Dani Nyugen!

Thanks to everyone who entered my debut giveaways in 2011. I can’t believe how many great books were released into the wild!

Speaking of great reads, I’ve had really good luck with books recently. Here are some of the things I’ve been reading.

A Million Suns by Beth Revis

This book had so many things I love: Space travel! Mystery! Romance! I think I enjoyed this one even more than the first book in the series. I’m excited for the final installment!

Ten Things We Did (and Probably Shouldn’t Have) by Sarah Mlynowski

This was one of those books that totally took over my brain so it felt like I was still in it long after I finished it. I loved the voice, the humor, and the non-chronological way the story was told, and the characters felt genuine and real. I highly recommend it!

Eye of the Storm by Kate Messner

I’m almost done with this one (which I was lucky enough to get from NetGalley), and I’m really enjoying it. It’s been a while since I read a MG dystopian, and I forgot how much I love them. I could see this being an excellent book to use in the classroom: it’s a great story and it deals with scientific issues in an engaging way.

What have you been reading recently?

I’ve been in picture book land recently, partly because I’ve been working on a new picture book project and also because that’s what my writing class has been focusing on for the past few weeks. So in case you’re curious about some of my favorite picture books, I’ve put together a list of five titles I often recommend to people:

Shark vs. Train

This book is hilarious! I love how the title alone draws you in. The way the story escalates in terms of intensity and humor is just brilliant.

It’s a Book

Again, hilarious and really smart. For anyone who’s worried about the influence of technology on children, this is the book for you.

Officer Buckle and Gloria

This is an older title that still holds up compared to newer books. I love the humor and the relationships in the story.

Bark, George

I use this book in my class and some of my students are put off my how bizarre it is, but that’s part of why I love it! The ending makes me laugh every single time.

The Red Book

I’m a big fan of wordless picture books, and this one is so fascinating. I love that it’s not only a good story, but it’s one that makes you think in an abstract way.

What are some of your top picture books recommendations?

A while back I blogged about Unearthly by Cynthia Hand and how it completely sucked me in. Now, thanks to NetGalley, I’m reading the sequel, Hallowed, and it’s just as engaging as the first book. Whenever I read a good book, I have to analyze why it works, so this is what I came up with.

Mystery

In both Unearthly and Hallowed, the story starts with the main character having a vision. The vision is vague and mysterious; the character then spends the rest of the book trying to figure out the meaning of what she saw. This works really well because it sets up a mystery right from the start, and readers try to figure out what it means along with the main character. And, of course, there are some twists and turns along the way.

Emotional Conflict

Cynthia Hand does a fantastic job of creating characters that feel completely real. The main character’s emotions feel genuine, and I think a big part of that is how conflicted she is throughout the story. She’s torn between following her destiny and doing what’s personally important to her. She also has to hide her true identity from almost everyone around her, though she hates lying to people. And, to top it off, she’s torn between two guys who are good for her in different ways. Normally, I’m not a big love-triangle fan, but in this case I think the emotions feels genuine enough that I believe it.

So what lessons should we take away from this series? Giving the character a mystery to solve, clues to put together, etc. can help to keep pushing the story forward. And the more conflicted your character feels, the more we’ll relate to her. It all comes back to Donald Maass’s mantra: Tension comes from conflicting emotions.

I haven’t had too much time for reading in recent weeks, but I did want to share two books that I really enjoyed.

The Agency: A Spy in the House by Y.S. Lee

I loved the tone of this book; it was smart and subtly funny. I always like a good mystery, so it was interesting to see how things would work out. I’ll definitely check out the next book in the series.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

I was lucky enough to read this via NetGalley, and I adored it from start to finish. The story had everything! Cyborgs, plagues, moon colonies, all woven through with fairy tale elements. I didn’t want the book to end, and I will be very eagerly awaiting the next installment!

What great reads have you come across recently?

]]> http://www.annastan.com/2011/11/two-recent-reads/feed/ 3 http://www.annastan.com/2011/10/friday-five-3/ http://www.annastan.com/2011/10/friday-five-3/#comments Fri, 28 Oct 2011 13:10:55 +0000 annastan http://www.annastan.com/?p=4890 1. Snow! That’s right, we had snow last night. And we’re supposed to have a snow storm on Saturday. New England might be known for its unpredictable weather, but since when does October = winter?

2. Halloween! We have two parties this weekend, so the husband and I have been busily getting our costumes together. I’ll post pictures next week, so for now I’ll just say that we’re going as ’80s video game characters. I’m hoping people will get it.

3. Reviews and interviews! My Book Twin, Karen Strong, posted a lovely review of UnFairy Tale Life yesterday. And the awesome Beth Revis interviewed me about the origins of the book and got me to reveal the craziest thing I’ve ever done.

4. Great reads! I just finished reading Gabrielle Zevin’s newest book, All These Things I’ve Done. It was engrossing and reminded me a little bit of The Godfather. I can’t wait to read the sequel.

5. Random quotes! I was reading a review of the new Justin Timberlake movie yesterday, and I literally guffawed at the first line of the review: “For addicts of forearm close-ups, ‘In Time’ is the most important movie of the year.”

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Last week, I read a great book called Fracture by Megan Miranda (thanks to NetGalley). The story was fascinating and creepy, and I zipped through it because I couldn’t wait to see how things would end. And you know what was amazing? It actually did end. There wasn’t a vague ending that left things open for a sequel, or a “the battle is over but the war has just begun” feeling. In a landscape of series, it’s refreshing to find a standalone book that has a clear beginning, middle, and end.

That isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy series; in fact, I read plenty of them. But the experience of reading a series is different than reading a standalone book. I go into reading a series knowing that the traditional story arc won’t necessarily apply. While I’m fine with that, I wonder what that might mean for the shape of stories. As series become more prevalent, will our expectations for how stories resolve change?

A series does usually follow a traditional story arc if you look at all the books together. But if you were to chart out the shape of the whole series, it would look different than the arc of a standalone novel. I wonder if that means the way we think about stories is evolving, and if we’ll have different expectations for stories now that standalone novels are becoming the minority. I’ve blogged about this before, but I’m coming back to this topic because it’s still on my mind.

What do you think about the fate of standalone novels? Do you think differently about the shape of stories now that series are so popular?

When I first got my Nook, I didn’t quite know what to do with it. But after a few days, I got into the swing of reading on it, and then I went a little overboard and bought a bunch of books. That’s the thing about e-readers; they make it way too easy to buy books on impulse. Since then, I’ve limited my spending and have been downloading e-books through my library instead.

I must say that I have been reading much more since I got the Nook. Now I can go to the library and stock up on books as well as put a bunch on my Nook; it’s been totally feeding my book-hoarding habit. It’s nice to have books for every mood and never run out of things to read. It’s also been nice to be able to put my manuscripts on the Nook and give it to my husband to read instead of having him read it on his computer.

It’s also been really interesting to read a few e-pubbed books. They’ve varied greatly in terms of quality, but I’ve read some that I really enjoyed. For example, right now I’m reading Getting Caught by Mandy Hubbard and Cyn Balog, and it’s great. It doesn’t feel any different from a traditionally-published book.

Something that I’ve been really thinking about is how e-readers will affect the price of books. I’d like to think that people will always pay more for quality, but I would hate to see publishing go into a underbidding war, so that only the cheapest books will sell. But that’s a whole other topic, and I’m not sure I know enough about it yet to say anything intelligent. I’ll certainly be watching the e-pubbing trend with interest.

What are your experiences with e-readers? Anyone else cross over to the dark side with me?

Unearthly by Cynthia Hand

This book absolutely sucked me in. The writing was lovely and the characters felt like real people. There was a mystery that began on page one and kept me guessing until the very end. I can’t wait for the next installment in the series.

A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan

I first heard about this via The Story Siren and it sounded like my kind of book: dark, futuristic, and slightly fairy tale-ish. I was not disappointed. The premise was interesting and the story moved along at a quick pace. There was such a clear logic behind how this futuristic world had come to be. Since I’m a big “world person,” this was totally up my alley.

Bumped by Megan Mccafferty

This book was so unusual and offbeat. It was like a cross between Feed and A Handmaid’s Tale. What I most enjoyed about it was the way the story went in completely unexpected directions. And, of course, I liked exploring the strange world the author had created.

What have you been reading recently? Any gems you’d recommend?

As Roz Morris points out, there are generally three types of chapter endings: ones that leave a reader with closure, a cliffhanger, or a question. As I was reading Vanished by Sheela Chari (thanks, Sheela, for letting me read an ARC of your lovely book!) I was struck by how effective the chapter endings were.

Vanished is a well-paced mystery about a stolen veena (an Indian instrument) that relies on both internal and external conflict. The book is not a thriller, however, so it often uses the “question” approach: each scene ends with the promise of further conflict. Here are a few examples of scene/chapter endings with my comments in brackets:

-Instead, its journey continued, passing through many hands, sounding lovely for those who could hang on to it. [Doesn't this make you wonder about those people who couldn't hang on to it?]

-Now if she could only play it without humiliating herself. [This implies that a time might come when she won't humiliate herself.]

-”Your veena will be safe. You have my word.” [The fact that this rather ominous-sounding dialogue is at the end of the first chapter almost works like a cliffhanger.]

I’ve been trying to keep this “promise of further conflict” idea in my head as I work on my own chapters, since cliffhanger endings wouldn’t fit with the type of story I’m telling. I think it’s working a little bit better, but this is definitely something I’ll keep focusing on in revisions.

Incidentally, Vanished also inspired me to add another subplot to my new story. I realized that since the tension in my book until now has been so internal, I needed something to balance it out. So after reading an engaging mystery, I thought I’d attempt to put a small mystery into my own work. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

How do you approach chapter/scene endings? Has anyone else recently added a mystery subplot to spice up your project?

The first was Orchards by Holly Thompson. My friend Sarah insisted I read it, so without knowing much about the book, I picked it up to flip through. I wound up reading the first two chapters standing up. Then I settled in on the couch and kept reading straight through until the end. Orchards is a novel in verse about a girl who is sent to stay with relatives in Japan after one of her classmates commits suicide. With such dark subject matter, I would have expected the story to be a downer, but it was actually filled with beauty and hope.

The second was Huntress by Malinda Lo. I read Malinda’s first book, Ash, and loved the language and magic she created. Huntress had these elements and more. The writing was rich and gorgeous, and I loved the way she used a traditional quest structure but added extra intrigue by creating a mystery that develops throughout. This was one of those books that I couldn’t wait to get back to, and I actually ignored my responsibilities one morning so I could finish reading it.

If you can’t tell, I highly recommend both of these books. What are some of your recent great reads?