The Girl Who Was on FIre

Sarah Rees Brennan asks: Why are readers so hungry for the Hunger Games?
Carrie Ryan looks at how the Gamemakers shape the truth for television.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes rejects both sides of the series' love triangle and declares herself Team Katniss.
Does real-life media training look anything like Katniss'?  Ned Vizzini says yes.

Who holds the real power in Panem

Trauma and recovery among Hunger Games survivors

Muttations in the real world

What the rebellion has in common with the War on Terror

The Girl Who Was on Fire answers lingering questions, provides new points of view, and will remind every Hunger Games fan why they love the series in the first place.

Having read The Hunger Games trilogy twice I was getting itchy to return to Panem for a third time when I heard that they were making a movie.  My heart leapt for joy as I have a fondness for dystopias.  My heart was still go-going in my chest when I bumped into a competition being run by Smart Pop Books - pay them a visit - they have some amazing things on their site!

Anyway to cut a long story short I won a copy of The Girl Who Was on Fire, which is a collection of essays by some of the best and brightest YA authors. They are (in no particular order): Leah Wilson, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Mary Borsellino, Elizabeth M. Rees, Lili Wilkinson, Ned Vizzini, Carrie Ryan, Cara Lockwood, Terri Clark, Blythe Woolston, Sarah Darer Littman, Adrienne Kress, Bree Despain

Reviewing a collection of essays is not the easiest thing in the world, with a novel you can give a brief synopsis and write about the story structure, characters and all the good stuff the story holds but in such a way so as not to give it all away and make the review reader want to go out and buy or at the very least borrow the book.

It is slightly more complicated with an essay collection (at least for me).  SO I will just say that the essays are witty, thought-provoking, deep and above-all readable.  They can be used for personal enjoyment but also for group discussion and sharing.

The blurb on the back cover says it perfectly:

In The Girl Who Was on Fire, thirteen YA authors take you back to Panem with moving, dark, and funny pieces on Katniss, the Games, Gale and Peeta, reality TV, survival, and more.

Go on!  Grab a copy! join some of the best-known authors of YA fiction (and maybe even discover some new ones) and be taken back into Panem and The Hunger Games.

Mondays are Murder

 They really are!  That is why crime takes pride of place here at Books... and stuff.  The inaugural crime review post is Plugged by the vastly talented Eoin Colfer.  Better known for his YA books including the brilliant Artemis Fowl series, Plugged is his first foray into the adult crime market.  While the age and location of the protagonist may have changed, Plugged is still full of the trademark wit and brilliant repartee that makes his books so brilliant!

Once I have hair I'll be happy

At least that's what Irish ex-army sergeant Daniel McEvoy tells himself

I really know how he feels...

Dan McEvoy has problems; his part-time girlfriend lies dead in the parking lot of the sleazy strip-club where he is the doorman, his best (and only) friend is missing, his crazy neighbour lady starts fixating on him and a chance encounter lands him a dangerous enemy in the form of a local Irish gangster. It starts looking as if his hair plugs are the least of his worries.

 I felt my scalp itch sympathetically with Dan's throughout the novel, phantom itching is bad and I could also identify with his hair-related worries. Plugged is a crime novel laced with humour and humanity throughout. Dan is no emotionless hero blasting his way through faceless goons who exist only to be shot down in a hail of bullets, the bit players are real people even if they were generally unpleasant.

It would be cliché to say that the action never let up (it didn't), the very human interactions between Dan and the other characters in this tale lifted it above many of the humourless wrong side of the tracks crime tales that pervade the crime shelves these days. Every death is keenly felt (if not mourned) by Dan and as events spiral out of his control, we learn as he does that not everything he knows is as he thought it to be. Through the novel we learn via flashbacks to his youth and military days who he is, where he comes from and why he is driven to do what he does.

Plugged is a thoroughly engrossing novel, there was not an ounce of wasted prose. The humour, violence and old fashioned whodunnit mystery mesh together seamlessly to provide a quick but completely engrossing read!

It is a testament to Eoin Colfer's skill as a writer that I got drawn in so deeply that I only noticed that I was reading in a mental Irish accent a third of the way through the novel. I must admit that I have not an ounce of Irishness within me, I cannot even fake a convincing accent, but my mind threw up Dara O'Briain's voice and I ended up seeing him as Dan on the movie screen in my head.

I think he would make a convincing Dan McEvoy... feel free to disagree!

Satireday

I am currently reading this book, I have started it three times as I am loving the opening pages.  A vicious satire on America's corporate culture and the super rich.

I am not too sure what I think of Jim the main character - utter philistine when it comes to art and culture but a VERY compelling character.  Honest about his aims and values.

Is he evil? At present I have no idea so I will withhold judgement until the end!

I was meant to read it through last night but I was at the Headline bloggers evening and went to the pub afterwards with some of the publicists and fellow bloggers and ended up drinking and talking books until 11pm and was in no fit state to read or do anything except fall semi-comatose into bed.

Well the Headline blogger event was fantastic, I was invited by the fantastic Maura Brickell and Sam Eades

We were shown a fab short film about their current and upcoming books, although I was blown away by the opening visuals of a pop up book that was just fantastic, it introduced all the genres that Headline produce and was beautifully made.  It was made by a graphic designer and I would really love to see the actual book...

The quiz was great fun with the team I was in not getting into the top three but having a cracking time nontheless!

We got to meet some fantastic authors,

 The fantastic Cathy Brett - I reviewed Ember Fury in 2009 and have been a fan ever since.  I now have a copy of Scarlett Dedd signed and waiting on my TBR pile ^_^

The ace Jenna Burtenshaw - I have been a fan since I read Wintercraft.

















Jonathan L Howard - an author I have heard about and now finally have a copy of of Johannes Cabal: Detective

 Not pictured but also in attendance were Geraint "City Boy" Anderson - meeting him was a memorable experience, he is a very entertaining character.  I enjoyed his City Boy column in The London Paper am interested to find out what his fiction is like.

 Julie Cohen Julie Crouch and Jill Mansell - three authors outside my reading sphere but fantastic to be around and truly wonderful people - good company to have in a pub (and possibly out of the pub as well). 

Today (Satireday) I went to a blogger meet-up at Waterstone's in Piccadilly.  Spent the afternoon comparing notes on blogging, YA books and chatting about books and hanging out.

I met Carly Bennett, Caroline Rose, Kirsty, Michelle, Sarah, Non and someone whom I can only remember as the French guy - I am so sorry but I cannot remember his name.  Coffee and much fun was had and a trawl around the YA section of Waterstone's before home to Doctor Who, the episode written by Neil Gaiman and the best episode to date that I can recall seeing and that includes the heartbreaking one where David Tennant said goodbye to Billie Piper on the beach >ahem<

anyway I must get back to American Weather!

Rated Aarg! The Captain Jack Sparrow Handbook by Jason Heller

Pirates, by nature, aren't terribly literate. As a consequence, no book can hope to fully prepare the pampered, modern-day layabout for the lusty life of a pirate.

This book, however, will put you on the right path - the path to adventure, treasure, glory, mystery, and, every so often, the bottom of a barrel of rum.

Just in time for the première of On Stranger Tides comes The Captain Jack Sparrow Handbook: a Swashbuckler's Guide from Pirates of the Caribbean.

A handy guides for lovers of the piratical arts this book gives you the hows and wherefores of becoming a scurvy dog of the high seas.

For instance it will educate you in the different types of pirate, no longer when asked "What are Buccaneers?" will you answer "The things you listen through on the sides of your Buccan'head!" There are also corsairs, freebooters and privateers - just so you know!

Not only a shameless tie in to the popular Disney franchise it is also an entertaining and educational tome written with tongue firmly in cheek. It is a good idea to take heed of the warning on the copyright page.

This book is a fine guide for any lubber wishing to become a swaggering Pirate captain in the vein of Jack Sparrow - the finest brigand to sail with the Brethren Court.

You may be thinking that this book will only have relevance whenever a Pirates of the Caribbean  film is released - but you would be wrong.  There is also International Talk Like a Pirate Day on the 19th September. Preparation for Halloween, and any other event you can hang a piratical hat on - remember rum is good any time of year!

This book is rated Aarg!

A book for everyone who is, was or has ever wondered what it is like to be a 15 year old boy!

One seriously messed up week...

… in the Otherwise Mundane & Uneventful Life of Sam Taylor JACK SAMSONITE

Our hero? 

Jack Samsonite

His mission?

1.  pass his GCSEs

2.  get the girl (to notice he exists)

3.  survive the week without a serious face punching 

 Good thing he's got a plan. Well, half a plan... 

One seriously messed-up week in the otherwise mundane & uneventful life of Sam Taylor Jack Samsonite is being billed as a cross between Adrian Mole meets The Inbetweeners.

It is also the only book I have had to stop reading on the underground as I was laughing too much in between cringing at the memories of my teenage years it was dredging up. I am seriously in awe of Tom Clempson, the man is a genius with the pen!  He has captured the awkwardness and uncertainty of being a teenage boy perfectly, combining crudity, romance, confusion, lust, friendship and the desire to get through the day without being bullied into the package of Jack Samsonite.

Warts and all protagonists of the male variety appear to be rare in YA fiction, it started with Adrian Mole in the '80's and then there was not much.  It is quite possible that we are witnessiong hte birth of a new trend in YA fiction.   The story is told in the form of a diary written as a school project. It begins with an introduction which was written at the end of the week, so I knew where Jack ended up but as someone once said “Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity, but in doing it!”

The story starts on a Monday – with nob ache. Which, if I remember my teen years correctly, (and believe me there is not a man alive that does not – no matter what we may say. We remember every embarrassing moment clearly) is how many days start for boys in their teens. 

Read this book, gain some insight into the mind of a teenage boy and perhaps you will even sympathise with them the next time one of them really pisses you off for just being a teen. 

I read it and loved it (unconditionally) for the laughs, the angst and the cringe-worthy memories it evoked. I was Jack without being cool but then most of us were in those days.