I really liked The Strain. I agree, it might be a bit insustainable. I think, though, the idea that the new vamps go after the ones they loved the most and therefore the son is targeted is even more heartbreaking than going after you spouse.

I'm meh on Hunger Games, BUT, students LOVE it. It's sort of like Battle Royale in premise.

For zombie books (zombies apparently being the new black), I liked Carrie Ryan's Forest of Hands and Teeth. Bleak, though.

I freaking LOVED The Hunger Games. I thought the writing and worldbuilding and characters and plot and relationships were all fantastic, and it was one of the few books I've read in the last few years that I just couldn't put down. Definitely one of my favorite books of the year.

Ok so I did have nightmares last night -- not anything that was Actually part of the Strain , but related. And even though the worst night mare was this morning , the worst part of the night was where I kept dreaming that the putting in of the patio was a big part of the fight of good vs. evil. That was just stupid.

Did we already know about The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making?

Because I've only read the first chapter, but I am charmed to death.

I need hivemind help. I'm trying to find a young adult novel I read, heaven knows when. I'm fairly certain I read it in junior high or high school, so it predates the 1980s and the setting for the book itself is either late 50s/early 60s. The lead character is a young half-Romany/gypsy girl who grows up in either Chicago or New York with her parents among the Romany community. After her white mother dies (the girl is about sixteen or seventeen at this point), her Romany father fulfills a promise he made to her that he'll take their daughter to get to know her maternal grandparents from whom mom has been mostly estranged. He takes her to stay with them in Wisconsin during one summer where she finds her grandfather welcoming and her grandmother cold and closed off and definitely embarrassed by her granddaughter's very gypsy-like exterior. She tells her if she's going to be staying with them, she'll have to put away the colorful clothes and jewelry and act like a respectable girl.

During this summer, she learns a lot about her parents, how her white mother came to run away with the gypsy boy, how her grandfather is extremely sympathetic to the Romany-- he's accepted as one of them-- at a time period where they were looked upon with deep suspicion as thieves and charlatans. In the meantime, our heroine has met a young local and is falling in love-- the Dark Moment of the book is when a fire breaks out at the family farm-- I'm fairly certain it was vandalism-- and she risks her life to save the animals in the barn. Afterward, her grandmother is very forgiving because of course, it was her Bad Attitude that prompted the vandalism and she nearly lost her granddaughter the way she lost her daughter, and the local boy proclaims his undying love and asks her to marry him (this is one reason I'm so certain it was set in the 50s/60s) and it all ends Happily Ever After.

You'd think if I could remember all these details, I could remember the freakin' title, but alas, no.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

I do not know the title,but I am pretty sure I read it!

Did we already know about The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making?

Fay, have you read Palimpsest? That's the novel that Fairyland comes from (although the author never intended to write Fairyland).

Anyway, I'm reading Fairyland, and it really is lovely.

I have not read Palimpsest, but I went to try to find it at my bookshop yesterday! Sadly it was not in stock. I printed out the info from the info-printy-outy-machine, and WAS going to go and order it, because it sounded so very much My Cup Of Tea from the website info. However, then my feet took me over to the comic book section, and I picked up Buffy Season 8 book 4, and LoEG: 1910, and The Umbrella Academy Book 1, and decided maybe I'd already spent enough for one day.

Was reflecting upon the events of Buffy 8 Book 3, and the death of Renne, and I'm torn, but I still kind of mostly want to smack Joss for that one, I think. Because, damn it, she's so very much shown as The Girlfriend, and then as The Dead Girlfriend, with her final thoughts being of Xander (rather than her mum, or whatever) and I did love the whole Dracula schtick very much indeed, for obvious reasons of slashiness, but I still pretty much hate that they basically just fridged her.

Ah well.

Man, I keep buying new books, and I have a MOUNTAIN - well, several mountains - of books yet unread, but I'm mostly just writing at the moment.

But Palimpsest is definitely on the list. (Hell, it's one of my very favourite words, for starters!)

I am reading the most amazing book: The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet It's really really jawdroppingly awesome as is the website. Anyone read it?

(P.S. this is a perfect gift for a certain globehopping buffista)