Widening the Scope Pt. 2: One of the best posts to come out of Tumblr

So, people may have noticed I've started using Tumblr again. It comes and goes ;) I wrote this post because I saw something on Tumblr a couple of months ago that I didn't simply want to disappear as so many things in Tumblr do.

Already this month, I've written about strength as it relates to characters who are male and female. Now I want to pay attention to a different kind of diversity and, dare I say it, one that is closer to my own heart.

When I was a teenage bisexual girl, I found that there were a lot of books that related my experiences with guys, but none that would give those strange and outlandish feelings I had for girls any credence. Oh, there was Sarah Waters and the book that the BBC mini-series brought out into the spotlight, Tipping the Velvet.

(Also Fingersmith and, to a lesser extent, The Night Watch.)

That was... kinda it. More commonly, there were starting to be books that would feature a side character, or best friend of the main character, who was gay. I think that Holly Black's Ironside was the first book I read where the gay side character featured in a romantic relationship of his own. 

It's not a fun feeling when you pick up a book only to find that the characters that should be there for you to identify with, at least in some books, simply aren't there. 

Polyamory is the other minority that just doesn't get a lot of play in books though, I will freely add, that it has gotten better already since two years ago when I wrote this post.

I mean... people are actually talking about it now. O.o 

Which brings me to the Tumblr post that inspired this babbling:

Hi Sarah, I really appreciated your response on asexual representation and was curious about your thoughts on the lack of poly representation in YA lit. (read more)

What follows is a well considered question asking to the cultural attitudes that may still too much influence what can and can't be published in YA literature. 

What Sarah Rees Brennan did was reply with her own carefully considered responses, even going so far as to post, 

Here is a non-comprehensive but awesome list of YA books with LGBTQ and poly characters I found! http://goforitgenevieve.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/long-post-about-lgbtq-and-poly-too-ya-fiction-is-long/ (Linking to this one rather than the one at gayya.org because it has a few indicators of favourite books and content, but gayya.org is fantastic and amazing and everyone should read it!) ... So these are my (imperfect!) thoughts, summed up with I think it can be done, has been done, and I truly hope it will be done more.

Which even I didn't know about, so I'm more than happy to share about it here.

As if that wasn't all amazing enough, Melissa Marr weighed in with her own opinion:

"I’m always happy when folks comment on the poly resolutions in my Wicked Lovely books.  Yes, Radiant Shadows has a poly resolution.  So, too, does Darkest Mercy.  Sometimes the answer (in both life & fiction) is that what looks like a “love triangle” is actually NOT. Sometimes a person can have a healthy, happy relationship with two other people." (read more)

When people pull me up and ask me why I read so much YA fic, why I think it's so important: this. This is the answer to all those questions.

New Release - Rages & Bones, edited by Melissa Marr.

I have been watching the release of this anthology for what feels like Too Damn Long. I am very excited to say, two weeks ago, this book hit shelves.

Many people would have had advanced reader copies long before that.

But now it's free to the general public!!

Well... not free. I mean, you still have to pay for it...

And why wouldn't you, with the likes of Neil Gaiman, Melissa Marr, Holly Black and Kelley Armstrong filling the pages!

Excuse me while I run around in circles in excitement that this book has finally been released. :D:D

For those people who may have been sleeping under a rock (or who are merely just not so excited about this bunch of authors as I seem to be), the novel drumming up this much excitement in me is Rags & Bones, a new anthology edited by Melissa Marr and Tim Pratt including a list of classic stories that have been revisioned and repackaged.

Let me pull out a line up for you:

Holly Black - Sheridan le Fanu wrote an early poem called Carmilla that is largely known for its lesbian vampire content. Oh, and it was originally written in the 19th century.

Neil Gaiman - After what Anne Rice did to the Sleeping Beauty fairytale in 1983-85, I can't wait to see what his magician of dark fantasy manages to put together.

Melissa Marr - I don't know much about Kate Chopin's The Awakening, which is what Melissa's own story in this anthology is based on, but I can't wait to find out!

Kelley Armstrong - W. W. Jacob's The Monkey's Paw sounds interesting.

Kami Garcia - I've read only a little from Kami before, but with the popularity that Once Upon a Time has shone on the character of Rumplestiltskin, I can't wait to see what this author has devised for us here.

Saladin Ahmed - This is an author I've heard absolutely nothing about before, but my love of Spenser's Faerie Queene won't allow me to let this revisioning go by unremarked.

There are 12 stories in the anthology in all. Well worth it for both favourite authors and for those you've never heard of before.If you're still unsure, io9 has published an excerpt from Tim Pratt's retelling of Henry James' The Jolly Corner:

The Cold Corner

by Tim Pratt

I left home five years ago, and haven’t been back since— so why do I still think of it as home at all?

After almost a week spent driving across the country on I‑40 East, I cut north on Highway 202, and within an hour reached the outskirts of my hometown, Cold Corners. The only corners are in the endless rectangular fields of soybeans and tobacco, and with triple-​digit heat and 90 percent humidity in summer, it’s hardly “cold,” so I don’t know where it got the name.  (read more)

Holly Black's upcoming release: 'The Coldest Girl in Coldtown'.

I had just finished airing excitement for the release of Love in a Time of Global Warming by favourite author Francesca Lia Block, as well as the upcoming new season of Sherlock. There as well is the ever-continuing promise of S.H.I.E.L.D. coming out in September. I had almost thought that all my potential for squee had been all used up for the time being.

Nope. I was wrong.

At the beginning of the month, I promised I'd be writing more on this upcoming title soon, and here it is:

Holly Black! That is a name people have no doubt seen on my blog more than a couple of times. (If you haven't, I have personally devised a clever tagging system at the bottom of each post so that clicking on 'Holly Black' will pull all such posts up. :D)

Holly Black's short story anthology The Poison Eaters got a fair amount of publicity in 2010 when it was released, but by far and away the most noise made of any short story in that anthology had to do with "The Coldest Girl in Coldtown".

Now, more than three years later, it's going to be released as a full length story in its own right. Now, first there was the cover reveal, then there was Entertainment Weekly releasing their exclusive trailer for the book slated to come out on September 3rd, here.

I'm not ashamed to say that I am excited. In fact, I'm already re-reading The Poison Eaters just to tide me through! And, as of today, the First 8 Chapters of The Coldest Girl in Coldtown are available for FREE, you saw correctly, FREE on Amazon now: http://www.amazon.com/Coldest-Girl-Coldtown-Chapters-ebook/dp/B00DB7R7E6/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1375816503&sr=8-1&keywords=coldtown

Only until the date of the release. (September 3rd. Eeeeeee!!) So get in quick!

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

July 2013 reading list

So I'm having a lovely time around here, working out what it's like to work as a full time admin from home while still working out how everything's supposed to look. My writing has taken a little bit of a pause of late, but that's just allowing my beta readers to catch up on a little bit of the backlog.

I've been watching a lot of Boston Legal.

I also had my first bout of depression since leaving the 'Real Life Job', which was a bit scary. I'd somehow thought that maybe my depression was being caused by going to a job I didn't like and by ceasing to go to that job, I would be magically CURED! Sad truth is, although the Real Life Job may have exacerbated the extent to which I was feeling sad, sad and depression is just something I have to look after now and again. That in itself is entirely too depressing a thought to linger on.

So! When I haven't been in the middle of all of that, I've been reading.

Here is my monthly dose of new books:

Heartless.

3/5 - An okay read, not as good as others in the series.
I remember in March, the first book that I listed was Black Heart by Holly Black. I remember it because it was the last one of its series and, as excited as I was to start reading it, I was also dreading it because it would prove to be the end of a series I had very much enjoyed. Well, there is still one more book after this in Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series, but only one.

The Night Circus.

4/5 - Imaginative and different.
I know almost nothing about this book except that the writing is said to be evocative and I haven't seen a single bad thing said or written by anyone whose advice I lean to in these matters. Onwards to finding a new author I'm sure I'll love!

The Elementals.

4/5 - Not the best book by her, but enjoyable just the same.
'I stood alone by the large window, looking out at the town below.'
This is the first new book by Francesca Lia Block that I have read for years and I am so excited by it! There's been a lot of talk about the new genre of New Adult writing going around. I think this might be the first book I'd place in that category since I started posting here. It seems, while I have not been paying attention, Francesca's visibility as a writer has gone up and up to the point where all her books are on hold or borrowed out at my local library. I'm so proud!

Something Rotten.

3/5 - This one dragged. I wanted to like it more than I did.
As I started reading the back of this book, I can't believe I've left it so long between reading the previous Jasper Fforde book and this one. It's a book whose narrative circles around Hamlet and Shakespeare! Be still my beating... I don't talk about Shakespeare enough on here. I barely even mentioned him when I read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. I really should do more of it.

Gentlemen and Players.

5/5 - Amazing, simply amazing. The best book by her I've read yet!
Joanne Harris. Need I say more? I'm sure I'm in for a treat, actually. With both the lyrical writing expected from The Night Circus and from Joanne Harris, the only thing I feel I'd need to add to this would be another book from Sarah Waters, but I don't think I have any more of hers that I haven't recently read. :/

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As ever, for updates on how I'm going with all these books, follow me on Goodreads.com:
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