Waiting On Wednesday #5

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Breaking The Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

Social Suicide (Deadly Cool #2) by Gemma Halliday

Twittercide [twit-er-sahyd]: the killing of one human being by another while the victim is in the act of tweeting.
Call me crazy, but I figured writing for the Herbert Hoover High Homepage would be a pretty sweet gig. Pad the resume for college applications, get a first look at the gossip column, spend some time ogling the paper's brooding bad-boy editor, Chase Erikson. But on my first big story, things went...a little south. What should have been a normal interview with Sydney Sanders turned into me discovering the Homecoming Queen-hopeful dead in her pool. Electrocuted while Tweeting. Now, in addition to developing a reputation as HHH's resident body finder, I'm stuck trying to prove that Sydney's death wasn't suicide.
I'm starting to long for the days when my biggest worry was whether the cafeteria was serving pizza sticks or Tuesday Tacos...

Expected publication: April 24th 2012 by HarperTeen


Deadly Cool was amazeballs! Hartley Featherstone is quite the Veronica Mars. 
I love YA murder mysteries ( What can I say? Something about young people killing each other just gets me) and they are really hard to come by so when they do I snap up 'em. 
I mean what with the the entire population gobbling up paranormal romance which I can't and won't read anymore, there are few books left in the YA territory I actually look forward too. 
This book is one of them.  I mean, it can't get cooler than Twittercide! 
And the cover is a major improvement over Deadly Cool's weird Nina Dobrev-isque alien. 
This female reminds me a little of that new redhead from Transformers 4009. Rose-Huntingbottom or something. 

Booking Through Thursday & Theme Thursdays #1

What’s more important: Good writing? Or a good story?

(Of course, a book should have BOTH, but…)

Wow, That's a tough one. 

I guess I would go with story. While writing is extremely important and sometimes the voice, the beauty with which you construct the sentences can make or break a book, I definitely need a story that is worthwhile. What's the point of a stunning prose if there is no good plot. 

But that's just because I had to choose,  I think a book MUST have both. I want my cake and I want to eat it too.

Think, Ian McEwan or Margaret Atwood. 

Great plots and pretty prose. 

This week’s theme is

VERY

"The very complexity of her feelings confirmed Briony in her view that she was entering an arena of adult emotion and dissembling from which her writing was bound to benefit. "

"I'm very very sorry." 

Check out my new Read The Classics Challenge and let me know if you are interested! 
  http://oopsireadthatbook.blogspot.com/2012/01/read-classics-2010-challenge.html

Read-The-Classics 2012 Challenge

   Since most of us are busy reading YA or contemporary all the time, I thought it would be a challenge and yet a delight to pick out some of our old favorites and also try out some new classics. I have quite a lot of literary books on my TBR that need taken care of and I also want to re-read some children's classics that I used to love. 

     Since the definition of a Classic is highly subjective, I figured we could just use our discretion and choose some books we always wanted to read instead of me putting up a list. It's pretty obvious I am thinking of books like Little Women, Jane Eyre, The Great Gatsby etc. 

However, here are The 100 greatest novels of all time: The list by Guardian Magazine and another list on Wikipedia that seems pretty concise. You can have a look if you wish.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/oct/12/features.fiction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Classic_Book_Collection

    We could all choose a book a month, if we can all agree on it and then put up posts and reviews etc. Or we could just randomly choose a book to our liking. 

If anyone is interested please let me know, I could arrange something for this challenge with rules and fancy badges/buttons and such. Suggestions are welcome. Also, please spread the word if you can. 

Thanks! 

X

Follow Friday #9

Q: Many readers/bloggers are also big music fans. Tell us about a few of your favorite bands/singers that we should listen to in 2012.

  While I may not obsess over music like I do with books and TV Shows, there are quite a few bands I love.
Off the top of my head here are a few of them, 
Nirvana (Kurt Cobain *insert hearts*)
Death Cab for Cutie
David Bowie 
Marilyn Manson
Led Zeppelin
Bright Eyes
Garbage
Bell X1
My Chemical Romance
AC/DC
The Rolling Stones 
The Doors 
The Ramones
The Shins
Beatles
Slipknot 
Frank Sinatra 
The Smiths
Bullet for My Valentine 
If you guys know any artists similar to these please recommend! And don't forget to link me to your list! 

Currently watching this week's TVD. Oh, How I missed Caroline!

2012 Must Reads: Which books are at the top of your list 

to be read this year (new or old releases)?

Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley

Because I like art.

Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk

Honestly? Just because I love Fight Club, the movie. 

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

I stared reading this, got distracted, but I loved what I had read, so I need to read it again. 

Psych Major Syndrome by Alicia Thompson

This book is probably gonna suck but I like Psychology, and always wanted to major in it.
Didn't. Studying Economics. Which I hate but whatever. 

As usual, link me to your post.

Toodles!

The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault

In the maze of cubicles at Samuelson Company, editorial assistant Billy Webb struggles to focus while helping to prepare the next edition of a dictionary. But there are distractions. He senses that something suspicious is going on beneath this company’s academic façade. What’s more, his (possibly) flirtatious co-worker Mona Minot has just made a startling discovery: a trove of puzzling citations, all taken from the same book, The Broken Teaglass. Billy and Mona soon learn that no such book exists. And the quotations read like a confession, coyly hinting at a hidden identity, a secret liaison, a crime. As Billy and Mona try to unearth the truth, the puzzle begins to take on bigger meaning for both of them, compelling them to redefine their notions of themselves and each other.

The Broken Teaglass is at once a literary mystery, a cautious love story, and an ingenious suspense novel that will delight fans of brilliantly inventive fiction.

 Emily Arsenault’s debut book was dreamy, dark and dreary. Just like In Search of Rose Notes, which I have read, loved and reviewed here http://oopsireadthatbook.blogspot.com/2011/12/in-search-of-rose-notes-by-emily.html

 I love the 3 D’s and I immensely enjoyed this book.

As emotionally satisfying as In search of rose notes, this book had a bonus delight.

It centred on words.

The mystery, the plot and the setting were all about words.

Set in Samuelson Company, a dictionary publisher’s office, the book follows College graduate Billy Webb as he lives a lonely existence in the cubicle till his colleague colleague Mona Minot stumbles upon citation from a novel called The Broken Teaglass. Each cit seems to tell a story that may reveal a past secret, buried deep in the grim office.

I haven’t read many books with male protagonists but Billy was cool. Highest form of praise I can give a dude.

With oddball characters and a plot brimming with suspense The Broken Teaglass is a literary puzzle and a coming-of-age novel with a dark and subtle sense of humour.

P.S - Another reason I totally love this book with every fibre of my being is that it introduced me to LEXICOGRAPHY!

I am 19 and totally clueless plus aimless about life and career and crap, but every once in a while I come across super-fun sounding jobs.

For example, right now I want to be a writer on a NBC sitcom. (And subsequently have a three-way with Amy Poehler and Will Arnett.)

30 Rock may or may not have influenced this decision.

Anyhoo, after reading The Broken Teaglass, I think it’d be SWEET if I was a lexicographer. Turns out they just have to read a bunch of magazines of their choice all the time and not really talk to people.

 I think it was a job specifically designed for me.

P.P.S- Another fun part of this book was all these random people calling the office and sending them letters etc with completely random and hilarious inquiries. That shit was gold.

P.P.P.S- Some might find pacing problems with this because the plot kind of moves along really slow. I savoured every bit but just wanted to put this out there. 

Teaser Tuesday #3 God of Small Things

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly  meme hosted by MizB where we share teaser sentences from a book we are reading.

I am currently reading the Man Booker Prize winning, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy and it seems really good so far. It has melancholy, tragedy and a hell lot of wordplay. 

“It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that is purloined. ” 

“...the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again. 

That is their mystery and their magic."

What was on your teaser Tuesday?