Waiting on Wednesday: One of our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde

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I’m sorry for the lack of posts here over the weekend — I needed a mental health day so I went up North with some of my friends. I hardly read during the weekend so there wasn’t much to review save for the post before this. I’m getting back on track now, but I have to write some more stuff on the other blog and do work and deal with real life, so now, I give a Waiting on Wednesday post.

I’ve made a rule for myself in making this post. I will only really post about books that I really am waiting for, and not just any book I spotted online. I’ve posted other WoWs about books that I just saw and I never got them, or when I got them, I was underwhelmed. From now on, this will only be for the releases I am really anticipating.

My last WoW was from one of my favorite YA authors, Sarah Dessen. This time, I’m waiting for another book from a favorite author and a favorite series:

One of Our Thursdays is MissingOne of our Thursdays is Missing

One of our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde
Release Date: February 22, 2011

Jasper Fforde’s exuberant return to the fantastical BookWorld opens during a time of great unrest. All-out Genre war is rumbling, and the BookWorld desperately needs a heroine like Thursday Next. But with the real Thursday apparently retired to the Realworld, the Council of Genres turns to the written Thursday.

The Council wants her to pretend to be the real Thursday and travel as a peacekeeping emissary to the warring factions. A trip up the mighty Metaphoric River beckons-a trip that will reveal a fiendish plot that threatens the very fabric of the BookWorld itself.

Jasper Fforde is one of my favorite grown up authors, and Thursday Next is one of my heroines. I thought all of her adventures ended in Something Rotten, but I was thrilled to know Fforde was writing another book. I got First Among the Sequels three years ago (!!!) and loved it, and the wait for the next was just too long. I’m so glad I won’t have to wait any longer, since this will be out in 13 days (as of this post)!

It’s such a Fforde year for me this year, as I finally got my copy of The Last Dragonslayer a week ago, and then this next book is coming out very soon. I can’t wait to get my hands on this — I wonder what craziness will Thursday be up against next? I think the first five Thursday Next books are up for a reread. The question is: do I have the time to do that? :o

“Waiting On” Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill of Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.

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Rot & Ruin

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Rot & Ruin by Jonathan MaberryRot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry
(Benny Imura # 1)
Simon & Schuster, 458 pages

In the zombie-infested, post-apocalyptic America where Benny Imura lives, every teenager must find a job by the time they turn fifteen or get their rations cut in half. Benny doesn’t want to apprentice as a zombie hunter with his boring older brother Tom, but he has no choice. He expects a tedious job whacking zoms for cash, but what he gets is a vocation that will teach him what it means to be human.

I missed my zombies. The last time I read a full-length zombie novel was back in November, Married with Zombies, and it wasn’t really an awesome read at that. I think I got a bit grossed out with the surprising gore part in that novel that’s why I took a break from reading zombie novels. Then the holidays came and I didn’t want to read about the living dead so I just let them wait a bit more. John Green’s Zombicorns whetted my appetite for zombies again, so I got the closest one from my TBR and devoured it last weekend.

Devour. A funny term to use for a zombie novel, but that is exactly what I did for Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry. I was in the middle of reading Emma then, and I wasn’t going anywhere with it, so I decided to take a break with the classic and start this one. Rot & Ruin tells the story of Benny Imura, a fifteen-year-old boy who lives in one of the villages in a post-apocalyptic America. It has been 13 years since the First Night, the night when the dead rose and infected the living. Benny lives with his older half-brother, Tom, a famous bounty hunter who prefers to be called a closure specialist. Benny hates his brother because he thought him as a coward from his first memory of his parents getting infected during the First Night. As part of their village’s rules, Benny has to find a part time job when he turns fifteen, and because of the lack of choices, he ends up being an apprentice under his brother. A day in the Rot and Ruin changes Benny’s life, and he finds that maybe all the things he knew and believed about his brother may be wrong. The question is, will Benny be able to live up to what his brother stands for when it’s really needed?

When I asked Aaron which I should read first when I was choosing between this and Charlie Higson’s The Enemy, he told me to pick Rot & Ruin if I wanted heart over gore. And he’s true: this is a zombie novel with a heart. I liked how Maberry showed the human aspect of the zombies, weird as that may sound. But if you really think about it, zombies are from humans. I’m not saying they are humans, but they were — they’re a brother, sister, father, mother, lover, friend. Video games and movies show that zombies are mindless monsters in search for human brains that need to be killed to stop the infection, but the human side, the loss, is not often discussed. The author did a very good job in showing us these emotions, and showing us that even in the midst of a world where zombies are a curse, there’s a humane way in treating them and making them (and the loved ones they left behind) move on in peace.

Rot & Ruin‘s world was very believable, and I liked how Maberry created Benny’s village. There’s a stifling, almost oppressive aura in the village, one that pressed on the characters until they have no choice but to leave. I liked how the author used this to make the characters move from their sheltered homes to the outside world. In a way, Benny’s village could be any place in the present world, minus the zoms — anywhere where people are happy with how they live even if it means turning a blind eye to injustices happening around them is the same as Benny’s world, and maybe even worse. Rot & Ruin is not just about killing zombies, but a book about humanity and family.

This is probably one of the other zombie novels I’ve read that has almost lived up to the love I have for Feed by Mira Grant. I think I may just be partial to Feed more because I could relate to the characters better since they’re bloggers (and Georgia is just so awesome, too). Nevertheless, I highly recommend Rot & Ruin for those who want to read a very good book with zombies in it. I am looking forward to Benny’s return in Dust & Decay this year.

Rating: [rating=4]

My copy: borrowed from Aaron (which we gave him as a birthday gift :) )

Cover and blurb: Goodreads

Other reviews:
Guy Gone Geek
taking a break
My Favorite Books

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Dear Communion of Saints

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Dear Communion of Saints by The Ironic CatholicDear Communion of Saints by The Ironic Catholic
Publisher: Smashwords
Number of pages: 90
My copy: ebook from Smashwords

What if “Dear Abby” were a saint? The popular satire and parody website, The Ironic Catholic, takes all the foolish questions we stumbling Christians have offers them to the great Catholic saints, who provide tough-love wisdom, insight, and considerable humor.

* * *

I find it hard to find easy-reading Catholic books. Save for the local ones from Bo Sanchez and Shepherd’s Voice, I feel like there seems to be a lack of books written for Roman Catholics. Sure, there are a lot of Christian books out there, and yes Catholics are also Christians (please, no religious debates here, okay?), but it’s hard to find books that actually talk about saints, the Roman Catholic church and all that. Or maybe I just don’t know where to look.

Anyway, I was going through my Google Reader one day when I saw that I haven’t been reading the ones under my “Faith” tag. So I browsed the feeds and saw magic words, “free ebook” from The Ironic Catholic. I immediately clicked the link and got ready to purchase the book but it turned out the coupon had already expired. I felt a tiny bit disappointed, but then decided to get the ebook anyway since it was only $1.99.

I read this book in between Emma, and it was the kind of book that I needed to clear my classic-muddled brain. Dear Communion of Saints is a collection of blog entries from a feature that The Ironic Catholic had in her blog. It’s a parody of an advice column of sorts for foolish questions that Christians may ask, answered in a saint’s point of view. Of course the author doesn’t mean that the saints would actually say the answers written in the book, but they are based on basic Christian teachings and are pretty obvious answers. Some questions really border on foolishness, too, like if they could play “Bad Romance” during a wedding mass, or why teeth are so poorly made, or how to cook a Thanksgiving turkey. There are some questions that somehow make sense, like who to blame regarding lack of mass attendance or if hell is dry heat, or if it’s okay to engage in celebratory hubris. It’s a fun, short book that makes you laugh and think at the same time, while still teaching the readers a bit about Catholic faith and the saints who are “answering” the questions. And it’s not just saints, too, but also some personalities in the Bible such as Job (whose book I just finished reading in the Bible — and it was beautiful) and even some of the archangels, too.

The Ironic Catholic writes in such a funny yet reader friendly way that it makes the saints feel closer and more human than they are viewed now. It’s highly unlikely that the saints would actually say these things (although we really don’t know about their sense of humor, really). I hope people won’t see this as blasphemous or disrespectful of the saints, because the point wasn’t really to capture who the featured saints are. The real point of this collection is, and I quote the author in her introduction:

I am poking fun at foolish human imperfections, many (if not all) of which are my own.

Dear Communion of Saints is a good book for Catholics and non-Catholics (if only by entertainment value) alike. It was a fun and quick read, but I wished there was more. While I pine and wish for a second volume, I will spend some of my free time perusing the author’s blog. You should, too.

Rating: [rating=4]

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Save as Draft

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Save as Draft by Cavanaugh Lee
Simon and Schuster, 256 pages

A broken engagement, a broken heart, and endless drafts of unsent emails. A love triangle unfolding in the electronic age illustrates all that can go wrong (and right) by this new form of miscommunication. Told in “electro-epistolary” form, the novel unfolds entirely through emails and text messages. What do these tools of technology mean for love? What happens when age-old courtship rituals fall prey to the ever-changing sensibilities of how we share not only information, but our own hearts?

I was thrilled to see that Save as Draft was included in Simon & Schuster‘s latest galley grab as I’ve had my eye on it ever since Jill of Breaking the Spine featured this book in a Waiting on Wednesday post. I’m a big sucker for epistolary novels, and I love it even more when they use technology in the story too (case in point: Tweet Heart by Elizabeth Rudnick).

Because I enjoyed the novel so much, I thought of writing a review for it in the way the novel is written. It might get a tad personal and long (just as how I tried to review This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen), but I hope you keep on reading. :P

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from: Tina <hello @ tinamats.com>
to: Achieving Friends :)
date: Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 7:19 PM
subject: Save as Draft, and all sorts of thoughts

Hello friends!

This may be a very surprising email for you guys to get because…well, do we really communicate using emails now? There’s Facebook and Twitter, and well, there are other ways we can communicate…but indulge me for a while. Sometimes a book can make you do silly stuff. ;)

So I just finished reading this book, Save as Draft by Cavanaugh Lee. It’s this book filled with emails and text messages from this girl, Izzy (a lawyer, but I don’t think she’s the Offshore Injury one), to her friends and her guys. It starts with Izzy in 2008, where she joins an online dating website and meets Marty, a nice and sweet guy who seems to be very interesting. However, even after a great first date, Izzy tells Marty that she has decided to exclusively date her best friend, Peter and she was sorry. Then we are brought back to 2006, where Izzy first meets Peter, and how their relationship started from best friends to lovers.

I’m going to stop there so I won’t spoil you. I thought Save as Draft would be one of those typical chick lit romance novels with only a difference in format being an “electro-epistolary” novel, but I was wrong. I was very pleasantly surprised with this, and you may have seen my tweets during the weekend about this book — I was literally laughing out loud at home while I was reading this because Izzy reminded me SO much of myself. I love Izzy – her over thinking, her flirting, even her depressing moments remind me so much of the times I felt the same thing! Girls, I think we’ll all see some of ourselves in Izzy, or even her friends. The way they exchange emails and all that feels like they were actually exchanging dialogues instead of mere emails, and it’s just like how we tweet each other sometimes, haha. I think we will definitely see some of the guys we know in Peter and Marty, too.

The book is littered with so many funny exchanges that’s the stuff you can see in modern sitcoms but also things you can see in real life. Of course, I’m no judge for that with my still single since birth status, but these are the things we usually talk about, you know?

I think the biggest “lesson” I picked up with Save as Draft is how relationships are never black and white. I’ve talked to some of you about this before, and again, given my single status, I know I’m highly idealistic. That’s why I like books like this — they show a side of reality that I have not yet experienced and give me a bit of a warning, if you may. Something to remind me that things will never turn exactly the way I like it. Remember how I used to say that I wanted a guy who had no issues or hang ups in life just so things won’t be complicated? Well, if I keep on thinking like that, then I know I would never ever settle down with anyone because a guy (or a girl, for that matter) without issues or hang ups does not exist. I think the author was very good at showing that relationships can be messy. There’s no perfect relationship just as there is no perfect person. Even if the person seemed perfect at the start, you’d realize eventually that he’s a workaholic, or he has issues with fat people (this really kind of grated my nerves there) or he’s too presumptuous (haha this reminds me of someone!). It’s all gray and there is never a clear thing, and sometimes you just really have to follow your heart, you know?

And excuse me for being emo there. These are the things we usually talk about when we’re drinking.

I think this is the first time that I was confused at who I wanted the heroine to end up with. I mean, even my Best Friend vs. the Other Guy thing couldn’t decide: Izzy fell for her best friend, but there was also this other perfectly nice guy there that I liked for her…is real life really like this?!

It’s a very, very good book, and I won’t spoil you anymore because I’m going to make you guys read this! I was entertained all throughout, and I bet you guys will, too. Save as Draft is not a relationship manual, but it’s given me a little insight on what I must remember when the day comes that I enter a relationship: (1) never substitute face to face communication with emails/tweets/chats/texts/what-have-you and (2) never let anyone dim my sparkle.

Oh, and never ever do anything you’ll regret when you’re drunk. ;)

Rambling off. Can’t wait to see you guys again — this weekend?

xoxo,
Tina

P.S. I just thought of a perfect Valentine’s Gift. I just hope this book gets to the Philippine shores on time. :)

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If you’re looking for a quick, fun yet meaningful read about relationships and how messy it can be, do get this book. Save as Draft by Cavanaugh Lee will be out in hardcover on February 1 under Simon & Schuster. Cavanaugh talks more about the book in an interview in Building My Life.

Rating: [rating=4]

My copy: ebook ARC from Simon & Schuster Galley Grab

Cover: cavanaughlee.com
Blurb: Goodreads

Other reviews:
Goodreads

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Required Reading: February

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Sometime around January, I was thinking of what books I would have lined up for February seeing that it was Valentine’s month and it’s sort of the right month to pick up romance novels and such. How cliche of me to do that, but I liked having themed reads. I like reading certain books at a certain time of the year because the month’s celebrations call for it. I think that makes it more fun (albeit masochistic, especially in February, if you know my stories :P).

Anyway, as I was choosing books from my Mt. TBR, I wondered if I could do a theme for every month. Which led to me thinking that maybe I can have kind of direction for the books I read in this year, instead of just choosing randomly. I would be able to conquer my TBR a bit for the entire year but without the big pressure of reading them all, you know?

So I came up with my own, sort of TBR challenge for 2011, where:

  • I would pick 4 books from my TBR pile that I should read within the month that sort of fits one kind of theme.
  • These books should not be included in other 2011 challenges.

This doesn’t mean that I would only read the books I listed within the month. These are just the books that I should read within the month, but I can read other books, too, in the pace that I want to. Call it required reading, I guess.

WAIT. Okay that’s the name of this “challenge”. Required Reading. :D

I have constructed a list in my planner which is still subject to change. I will share them every start of the month, of course, but for now, my February line up!

Thanks, we heart it!Well it’s obvious the theme is love. Like I said, it may be a bit masochistic for me because of the current state of my love life (or lack thereof — but I will not post that here. If you want more of that, it will be posted in the personal blog :P)…but hey, everyone loves a good love story, right? With all it’s red and pink magic. :)

So from my TBR, here are my February Required Reading!

  • Seventeenth Summer by Maureen Daly
  • Delirium by Lauren Oliver
  • Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin
  • Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

There’s a book on summer love, a dystopian novel about love being a disease, a novel about a wedding, and finally a retelling of a Roman myth with the god of love. I even feel like throwing in a few more romance novels in the mix here. Let it be a month full of books on love, yes? :)

Posted in: Challenges \ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,