One Word: Love

Today, I'm coming to you guys with something completely unrelated to books. Today is To Write Love on Her Arms Day, and this is my spiel about why TWLOHA is important and why you should all take a few moments to write four little letters on your arm today.

To Write Love on Her Arms is a nonprofit organization based in Florida dedicated to helping those who are dealing with depression, self-injury, addiction, and suicide. The website, www.twloha.com, describes their mission with these words:

To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide.  TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.

The idea of TWLOHA Day is for people to write the word "love" on their arms to raise awareness and spread the message of love to people who need it. I'm gonna get on my soapbox for a minute here: It seems to me like people spend an awful lot of time joking about these sorts of things - every day at my school, I hear people making sarcastic comments about how a hard test made them want to slash their wrists or how they "raped" - did well on - some sort of assignment. There are an awful lot of people out there who think suicide, self-injury, and depression are funny. I can't speak for those people - I can't say they have never been around it or don't understand what it means - but I can say that these things they are joking about are real issues, and I can say that they are not something to laugh about.

Are you ready? I'm about to bring my personal life onto the blog, which I can assure you will not happen often. TWLOHA matters to me because I see these issues every day at school. Someone that I was very close to attempted suicide last year. I see people every day who have dealt with or continue to deal with depression and self-injury, and I have experienced first-hand the relief of knowing that there are people out there who care. Maybe not everyone will take it seriously; maybe it is not what everyone needs. But I have seen the hope and love that TWLOHA shares help someone, and I know it can make a difference. This is something that really matters.

No life is worthless. No one should ever be made to feel like there is no one out there who cares about them, like they have nothing left to live for. No one should ever have to feel like they are completely and utterly alone. TWLOHA exists to let people know that there is always someone who cares and someone to talk to. There is always a reason to keep on living.

I'm writing "love" on my arm today. And you should too. Thanks for reading. ♥

Review: 13 to Life

Title: 13 to Life
Author: Shannon Delany
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Pages: 308
Series: 13 to Life #1
Rating: 4 stars
From the back cover: 
Everything about Jessie Gillmansen's life changed when her mother died. Now even her hometown of Junction is changing. Mysterious dark things are happening. All Jessie wants is to avoid more change. But while showing a hot new guy around Junction High, she's about to discover a whole new type of change. Pietr Rusakova is more than good looks and a fascinating accent -- he's a guy with a dangerous secret. And his very existence is sure to bring big trouble to Jessie's small town. It seems change is the one thing Jessie can't avoid.

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I really dislike the summary of this book. (I do, however, love the cover - the way the moon is the center of the eye? It's awesome.) The summary makes the book sound completely cliched and stereotypical, and it doesn't really talk about what the story is about. BUT! The story inside the book is awesome.

Jessie, a reporter for her school paper, has taken an interest in the "Phantom Wolves" that were supposedly haunting the nearby city of Farthington. So when she starts seeing wolves - big wolves - in her small-town home, Junction, she's naturally somewhat freaked out. And if that's not enough to be getting on with, she's been assigned the job of showing new-boy Pietr Rusakova around school. Pietr, Jessie finds, is impossibly annoying, incredibly mysterious, and more appealing than he should be. She's drawn to him, but she can't explain why. Instead, she pushes him towards her friend Sarah, who is clearly interested in him. Big mistake, especially because Sarah is showing hints of turning into the ice queen she was before the accident. The same accident that killed Jessie's mother.

It took me a while to figure out what exactly the relationship between Jessie and Sarah was. I couldn't decide whether they were friends or enemies or what, but once I got it, it made sense. And I loved the relationship between Jessie and Pietr -- they don't immediately hate each other, and it isn't love at first sight. It develops somewhat more normally than that, which was a very pleasant change from a lot of YA. I felt like Jessie was really slow to make the connection to Pietr's secret, but that was probably just dramatic irony at its finest, and I loved the awesome new twist on werewolf mythology. But what really made me love this book were the characters.

Jessie can be a bit slow at times, but she's a wonderful protagonist. Personally, I would have liked to see more of her best friend, Amy. And Sarah...I'll be interested to see what happens with her in the second book. Weird Wanda, Jessie's dad's girlfriend, makes another interesting addition to the novel, and Pietr's whole family is just wonderful. Max cracked me up so much, and I would love to hang out with Catherine sometime. And then, of course, there's Pietr. Add one more name to the list of "Amazing Fictional Guys." He's sweet, he's protective, he has a sense of humor, he's not a stalker (unlike too many YA guys now), and he's just overwhelmingly real. I love Pietr. And Jessie. And the two of them together.

Parts of the novel were predictable, other parts were a little confusing, but it was absolutely worth reading anyway. J'adore this novel. (Someone check my French? I take Spanish.) It was excellent and wonderful and lots of fun, and I cannot wait to read the sequel, Secrets and Shadows, which I believe comes out in February. 13 to Life was engaging, funny and dark in equal measure and in all the right places, and I just loved it. Well worth your time!

Links: 
Shannon Delany's website
Shannon Delany's blog

Waiting on Wednesday

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill of Breaking the Spine.

This week, I'm waiting on Memento Nora by Angie Smibert. Honestly, it was the title that made me look further at this book and actually read the synopsis, because I thought of "Memento Mori," which I remembered from The Austere Academy (why yes, I am quite a fan of the Series of Unfortunate Events books). Anyway, I'm glad I did look at the synopsis, because it looks quite intriguing:

Description from Goodreads:
Nora, the popular girl and happy consumer, witnesses a horrific bombing on a shopping trip with her mother. In Nora’s near-future world, terrorism is so commonplace that she can pop one little white pill to forget and go on like nothing ever happened. However, when Nora makes her first trip to a Therapeutic Forgetting Clinic, she learns what her mother, a frequent forgetter, has been frequently forgetting. Nora secretly spits out the pill and holds on to her memories. The memory of the bombing as well as her mother’s secret and her budding awareness of the world outside her little clique make it increasingly difficult for Nora to cope. She turns to two new friends, each with their own reasons to remember, and together they share their experiences with their classmates through an underground comic. They soon learn, though, they can’t get away with remembering.

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Dystopia (at least, it sounds like it) and magical forgetfulness pills and remembering secrets? Sounds like my kind of book. I'm not too sure about the whole "ooh popular!" thing, but the cover is awesome and the plot definitely sounds fascinating. Memento Nora comes out in April 2011, at which time I will definitely need to read it!

What are you waiting on this week? Leave a link in the comments and I'll stop by to visit!

A Noveling Plea for Help

Yup, it's another one of those NaNoWriMo posts...

I realize that the second week of NaNoWriMo is not exactly the best time to be doing writerly research, because speed-writing + homework + college applications != lots of time to look stuff up. But I need to do some writerly research anyway. And I need your help!

The protagonist of my NaNo novel is very involved in fencing, as in the sport, and is also very skilled in the art of actual swordplay. (She's been practicing both for years, so it's not "poof, I can magically do it!" because that would annoy me.)

The problem is, despite my best efforts to the contrary, I've never been able to learn how to fence, and I've definitely never used a real sword. This is where you come in.

If any of you wonderful, awesome, well-read and multi-talented readers know anything about fencing or swordplay or can direct me to a book or website that would help, that would be spectacular. And if it will make you feel better, I can even name a character after you. I'm always short on good names. :) Any and all help is greatly appreciated!

Also, just a general update on book-related things: my reading time has been tragically limited by all the schoolwork I'm having to do, but I should have a new review up sometime this week, with any luck at all.

♥ Becky

Review: Beautiful Darkness

Title: Beautiful Darkness
Author: Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
Publisher: Little, Brown
Pages: 503
Series: Caster Chronicles #2
Rating: 5 stars
From the book jacket: 
A few months ago, I believed nothing would ever change in this town. Now I knew better, and I only wished it was true.

Ethan Wate used to think of Gatlin, the small Southern town he had always called home, as a place where nothing ever changed. Then he met mysterious newcomer Lena Duchannes, who revealed a secret world that had been hidden in plain sight all along. A Gatlin that harbored ancient secrets beneath its moss-covered oaks and cracked sidewalks. A Gatlin where a curse has marked Lena's family of powerful Supernaturals for generations. A Gatlin where impossible, magical, life-altering events happen.

Sometimes life-ending.

Together Ethan and Lena can face anything Gatlin throws at them, but after suffering a tragic loss, Lena starts to pull away, keeping secrets that test their relationship. And now that Ethan's eyes have been opened to the darker side of Gatlin, there's no going back. Haunted by strange visions only he can see, Ethan is pulled deeper into his town's tangled history and finds himself caught up in the dangerous network of underground passageways endlessly crisscrossing the South, where nothing is as it seems.

**********

I loved Beautiful Creatures, the first book in the Caster Chronicles, so I've been dying to read this since way before it was released. Sometimes in cases like that, the sequel can't possibly live up to your expectations, but I think Beautiful Darkness did.

I will confess that I had a hard time getting into it at first - it started off a little slowly. But once it got going, it really got going. After getting through about fifty pages throughout the week in my few free minutes at school, I sat down this morning to read a bit more over breakfast. I decided that I would read while I ate, then go work on college essays and NaNoWriMo. Around 3 pm, with only a brief interruption to get lunch, I finished the novel and hadn't written a word. I simply could not put it down.

Ethan is still crazy in love with Lena, but Lena is struggling with a dark secret and even darker emotions that are pulling her away from Ethan. Suddenly, she's hanging out with her evil cousin Ridley and a mysterious new Incubus, leaving Ethan feeling pushed aside and desperate to save her before she turns Dark. Her Seventeenth Moon is coming up, and Lena will have to be Claimed soon. And Liv, Marian's new assistant at the library, is only convincing Lena that Ethan has moved on. But, of course, in Gatlin, SC, nothing is what it appears to be.

I loved so many things about this book. The characters - Link and Liv especially, and Ethan's great-great-aunts, and Ridley, and of course Ethan most of all - just came to life in my mind. I wish we had gotten to see more of Lena, although I'm confident that she'll be more important in book three. I would read pages and pages of just small talk between these characters, because I love them that much.

And the plot. Oh my goodness. I really want book three NOW, because I just have to know what happens next. Beautiful Darkness keeps working at solving the mysteries introduced in book one, answering a few questions and raising plenty more, and there's always something new happening. I feel like that description is really cheesy and doesn't do the book justice at all, but I'm not sure (1) how much I can say without accidentally spoiling something and (2) how else to say it. It just takes hold of you and refuses to let go until you've read every last word, and then leaves you hungry for more of it.

Long story short: I adored this book, every bit as much as the first one if not more, and I can't wait for book three! Absolutely read the Caster Chronicles.

Links: 
Caster Chronicles website
Kami Garcia's blog
Margaret Stohl's blog

NaNoWriMo By the Numbers

Yes, I'm one of those people. The people who are crazy enough to attempt to write a 50,000-word novel in a month, on top of senior thesis and college applications (*shudder*) and a trip to Orlando for NCTE/ALAN (*squee!!*).

Oh! I should talk about NCTE/ALAN! Because I have the best dad ever and he happens to be an English teacher, I get to go with him to the NCTE convention and ALAN in Orlando this year. I am unbelievably excited about this trip, and I promise to tell you all about it when I get back. With pictures, probably.

But anyway, NaNoWriMo. It's November 5th. Here's NaNo as of today, in numbers:

-Goal word count for today: 8,335
-My current word count: 8,209
-Dances I have performed in instead of writing today: 1 (and it was so much fun! If any of my fellow dancers are reading this, y'all rock <3)
-College applications that I should be working on instead of writing: 2
-Number of essays required by those applications: 9 (I know, 9 essays for 2 applications. Whaaat?)
-Pages I have read of Beautiful Darkness: 96 (and I love it!)
-How long I have left to meet today's word count and still get some essay-writing done: 3.5 hours

Off to write some more now! Whether it will be college application essays or NaNo remains to be determined.

Super Awesome Cover Love

This would be released on a Wednesday when I already have my WoW pick up. I considered scheduling this post to show up tomorrow, but I'm really excited about this, so I had to share it now. Without further ado, I present to you....the amazing-wonderful-awesome cover of The Demon's Surrender by the lovely Sarah Rees Brennan:

I am so excited for this book, you guys. I loveloveloved the first two books in the series and cannot wait to read this one! It's sad that the series will be coming to a close, because I'll miss these characters, but oh my goodness I simply MUST find out what happens.

(The Demon's Surrender, if you don't know, is the third book in the Demon's Lexicon trilogy.)

*wants this book. now.*