How Fantasy Turned Me Into A Book Junkie

Then, one summer, I’m visiting my family in Victoria and my cousin says, “Have you ever read this book?  It is so great!”  The book was Guards!  Guards! By Terry Pratchett.  This introduced me to Discworld.  I then introduced my husband’s (then boyfriend’s) family to Terry Pratchett after I saw their taste in comedy was incredibly similar to my own.  They loved Douglas Adams, but also Flying Circus & something I had never heard of, Goon Show.  I gave my father-in-law my rather tatty copy of Guards!  Guards! and he was hooked.  I think we now have nearly all of the Discworld series scattered throughout the house although we are trying to gather them in one spot.

My introduction to Harlequins came via my family in Kitchener.  When we went on vacation, we would all bring Harlequins to read and then swap.  This had become a tradition somewhat earlier in our lives with Archie comic books, but then we changed our reading habits once we got older.  Whenever I read Harlequins, I found that I preferred the historical romance novels rather than contemporary.  One of my favorite novels is Hidden Fires by Sandra Brown.  Since I moved to my current town, I started reading more & more historical romances, especially Regency.  I’ll be doing separate posts on some of my favorite authors later.

I also started to get really into Teen & Children's books.  Although I didn't realize it at the time, what my high school library had was a highly curated collection of books chosen to appeal to teens.  While working at the library, I often saw my favorite books from high school placed in the adult Science Fiction & fantasy section.  So I dove right into the teen section which composes of books written specifically for teens.  As for children’s, well, there’s a ton of fantasy there that I love,  Again, separate posts will be forthcoming for some of my favorite series.

How I Became A Book Junkie

I’ve always loved libraries!  When I was a kid & growing up in a small southern Ontario town, there wasn’t a lot to do.  On the weekends, we'd all troop down to our local library (it was a Carnegie) and choose movies and books to read.  We had the traditional scary children’s librarian.  When I got older and was in grade 7, I was ready to read more adult books.  My piano teacher suggested that I read Jeanette Oke, which served as my introduction to the romance genre in general and the Christian romance genre in particular.  However, there was no YA or Teen section, so imagine my surprise when I got to the high school library.  All these books, meant for my age group?!  It was a huge revelation, especially when my Grade 9 teacher made us read a Fantasy book.  It was like a whole new world had opened up for me.  I started off with David Eddings and when I finished those two series, I moved onto authors Piers Anthony, then Terry Brooks.  I then burned my way through the first 5 or 6 books from the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.  One of my cousins loaned me a book called Brightly Burning by Mercedes Lackey, but I really didn’t like the ending, so this turned me off her for what I thought would be forever.  During this time, I was still taking items out from the public library.  I started branching off into more contemporary romances written by Barbara Delinsky & Sandra Brown.

My grandmother also heavily influenced my reading as a child that would continue as an adult.  She gave me one of my first fantasy books, Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper.  It was such a delight.  I had to get the rest of the series from the library since I couldn’t wait to read the rest. 

My father read to us every night.  Obviously the books changed over the years as we became older the books changed to something that would take months or even years to finish reading.  We started off with picture books of course, but then as we got older my father read us books by Gerald Durell & James Herriot.  Eventually, he read us The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings.  This continued all the way to end of high school.

Apologies (Again!)

Goodness, it has been a long time since I wrote my last post, a little over two years to be exact.  I've been pretty lax about writing the blog post because to be honest, I totally forgot about it.  One of the reasons I feel I forgot about it was because I had trouble coming up with articles to write.  The other reason is that a lot of things happened at my workplace in December 2013 and I was then transferred in January to a full-time position at another branch in the library system for a few months, then back to my old branch and then to another branch in November 2014 until the end of January 2015.  My personal life also took a big hit when my husband got a job out of the country, so we were trying to spend as much time together as possible before he left.

Although this blog started out as a project for my Teen Materials class at Western, I’m going to change things up to make it easier for me to keep up the momentum.  One of my new series will be about my reading history, what got me started, series I've read & enjoyed, authors who I love, etc.  Also, I will be writing about author & publication news as well.

Exciting News!

I am very excited to have found out about the new Fairy Tales that were found in Regensberg Germany.  Although the news is no longer new, it is still very cool!  Here is a link to the news article:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/05/five-hundred-fairytales-discovered-germany

I am personally looking forward to getting my hands on a translation or even just a copy.  Sadly, it seems that noone local is carrying them, not even the universities.  Hopefully that will change, but in the meantime, I'll just have to stick to reading twisted and other fairy tales that are published.

Percy Jackson Mind Map

Hi everyone!
So, the third book for the Heroes of Olympus is coming out in two days!  This is very exciting news for those of us who love Greek mythology series.  In celebration of this, I have created a Percy Jackson Mind Map.  It is saved as a PDF.  If you use Foxit Reader, you will need to disable Safe Mode and use the Hand Tool in order to access the links.  Adobe does not seem to have any problems!  I hope you find some new books out of this document!  Happy reading!

In order to view the document, click on the link below:
Percy Jackson Mind Map

The Selection Book Review

The Selection by Kiera Cass

Published by Harper Teen, 2012

This is the first book of a planned trilogy.  In the American state of China, the royal family selects 40 girls from the population for the royal prince to choose to marry.  When America is selected, she is heartbroken as she has been secretly dating someone for about two years who is below her caste.  The ones, basically royalty, are on top and the eights are on the bottom.  However, this is her chance to not only better herself, but help her family and she strikes a deal with her secret boyfriend.  This book is a combination of the TV show The Bachelor and The Hunger Games.  While not everything is recorded and broadcasted like in The Hunger Games, particular events and interviews are broadcasted.  Unlike The Hunger Games, there are rules in the house and if these rules are broken, then the offender gets kicked out.  This book is suggested for those who like dystopian novels, romance, love triangles, series and suspense.  I suggest ages 16 and up as that is the age of the Selected.

P.S.  There’s supposed to be a televised series of the books, so keep your eye out!

Death of a Good Author

It is with much sadness that I announce that Donald Sobol has died.  I knew him from my own childhood and as a jumping point into mysteries.  The Encyclopedia Brown series is still one of my favourite and perfect for starting off in mysteries.

Here is the CBC article:  http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/07/16/obit-sobol-donald-encyclopedia-brown.html