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Artsy Shelf – 28 – From the back

Posted by kay on February 24, 2011 4:00 am in Features | 11 comments

Back in July 2010 I featured some interesting covers presenting women with their hair tied in a bun, viewed from the back. This time around, I have a slightly similar theme, except that these do not all have their hair in a bun, but are viewed from the back too ;

Am I the only one who feels like featuring a woman from the back is just another way to put a character on a cover without showing too much of her face, like those numerous covers with headless people? There’s definitely a sensuality to it, too. Since i like covers who show me enough but leave place to my imagination, I’m okay with these. In fact, I like some of them a lot!

If I had to pick a favorite it would be among the first four, and The Peach Keeper would be the ultimate winner. The cover is dreamy, poetic, sensual, feminine. It’s one of those dangerous covers that makes my heart yells “WANT!” even though I have no idea what the book is about. I really need to read Sarah Addison Allen soon.

My second favorite would be Russian Winter (which, by the way, has many beautiful covers! My copy is all white with a touch of red, beautiful!) I like the simplicity, the subtle tones, the frame, the lettering, its elegance.

Sweet Venom has an interesting dynamic, there’s movement which makes the cover look less stiff than others.

Would you pick any of these books by their covers? Which one is your favorite?

Wordless Wednesday – Church

Posted by kay on February 23, 2011 2:00 am in My work, other | 17 comments

Church across the street (Église du Très-Saint-Nom-de-Jésus).

Picture taken over a year ago, just found it again

For more Wordless Wednesday, click here!

Review : Trapped

Posted by kay on February 22, 2011 2:42 am in 3 stars reads | 6 comments

Trapped by Michael Northrop
Pages : 232
Genre : YA, Fiction
Stand Alone
My Rating :

What it’s about :

When the blizzard started, school was dismissed early, and everyone went home. Everyone, but Scotty and six other students. What they thought would be no more than a few hours, at worst a night, soon turns out into days. Without warmth, light and very little news from the outside world, the seven of them have entered a battle for survival.

I liked many things about this book : the writing, the idea, the realism… It wasn’t enough to really get me completely hooked, but it was enough for me to appreciate the book.

Really, if you want one quick indicator of what kind of storm it was : Drivers froze in their snowplows. (p. 2)

If you open this book waiting for action, adventure, suspense… you’ll probably be disappointed – or, to say the least, surprised. The pace of the story is very slow, with very little happening. Mostly, it’s about how cold it gets, how they get food, warmth, and so on. The characters are well defined in their roles (the beautiful girl, the dangerous guy, the football guy, etc.), but we don’t get to know a lot about them.

I would describe Scotty’s narration as “interior”, and I think that’s why I left the book feeling like not much happened in terms of action. Scotty isn’t describing what happened as much as how he felt when those things happened. There’s little dialog, and the claustrophobic setting translates into a claustrophobic narration. It’s quiet, like you can imagine when the only thing going on is snow falling, again and again, for days. This voice is probably my favorite aspect of the book.

I do think the book could have been a little more concise, and pack even more of a punch with its ending. The ending really let me down; it was a bit too open for my taste, with not enough resolution. Scotty announces from the first few pages that not everyone will survive : yet in the end, we don’t really know who does and who doesn’t. He also mentions many times how he and his friends worry for their parents, yet we never get to know if they’re all right or not.

In the end, I felt like there had been a lot of potential stories in this idea that were never told. I wish I could have know the characters better, and know more about what happened after. It’s hard to put stars on how much I enjoyed the book, because despite how much I liked the writing, the story let me down. Still I think many other readers will enjoy this quiet, shivering tale.

Review : Ice

Posted by kay on February 21, 2011 2:22 am in 4.5 stars reads | 10 comments

Ice by Sarah Beth Durst
Pages : 308
Genre : YA, Fantasy
Stand Alone
My Rating :

What it’s about :

On the day of her 18th birthday, Cassie comes face to face with a talking bear who makes her the following deal : if she’ll agree to marry him, he will bring back her mother, imprisoned away since Cassie has been a kid. Cassie has no idea what she’s in for when she says yes; in the following months, her life will be turned upside down more than once, taking her across the Arctic and testing her will in many ways.

Magical. Enchanting. Breathtaking. Adventurous. Surprising. Poetic.

Those are only few of the many words I could use to describe my experience of Ice. I loved, loved, LOVED it – even more because I hadn’t expected to.

I discovered Ice last year, reading reviews of it on various blogs, and thought it looked interesting enough. I still had some doubts it was a book for me though, as I am a very capricious reader when it comes to fairy tales. I’m not sure why, but not all re-tellings work well for me. Plus, talking animals, when written seriously, have a tendency to come off as ridiculous (to me, anyway), so it was with great skepticism that I pulled Ice from the bottom of my TBR pile.

From the start I loved Cassie. She’s the kind of main character I enjoy : she’s strong, not whiny, intelligent. She has a head on her shoulders and is ready to do anything for those she care about. She’s dedicated in a way that is admirable, which doesn’t mean that she’s perfect or never worried. She felt complete to me, and very real.

This realness in Carrie’s character was important in a world that suddenly reveals itself as filled with magic. It allowed me, as a reader, to really discover this magic through her eyes, and to understand (to some degree) what she was going through. I was especially worried about the “falling in love with a bear” part, since other readers had mentioned how weird it was, how unbelievable. It worked for me though. It’s definitely a personal feel; I liked Bear and found him to be very “human”, and the fact that he could change into a man at night reinforced that impression.

The author also did an amazing job of describing the Arctic. I could feel the cold through the pages, imagine the landscape of infinite white, the ice castle Bear created and all the places Cassie visits. I did felt the action was going in circles a bit at some point, when Cassie talks to a spirit, who brings her to another spirit, who brings her to another spirit… but in the end, it was only a small piece of the novel.

I loved Ice, and already can’t wait to read more from the author. Also, isn’t that cover just gorgeous?