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A lady with a love for literature and shiny things discusses books & bling.

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What I’m reading: Vol 6.

What I'm reading

Nightstand: Trickster’s Queen by Tamora Pierce.

Coffee table: My GIA class notes!! Makers marks, the content of alloys, and vocab words galore.

Kindle: The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth and The Shadowy Horses by Susanna Kearsley. I’m a fast reader and I spent 10 hours on planes this weekend. I’m in the middle of Horses, at the beginning of Cameron Post and also finished Libba Bray’s Going Bovine and Tamora Pierce’s Trickster’s Choice.

Audiobook: In the Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce. We had to take a hiatus on this one because the library loan ended and there was a short wait to get it back.

Internets:

Most important link of the day right here! I am co-hosting an online book club for The DC Ladies and November is the first month!! My fabulous cohost is kicking things off by leading us through Where’d you go, Bernadette? It is not to be missed.

Lee Harvey Oswald’s Wedding Band Fetches $118K at Auction – I find this fascinating. You have to wonder about the motivation of the person who bought it.

One of my Book Riot peers wrote this very thoughtful piece in response to the news of a mom who is editing out the scary parts of Harry Potter as she reads it to her child.

Museum of Science Fiction May Become Reality In D.C. – EPIC. Would you visit?

I wrote a roundup of bookish wedding cakes for Book Riot. The Game of Thrones cake is beautiful and it warms my heart that someone had a Dune wedding cake. Which is your favorite?

This is an entire farm filled ONLY with miniture animals. Why haven’t you clicked yet?

World’s Largest Paraiba Tourmaline Unveiled – You know I love me some Paraiba, and this one is incredible. What do you think of the necklace? I think I’d prefer to see that stone in a simpler piece. Something that magnificent doesn’t need so much embellishment.

This fabulous interview with a romance novel author includes the phrase “real heroines rip their own bodices.” What more do you need to know?

 

Thin Space by Jody Casella.

My review of Thin Space by Jody Casella, a beautifully-written, haunting book about a teenage boy who has recently lost his twin brother in a car accident. Via Diamonds in the Library.Thin Space by Jody Casella.

This book is: dark and heart wrenching with a pinch of magical realism.
Other elements: twins, sibling relationships, the death of a teenage, identity,
Read it: if you love strong, complicated characters.
Overall rating: 7.75/10

One of the reviews I saw online for Thin Space described reading the novel as similar to being “trapped in a dream” and I think that’s pretty accurate. I read this book all in one sitting – it pulled me in and I didn’t want to break away until I knew where it was going.

The hero of Thin Space is a young man named Marsh, a teenage boy still reeling from his twin’s recent death. Marsh is consumed with finding a way to get in touch with his recently deceased brother, but not just any way: he wants to find a “thin space,” one of the portals of Celtic legend that his elderly neighbor told him about shortly before her death.

I was drawn entirely into Marsh’s mind while reading this book. I saw his world as he did, felt the cold ground under my bare feet, could put my hands up against the barrier of grief that separated Marsh from other people. It’s truly remarkable, then, that the author managed to pull off  a huge end-of-novel reveal. I knew there was a piece of information that I was missing about Marsh’s past, but I never suspected the truth.

Through Marsh, you get a glimpse of a small community that’s reeling from the tragic death of a young boy and the entire town’s inability to know how to act around the surviving twin. Eventually, with the help of a new neighbor who never knew Marsh as one half of a pair, he’s able to come to an important decision about he wants to live his post-twin life.

If you’re going to read Thin Space, I recommend that you steer clear of other reviews to make sure that no one spoils the ending for you! It’s worth the effort.

My thanks to Edelweiss and Simon Pulse/Beyond Words for providing me with a copy of this book for review.

What I’m reading: Vol 5.

What I'm reading

Nightstand: The Will of the Empress by Tamora Pierce. Rereading because I just read her new book about Briar and Rosethorn (Battle Magic) and one book of Briar is never enough.

Coffee table:  Fire by Kristen Cashore.  LOVE this book. Rereading to research for a Book Riot post.

Kindle: Graceling by Kristen Cashore. Sensing a pattern?

Audiobook: In the Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce. YA all around!

Internets:

20 Photos of Famous Authors in Awesome Costumes – Epic. Writers know how to party.

There’s no reason you’d want to skip reading an article called “Did Cervantes Invent the Turducken?”

I could never possibly spend enough time looking at the Miniature Libraries of Marc Giai-Miniet. SO WONDERFUL.

A Pug Dressed as a Wrecking Ball Won $25,000 in a Costume Contest – I think this was well earned.

5 Cozy Bread Bowls to Hold Your Soup (and Your Dreams) – YES. This. It is all I want.

People have been making noise recently about possibly changing the racial slur that my hometown’s football team uses as its name (and its accompanying offensive caricature of a mascot). I’m not a football fan, but I think this name change is long overdue.

Get a peek at the mockingjay dress in this new Catching Fire footage. What do you think?

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