August 2013 reading list

I had four of these titles decided and ready to go from the evening of the 3rd of July. Luckily, I had all of these on hand, rather than having to rely on library availability. I think I would have cried if I had to go into a cue for this line up of novels.

I've also had a friend over from Brisbane last month, who found out what happens if you try to steal my books away from me.

So I'm being a little ambitious this month with my books, but as many of them are YA, I think I should manage to get through them alright.


For this month:



Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir.

4/5 - really great comedic writing.
I've been to a Reading Party where one of the hosts was reading out chapters from this novel. Don't know if it will stand up to being as hilarious as it sounds when being read out loud, but if things can stand the test of that, mostly they're as good as they seem.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing.

DNF - There's one in almost every month.
This Young Adult novel has been sitting on my to-be-read shelf for entirely too long. It may not be a library loan, but my partner is finally going to take it back off me if I don't get around to reading it this month! What can I say, I have a partner who indulges and encourages my love of YA lit. What can I say?

Divergent.

3.5/5 - Not exactly what I expected it would be, but a rewarding read all the same.
There is a lot of dystopian fiction in YA writing at the moment. I've already written a blog post about it here, so I won't go into that again here. Mostly, I'm reading this one because I'm interested in seeing the way Veronica Roth paints her view of our future world.

Wolf-Speaker.

4/5 - I've read this book before. Loved it then, loved it now. 
I first read this series of novels in late high school. They were a copy that belonged to a friend of mine, and I must have read them through till the spine started cracking. These are my very favourite series of the entire of Tamora Pierce's wide array of teen fiction subverting the idea that young women in fantasy can't play a main part in adventures. I'm reading it this month as a "buddy read" with a friend on Goodreads.com.

The Poison Eaters.

4/5 - Yes, yes, yes. Only one week story in this and it's definitely a re-read title.
This is a first time read largely because I cannot believe there is something by Holly Black that I haven't read yet! Also, it's a must read for me before her novel of one of the short stories in here, "The Coldest Girl in Cold Town", gets released (more on that soon).

Throne of Glass.

3/5 - Very structured plot in the beginning. Character development let it down. 
This is a giveaway book from Bloomsbury straight to me. I'll be sharing my thoughts on the book very soon. Mostly, things I know about it: there's an assassin, there's a fantasy world she's in, there is a Hunger Games related sticker on the front cover, so I know who they are marketing towards. It should be interesting.

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As ever, feel free to follow my reading or just follow me outright on my account at Goodreads.com
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6878229.Nicole_D_Fergusson

On Erotica, part 2.

Sometimes, it just so happens that book fans as big as me get to meet some of the authors that they most enjoy reading. Even when those fans live in a place so far away as Australia.


As it happens, I met Tracy O'Hara for the first time during the WorldCon held in Melbourne a couple of years back. She was excited to see her books featured in our book store, happily signed them and then stuck around talking with me and my co-worker for around half an hour before she went to the next panel she was in.

(I also got to meet writers Erica Hayes and Catherynne M. Valente!)

((This was also the con where I managed to score a signed copy of Charlaine Harris' Dead in the Family the year that it came out and before there was quite so much drama about her writing.))

Her 'Dark Brethren' vampire series is my most favourite, written in a style similar to Ms Harris and Patricia Briggs.

Tracy O'Hara herself is a lot of fun to talk to, and we've kept in contact over the years on Twitter as Australian writers and aspiring writers sometimes seem to do. So when I saw this interview reblogged on her feed, I knew it was bound to be good.

Erotica is not Porn: Novelist Encourages New Erotic Writers.

“Fifty Shades of Grey is not the best example of erotica. It's just the one that managed to break through here. Erotica is only a new publishing phenomenon here in Australia. In the US, it's been a best-selling and profit spinning genre since 2000,” Ms O'Hara said.
(Read more)


Now I've written about erotica on this blog once before. Then, it was to quote Julian Barnes' Telegraph article, in which he stated most modern authors feel obliged to write sex scenes if they want to see themselves published. I myself could certainly relate to this in past publishing experiences.

But Tracy's post is another side of the coin, if you will, an empowering view of the writing of erotica and separating it from the more derogatory title of "porn".

“They are stories which contain graphic sex scenes but narratives also centre as much around the mental and emotional journey of the characters as they do about the physical side of things.”


What Tracy suggests seems to be that physical aspects happen in real life and if your story is about the goings on of romance and real life characters, why not include erotica as a segment of that story? It doesn't need to be gratuitous, it doesn't need to be there, but it's an option to be considered.


Earlier in this month, I read one of Francesca Lia Block's books called The Elementals which had some graphic content. It forwarded the story, the relationship between two characters. I've also enjoyed reading her short story anthology Nymph, though that is a collection of erotica, which is not exactly the same thing.

Just before posting this, I reblogged a comment on Twitter stating that the only hard thing about writing erotica is figuring out good reasons why the characters are engaging in smutty activities.

My latest project is a joint anthology of m/m retold fairy tales, which is fantastic cause it's been a long time since I wrote anything other than het (hetrosexual pairings), but it's fun as well because some of the tales are heading towards erotic content. But they also centre as much around the mental and emotional stories of the characters, so I guess that's okay. ;)