I know I read a lot. I still get intimidated by big books. Funnily enough, Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo is not even 500 pages (similar to the second book, Crooked Kingdom), but the book itself—perhaps because of paper type?—feels bigger than that. And, honestly, I wasn’t that into if for the first quarter…
If you’ve been paying any attention at The Starving Artist, then you know I am up to my neck in Nanowrimo, the National Novel Writing Month when writers write about 1700 words per day until they have a “novel.” As part of my project this year—a YA fantasy adventure trilogy, book one—I have immersed myself…
It was October when I was at a great Southern Pines, NC bookstore called The Country Bookshop with a coupon, so my choice of Cooking for Wizards, Warriors and Dragons by Thea James (co-author of the award-winning The Book Smugglers fanzine) was not just about enjoying fantasy books nor just about me having a project…
Every once in a while, I pull an old favorite off the shelf and give it a read so that I can review it, fresh, for you. Till We Have Faces is one of my favorite books. Never heard of it? I’m sure you’ve heard of C. S. Lewis, the Christian apologist who also wrote…
Not a secret: I’m a Harry Potter fan. I read the new stuff as it comes out, including the Fantastic Beasts series, which, if you don’t know, is a five-book series of screen plays set in the Harry Potter world but seventy years before the stories we are familiar with. Which makes Dumbledore really old.…
I have read Life of Pi a couple of times and I like it. I have reasons, and I’ll give them to you in a sec. I also always leave it a little disappointed. I think my main beef with this book is that Yann Martel tried too hard to sell us his perceived moral.…
Disclaimer: The Dragonbreath series has nothing to do with Dragon’s Breath ice cream. It’s not that easy to find a local author to support, but my son did it for me. Ursula Vernon is an author out of Pittsboro, which is a town not that far from here (Durham, NC) and a place I will…
I have this feeling that my review of J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy has to be super long, like in accordance with the length of the books. But are the books really that long? Let’s do a little comparison. Each of the books (The Hobbit and then the trilogy…
It is hard to walk away from a book and expect to just re-approach it later and talk about it. Things have changed, they always have. And my memory never was what it used to be. I have the blog for that. In fact, after a couple years of always writing slightly behind myself (except…
I have been looking forward to re-reading this book for years, so it was advantageous when the movie was slated for release around the same time it was coming up on my son’s fourth grade reading list. You see, it was one of my favorite books when I was a kid and I read it…
When I made the Best Books list and started on the adventure of reading to children as they grew, I did not realize that so many of the “classics” of children’s chapter books come from the 50s. Even if they weren’t written in the 50s, many of them take place in or around the 50s.…
I have been surprised just how many books I already owned have surprised me in the past several weeks. Yes, I meant that sentence to read that way, but now it strikes me as awkward. Ah, well. Since I started Book a Day (which would be going much better if I didn’t keep misplacing the…
The Pendragon Trilogy, by Stephen R. Lawhead, which includes Taliesin, Merlin, and Arthur. I read old paperbacks from Avon Books which I received as hand-me-downs from my aunt. The original publication dates were 1987, 1988, and 1989. Turns out I was confused about these books. (Side note: Did you know there is a website to…
The Once and Future King and The Book of Merlyn, by T.H. White. This five-part series (four of which are included in The Once and Future King) was published as a complete novel, in 1958, and The Book of Merlyn posthumously and largely unedited, in 1977. The Book of Merlyn was always meant to be…
The Land of Stories series, by Chris Colfer, published from 2012-2015 by Little Brown. The series consists of four books so far, and Colfer says the series will end with the fifth book, assumed to be published in 2016. I read the series because my daughter–and just about every other kid her age–is in to…
I have recently joined a science fiction/fantasy writers group in the area. I thought that since my first novel was magic realism, the second was fantasy, and the third will also be fantasy, it would behoove me to get a little more into the culture, to learn from it and to basically not be totally…
The Sale Is Here. The Pre-order Is Here. The Reading Is Coming. The Festival Is Coming. The Launch is Here! Whew! No wonder I have hives. (Actually, I think that’s seasonal allergies.) The Night of One Hundred Thieves is a fantasy/medieval magic realism novel about thirty-two thieves and one magical ring. They all want it.…
I have not been a fantasy fan for very long. It took a daughter who was very into The Chronicles of Narnia and then Harry Potter to change my averting, literary ways. And then I was handed a copy of The Once and Future King. Oh! Where have you been all my life, T. H.…
the starving artist 