G is for Graphic Novels

I literally didn't have a G until a few seconds ago. I was looking through the genres section on Goodreads and saw it and thought HA! YES!

I've had very little experience of graphic novels. I read a few when I was in school because our library had just started to stock manga and graphic novels and they were very easy to read over a lunch break if none of my friends were sharing the same lunch hour. Honestly, I can't remember most of them but some of the artwork blows my mind.

I do however, follow one online graphic novel called The Dreamer.

Here is the synopsis from the website:

Beatrice "Bea" Whaley seems to have it all; the seventeen year old high school senior is beautiful, wealthy and the star performer of the drama club. And with her uncle’s connections to Broadway theater, the future looks bright ahead of her. Little does she know that her future might actually be brighter behind her...
Bea begins having vivid dreams about a brave and handsome soldier named Alan Warren--a member of an elite group known as Knowlton’s Rangers that served during the Revolutionary War. Prone to keeping her head in the clouds, Bea welcomes her nightly adventures in 1776; filled with danger and romance they give her much to muse about the next day. But it is not long before Beatrice questions whether her dreams are simply dreams or something more. Each night they pick up exactly where the last one ended. And the senses--the smell of musket shots and cannons, the screams of soldiers in agony, and that kiss--are all far more real than any dream she can remember.

I just adore this series and once a week update is never enough. To practice my Spanish when I was still in school, I attempted to translate the comic but never got farther than a few pages.

I've been tempted to start reading The Walking Dead graphic novels because I've really enjoyed the TV show and I've also played the game.

Have you read many Graphic Novels? What do you think of them? Have you any that you could recommend?

Sarah x

F is for Fantasy

I love fantasy. If you're looking for a post with a bit more substance, this is not the post you're looking for.

There's not much I can say about it, which works out well because I have an amazingly busy day ahead of me and I don't have much time to blog (it's my own fault for not preparing this earlier! This morning I helped my friend make her wedding invitations and now I'm away to help my mum set up for my birthday party later tonight. Phew!)

You can make up your own rules in Fantasy. You have to be careful about world building, because it's very easy to leave gaping holes. However, no-one can reprimand you for doing anything 'against the rules' because you're making up your own rule book!

That's why I don't think I could ever write a historical fiction. Even contemporary can be troublesome for me sometimes as I feel like I'm always on google checking to see if this is right, or if this is a thing. I recently did a fanfiction and you wouldn't believe how long it took to check how long it would take to get from London to Switzerland via train because one character had a fear of flying!

My favourite fantasy series at the moment has to be Game of Thrones. However, I've heard the phrase 'sweeping epic' applied to this fantasy series and, boy, they're not lying. I enjoy the TV show because 1) it's amazing 2) it's mostly filmed in my country!

I also enjoy the books, but I can only ever read one every 6 months. There are so many characters and theres so much going on that my brain can only handle so many Ser's and so many locations in one sitting. Otherwise I'd be caught up by now!

Fantasy is also that genre that can be crossed into from almost any other genre. Like, Sci-fi fantasy such as Star Wars. And then there are contemporary fantasies  though it's tempting to call those paranormal fiction.

Like me, do you find wading through the endless amount of characters in some fantasy stories hard? What do you think about fantasy in general? Yay, or nay?

Sarah x

E is for Erotica (But a PG-13 post!)

I don't think I have many young readers. But I kept this post PG-13 anyway...

Last summer I went on holiday with the girls that I lived with. I brought three books with me and had them all read a few days into the holiday. So we decided to swap around the books that we'd brought. However, the one that I ended up with, as you can probably guess, was Fifty Shades of Grey.

Last summer this book just exploded onto the market. Everyone was reading it. On the plane, on the bus, by the pool. It was crazy. I knew what was in the book because when my friend was reading it, she would read us passages aloud when it got to a particularly "interesting" bit.

Now I'm quite partial to a good innuendo, I have my mother to thank for that. I'm in no way 'prude' but this book just had me curling my toes... and not in a good way.

Here are some gifs summing up my facial expressions.

As I got further through the book, I just ended up skipping over those bits because they just became boring and gratuitous. I never finished it, despite a few people who have read the whole series telling me that the writing/story gets better in the second two books, it had lost it's appeal and I was in no way interested in reading a single page more.

Now there seems to be a whole lot of erotic novels that have been springing up (pun absolutely intended) in book stores but Fifty Shades has completely turned me off venturing any further into the Erotica genre.

Have you read the series, and if so, what did you think? Was 50 Shades just a bad part of Erotica pool to dip my toes in?

Sarah x

D is for Dystopian

It's such a buzz word right now.

After the success of The Hunger Games, everyone and their dog seemed to suddenly be writing about a future world that had a totalitarian government in place.

I've read a few, and will defend the Hunger Games against it's harshest critics but... surely we've all had enough of Dystopian at this point? Right?

It just seems that, when reading some of the fallout from this dystopian boom that we've been having one thing is clear to me. The 'evil' 'corrupt' government systems are usually one dimensional. Maybe that is because most of the boom of Dystopian novels seem to be series that are still incomplete and they may be saving more of the political background to the later books. However, there are some where I feel that the author gets a bit lazy and the government is totalitarian, because it can be. It's a bit reminiscent of an old silent film baddie tying the girl to the train tracks, or one of the classic James Bond villains  Mostly they seemed to be that way "because of reasons."  If I was to have conversation with these books, it would go something like this.

"Government is Evil!"
"Why?"
"...EVIL."
"Yeah, but why?"
"... because this is a dystopian novel. EVIL AND CRUEL."
"Surely there must be-"
"EEEEEVIIIILLLLL."

Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just me being picky? What's the best Dystopian that you've read out of the recent boom?

Sarah x

C is for Coming of Age (And IWSG)

Isn't it funny the way things work out. I had planned a while ago that I would tackle the topic of stories about coming of age in the A-Z challenge, forgetting that C would fall on the 3rd of April.

Which is today. Which is my 21st Birthday.

Reading Young Adult books, as I do, the topic of crossing over that line between being young and becoming an adult is something that I come across a lot. I would argue, however, that it's a bit hit and miss. It's thrown around wildly in the blurbs on the back of books, sometimes unnecessarily. Someone who I think covers that 'stuck in the middle of teenager/adult line' is John Green. However, it's in the trilogy/series books that I find sometimes the growth is lacking. Authors get caught up in 'How many books can I squeeze out of this story' rather than focusing on the characters that everyone fell in love with in the 1st book. This happened for me in the Gemma Doyle series by Libba Bray. I enjoyed the first two, but the final one was so indecisive and full of pointless story that I almost couldn't finish it. And some of the characters seemed to regress back into petty children rather than progress into the young women they seemed to be becoming in the earlier books.

What's the best coming of age story that you've read?



Now, onto my insecure writers support group post! Very appropriate post this week:

My age is something that, when it comes to writing, is something that I'm both secure and insecure about. If that makes sense. 

I'm 21. Most people on the YA scene are late 20's to 40's so on one hand I have plenty of time. I also probably need to live a bit more. Experience life. Experience crappy underpaid jobs and ungrateful bosses. That's my logical, optimistic answer.

The pessimistic side of my brain likes to remind me that there are lots of people my age and younger who have written full length novels, some of whom have been published and I get really jealous. I feel like, if they can do it, why can't I? And for those who are successful younger than me, I wonder if I've wasted the time I've had so far? You never have as much free time as you do when you're young. Have I wasted my opportunity on games and bad TV?

I'm graduating in the summer with no word yet on whether or not I've gotten onto the teaching course for September. If not I'll have to go and start the arduous process of finding a job while I re-apply to teaching courses for 2014. I've already had to move back home for financial reasons. I'm not sure what I want. Is teaching just something that I'm trying to get into because I know that I'll have a lot more holidays than your average person for writing? And if I really wanted to be a writer wouldn't I have a bit more to show for it by now than a handful of started novels and a few badly written fan fictions? 

I feel like I'm in limbo. And I guess that's exactly how every coming of age story starts. 

I guess I may be of age. But my coming of age story just hasn't started yet.

Sarah x

B is for Biography

Still haven't found my list, but I remembered what B was!

Biographies, or (Auto)Biographies. I'm cheating a little here but we'll just gloss over that.

My experience of Biographies, auto or otherwise is fairly limited. I do have a biography of Johnny Depp that was bought for me that I've never read, only flicked through for the pictures. I have, however, read the (Auto)Biography of english comedian Michael MacIntyre. It was a christmas present one year and I found it extremely interesting. He's a face that anyone who enjoys comedy here in the UK will recognise. However, it took him nearly 4 years and £40,000 of debt before he made his break. This guy is HILARIOUS, so it's very hard to imagine that there was ever a point where he wasn't getting recognised for his work. If there's a lesson to be learned here, it's don't give up on what you love.

But that's the only book about someone's backstory that I've ever read. With Wikipedia and the internet in general, if you want to find out something about someone, it's just a matter of a few clicks away. I don't make a point of reading biographies, but maybe it's something that I should look into. I spend far too much time in story worlds that are completely made up, maybe I should remind myself occasionally that real life can be just as interesting too.

Have you read any auto/biographies recently? Can you recommend me any that I have to read?

Sarah x

A is for Adventure.

Yes, I'm doing the A-Z blog thing. Yes, I'm an idiot for signing up. Yes, I did lose the list of all the topics that I had planned to talk about. BRILLIANT START SARAH!

I've gotten off to a bit of a false start. I know I should have been prepared for this but April 1st kind of crept up on me and caught me unawares. 

The idea that I had for the A-Z was to give my (brief) opinion on various themes and genres of books. Today is A, so I'm starting with ADVENTURE!

Yes Bilbo, like that. 

For my first post I'm going to get all philosophical and start by saying that I think ALL stories are technically adventures.  Some are the more obvious sort taken by our little Hobbit friend. But even the stories that don't scream ADVENTURE at you, are still likely to be. They may not be dragon slaying, mountain reclaiming sort of adventures, but are adventures nonetheless. Even if the protagonist isn't physically going anywhere, they're more than likely having a personal/spiritual journey of some sort. Rarely are people the same at the end of a book or series as they are at the beginning. 

I really admire those who tackle stories where the 'adventure' is internal and therefore done through much more subtle means. 

Do you agree? Are ALL stories technically adventures? 

Now I'm off to try and remember what I had planned for B-Z. Wish me luck!

Sarah x