// By Jessica 7 Comments
6 Jan
2012

WHERE IN HADES IS MY BOOK?

There are two awesome book signings in Utah this month: Cinder by Marissa Meyer and Everneath by Brodi Ashton. My favorite thing about book signings is reading their books and then getting to ask them questions about it. Plus meeting them. Yeah, yeah and the signature, too.

Luckily, Cinder is already released and Marissa Meyer won’t be in Utah until the 11th so I have plenty of time to read her book before she gets here. YAY! And ask her questions!

I had my heart set on reading an ARC of Everneath by Brodi Ashton before her launch party on January 24, 2012. I decided this way back in November so I figured I’d have plenty of time to get an ARC by then.

Oh how wrong I was.

First, I found the email to Brodi’s agent on her website and emailed her agent since I’ve learned vicariously from twitter that asking an author for an ARC is a big no-no because it’s rude and they don’t have them. Her agent kindly emailed me back and said she didn’t have any but that I should try NetGalley.

Google: What is NetGalley

Oh. It’s an ARC request site where they send you ebooks of ARCs if you are approved by the publisher. I bow to the genius that thought of that. I request Everneath 3 times and get denied each time.

How about four times?

No.

Five times?

NO.

Six?

STILL NO.

I think the seventh time will be something like, “OH MY GOSH JESSICA THE ANSWER IS NO DON’T EVER ASK AGAIN.” So I’m afraid to request it seven times. I don’t want to be a pest.

I’m not giving up (though the logical part of me thinks that I should). Do you see an ARC of Everneath in my hands? I don’t either.

That’s when I get on twitter.

I find four contests on twitter that are giving away Everneath ARCs none of which I win. I put a plug on my Waiting on Wednesday blog post that you can be my new best friend if you have an ARC of Everneath that I can have which no one responds to. Ouch.

And then.

I find dear, sweet Melina from Reading Vacation who wants to trade Everneath. What do you want for it, Melina? YOU CAN HAVE ANYTHING YOUR HEART DESIRES. I send her Clockwork Prince and she mails me Everneath and another book, whose title I can’t remember, to my PO Box that I bought just for my blog. I’m giddy. I check that PO Box with bated breath every day. Nothing.

Hermes himself changed the correct address that Melina put on the package to the wrong one. Then it gets sent to the Underworld where the Dark Lord sits on it and then they send it back to Melina. What the crap. And I mixed up two mythologies. Whatever. I complain to the post office that my package got sent back and they reassure me by saying, “That’s not supposed to happen.” No duh. They give me my money back for my PO Box and I still don’t have my book.

Melina, angel that she is and in no way is to blame for any of this, resends my book to my home address before Christmas and IT’S STILL NOT HERE despite me stalking my mail delivery person. I think Hermes took it back to the Underworld where he’s dancing around with it and the Dark Lord is farting on it….I don’t know. Seriously. Where in Hades is my book?!

So.

I’m going to read Cinder and then I’m going to read The Hunchback of Notre Dame because THAT’S THE KIND OF MOOD I’M IN. I’m starting to get YA overload. I need a break with something nice and long and tedious.

I feel liberated after my rant and ready to pass out at the same time. Thanks for listening.

By the way, I laughed my head off while typing this whole thing and I turned something that was giving me real anxiety into something funny.  I feel ten times better about it now and I can laugh it off.  That’s the magic of writing.

Posted on: January 6, 2012 4:01 am By Jessica Filed Under: My Reading Diary Tagged With: , 7 Comments
// By Jessica 2 Comments
28 Jul
2011

My First Journal

I started this journal when I was 4 years-old in 1988. (I’m 27.  Stop counting.) The first entry is written by my mom since I was too young to write and it talks about how I learned in church about journals and wanted to start one. I scribbled in it, traced my hand, and drew pictures until I learned to write.

The things I wrote about most often were vacations. We went on a lot of vacations as a family. It was almost always camping and something almost always went wrong. It made for some adventurous trips and great stories to tell. Looking back, I’m amazed that I loved writing even when I didn’t know how.

Some of my Flashback Friday posts will have my original journal entries along with them – including tomorrow’s post!  See you then!

Posted on: July 28, 2011 7:40 pm By Jessica Filed Under: My Reading Diary Tagged With: 2 Comments
// By Jessica 2 Comments
25 Jul
2011

I Only Read One Book at a Time…Kind of

I was sad to break my blogging streak, but I went on vacation this past weekend at Mirror Lake in Utah.  I had blogged for 35 days straight without missing a day.  It had to end sometime.

I probably won’t write much about the vacation because it’s hard for me to write about what’s happening in my life now.  It just doesn’t have the perspective of looking back and it tends to read like a bunch of facts instead of a story.  I will say, though, that I thought my kindle was broken.  I LOVE reading on vacations and I was very sad that my broken kindle didn’t allow me to do this on the last day of our trip.  Marla was the only one that gave me the properly shocked reaction I was looking for.  My two boys were running around the trailer and accidentally knocked it off the night stand.  It only fell two feet and when I turned it off, the screen went blank. I kept holding the power button to reset it, but nothing happened.  When I got home, I got online to troubleshoot it.  Turns out, you do hold the power button to reset it, you just have to do it longer than I was.  It reset fine.  Crisis averted.

Me and my son at Mirror Lake

“Books are more real when you read them outside.”

-Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver

Everyone was very nice about my kindle being broken on the trip and offered books for me to read.  When I said that I only read one book at a time, my husband laughed. “You do not!”  Okay, he’s kind of right.  Here are the books I’m reading right now:

  • The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
  • Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual
  • The Twilight Saga Official Illustrated Guide
  • Grimm’s Fairy Tales
  • The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan

So I only read one novel at a time. Short stories and scriptures don’t count.  It’s one of my “rules” to not start another novel until I’ve finished the one I’m reading because I don’t read for the sake of reading.  I like to finish stories and it’s really hard for me to not finish a book once I’ve started it.  This makes me really selective of the books I read because it’s hard for me to put it down even if it’s trashy.  I’m getting better, though.  Even though it was nice of my dad to offer his Mitt Romney book for me to read, I didn’t see the point of reading 20 pages and then going back to the book I was reading.

Some people will ask how I can keep books straight if I’m reading more than one.  It kind of reminds me of how people will watch many TV shows on a weekly basis and not get them mixed up.  They’re different stories – it’s not hard.  I will say, though, that reading more than one novel at a time will give me very strange dreams sometimes.  Apparently my unconscious mind can’t keep the stories straight as well as my conscious mind can.

Posted on: July 25, 2011 2:22 pm By Jessica Filed Under: My Reading Diary Tagged With: , 2 Comments
// By Jessica Leave a Comment
16 Jul
2011

Harry Potter

Aren’t they pretty?  These are the UK Adult Paperback versions of Harry Potter books 1-3 that I bought at King’s Cross station in London when I was there in 2008.  I geek out every time I see them.  I love the British slang in there and it’s sad to me the American versions left it out.  It was such fun to try and figure out what they heck they meant by, for example, their “revision schedules.”  Uhh…apparently it means “studying schedules.”  That’s one thing I learned in Europe.  Speaking the same language doesn’t always mean you understand one another.  Whenever we’d ask someone where the “exit” was, we’d get blank stares until we learned the term was “way out.”

I couldn’t let today end without saying something about Harry Potter.  I saw the movie today in IMAX 3D and it was AWESOME.  What a tear jerker.  My husband even tried to discreetly hide his tears.  Everything about Snape was moving and Harry coming to the realization that he was going to die for his friends was heart breaking. My dad elbowed my sister the whole time  with questions and a few exclamations of “I knew it!”  He hasn’t read the books, so he had a lot of theories of what would happen.  After the movie was over, my dad said that he liked it and “he’d spend the rest of the day trying to figure out what happened.”

I feel like it’s an end of something great, but I feel a little better thinking about Harry Potter living on when I read them to my kids someday.  Oh, and Pottermore cheers me up, too.  It’s going to be epic.

Posted on: July 16, 2011 9:46 pm By Jessica Filed Under: My Reading Diary Tagged With: , , Leave a Comment
// By Jessica 1 Comment
7 Jul
2011

My Reading Journal

Before I started this blog, I kept a reading journal in a black composition notebook.  I started it in 2005 and I still use it.  It’s been my catch-all place for books I’ve read, stickers, articles, comics, notes on difficult books, reading lists, and favorite quotes.

Front Cover

Back Cover – I got the "trust SNAPE" sticker at Borders for preordering HP7. I'm so glad I was right.

Here’s how I have the pages organized: I have 3 columns - one for the year I finished the book, one for the title and one for the author. Books without a date haven’t been read yet.

 

I scribble in the margin where the year usually goes when I’m writing a quote. At the end of the quote, I write the author name and the book it came from.
 
I recenlty put sticky notes that authors signed. When I met author’s whose books I had in ebook on my kindle, I didn’t know what to have them sign. I decided on sticky notes so I could keep them in my reading journal.

 What would you have an author sign if you bought their ebook?

Posted on: July 7, 2011 5:25 am By Jessica Filed Under: My Reading Diary Tagged With: 1 Comment
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