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It’s time for the long-overdue post on books I read this summer. However, I’m going to start with books I failed to finish reading.

Surprisingly, there were only two: The Space Between, by Brenna Yovanoff, and iBoy, by Kevin Brooks. I have my reasons for throwing both of them across the room in disgust. Trigger warnings ahoy.

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“You cannot open a book without learning something.”

- Confucius

2: The Rest ->

If Varin couldn’t hear her coming, he’d gone deaf. She didn’t run down the hall to the study that had once been her fathers, the study that Varin had filled with cheap knickknacks and unchecked books and careless signatures on documents that he’d never read. She walked instead, but she walked loudly, the ticking of metal beating in time with her steps, which seemed in her ears to echo on the stone floor. There had been plenty of time to get her anger worked up to boiling.

Varin visibly jumped when the door banged open, and so did the maid who had been sitting on his lap. She left the room before the doors could swing back into place.

“Congratulations,” Adria told her brother, “You’re a father. Again.”

calli_scribbles

Warnings: disturbing imagery, swearing, stalking behavior, general mind screw. That should be about it, let me know if there’s something I haven’t remembered to put up here. This is also in the running for the creepiest thing I’ve ever wrote.

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The thing about ghosts is that they don’t realize they’re dead.

Some of them, now, they wonder, and they’re the easiest ones to pick out. The easiest ones to send on. They’ve got an inkling, the doubt is gnawing at them from the inside, they’ve noticed that something’s not quite right with their world. But most of them still believe they’re still alive, and that’s how they try to convince you that they are. Very lifelike they can be, screaming and pleading, but all of them eventually realize that they’ve already died.

Most people can’t stomach it. You have to make them realize that they’re dead, but since they think they’re still alive, they do a very convincing job of acting like you’re murdering them. They even bleed, and getting their ghostly fluids out of your clothes is hard. You’ve got to do it before  any of the other people, who are selfish enough to think that they can live locked up in their little boxes and not extend the hand of mercy to end the ghosts’ suffering, notice and disapprove. It looks just like the real thing, too.

Me, I can’t let a ghost just go by. They’re in pain, you know, and the sooner they move on, the better for them. They don’t want to live the shadow-life where they are, and they can’t get back to the sunlight and the way that they were before. Best not to let them dwell on it – you can see the relief in their eyes when you’ve done it, when you’ve sent them on.

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While inspired rants can be fun, it was high time to spend some time reviewing a book that I could actually reccomend. It might not be the right cup of tea for readers around here, but if you need to give a child a book (and really, if there is a child in your life, you should give them one,) I highly reccomend Under the Green Hill by Laura L. Sullivan.

Recommended Age: 9 or 10+, the book’s clearly written for a 10-12 audience due to the age of the protagonists. I enjoyed it as an adult, though. Thirteen year olds probably wouldn't find it childish, but fourteen year olds probably would.
Genere: Children’s/JYA fiction, fantasy,
My Reccomendation: Five Stars.

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“Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.”
- Shakespeare’s As You Like It

<- 9) Thou Winter Wind ~0~ 11) A Great City

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“Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
thou art not so unkind
as man's ingratitude;"
- Shakespeare’s As You Like It
<- 8) Desires of the Moment ~0~ 10) Sweet Adversity ->

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“Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked.”

- Niccolo Machiavelli
<- 7) The Establishment of Others ~0~ 9) Thou Winter Wind ->