Tag: Ibi Zoboi

#ThanksgivingReadathon | Jorie’s #mustread List for #Mythothon (otherwise known as the STORIES Jorie didn’t want to stop reading after she reached page *25!*)

Posted Friday, 23 November, 2018 by jorielov , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 0 Comments

#ThanksgivingReadathon badge created by Jorie in Canva

This lovely readathon is hosted by Jackie @DeathbyTsundoku

You can find the Announcement Page on her lovely blog!

Rainbow Digital Clip Art Washi Tape made by The Paper Pegasus. Purchased on Etsy by Jorie and used with permission.

For the past three days, I’ve been reading the FIRST *25!* pages of all my borrowed #Mythothon Reads via my local libraries! Yes, you read correct, multiple libraries were involved! I wasn’t able to tweet each of the days I was reading as since Wednesday night & early Thursday morning, I have been in *severe!* pain!

Funny story short – when your selecting a special priced *ham!* from a bin in the Meat Dept. be sure to PICK IT UP with both your hands and DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE how much it weights! I literally threw my back out and the severity of the pain made it IMPOSSIBLE To read / type in any kind of combination. I’ve popped on as I could to give small updates but blessedly, after rotating hot/cold compresses I’ve been able to resume a slightly more ‘normal’ groove – hence, if you start to see reviews & posts magically populating my blog’s archive, you’ll understand ‘why’… Laughs with a smirk.

This post is to re-acquaint  myself with the *thirteen!* stories which made my cut – the ones which I achingly had to put into the “Keepers Stack” in order to dig through the rest I borrowed to find the rest of the ‘gems’ I wanted to be reading for #Mythothon!

Ironically, I had originally envisioned spending 30! days on #Mythoton & #RRSciFiMonth – in the end, I’ve spent a fortnight so far reading my Sci Fi November selections (reviews are still forthcoming have no fear!) and I’ve only spent 72+ hours reading my #Mythothon selections! Thus, I’ve amended how those Mythos stories are going to be blogged! I’m starting off with this (post) to tuck into the 13 Stories which I knew in *25!* pages these writers were giving me something wicked lovely to contemplate and muse over as I read their #awesomesauce stories!

Next, I’ll be back-posting (Thursday)’s post which are the DNF selections – the stories which held either early promise OR repulsed me so quickly off the bat, there was simply no hope of return!! Those are the ones boomeranging back to the libraries so quickly I could have had whiplash! They might be ones who will resonate with other readers, but for me, as you will soon find out – there was *something!* not quite my cuppa within their pages!

Afterwards, I’ll be back-posting (Wednesday)’s post which is a continuation of gushing JOY over having discovered the magically lovely world-building within the Japanese set “A Mortal Song” which was truly absorbed & discovered the very day #ThanksgivingReadathon kicked off and entered my life! It will also serve as a journal about how a girl & her Mum can tuck into a diner late at night after a petrol accident (ever have a gas station have contaminated air?) to ‘clear’ their lungs — chattering about everything but specifically how this #Mythothon is giving me such a delightfully unexpected passage into a ‘hidden niche’ of literature I never knew existed! I also recapped the WHOLE twenty-five pages of “A Mortal Song” – so I’ll be trying to recapture that night – whilst discussing what we ate and drank; staying til nearly close and musefully enlightened with the joyfulness of Crewe’s artful story-telling!

Settle in with your favourite brew & cuppa in hand – soak in my ruminations over these enchanting twenty-five pages – per each novel of the stack of *13!* and find out why I, Jorie, wishes to DEVOUR the rest of the pages – maybe I’ll find beloved & cherished reads, maybe I’ll find myself pulled out of them at some unknown future page – all I know, is initially as I read these cleverly writ pages, I was fully absorbed through the vision each author had for their stories!

Come with me as we chase after #Mythos & #Mythologies – specifically attempting to focus on the Greeks with a few diversions along the way! Come share with me your own travelling routes in the comments & let’s rock out #Mythothon in the joyfulness of combined discoveries!!

Rainbow Digital Clip Art Washi Tape made by The Paper Pegasus. Purchased on Etsy by Jorie and used with permission.

#ThanksgivingReadathon TBR List badge created by Jorie in Canva. Photo Credit jorielovesastory.com

Fun Stuff for Your Blog via pureimaginationblog.com

#ThanksgivingReadathon TBR List created by Jorie in Canva

Fun Stuff for Your Blog via pureimaginationblog.com

My #25PagePreview of my #Mythothon Reads

during the 2018 #ThanksgivingReadathon !!

ALL the stories featured today
were #borrowed via my local #library!

I do earmark which ones were ILL’d but overall, for the most part, I lucked out by pulling from the locals which had a rather IMPRESSIVE selection of Mythos in Fiction!!

Fun Stuff for Your Blog via pureimaginationblog.com

A Mortal Song by Megan Crewe

Site | @megancrewe | Pub’d by Another World Press
*Ill’d (inter-library loan)

Notation on Cover Art: I was truly taken by the artistry of the cover art design for ‘A Mortal Song’ as it held my eye, never letting turn away and told a story of its own! I love artwork like this which is custom made for the story – it gives you more dimension and a hugged in feeling as if the artist and the writer were in symmetry with each other! I had such high hopes for this one – I had no idea between the evoking artwork and the promise of the premise, I would literally find my first #Mythothon selection I wanted to hug + shout out about to the world!

A bit of a background – I personally have loved Japanese culture, tradition, customs and art ever since I was a young girl as my maternal grandparents were collectors of their art and music. I grew up knowing quite a bit about Japan as a result from a cultural perspective whilst as I grew into a teen, I started to correspond with Japanese friends through postal letters, enhancing my knowledge of their customs (such as the tea ceremony) and the contemporary living histories of my friends as we would exchange memories and traditions in our letters. As an adult book blogger, I learnt more through my readings of the Shinobi / Hiro Hattori novels by Ms Spann, as her stories are set in the 16th Century but illuminated as if we were time travelling straight back into that era and can alight as if we’re meant to live then rather than now! Thus, finding a story involving the ‘kami’ was another element of intrigue for me and one I wanted to readily explore.

Dear hearts, this novel was published in [2016] and I must confess, my copy of the novel appears to have been read either by readers who leave no trace like I do for having read their stories OR I’m the first bookish heart whose graced the pages with her imaginative heart. Either way, it felt super special dipping into this world and seeing the wonders which IMMEDIATELY started to unfold!

As I am composing a special post featuring A Mortal Song – comprising of the JOY of finding this story was breathed to life in such a unique way of giving me a fantastical quest and journey into not just the mind of Crewe but into this part of Japanese folklore and Mythology, I shall leave these short takeaways to entice you to wait for my further revelations of why this readerly girl and her Mum felt enchanted together for the symbolic beauty awaiting everyone who picks this story up for themselves to experience!

Verdict? (see also this tweet!) & (see also this tweet, too!)

How do you prepare yourself to extract yourself from a WORLD you’re so dearly captured by you literally can’t think of anything else but ‘turning’ the next pages, falling further into the story and sorting out the Mythos along the way? I dearly wanted to stay up through the night & simply DEVOUR this until every last word was breathed into my imagination – however, life has a strange way of working against you at times! My back pain & injury left me unable to devout the night to “A Mortal Song” but my mind & heart never fully left its world; the pull it had on me was FIERCE!

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Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

  • #ThanksgivingReadathon 2018
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Posted Friday, 23 November, 2018 by jorielov in #25PagePreview, #ThanskgivingReadathon, Blogosphere Events & Happenings, RALs | Thons via Blogs

#ThanksgivingReadathon | as #JorieReads and discovers her *second!* book hug: “PRIDE: a Pride and Prejudice Remix” by Ibi Zoboi

Posted Friday, 23 November, 2018 by jorielov , , 0 Comments

#ThanksgivingReadathon badge created by Jorie in Canva

This lovely readathon is hosted by Jackie @DeathbyTsundoku

You can find the Announcement Page on her lovely blog!

Rainbow Digital Clip Art Washi Tape made by The Paper Pegasus. Purchased on Etsy by Jorie and used with permission.

I fully admit it – I am positively consumed, addicted and attracted to the story of PRIDE & PREJUDICE!! In all its incantations and variants of entrance – if there is a PRIDE retelling, variant or after canon sequel, there is a good chance I am going to find it, sample it and either a) love it to the moon OR b) find it wasn’t my cuppa. In this instance, I remember vividly finding out about this particular release in the twitterverse, I even remember tweeting the author to talk about how wicked enthused I was about this re-telling – as I am forever and then some on the hunt for Austen stories which have a certain element of the original canon within them but then, take us through an wholly original variation only the writer themself could have envisioned!

I knew I wasn’t going to be able to purchase a copy of this novel when it published but I have had some good luck this year submitting purchase requests at my local library – to where they have purchased so many lovelies for me, I’ve lost track of them! I appreciate being able to submit the requests and it is an unexpected joy of mine finding out which ones are accepted as I never take it as a given they will accept a request for purchase. I feel humbled by the fact they enjoy my selections and are allowing me the grace to read stories faster than if I had to wait the six months outside of publication to seek them through ILL’ing (inter-library loaning).

I also was struck by the fact as soon as I saw the premise of this PRIDE and started to gather a sense about how it was writ – I knew it was the STORY I wanted dearly to READ but never knew I was seeking it! It was one of those random moments where I connected with a story prior to reading it – I have had a healthy attachment to stories set in New York City & the boroughs – I love literature what takes us to the City and gives us a heightened sense of what it is like to live there from all perspectives, lifestyles and areas of the City itself. I’ve felt as if I’ve lived a part of my life there due to how many stories I’ve read that are set there.

Brooklyn has been a place I’ve tried to envision and yet, failed a bit round the edges. As soon as I opened PRIDE – not only did I feel as if a part of my own childhood was re-envisioned through a conveyance of reality I knew once myself – but I felt as if the best grace of this story was feeling a personal attachment to Brooklyn itself! The beauty for me is how Zoboi wrote PRIDE.

As I grew up in a melting pot of a metropolis, I was also surrounded by cultures outside of my own heritage on an everyday basis. I love her instincts for telling this story – from the slang which is partially an upgrade from the slang of my youth (finally sorted out what ‘don’t throw shade on my door’ reflects as it is similar to a phrase from my youth) whilst it also tucks in linguistic nuance. I grew up hearing slices of different languages all the time – I still do in many ways, as cultural and ethnically, I live in a region that is rather diverse and I wouldn’t trade it for anything as I love how we all merge our lives together.

I was happy to realise I still knew what these phrases & words were – they were like little memory anchours of my past, coming back to the surface and allowing me to alight in the story as if I have never distanced myself from whence I was bourne. There are other variables I noticed – from their personalities to how they interacted to their dialogues and everything about how this was becoming introduced to us about their life, their world and their family. It was almost as if the people I knew as a child and young girl were now populating this novel. And, for me, that as the best literary gift to receive the week of Thanksgiving!

The library happily added this title to their card catalogue in October, 2018 – shortly after I requested it and during #ThanksgivingReadathon I was happily able to soak inside its prose and find myself so dearly attached, I am overjoyed for the discovery!

Rainbow Digital Clip Art Washi Tape made by The Paper Pegasus. Purchased on Etsy by Jorie and used with permission.

Fun Stuff for Your Blog via pureimaginationblog.com

My #25PagePreview of the SECOND #Mythothon story which gave me such a warm bookish hug & gave me a thirst for more of it’s bookish heart!

during the 2018 #ThanksgivingReadathon !!

Pride badge created by Jorie in Canva. Photo Credit jorielovesastory.com

Pride: A Pride & Prejudice Remix by Ibi Zoboi

was happily #borrowed via my local #library!

It ought to go without saying, but I am sharing my bookish ruminations for my own edification but also in a continued method of sharing my bookish life to help my readers find their own #mustreads and follow my own readerly journey into the stories I’m reading myself. I was not compensated for sharing my opinions and thoughts herein.

Fun Stuff for Your Blog via pureimaginationblog.com

Pride: A Pride and Prejudice Remix
by Ibi Zoboi
Source: Borrowed from local library, Purchase REQ | local library

Genres: After Canons, Classical Literature, Re-telling &/or Sequel



Places to find the book:

Borrow from a Public Library

Add to LibraryThing

ISBN: 9780062564047

Published by Balzer and Bray

on 18th September, 2018

Format: Hardcover Edition

Pages: 336

Site | @ibizoboi | Pub’d by Balzer & Bray
*purchase request of mine which was accepted by my local library
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Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

  • #ThanksgivingReadathon 2018
Divider

Posted Friday, 23 November, 2018 by jorielov in #ThanskgivingReadathon, After the Canon, Blogosphere Events & Happenings, Classical Literature, Inspired By Author OR Book, Jane Austen Sequel, Pride & Prejudice Re-telling, RALs | Thons via Blogs