http://lostquiteclassically.today.com and you're lost quite classically with your nose in a book, and it seemed so fitting Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:02:18 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en As I may have mentioned, I'm on something of a campaign to find and publicize vampire books that don't suck (and yes, you can expect to see almost everything on that list coming up for review here--eventually), largely because the Twilight fad is driving me crazy and the few people ... http://lostquiteclassically.today.com/2009/11/09/book-review-gail-carriger-soulless-the-parasol-protectorate-book-1/ (Great topic, huh? Especially since the only thing I seem to be keeping up with this this "feature". I WILL WRITE MORE BOOK REVIEWS SOON. I PROMISE. ...Just as soon as I finish my gorram thesis...) Last November, a number of my friends participated in NaNoWriMo, something I’d sort of been ... http://lostquiteclassically.today.com/2009/06/25/writing-wednesday-staying-on-target/ (In an effort to get myself to write in here more regularly even when I don't have time for a book review, I figured I'd start a weekly feature where I talk about matters of craft and style in writing, mostly because that's one thing I can almost always ramble ... http://lostquiteclassically.today.com/2009/06/18/writing-wednesday-economical-exposition/ Barbara Hambly's Those Who Hunt the Night is an immediate lesson in not judging books by their covers--or flyleaf blurbs, for that matter. The cover is the ultimate in cheesetastic Victorian vampire camp, and the blurb is kind of sensationalistic and stupid--it's in past tense, first of all, which ... http://lostquiteclassically.today.com/2009/04/22/book-review-barbara-hambly-those-who-hunt-the-night/ Now that I’ve actually read it, I’m doubly pleased that The Graveyard Book won the Newbery, because it’s a wonderful book with an amazingly creative premise—a boy whose family is murdered is taken in and raised by a graveyard full of ghosts, along with a few other guardians who ... http://lostquiteclassically.today.com/2009/03/28/neil-gaiman-the-graveyard-book-2/ I've mentioned before that I like Neil Gaiman, which is true. I still haven't really read Sandman, though, the series of graphic novels for which he really first became famous. The biggest problem there is that there are so many volumes collected so many different ways, and my ... http://lostquiteclassically.today.com/2009/02/28/neil-gaiman-sandman-vol-6-fables-and-reflections/ I don't use Entrecard quite as much as I should, but it's a good way to bring in some traffic if you take the time to make a lot of drops. I've also found a lot of good blogs that way, which reminds me: I need to update my blogroll. Whatever ... http://lostquiteclassically.today.com/2009/02/28/so-entrecard-market-is-interesting/ I've been told that Cornelia Funke's Inkheart actually isn't the best translation from the original German, because the English version doesn't retain what made the other German, or something like that. When I read Inkheart after having recently read The Thief Lord, I got basically the exact opposite ... http://lostquiteclassically.today.com/2009/02/23/cornelia-funke-inkdeath/ Still busy with school, natch; not doing quite as much pleasure-reading (for instance, I read the first couple chapters of Catch-22 the other day because I'll be presenting on it for a class, and so far I haven't been able to force myself to read more because I hate ... http://lostquiteclassically.today.com/2009/02/22/after-these-messages/ I've tried to explain, more than once, why I'm drawn to science fiction and fantasy. It's a little easier when I'm talking about why I write it--I say things about how it means less research (this is not entirely true. Worldbuilding done well generally requires enormous amounts of research. ... http://lostquiteclassically.today.com/2009/02/21/jo-walton-what-a-pity-she-couldn%e2%80%99t-have-single-handedly-invented-science-fiction-george-eliot%e2%80%99s-middlemarch/