Winner!

Belatedly...a giveaway winner announcement!

The winner of Dido's Crown is ... Ulrika F.!

Congrats! There are no more giveaways at the moment, but a few more coming up in the next few weeks!

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Winners!

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Three giveaways closed for this week. Here are the winners!



The winner of Ashes of the Earth is ... Nancye D!

The winner of Road From the West is ... Elysium!

The winner of Ivan and Misha is ... Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit!

Winners have been emailed -- congrats!  For those who didn't win, I have two open giveaways still and more coming this week!
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Winter 2017 Bloggiesta To Do Post

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I love Bloggiesta for reminding me to brush up and take of my blog, and doing it "in community", so to speak, makes this housework a little more fun.

Given my earlier whining about feeling out-of-it with my blog, I'm really excited there's a mini-event this coming weekend in which I can do some backend work here.

My to do list is pretty simple:
make a top 10 of 2016 post (even if it is just a list!)review the book I just finished!I'd like to start 2017 without a backlog of reviews, so it feels important I keep up. We'll see if I'll tackle my 2016 backlog. (Perhaps for another Bloggiesta!)
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Book Review: The Hunger by Alma Katsu

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First line: Everyone agreed it had been a bad winter, one of the worst in recollection.

Unlike most of the planet, I didn't like Katsu's debut novel, The Taker. Which I was bitter about, because Katsu impressed me with her potential.

With The Hunger, I got the novel I always wanted: taut, moody, dangerous, atmospheric, and creepy.

I don't know where to start with my squee-ing. It helps that the premise -- supernatural take on the Donner Party tragedy -- is just so delicious. Katsu doesn't speed through the trip, and through the early days we learn how fractured these people were, and the many demons that chased them. She takes her time to give the characters space to breathe, and we're rewarded with rich plot threads and deeply flawed and oh-so appealing characters.

For history sticklers, this book will surely aggravate, as Katsu takes some wild liberties with the histories of the Donner Party members: victims of sexual abuse, secretly gay, murderer. But I uh-dore…
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Book Review: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

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First line: Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond.

I had to grit my teeth to get through this book. (All 209 pages.)

I'm ashamed to admit this since a surprising number of folks online and in person have cited this novella as one of their favorite books, but I found everything about this brief read to be agonizing -- the plot, the narrative style, the characters -- it and I just did not connect.

I went in expecting to love this book given its reputation and subject matter. Achebe depicts the story of a Nigeria broken by white colonialism; our hero is deeply flawed and stubbornly committed, living in a world with problems triply complicated by the unnecessary influence of white colonizers. Achebe's narrative style is straight-forward and clear, even as he articulates a world deeply foreign to modern audiences.

I suspect I didn't understand this book; I'm also not a huge fan of tragedies (I loathe Hamlet) so Okonkwo as a character didn'…
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