(Image, sans text, a creation by our 2012 R.I.P. artist, Gothicrow)

We are mere days away from the beginning of October, the final month of this year’s R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril event. And with the onset of October begins the second of our R.I.P. group reads, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. Not only is this one of my favorite Gaiman books, it is one of my favorite books in general:

The short story structure of the chapters.

The overarching coming-of-age exploration.

The whimsy and sentiment that is perhaps unexpected in a story set in a graveyard amongst the dead.

I adore this book.

I look forward to exploring in greater detail why that is the case. There are a number of you who have expressed interest in joining this read-along, some of whom have not had the most positive experience with Gaiman’s work and/or this particular book. I welcome the interaction we will have from those who love (or will love) the book as well as those who do/will not. It promises to be an engaging discourse.

If you will follow along I will briefly outline the reading plan and talk about some other fun things I plan to add to our Graveyard Book Read-Along.

*you may also listen to the audio book (which I plan to do this time around) because a) it is ‘reading’ in my book and b) Neil Gaiman’s narration of this story is just wonderful.

Continue reading The Graveyard Book Read-Along* →

(Image credit)

“Every day should be unwrapped as a gift.”
― Harry Harrison

An early morning visit to the Twitterverse brought the revelation from friends that one of the biggest influences on my reading life has passed away: Harry Harrison, author of the Deathworld trilogy, the Bill the Galactic Hero stories, a number of stand alone novels and of course my favorite, the stories of Slippery Jim DiGriz, the Stainless Steel Rat.

One of my prime sources of imagination and adventure in childhood was a small bookshelf in the room of my uncle Dean. A visit to my grandma’s house meant one thing above all else–I would sit on the floor pulling out paperback after paperback, gazing at the wild and imaginative covers of his science fiction collection. I was one of the few people he let read his books and it was a great honor coming from an uncle I idolized. My first destinations from those shelves were the Han Solo books by Brian Daley, but what I remember most clearly was the day I discovered a charming rogue who existed many years before the owner of the ‘fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy’–Slippery Jim DiGriz.

Continue reading A Sad Farewell to the Stainless Steel Rat →

Two books down in the Mistborn trilogy and one to go! Its time to get cracking on the group read for The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson. This one will be done blog tour style, the same as was done for book two: The Well of Ascension. Following will be the schedule for reading and tour hosts as wel as the signup for those who want to participate and/or be a part of the weekly email reminders. If some part of this posted schedule does not work for you, please let me know.

Thanks everyone, hope you are all geared up to discuss this final chapter in the first Mistborn trilogy.

Continue reading The Hero of Ages Group Read: Blog Tour Style →

(Image property of artist Christian McGrath)

I hope everyone has had a chance to venture forth into exciting and strange worlds over the weeks that we have been away from Luthadel and the rest of the Final Empire. For now it is time to return to our journey with Vin and Elend and the rest of the cast that we became so attached to in Mistborn: The Final Empire. It has been a nice break and now I am itching to get back to the story, I hope you are too.

I sent out an email recently indicating a change in the format of the group read for The Well of Ascension. We are going to do an experiment: hosting this discussion Blog Tour style. Several of you have volunteered to take question duty over the course of the next two novels and what I was envisioning is that each week one person would be the Discussion Host. That individual would post the questions for their section in a blog post on their site. I would email out the link when the post was up and we would all descend like locusts on that one site and have a week-long back and forth conversation about the section of the book we read that week.

The advantages of this would be to eliminate the pressure folks feel to get a post up each week at a specific time or essentially be left out of the heart of the conversation, would cut down on the number of sites we have to visit each week, and would potentially allow for more in-depth back and forth.

In addition to this change I was also going to suggest we limit the questions which would allow everyone to discuss what stood out for them in the section being read.

Deanna did a marvelous job coalescing all the above gobbledygook into this succinct explanation:

1. Discussion Host would post questions on his/her site.

Then each discussion participant could do their own wrap up post (a review of the book) [at the end of the group read] if they choose to do so.

Sound good?

Continue reading The Well of Ascension Read: Blog Tour Style →