Why Steampunk Is So Much Fun

This weekend is Comiccon.  I went yesterday on Saturday, and now I think it is time to discuss one of my favorite topics, Steampunk.  I’ve only recently gotten into this aspect of science fiction.  Some of you might already be familiar with Steampunk.  One of the reasons steampunk is so great is that it allows for all kinds of creativity and there are all kinds of sub-genres.  Some of you might be familiar with Western Steampunk, Firefly & Wild, Wild, West are examples of that.  I went to the steampunk cosplay session and one of the tips they gave was that it is all about expressing yourself, so be creative and have fun.

One of my favorite quotes is actually from a Castle episode called “Punked” which is all about a murder that takes place in the steampunk community in New York City.  This is one of the best definitions I’ve ever heard:  “It's a subculture that embraces the simplicity and romance of the past at the same time, couples it with the hope and promise and sheer super-coolness of futuristic design”.

When it comes to Steampunk, there are so many books, so I’m going to discuss a couple of my favorite non-fiction books and steampunk author.  Also, I borrowed all of the below books from my local library, so if you are interested, be sure to check them out.

One of my favorite steampunk non-fiction books is Steampunk Your Wardrobe by Calista Taylor.  This is one of the best books to look at if you are looking to modify clothing so it is more steampunk.  I am really looking forward to trying a number of crafts from this book.  Basically, find what you want to do, go to the thrift store and adapt.

The other non-fiction book I really like is titled Steampunk Emporium by Jema Hewitt.  In fact, I made a choker based on one from this book.  That is the great thing about steampunk.  I didn’t like the choker in the book, it just wasn’t me, so I made my choker more to my taste.

As for fiction, there is one name that stands out in my mind as a steampunk author, Gail Carriger.  I absolutely love her books!  She has a wonderful sense of humor and the characters in her book are wonderfully written.  She also writes strong female leads.  It is a perfect blend of science fiction (steampunk) and fantasy (vampires/werewolves) elements.  In chronological order, you should read the Finishing School series, the Soulless series and the Custard Protocol (her newest) series.  In publication order for the series, it is Soulless, Finishing School and then Custard Protocol.  I suggest reading it in chronological order as I read it in publication order and now find myself somewhat confused by the Custard Protocol because it is recalling events that occurred at the end of the Soulless series.

Finishing School

          

Soulless

          

The Custard Protocol

Why Terry Pratchett Is One Of The Best Fantasy Authors

So I want to tell you all about one of my favorite authors.  As mentioned in my previous post, it was my cousin who introduced me to Terry Pratchett.  I read that first book (Guards!  Guards!) and absolutely fell in love with Terry Pratchett’s writing style.  It made fun of so many of the fantasy conventions that I loved.  When I was trying to describe him to my family, I said that he was like the Douglas Adams of fantasy.  Sadly, he passed away recently and fans reacted at once on social media, even to the extent of creating code so that he could live forever in the Internet!  In addition, The Economist wrote a wonderfully hilarious obituary for him.

Now, as mentioned, the first book I ever read by Terry Pratchett was Guards! Guards!  After that, I started reading as many of his books that I could get my hands on!  My other favorite series are Going Postal and the Tiffany Aching series, starting with Wee Free Men.

The original City Watch or Guards series is a trilogy.  The first book is Guards!  Guards!, the second book in the series is Men at Arms and the third book is Feet of Clay.  I highly suggest starting off with this series as events that happen in Feet of Clay are reflected in the Going Postal series.  The reason that I mention the original is that Terry Pratchett took one of the main characters from the books, Sam Vimes and gave him his own series which is centered on him rather than the City Watch. 

          

Going Postal is a hilarious book about Moist Von Lipwig, a con man who is "hired" by the government to run the Post Office on pain of death (again).  This seems fine until he finds out what happened to the previous Post Masters AND also has to contend with the Clacks company’s CEO.  This is the first book in what has been termed as the "Moist Von Lipwig" series or Moist for short.

          

The Tiffany Aching series is actually a teen series.  To get a good idea of what Wee Free Men is about, please check out this book trailer that I created.  It is a wonderful series based on Celt traditions.

   

   

As for standalone books (Discworld, but not a smaller series), Hogfather is one of the best!  It is hilarious and incorporates the origins of our Christmas.  I highly suggest making time around Christmas to watch the the mini-series.

And my husband highly suggests Good Omens so long as you can handle people making fun of the book of Revelations.  Also, this book is co-written with Neil Gaiman, who is also a great author.

If you have very young readers, I highly suggest The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents.  This is a Carnegie award-winning book based on the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin, but with Terry Pratchett's usual twist.  He also wrote a number of short stories, then hid them in his closet.  These stories were collected into Dragons at Crumbling Castle and includes two stories about The Carpet People, the title of the first book he ever wrote, which was meant for children.

       

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