Rift, by Andrea Cremer, and a New View!

Monday, July 2, 2012.  The sun rose at 5:17 and it will set at 9:10.

The day is cool, so far, and the air feels wet.  It's overcast, but D went off to work without an outercovering saying, "It's Summer."  Yes, it is.  It's been muggy, colder inside than out, and I am REALLY not complaining, not after hearing about the rest of the nation's woes.  A friend in D.C. lost her porch when a tree fell in her backyard during the tornado strength storms over the weekend.

After a month and some odd days, it will be 2 months on July 5, we are finally putting up my birthday present!  During one of the last wind storms we awoke to the back screen door in pieces, dangling from its hinges and screws.  The wind caught it and slammed it back and forth against the house until it was limp and splintery.

We bought a new screen door on May 5, picked it up a week or two later.  I went out, got it securely packed in the jeep and received a short tutorial on how to finish a door.  I've spent the last 2 weeks or so sanding, wiping, oiling and staining.  The door is gorgeous and feels as soft as buttah.  Sliding my hands over the varnish, it's like glass, so smooth and silky.  The door guy is coming today.

We'd do it ourselves but the last time we did doors, we got into the worst fights!  Go to your left, no, your OTHER left! Lift, not that high! No, higher! Oh, my god, it was worse than learning how to drive a stick shift together.  Never again; it is so much more worth having someone else do it for me.  I did it once.  I know I can do it again.  I don't need to do it again.  And if I have to do it again, I may well have to do it with someone other than the husband.  Too easy to yell at the husband.

I just finished reading Rift, by Andrea Cremer.  It's the prequel to the Nightshade series, that really fun series of books about packs of werewolves with a very strong female presence.  Andrea Cremer is an early modern history professor at Macalester College.  Filled with allusions to sexual politics and the rights of women to make decisions about themselves and their lives, they are eye-opening and  empowering reads for young adults.  Okay, I read them long before realizing the self-empowerment parts - I just thought they were really good and the main character was so COOL!  Talk about a butt-kicking hero!

Rift takes place in Britain, after the Knights Templar, during the middle ages.  Ember is the younger daughter of a wealthy lord.  She was promised to the Conatus when her mother was saved from death during Ember's birth.  She's 16, now, and the Conatus, a secret group battling evil and demons throughout the land, have come to claim their due and train her as a warrior. 

Ember finds herself adapting easily to this world of warriors except for dealing with her tutor, Barrow.  She's finding life with Barrow to be particularly unnerving as she's not quite sure what the feelings she has for him are or if she is allowed to even have them. She's a quick study, strong, able with her weapons, but unsure as to what he feels for her.

When one of the group goes rogue, tempted into the dark magics to save her convent from a greedy abbot, convincing her order that the only way to survive is to join up with the demons, Ember has to decide whether to follow her or to leave the order and hunt down the knights she's grown to love.

Filled with action and weaponry and romance, Rift is a worthy addition to the Nightshade books.  It tells the beginning of the tale of the Keepers and the Searchers, the two groups represented in the Nightshade series.

I would have loved a pronunciation key for the names.  I played with all the possibilities until I just gave up and hummed them in my head as I ran across them.  Fionn=Finn?  Cian=Sean?  Shawn?  Does it matter?  Only if doesn't bother you to stop and figure them out each time they come up.  Eira=?

I really enjoy Andrea's books because the girls aren't afraid to get dirty.  They are strong and able, secure in their abilities to fight and win, a little arrogant, and will wade in to defend those they feel are on the right side of the battle.  They are sexual beings and comfortable with it.  The women in her books are warriors and proud of it.

And there are horses! 

(Ages 14 and up.  Philomel. $18.99.  Available August, 2012.




(No recompense received for the review of this book.)

Going to Portland, Going to Portland!

Sunrise was at 5:14, sunset will be at 9:02.  Everything smells so good outside.  I've been trimming back the rosemary bush.  It was great gardening weather; overcast, cool, and then the sun came out just in time to stop.  The fountain burbled, the birds chirped, the ducks next door were rowdy.  It was all good.

I'm heading to Portland to spend the night with my sister.  My niece is turning 24 (25?  Ah, I'm a bad aunt) so we're celebrating together!  It's the first birthday I've celebrated with her since her first birthday.

So what do you take on an overnight trip to Portland?   

I know you all do this:  I have a 3 hour trip, one way, and I have  6 (SIX!) books in my bag.  I'm always worried that I won't like a book, finish it faster than I thought, lose it, or have enough...so I pack far more than I really will finish, at least in real life.  Although, now I'm worried that 6 books won't be a good plenty.  If I read a book an hour... Well, and then there are meals, coffee shops, that little bit of time between wine and sleep, those moments waiting for someone who actually does wear makeup to come out of the bathroom.  And what if the bus is delayed?  Oh, man.  I'm meeting my sister at Powell's, you'd think I'd be okay. I just need to find one more book, a thick one, to add to my bag.

What's in the pile?  What do I travel to Portland with?  You Are My Only, by Beth Kephart (Egmont); Small Town Sinners, by Melissa Walker (Bloomsbury); Rift, by Andrea Cremer (Philomel); A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness (Candlewick); Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline (Crown); and Struck, by Jennifer Bosworth (FSG).  I just added Railsea, by China Mieville (Del Rey).

It's a little bit of everything: Contemporary fiction, historical fiction, horror, science fiction, and a little romantic eco-chaos fiction. I'm set now!

I'll let you know how they were when I get back!


(no recompense was received for the mention of the books in this blog.)

Presents for Me!

Sunrise was at 7:40, sunset will be at 4:19. Beautiful morning, blue skies, cold (39 degrees), windows across Beacon Hill exploding in color orange and yellow.

I don't have to be at work until 10:30 today because we have an author coming at 5:30, so I can watch the hummingbirds in the fountain and hope the swelling in my right eyelid goes down enough to be able to see.

I don't know what happened, one minute it itched, the next it started to swell. Maybe I touched my eye after touching spices on something we sampled at Pike Place? There's a little white spot on the swollen part, maybe a bite? I can't see my tear duct and it looks really weird. My eyelashes haven't turned under yet. I wish I'd taken a Benadryl last night but I forgot and now I'm worried that, if I take it now, it will put me back asleep.

We went to Urban Craft Uprising and Pike Place Market to shop and be around people yesterday- nice to see so very many people shopping at booths and filling bags with homemade local goods. Too crowded for me but it was exciting to be in the scrum! D wanted to shop at the market for stir-fry veggies and it was just a blast to be in the middle of all those locals and tourists. The colors of the vegetables fairly glowed in the lights as the sun went down.

Just a veritable bounty of bookish goodness at my house: John Green's manuscript of The Faith in Our Stars, the new Krisin Cashore sequel to Graceling and Fire, Bitterblue, and Bloodrose, the last in the Nightshade series by Andrea Cremer.

I am so looking forward to getting the couch cleared so I can just settle in for hours and read. I think there are times when you just need to skip the sweeping and the folding, let the cat deal with her own issues, put something in the slow cooker, and then provision yourself with a full pot of coffee, cheese and crackers and salsa, warm and thick socks, the coziest sweats and blankets, plump up the pillows and move your couch so it's under the window so you can read in natural light for as long as you want. During the daylight hours! Doesn't that sound positively decadent? Doing something completely for yourself? It would be a spa day without ever leaving the house.

Happy Solstice!

It's Solstice! Sunrise just occurred at 7:55, the Seattle skyline is glowing in the sun (yes, no rain and some clear skies). It is the shortest day of the year and sunrise will be at 4:20.

Were you up last night watching the lunar eclipse? So very, very cool.

Check out www.starhustler.com to see a little video about the eclipse. Well, you should take a look at the site anyway because it is so darned great. Lots of the "naked eye astronomy" videos that play on PBS are on the site, and they are fabulous. D and I have stayed up late most nights since we discovered the show in '94, just to catch the 1-5 minute star and planet lessons on one of our local PBS stations (KBTC). I know the winter constellations and that the brightest light we can see in the sky toward the south is Jupiter.

Our childrens' book staff presented our favorite books of the season at a little store book talk last week and one of mine is Nightshade, by Andrea Cremer.

Nightshade is the story of Calla, a leader of a pack of werewolves who knows that her future is fairly well set. When she graduates from the Mountain School she will be the mate of the other major pack forming a large and very strong pack, ruling together, and guarding all of the sacred sites of the pack. This has been the plan for most of her life and she has been happy with it. It doesn't hurt that her future mate is extremely sexy and strong himself! When Calla saves a human boy and brings him into their lives, she sets into motion a number of things that cause her to question her life and the world she has always known.

Ooh, this was so good! Great romance, great, strong female character, history, it has it all. Oh, and it will be a series- Gotta tell you that the next one will be at the top of my to read pile!

One of the things that is really cool about being a bookseller is that we often get to go to dinner with the authors of new books and talk to them, listen to what they have to say, and catch up with the other booksellers in town. We get to eat some really great food and drink some pretty good drinks and talk to other people who love books. The lists we compile at these events are pretty good ones; someone ought to be writing them down!

Anyway, dinner with Andrea was amazing. Not only does she write really good young adult books (this is her first but she'll write more) but she is a history professor at Macalester College and used her research for writing about sex, violence, religion and power in history to write Nightshade. It's not only a good book, it will make you think!

And the cover is exquisite. Age 14 and up. (Philomel. $17.99. Available now.)

This is Andrea's blog site: www.blurredhistory.blogspot.com.