Great read:

I finished When She Woke yesterday, the 2nd novel by Hillary Jordan, and I LOVED it. It falls under the fantasy genre though, to my mind, it's a perfect blend of literary and fantasy - the kind of novel I aspire to write. The night before last afforded me the rarest of occasions: the opportunity to read uninterrupted. No chores to be done, no meals to be made, no one to talk to. I had the house to myself and so I plucked When She Woke from its spot among the stacks of books on my nightstand and picked up where I'd left off. I had barely gotten into it the night before, just 50 pages or so, enough to be thoroughly intrigued. So I read. And read. The hours slipped by unnoticed as I tumbled into the world of Hannah, a woman who lived in a society where crimes were punished via the injection of a virus that turned your skin yellow or orange or green or red. She was a Red. When my husband came home at 1 AM, I was still up, reading. When he insisted that the bedside lamp be extinguished so he could sleep, I retreated to the kitchen and made some toast with jam, and continued reading. I read at the kitchen counter, my eyes burning, until 3 AM. The next morning, yesterday, I woke and tried to go about my morning, but my mind was on the story. So I succumbed. After my shower, I slipped back into bed, my hair wrapped in a towel, and read. Less than an hour later I was finished.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.... it was excellent on every level. I highly recommend it.

Great read:

I've just finished Kristin Cashore's Graceling and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was very Game-of-Thrones-esque, which is probably why it appealed to me. Don't let the YA label fool you or dissuade you from picking up this book - I didn't find it simplistic or too vanilla at all. In fact, on this lazy day in April, with raindrops splattering against the windows, and a fuzzy throw snugged around my legs to ward off the stubborn hold of winter, it was the perfect way to spend the afternoon.

I haven't updated my reading list, here, but I've been busy reading nonetheless. Unfortunately, most of my forays into the genre world were more ho-hum than not:

* Red Mist by Patricia Cornwell
* The Drop by Michael Connelly
* The Litigators by John Grisham
* The First Prophet by Kay Hooper

Of these, the only one I really enjoyed was The Drop.

On the literary front, I read a fantastic story published in One Story: E. B. Lyndon's "Goodbye, Bear."

Good read:

I've just finished Malcolm R. Campbell's The Sun Singer and I really enjoyed it. It's the story of Robert Adams, a high school-aged boy, and his gift of precognitive dreams. Although he foresees the tragic death of his best friend's sister, he's unable to prevent it and so he shoves his ability aside, refusing to engage it. When his grandfather dies unexpectedly, Robert resurrects his gifts in order to complete a task left undone by his beloved grandfather. The story has parallel universes, portals, synchronicity, and magic -- all deliciously woven together.

The book's back cover contains this label: Contemporary Mythic Adventure. I quite agree.

Although I really enjoyed the story, I feel like I have to say a few words about the beginning chapter. I found it awkward, choppy, amateurish, filled with grammatical errors, and full of one-dimensional characters (of which only two get filled out by story's end). There's also this weird script/layout that occurs on page one and shows up periodically throughout the book, where the prose divides into two columns and the text on the left continues in the standard typeface while the text in the right column is italicized. The intent, I believe, is to showcase, simultaneously, two opposing thoughts/reactions of/by one character to a given situation. The result, in my opinion, is so confusing and odd that it does more harm than good. The whole of this chapter was so off-putting that had the story not gotten pretty quickly to the good stuff, i.e., parallel universe, I would've abandoned the read. And speaking of the "good stuff," I found that although the lack of proof reading was still evident (thought instead of though, then instead of than, etc.), there wasn't any of the awkwardness in phrasing or abrupt switching from one speaker to the next that characterized much of the opening chapter. It was very smooth and very engaging, which makes me think Mr. Campbell was really in his element while composing this part of the story. The downside is that it highlights just how disintegrated the opening chapter is with the rest of the book; it makes it feel like an afterthought.

Great read:

I've just finished Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind and I really, really enjoyed it.

First, though, I feel like I ought to get some credit toward my Goodreads 2013 reading challenge for reading a 722 page novel (yes! 722 pages!), that instead of 1 book, it should count as at least 2, maybe even 3. I'm kidding. Sort of.

The 722 pages go by quickly. This is fantasy, and the fact that I enjoy fantasy is only a recent revelation to me (see my discovery, here). The world Mr. Rothfuss creates is amazing -- rich and believable and all encompassing. The likeability of the protagonist Kvothe (pronounced "Quothe") is astounding as well: we root for him and believe in him. And the scene where he ends up on his own is one of the best I've had to pleasure to read. It was haunting; utterly surprising and shocking, it and its immediate aftermath has stayed with me.

I have only 2 small quibbles with this story. The first is when it switches from the present time and assumes a "let me tell you what happened" tone. This is how the entire story is told, actually, where Kvothe recounts his life's events to Chronicler, who is busy copying the oral into written form. And, really, Rothfuss does such a marvelous job in drawing us into young Kvothe's world that we very quickly switch gears and are absorbed into the unfolding scene and story. My reaction stems from the intrigue that surrounds the older Kvothe and his situation at the book's beginning, that I didn't want to leave it to start over as it were. My slight irritation was short-lived, though.

My other quibble has to do with the ending. It feels like it just sort of ends. On the one hand, the story was already 722 pages long, so, really, it was time! On the other hand, I wanted a bit more of something... resolution, closure. Instead, it feels very open-ended, very much like a pause, and I'm guessing that the 2nd in the series, The Wise Man's Fear will pick up seamlessly where this one leaves off. But this just stopping, if you will, left me slightly unsatisfied and is only a very small notch against a fantastically fabulous read.

Good Read:

I wanted to read this because I thought it would give me some exposure and insight into what sorts of stories are considered the best of the best in the sci-fi and fantasy world. I've always considered myself a sci-fi fan and, more recently, came to understand that I also enjoy some of the fantasy genre as well. What I've learned after reading this anthology is that I'm more of a middle-of-the-road kind of gal when it comes to sci-fi/fantasy. Or maybe I just need it (the story, the concept) to be somewhat plausible, or, if that's not possible, then it needs to be well written in order for me to make the leap. Now, since this volume is "the best online," that means the stories within are clearly well written and chosen for these and other merits from someone who is well versed in the genre. And, still, I didn't care for a good number of the stories. They were too bizarre, too out there for me.

I find it interesting and ironic that my two favorite stories, ones I really liked and enjoyed, are anything but middle-of-the-road. Yoon Ha Lee's "Blue Ink" begins and ends with sections that are in 2nd person POV, which is almost always an instant turn off for me. But it quickly morphs into 3rd person and a storyline that is just fantastical enough to border on brilliant. Catherynne M. Valente's "Urchins, While Swimming" has a magical realism component that is really well integrated and very engaging. Both of these stories are grounded in three dimensional characters, in elements of the every day... maybe this is the structure in which sci-fi/fantasy works best for me.

Sci-fi!

I've just finished a couple of good sci-fi reads and I realized (or perhaps I'm just ready to admit) that sci-fi is my first love. Science fiction gets such a bad rap, and unfairly so in my opinion.  Sure, there are weird aspects of the genre (like swords or over-the-top human-hating aliens), but what draws me in are the possibilities - worlds, beings, ways of living, gadgets, things alien to our way of thinking. The possibilities are limited only by one's imagination, and I find this exciting and so compelling.

I've always been fascinated by the stars, by galaxies and universes, by all things cosmology, and so I guess it's no surprise, really, that I'm drawn to science fiction. Though there are many labels attached to the genre (things like hard/soft science fiction, cyberpunk, social science fiction, apocalyptic, time travel, space, fantasy, superhero), for me, there are just two distinctions: science fiction and/or fantasy. If you'd asked me last week which side I was more aligned to, I would have said without hesitation: science fiction. Fantasy, to me, always involves swords or super heroes - two things I don't particularly care about (though even as I write this HBO's Game of Thrones swims into my awareness - a definite favorite of mine and all about swords. So maybe it's super hero-wielding-swords that I don't like?) However, after doing a little research, I stand corrected: both sides appeal to me. For the record, here's what my research produced by way of definitions:

*  Science fiction: unlikely things that could possibly take place in the real world under certain conditions; no supernatural elements.
* Fantasy: a scientific veneer applied to things that simply could not happen in the real world under any circumstances; allows supernatural elements.

I definitely enjoy supernatural aspects as well as magical components, and, truth be told, sometimes all that technical mumbo jumbo by way of explaining how a science fiction world is possible is sometimes too much for me. So it seems, for me, the perfect sci-fi story involves a bit of magic or supernatural components (magical creatures, potions, voices or knowings from beyond, harnessing the power of mother Earth) as well as the grounding elements of a science fiction world (interplanetary travel, time travel, colonization of multiple planets). Oh, and one more thing - all of these elements need to be written with a literary bent. That's not too much to ask, is it?

Here are the stories I read:

Robert Reed's Five Thrillers - This story is included in The Year's Best Science Fiction, Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection published in 2009. Yeah, I'm a little behind, but in my defense, this collection is 639 pages long. Five Thrillers is a series of 5 short-shorts linked by a character named Joseph Carroway. I LOVED it. It's smartly written, suspenseful, engaging. I enjoyed it so much, in fact, that I'm going to seek out more of Robert Reed's work.

Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama - I wanted to like this more than I did. It's revered as a classic, and I purposefully sought it out after reading all the glowing reviews for it. It's very imaginative and the world building on the spacecraft Rama is astounding. But it left me feeling a little flat... we go through all of the exploration and discovery of an object that's entered the Earth's solar system only to have it leave again in short order. I'm guessing that the idea of other beings, of having other life confirmed and being exposed to that confirmation is supposed to be enough, and maybe 40 years ago, when it was first published, throwing the idea out there was enough. But for me, it wasn't. I felt like there was all this buildup and then... nothing. Perhaps this was intended to whet my appetite for the sequel, but I think I'll pass.