{"id":483,"date":"2014-11-18T00:35:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-18T00:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=483"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:42:11","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:42:11","slug":"books-im-excited-about-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=483","title":{"rendered":"Books I&#8217;m Excited About Today"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\">\n<a href=\"https:\/\/writingya.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/MsMarvel.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/writingya.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/MsMarvel.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>I&#8217;m still not quite back on a normal blogging schedule&#8211;I don&#8217;t quite have the brain space for a review today (though the book currently on deck is an exciting one: <i>Mortal Heart<\/i> by Robin LaFevers!). But I did want to share a few books which arrived on my desk that I really cannot wait to read. First up, yesterday a friend loaned me a copy of the recently-released graphic novelization of the new <i>Ms. Marvel<\/i>&#8211;if you haven&#8217;t heard about her yet, she&#8217;s a 16-year-old Muslim Pakistani-American from New Jersey named Kamala Khan. I was definitely excited about the idea, but I didn&#8217;t realize how amazed and&#8230;<i>moved<\/i> I&#8217;d feel just holding it in my hands. What if there had been Pakistani-American superhero girls when I was growing up? How might I feel differently about my own identity? Possibly it wouldn&#8217;t have changed anything, but those questions zoomed across my mind as I flipped through it.<\/p>\n<p>Another one I just got in the mail is the ARC for Nova Ren Suma&#8217;s upcoming book <i>The Walls Around Us, <\/i>due out in 2015. It sounds suspenseful and creepy and all-around awesome, with ghosts and a whodunit and multiple viewpoints. Also just found out that the author is teaching a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.djerassi.org\/2015NovaRenSuma_workshop.html\" target=\"_blank\">Workshop\/Residency on YA novel writing<\/a> here in the area at Djerassi artist colony in the Santa Cruz Mountains. That&#8217;s next summer, with an end-of-Feb deadline&#8230;something to consider&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Lastly, I bought a book that&#8217;s supposed to be my reward when the semester is over and my teaching-related work is on a winter hiatus: the final book in the Bloody Jack series by L.A. Meyer. You know I loves me some Bloody Jack stories and I will be both happy and sad to read this one. On the other hand, I have a lot of respect for authors who are able to bring their characters through a long-long-term story arc like this one, having them grow and change and remain interesting throughout. And, in this case, the author keeps me laughing at Jacky&#8217;s outrageous doings, managing to ride the line between preposterous and believable, and create a fully fleshed-out historical setting that happens to contain quite a few incorrigible rogues. Viva Jacquelina, indeed. (<i>Viva Jacquelina<\/i> being the title of the penultimate Bloody Jack book, which I believe I&#8217;ve lagged on reviewing&#8230;sigh.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m still not quite back on a normal blogging schedule&#8211;I don&#8217;t quite have the brain space for a review today (though the book currently&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,60,34,47,18,22,10],"class_list":["post-483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-af","tag-book-news","tag-diversity","tag-ethnicity-and-ya-literature","tag-happenings","tag-roundups","tag-views"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=483"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8326,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions\/8326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}