The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling, 1894, 1895 Disney’s The Jungle Book , 2016 Challenge Book! Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016 – Read a book that was adapted into a movie, then watch the movie. Debate which is better Okay, I may have done the challenge slightly backward, in that I saw the new live-action movie and then wanted to re-read the book. I have read the book before, but it’s been a few years. Of course, years before I read the books the first time, I saw the Disney animated movie, and the Chuck Jones specials (Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, The White Seal). But I read the Just So Stories before that ... does that count? I guess the timeline is sort of a wash. Anyhow, none of that is the point. The point is that I adore these books, nearly unreservedly. I say nearly, because a few of the short stories contain slightly awkward, outdated phrasing or attitudes, but VERY few, considering when these were written. I don’t know what to cover. I guess f...

Paper Girls Brian K. Vaughan, Cliff Chiang, et.al., 2016 Premise: Erin delivers the paper in the early morning, but the morning after Halloween isn’t a good time to be out on the streets. There’s teenagers causing mischief, cops looking for teens to bust, and… monsters from another time? Four paper girls team up in this comic that’s part horror, part adventure, and totally 80s. Collects Paper Girls #1-5 I was really intrigued by an excerpt from this book, and of course I’ve enjoyed Vaughan’s work before, so I snapped this up in trade. I really like how firmly set in its time period it is. The fashions, the (offensive) language, the technology, everything is right. The plot is surreal, mysterious, and potentially really screwed up - so basically what I expected. The dialogue of some of the antagonists is very cleverly written. Erin, KJ, Tiffany, and Mackenzie are an appropriately diverse group for a piece written today and loosely inspired by the boys-adventure movies of t...

Christmas vs. the Fourth of July Asenath Carver Coolidge, 1908 Challenge Book! Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016 - Read a book under 100 pages Another bonus review on Mainlining Christmas ! This week, read about a weird little book from the early 1900s.

No normal review today. Instead, I have a snarky book post up over at Mainlining Christmas , as part of our Christmas in July special event! Enjoy!

The Uplift War David Brin, 1987 Hugo Winner - 1988 Premise: The inhabitants of the colony on the damaged planet of Garth know they are in danger. They don’t know why Galactic strife is focused on the species of Earth, but humans, chimps, and alien diplomats prepare to defend their colony from a larger societal struggle they barely understand. This book is technically a sequel to Startide Rising , but this is a completely separate story taking place very far away from the prior book. The events of the prior book have an impact on this one, but there is no need to read this series in order or in its entirety to comprehend the story. To recap the setting, these books take place in a future in which the sentient species of Earth (humans plus the genetically modified neo-chimps and neo-dolphins) have recently joined a greater galactic civilization. One of the major principles of this civilization is uplift. A recognized species can “uplift” a pre-sentient species into a spac...

World War Z Max Brooks, 2006 (audio edition 2007) Challenge Book! Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016 - Listen to an audiobook that has won an Audie Award Premise: After the end of the Zombie War, journalist Max Brooks travels around the world to collect the stories of survivors, to keep alive the memory of an unprecedented struggle. Look, I finished an audiobook! It helps that a) I have a new commute that takes a long time, and b) this book is basically ideal to record as an audiobook. The structure of multiple narrators and interviews is perfect for this full-cast format. I can also understand both why Hollywood snapped it up for a movie and why the adaptation was reportedly terrible. This would be a fantastic fictional documentary, or a series of short films. It would not work as a single-character adventure vehicle. I really enjoyed listening to this book, although I went back and forth on how realistic I felt it was. The immediacy and detail of each account was n...

Inside Out and Back Again Thanhha Lai, 2011 Challenge Book! Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016 - Read a middle grade novel Premise: Hà is just a girl when she must leave her home, her country, and seek a new life in America. Follow her family’s journey through a series of poems chronicling the year 1975. This was recommended by a friend who is studying children’s literature, and I can see why. It’s approachable and an easy read, but emotionally, culturally, and historically complex. Lai is writing directly from her own experience, as she fled Vietnam with her mother and siblings at the end of the war. I think the author fully succeeds in her aim to convey the emotional reality of being a child going through that experience. The narrative voice is shaped by the form, and the short, evocative phrases of the poems make tangible Hà’s ambivalence, her anger or sadness or worry, her hesitancy. They give the book immediacy in all the description of small details as well as ...