "If we meet any zombies, we'll pacify them with Hostess snack cakes."

      From page 265 of Feed by Mira Grant.

      Either there is an ongoing joke in the upper half of the world about the power of Hostess snack cakes to repel all sorts of things that go bump in the night, or Mira Grant listens to the Geek Survival Guide.

      Terra

      Posted by Terra at 12:17 AM | Labels: , | 6 comments | | |

    • Title: Life As We Knew It
      Series: Last Survivors
      Author: Susan Beth Pfeffer
      Publisher: Harcourt
      Release Date: October 1, 2006
      Source: Library

      From the Back Cover:
      It's almost the end of Miranda's sophomore year in high school, and her journal reflects the busy life of a typical teenager: conversations with friends, fights with mom, and fervent hopes for a driver's license. When Miranda first begins hearing the reports of a meteor on a collision course with the moon, it hardly seems worth a mention in her diary. But after the meteor hits, pushing the moon off its axis and causing worldwide earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes, all the things Miranda used to take for granted begin to disappear. Food and gas shortages, along with extreme weather changes, come to her small Pennsylvania town; and Miranda's voice is by turns petulant, angry, and finally resigned, as her family is forced to make tough choices while they consider their increasingly limited options. Yet even as suspicious neighbors stockpile food in anticipation of a looming winter without heat or electricity, Miranda knows that that her future is still hers to decide even if life as she knew it is over.

      My Thoughts:
      Although Life As We Knew It is about the chaotic side effects of a meteor knocking the moon into orbit much closer to the Earth don't  be too hasty to label it as "apocalypse" fiction so much as "survival" fiction. Much of the book is set inside Miranda's house as her family struggle to survive within without the 21st century resources that they are used to. Miranda only hears about the massive tsunamis and volcano eruptions and is spared from experiencing them. In Life As We Knew It you won't see an informed overview of the world falling apart so much as the very personal story of Miranda and her family's struggle against starvation and the cold. Some readers may be dissappointed at times to miss out on the big action but I really liked Pfeffer's appoach of focusing everyday survivalism and family.

      There is one thing that I think that Pfeffer does very well and that is to make me feel hungry and then to make me feel immediatel guilty about it. It really is amazing how little people know about how to survive in an emergency situation. We all like to think that we would be prepared but in reality we are so used to depending on electricty, gas, plumbing, and supermarkets to provide us with heat, running water, and food that who among us are trualy equipped to survive long term? Especially when your home environment suddenly turns so hostile.

      One of my few complaints is that sometimes, especially at the start, the writing style felt a bit much like it was listing things but it is hard to say if this was intentional as Life As We Knew It is in the format of Miranda's diary and the everyday venting of a seventeen year old girl can't be expected to always be a piece of art. I also felt like there were a few lose ends left open that I would have liked to see tied up.

      That, and I am always a bit disappointed in survival stories when they scabble for can of foods to stock up and no one makes a point of saying: "Can openers! Grab as many can openers as you can!" It's just my pet survival thing. I mean, wouldn't it just suck to starve to death despite having all that food because something happened to your only can opener?

      Also Check Out:
      The Road by Cormac McCarthy

      Terra

      Posted by Terra at 11:03 PM | Labels: , , , , | 2 comments | | |

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