As a NaNoWriMo participant, Kevin Kaiser's @WRIMO: 30-DAY SURVIVAL GUIDE is a motivational read. I would not dare to say that it gave me the inspiration I needed to stay focused and actually finish my 50,000 words for the month, but I will dare to say that it kept me wanting to work on my novel. It is written in the same style as devotionals which means that the chapters are short, sweet, quick to read, interesting, and motivational. There is one chapter for every day of the month. I finished it a day or two early only because I also finished my 50,000 words a few days early. I have now read this book for three years straight during the month of November. It just keeps getting better and better.
The one question I have for Kevin Kaiser or anyone on the NaNoWriMo staff is: What are the current statistics and/or how do I find them? I don't know why, but I find it fascinating to know the number of people who signed up for NaNo vs. the total number to finish.
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IDENTICAL by Ellen Hopkins is incredible! I prefer not to read books about sex, drugs, and alcohol filled with foul language, but Hopkins deals with such issues in a way that demonstrates the fact that such things can (not always, of course)--but such things CAN lead to destructive behavior. The way she handles her stories is just fantastic. I realize that many of her books, IDENTICAL included, come under the heading of "YA" Literature, but as an adult, I can't get enough of her! I LOVE that she writes prose in poetic form and that she is the only author I have read up to this point who has done this--and done it so incredibly eloquently! It's a throw-back to old English Literature such as Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, John Milton, and others like them who wrote prose in poetic form, but mostly in iambic pentameter or other consistent poetic styles. Hopkins doesn't stick with one poetic form; she plays with poetry in a manner that creates a story that not only jumps off the page because it's simply brilliant, but also because of the physical appearance of the words on the page. I loved holding my book at different angles sometimes to see if a poem held a new way of seeing it by SEEING it differently! Hopkins is genius and should be read by EVERYONE!!!
I have to say that I am excited to note that I actually figured out the
"secret" of the book before I got to that part. I did it with the help of someone who asked me a random question when I was talking about the book. He didn't even realize he'd done anything. And to be perfectly honest, at the time, I thought it was a dumb question. But it was ultimately a question that led me to question my original perception of the book and to evaluate it from a completely different view and to figure out the surprise twist before I actually read the surprise twist! It did NOT ruin the book for me to know that in advance! I was, instead, quite excited to find that I had figure it out before needing to be told--by the story itself!
Great book! Go read it!!!!
Laurie Lyda, thank you, thank you, thank you for introducing the OUTLANDER series by Diana Gabaldon to me!!! I LOVE it! I share it with everyone I can! I even bought the audio CD and downloaded it to my computer so I can share the CDs, too!!! So now I have the mass market paperback version (it's falling apart from being read so often), the audio CDs, and now the digital ebook!!! And I just purchased the ebooks for books 2-4! They're all on sale through Amazon.com (Kindle) for $4.99!!! I can't resist!!!! The digital reader is so much easier to hold than a massive book of over a thousand pages! Don't get me wrong, now. I love the actual books, but I don't mind having the ebooks, too! In fact, while reading OUTLANDER this time on the digital reader, I had to get my paperback copy out for a day or two because my digital reader wasn't available at the time!
I LOVE that OUTLANDER doesn't neatly fit into one genre category. I don't believe in genres anymore anyway. I get that publishers/libraries/book stores, etc. need to have genres in order to have places to put the books on the shelves and thus to find them quickly and easily, but yet it's ridiculous to attempt to put every single book into one simple category and expect that to be the end-all answer for what that books is really about. For a practice book,
Gabaldon hit this one out of the park!!!
If you haven't read the OUTLANDER series yet, what are you waiting for?!
And, yes, I LOVE the series as it's playing out on STARZ! They're doing a fantabulous job with the books to tv series! Jamie is even more gorgeous than anticipated!!! ;)
