Top 5 YA Sci fi books

Top 5 YA Sci fi books

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Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal: Creation Myths, Volume 1

Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal: Creation Myths, Volume 1 by Brian Holguin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Damn it now I have to buy the next one!

This was amazing. Really takes you back into the world of The Dark Crystal. I love the characters created by Brian Froud/Jim Henson and Brian Holguin really gives them a new dimension.
I was worried that is would look to cartoony but the way they have designed the speech "bubbles" to be jagged actually added something rather than detracted.
Loved it!


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Fables Vol 22 by Bill Willingham & Mark Buckingham

Fables, Vol. 22: Farewell by Bill Willingham
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So this was a bit of a mixed bag. I really like the final conclusion of the story line between Snow and Rose Red and some of the Final Story of .... pages but there were just too many of them that I didn't care about. These made it a bit tiresome. Over all quite good but sometimes too much of a good thing is actually too much.

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Tumor: A Medical Noir by Joshua Hale Fialkov & Noel Tuazon a short review

Tumor by Joshua Hale Fialkov
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This would have been a 2 star if not for the ending. I really liked the art work but I found the story just a bit too simple. I thought that is could have had a little bit more in the way of plot to fill out what could have been a really meaty story. Ok not great.

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Snow White By Matt Phelan very short review

Snow White: A Graphic Novel by Matt Phelan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a re-telling of Snow White set in the 1920's told mostly by the beautiful sketched illustrations. A very quick "read" (There really isn't much to read).

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Bitch Planet Vol 1 Review

Bitch Planet, Vol. 1: Extraordinary Machine by Kelly Sue DeConnick
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was great! The fake ads at the end of each issue about treible products that some sadly existed in the past (tapeworms for weight loss) and could very well exist (pills to make women more compliant, sound like frontal lobotomies anyone?) mixed in with sadly true stats about domestic violence.

Women are held to ridiculous standards by the "Fathers" and anyone who doesn't reach these ideals of feminine beauty, behaviour or stereotype is shipped off to the prison planet Bitch.
Keen to see where this one goes.

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Day 28 Book Photo Challenge: Makes Me Incredibly Giddy

I have picked Comics for this thing that makes me giddy. I assume the intention of the challenge was to pick a specific book that makes you giddy or even an author but comics (buying, browsing, looking at old and new ones, reading and the prospect of any of these things.) is one of the few activities that I do, that I genuinely can not help my self clapping my hands, jiggling my feet and having my voice go up an octave like one of my students talking about some god awful boy band member. 

Just recently I discovered a comic book store near our new house and I think my partner was afraid I was going to send us bankrupt. I have been known to do all of those excitable things described above and say "I'm off to the comic book store" at the end of a work day and have people either look at me oddly or think that I am joking. Just to put it in context, I'm nearly 30 and female. But quiet frankly, I get my love of comics from my mum who still goes to comic stores even if she gets looked at as if she has taken a wrong turn on the way to the grocery store.

So in conclusion, comic books make me giddy and people shouldn't judge others on the stereotypes in their head.

*please note, I call them comics and I am sorry if you like calling them graphic novels. I love them whatever they are called.

Catwoman vol 1. New 52

Well I finally got the chance to sit quietly and digest this yesterday and honestly i love it as much as i ever used to as a teenager. (*Warning this will contain spoilers)
I love the rawness of Selina's personality. She has been broken and had to build herself up again and again and had no one to rely on until she found Lola. This means that she takes unnecessary risks, almost childlike in behavior that get her in trouble that she then has to get herself out of. This risk taking, reckless behavior combined with the beautiful drawings and layout by Judd Winick and Guillem March make it one of my favorite comics yet again.
I may have cried a little bit when Lola was killed and then again when Selina (Catwoman) went to Gwen for help at the end, even though she promised herself she would not. This volume has set up Catwoman beautifully to be that rather damaged cat burglar that i have come to love. The best bit is they haven't gone into the territory of Selina becoming unhinged like Harley Quinn and that way i have two strong women to read about. Yay!
I will be going out next week and getting the next volume so stay tuned if you want to find out more.

The Day The Young Writers Festival Came to Work

Out of the blue, Ron Barton at my school had organised a young writers festival at school yesterday.

He had organized all sorts of workshops and different authors of different genres and writing types to come in and give lessons and have Q & A sessions with the students. 

This was great because I have totally stopped being shy and can now just poke my nose in anywhere at work and see whats going on.

This of course means I got new signed books! Yay!

The Hatchling is written by Hayden Selfe (the son of one of my colleagues) and is book number one in the Dragon Paladin Series.

  The Darkening is written, drawn and inked by Marcus Schultz and is the first publication of Dichosis Studios.

I will put up reviews of these once i have read them, but in the mean time lets take a moment to thank the good people of my schools English department and all others who organised this event and further enabled my addiction to signed books. Give them a round of applause would you.

Yay! More Harley Quinn

As I was leaving work yesterday, I said to some of my work mates "Yay, I'm going to the comic book store"

Their response: "Oh your so funny" thinking I was joking. As you can see I wasn't joking. I was in fact off to buy a joker (not the joker but close enough)

Purchased the new Harley Quinn #0 and raced home to read it straight away.

This was a great idea with each artist getting a page each and having a conversation with Harley about how she wants to be drawn and that she doesn't want to be a stereotype. 

If I remember correctly this was the one they got in trouble from for drawing her naked and committing suicide, but they seem to have dropped that out.

This also set up the first of the series with her having a visit from a mysterious man in a dark car telling her she has inherited a 4 story house.

Can't wait for the next installment! 

Photo challenge (catch up day 1) this months reading list.

Technically day 1 of the photo challenge my proposed reading list for December. I stress the word proposed because the list in my head always changes as I actually come to the end of a book.

Also I have a list of ebooks that need reading because they need reviews.

But yay for comic books, sci-fi and historical fiction.

List:

Comic Books

•  Catwoman, vol 1 of new 52, Judd Winick and Guillem March
• Witch Craft, 1,2 & 3 of 3, James Robinson, Peter Snejbjerg and Teddy Kristiansen
• Ballads, Charles Vess

Novels

• Insurgent, Book 2 Divergent trilogy, Veronica Roth
• Allegiant, Book 3 Divergent trilogy, Veronica Roth
• The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett 

Why I Read Comics (The One That Sparked It All)

So I used to read Catwoman on and off as a teenager and I decided recently to get back into it since we had the reset of the new #52. I am not sure how I fell about the new #52 reset of comics and I have deliberately avoided reading any commentary on it, so I don't even know how I am expected to feel, so I will leave that discussion to another post.
 
As a kid and early teen, my mum would drive us the two hours to the city for the second hand card fairs and they were always one of the best days on the calender. It started out with trading cards and that gave me an appreciation for art no matter how small or mass produced the medium.  Pretty soon the trading card hype peaked and petered out but I still had a hankering for the art that I once got from trading cards.
In stepped the comic book!
Sure, having a mum that was into trading card (she was collecting them as well, there was a self serving motive to her motivations of persuading us to start a collection too,) we had comics in the house and i had read them in passing but they hadn't grabbed me yet. So, as the desks of trading card sellers shrank and the space was taken over by boxes of comics, well naturally I was attracted to the $1 comics boxes for a) a bargain and b) something to browse after I had finished looking at the cards.  One auspicious day I found this comic;

I'll admit, I judged a book by its cover, but what a cover. I had never been a traditional superhero comic book reader because they had never appealed to be with the big steroidy muscle men always doing the right thing and beating up the bad guy. But this was different, no brightly coloured cover with a suited man doing what suited men do. No this was the "hero" vulnerable in the distance being visited or haunted by a ghostly visage. As a teenage, I thought i could relate to this sort of "superhero" and she was a she and in purple (my favorite colour.  

And I have never looked back, with my stacks of random comics I have collected over the years, literally judging comic books by their covers and buy with that instinct and feeling I had back then.

Now I am going back to my comic book roots with Catwoman Vol 1 of the new #52.

I look forward to reliving the feelings of old.

This week’s acquisitions.

My local comic book store’s very helpful staff tell me that there will be a Harley Quinn series starting some time in November so got the one off to get back into the swing of things. I have to admit I quite enjoyed it and am now looking forward to the series…hopefully.

I also picked up the first of The Hollows, even though there was 1-4 on the shelf, just to see how it goes. i really liked the story line. Set in a post apocalyptic Japan where the lucky survivors live in gargantuan, genetically modified trees high above the not so lucky survivors who need to scratch out a life whilst protecting themselves from the soul sucking Hollows.  

I could be good, i will tell you how it goes. 

Ok, so I know I said that I was going to start reading The Eye of the World but it turned out that I was in a graphic novel mood and not a long read mood this week.
 Just finished The Wonderful Wizard of Oz graphic novel by Eric Shanower and have been reliving the feeling i had as a child watching the movie. The land of Oz and Wonderland are always going to be my favorite fantasy lands and i will always be a sucker to read/watch/listen to any adaptation, interpretation or re-imagining just to visit these worlds again.