Top Ten Tuesday: Book Club Picks

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Jenni Elyse

There are a lot of great books out there that would be awesome as a book club pick. And, I’m sure I’ve missed out on a lot of them just on my own. But, out of the books I’ve read, here are my top ten:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Night by Elie Wiesel
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
La Dama del Alba by Alejandro Carsona
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Anything by William Shakespeare (although I’ve only read Othello)

Honorable Mentions

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
Dune by Frank Herbert
His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
These is My Words by Nancy Turner
Matched by Ally Condie

Meme Rules

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Everneath Launch Party

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Jenni Elyse

On Tuesday, I went to the Everneath launch party at The King’s English to help support Brodi Ashton. The launch party was a lot of fun. It was the largest I’ve ever been to. And, by that, I mean more people showed up to this launch party than any other launch party I’ve been to. My friends and I showed up 35 minutes before it started. We were in the process of saving seats for our other friends who were on their way when all of a sudden every seat in the place was taken. The King’s English staff got more chairs, but it took less than a minute for them to all be taken as well. The gallery was packed like sardines, standing room only for more than half of the attendees. And, that is no exaggeration!

Brodi talked about her road to success by doing her first ever PowerPoint presentation. It was a huge success! The crowd was laughing at her hilarity. (She’s really a very funny person. If she ever gets tired of writing novels, she should be a stand-up comedian or a writer for TV or movies.) She also showed us about a quarter of the rejection letters she received in the querying process for her first novel, Echo. She was “excited” to receive her first personalized rejection rather than just all the form-letter rejections. It was interesting to find out that that rejection was actually from Suzanne Collins’ agent and the agent rejected Brodi’s manuscript because he/she already had The Hunger Games manuscript on her desk getting ready to be published. After her presentation, the crowd was able to ask some questions. Some of the questions were:

“Is it harder to write under deadline?” She answered yes.
“Where did you get your idea?” She said that Sam, her husband, challenged her to write a heroine completely different from her first heroine. So, she thought of writing about a heroine who was broken yet strong. And, as she started thinking about that, she started thinking about why she was broken and Everneath was born.
“Was the title always Everneath?” She said no. At first, it was Broken, then it was Underneath. Then, she and Bree Despain, friend and fellow author, decided to play with the words “forever” and “underneath” and came up with Everneath.
***spoiler*** “Did you mean to write a love triangle?” She said she doesn’t think of the book as being a love triangle. Cole is the villain. Nikki knows who she wants and it’s not the villain. ***end of spoiler***

After the questions, Brodi signed books. She started around 7:30 pm. My friends and I were the second to the last in the line and our books were signed around 9:40 pm. Two hours of signing for a debut author! Isn’t that incredible?! The wait was definitely worth it.

I’m so glad I was able to go and show my support for Brodi. I absolutely love her writing style. I’ve had a chance to read both Echo and Everneath and I love them both. I hope that one day Brodi can also publish Echo. But, if not, I’m sure whatever she does publish will continue to be fantastic.

Cassinova Felix

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Jenni Elyse

Our beloved Cassinova Felix passed away on Thursday. He was 13.5 years old.

In September, we found out he had Kidney Disease. Our vet told us it wasn’t time to put him to sleep. She said with some medication, flushing out his kidneys and by keeping him very hydrated, he may make a full recovery. We fought for him for 4.5 months. He also fought for himself during that time. And, for a while, he improved and did okay. But, last week, we decided that his quality of life was such that it wasn’t fair to him to keep putting him through the regimen he was going through just to stay alive because we didn’t want to say goodbye. At the end, he only weighed 4 lbs and could barely walk. … We’re trying to remember him as he was before he got sick.

We found Cassie in July 1998, four months after we were married. At the time, we couldn’t see any sign of his manhood so we named him Cassie thinking he was female. When we got him fixed, we were surprised to find out he was male. We lengthened his name to Cassinova. (We know Casanova is the proper spelling, but we like our spelling for him.)

Cassie’s name fit him to a T. He was the most loving, friendly kitty anyone could ever meet. Even people who hated cats liked him. He was always so inquisitive and excited to meet new people.

In fact, Cassie turned Corey into a cat person. Corey didn’t much care for them when we found him. But, he was so cute and acted kind of like a dog. He would always fetch his toy mice. Soon, Corey fell in love with him and now would rather have a cat than a dog.

Although our kitties are inside kitties, Cassie loved to play outside. Every now and then, we’d go out with him and let him play in the grass and run around. It was fun to watch him have so much fun. He also loved strawberries, particularly strawberry yogurt and creamies.

We miss Cassie dearly. We miss his presence. All the places that he used to sleep in seem empty. Our two other kitties are missing him too. They keep looking for him, not understanding why we don’t bring him home. Right now, we can’t get through a day without crying or feeling depressed in some way because we miss him so much. The only comfort and peace we have is that we’re happy he’s no longer suffering and that we’ll see him again someday. For now, I guess that’ll have to do.

Stop SOPA

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Jenni Elyse

Today, we are striking against censorship. Join the largest online protest in history and tell Congress to stop this bill now!

Join The Strike!

Learn More: Watch the video · American Censorship page · View the Infographic · Read SOPA on OpenCongress · Read PIPA on OpenCongress

The three most definitive articles on SOPA and PIPA: Free Speech, Problems, Security

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Conversing with Marissa Meyer

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Jenni Elyse

Last Thursday, I had the chance to meet Marissa Meyer, the author of Cinder, at the Provo Library. I’ve wanted to read Cinder ever since I saw the cover. (I know I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I love it!) When I found out Marissa Meyer was coming to my library, I was really excited. Unfortunately, with everything going on, I haven’t had a chance to read Cinder yet, but I do plan to read it soon.

Before the actual event hosted by the library, Utah book bloggers were invited to a meet-n-greet with Marissa Meyer. We got to sit down with her in a more personable setting and chat. We talked about our favorite books from last year, how she came up with the idea of Cinder, and a little about her writing history and routines. She’s been writing since she was 14 when she started to write fan fiction for Sailor Moon. She’s from Tacoma, Washington and just got married in October. Her husband and her publisher accompanied her on tour. It was a lot of fun to sit down before hand and get to know her a little bit in a more intimate setting.

At the actual event, she talked about Cinder and the future sequels. Each of them are based on futuristic retellings of a fairy tale. Cinder is based on Cinderella. Scarlet, the second book in the series, will be based on Little Red Ridinghood. Crest will be based on Rapunzel. And, Winter will be based on Snow White. Each book takes place in a different area of the world in which the stories are set, and Cinder will be the main character in each book, but she’ll encounter Scarlet, Crest, and Winter as she continues through her journey to overpower the Lunars.

Meyer said she pitched Cinder as a series because it was always meant to be four books. Even though a lot of fellow writers told her to just pitch it as one book and let agents and publishers decide, she didn’t want to deceive them by giving them Cinder, with its cliffhanger ending of sorts, and then be all like, “Oh yeah, it’s supposed to be four books.” Luckily, her agent and publisher saw the potential of the story and signed a deal for all four books.

She said she came up with the story as part of a contest. She wanted to participate in NaNoWriMo and noticed a contest with a prize of a walk-on role on Star Trek for the person who wrote the most words during NaNoWriMo. She wrote just over 150,000 words but still came in third place. But, a very early version of Cinder was the fruits of her labor so it wasn’t a total loss.

I’m excited to read Cinder. It sounds like something I’ll enjoy a lot and I look forward to the sequels as well. I really enjoyed meeting Marissa Meyer and getting to know her a little bit. All in all, it was a great evening with her and friends.