Review: Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

From Goodreads:

Hark! A Vagrant takes readers on a romp through history and literature—with dignity for few and cookies for all—with comic strips about famous authors, their characters, and political and historical figures, all drawn in Kate Beaton’s pared-down, excitable style. This collection features favorite stories as well as new, previously unpublished content. Whether she’s writing about Nikola Tesla, Napoleon, or Nancy Drew, Beaton brings a refined sense of the absurd to every situation.

In just four years, Beaton has taken the comics world by storm with her non sequiturs, cheeky comebacks, and irreverent punch lines. With 1.2 million monthly hits on her site—500,000 of them unique—and comics appearing in Harper’s Magazine, the National Post, and The New Yorker, her caricatures of historical and fictional figures filtered through a contemporary lens display a sharp, quick wit that knows no bounds.

If I said that comic books were my guilty pleasure, I would be lying; I don't feel guilty at all for loving them! I had been reading Kate's comics for at least a year before picking her book up, but even then most of them I hadn't seen before or they gave me a laugh the second time around.

I love English, sure, but I'm still a history buff through and through. Luckily for me, Kate's comics center around both of these things! Some of the most fun I've had while reading this book is looking up new people from history that I haven't heard of before and finding out even more about how cool/ bad-ass they were. For example, the most recent comic? Josephine Baker saves the day. Even if you know little about history, Kate explains some of her comics at the bottom of the page, but even if history comics aren't your style she has plenty poking fun at classic novels and superheroes.

If you're even the littlest bit curious about Kate's comics, you can check out her LiveJournal of the same name to see some samples of her work, or spend hours upon hours reading one right after another. Because, you know, it's not like I have or anything...

I'm loving this string of awesome books I've gotten to review!

Goodreads, Her Store, her Tumblr
Title: Hark! A Vagrant
Author/ Artist: Kate Beaton
Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly
Publication Year: 2011
Page #: 166
ISBN: 978-1-77046-060-7

Her book is available for sale at her store, along with other things with her drawings printed on them, so you can look extra-cool while you read it.

Fantastic Covers Friday: The Evolution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

Fantastic Covers Friday is a weekly meme over here at Brave New Shelf where I highlight beautiful covers that I find, from both old books and new, from young adult books.

Wow, LOADS of awesome news coming out of the writing world this week! First Free Four was a success, and now the cover for the sequel to The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (my review here) by Michelle Hodkin, titled The Evolution of Mara Dyer, has been revealed:

Whoever is doing her covers seriously needs some recognition, they're absolutely gorgeous! I'm assuming that, like the first book, the cover design was done by Lucy Ruth Cummings and the cover photograph is copyright Heather Landis. (both links go to the respective websites of the artists)

I love how the hands are coming together (or moving apart?) in the middle, especially after the embrace on the cover of the first book. The word "of" has even moved from it's position on the first book to make room for them, a great set-up in my opinion. The coloring is spot on too, that eerie blue tone that is both sad and scary at the same time. 

Well, I'm excited now. Are you?

P.S. Don't worry that Goodreads says the book is only 272 pages. Michelle Hodkin has stated on her blog:

THE EVOLUTION is almost exactly the same length as THE UNBECOMING. Like, within a few hundred words. I have no idea how that happened, but I think it's kind of cool.

No worries! There's plenty more Mara coming October 23rd.

Book Trailer: Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

Um, WHY haven't I read this book yet?!

An older book trailer, but still a beautiful watch for those that haven't seen it yet. I'm posting it for the gorgeous artwork and animations, not to mention my fangirl mode activates whenever I find canon drawings of book protagonists. 

It's funny, I always think that book trailers are something that I won't like, but I've stumbled across plenty of great ones. Do you have a favorite book trailer I should watch?

Poem in Your Pocket Day

From Poets.org

I'm not a poetry girl. Some folks live for them, and I say all the power to those people, but they really aren't my thing. For years poetry units in school would fill me with dread, and to be quite honest they still do. I'm apparently not the only one either: my school only put up their National Poetry Month poster this week (yikes.)

That changed in ninth grade. I was in an advanced English class with other kids I had shared English with for years, but even that didn't lessen the unpleasantness of our poetry unit. We has this thick green book that was a hassle to carry around, and God help you if you dropped it on your toe (or someone else's.) We were instructed to find a poem in the book to share in front of the class. I flipped and flipped through that book, and eventually I stumbled across a poem I... liked. One of the first poems I had read that wasn't about flowers, trees, or feelings of existentialism through birds. It was gritty, it was honest, it was sarcastic, albeit is was still about plants.*

And I want to share it with you, because that's what National Poetry Month and, by extension, Poem in Your Pocket Day , April 26th, is all about. Find a poem and share one with a friend, with a stranger, with anyone.

And especially share it with that quiet ninth grader who sits in the back of your second period English class and most likely hates poetry.

*If you're curious, it's by Carl Sandburg and titled "Grass." It can be found at the Poetry Archive if you're interested in reading it. I still buy his books today, and he's the only poet that I will read on a regular basis or for *gasp*, fun.

Waiting on Wednesday (5): The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

From Goodreads:

“There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.”
It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.
Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.
His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.
But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.
For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.
From Maggie Stiefvater, the bestselling and acclaimed author of theShiver trilogy and The Scorpio Races, comes a spellbinding new series where the inevitability of death and the nature of love lead us to a place we’ve never been before.

Publisher: Scholastic Press
Release Date: September 18th, 2012
Amazon, Author's Website

.......... 

I'll admit, I'm probably the last YA reader on Earth who hasn't picked up The Wolves of Mercy Falls series of hers, but I've been listening to The Scorpio Races while I work and it's been pretty good so far. I love the creativity that went into writing it, and I'm certain that Stiefvater will bring the same to this next book. I'll admit that the whole idea of her not having a problem with causing her true love to die doesn't sit too well with me, but I love books about facing death, and so I'm looking forward to this one. 

..........

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted weekly over at Breaking the Spine.

Mission Free Four: Success!

Boy, am I glad that I pre-ordered Insurgent by Veronica Roth last night, because I came home to a pleasant surprise today! Keeping good on her promise, after Insurgent reached 35,000 pre-orders Veronica Roth has released Free Four: Tobias Tells the Story, a Divergent story from Four's perspective!

Sadly, I'm up to my armpits in AP test prep right now (chemistry, macroeconomics, and English, here I come!), so I'll have to postpone reading it. You can pop right on over and do so right now though, at the Divergent Series Facebook page to check it out.

Happy reading, and don't spoil it for me!

Review: Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

I have seriously seen all of these covers one place or another. 

From Goodreads:

Meet Skulduggery Pleasant. Sure, he may lose his head now and again (in fact, he won his current skull in a poker match), but he is much more than he appears to be—which is good, considering that he is, basically, a skeleton. Skulduggery may be long dead, but he is also a mage who dodged the grave so that he could save the world from an ancient evil. But to defeat it, he'll need the help of a new partner: a not so innocent twelve-year-old girl named Stephanie. That's right, they're the heroes. 
Stephanie and Skulduggery are quickly caught up in a battle to stop evil forces from acquiring her recently deceased uncle's most prized possession—the Sceptre of the Ancients. The Ancients were the good guys, an extinct race of uber-magicians from the early days of the earth, and the scepter is their most dangerous weapon, one capable of killing anyone and destroying anything. Back in the day, they used it to banish the bad guys, the evil Faceless Ones. Unfortunately, in the way of bad guys everywhere, the Faceless Ones are staging a comeback and no one besides our two heroes believes in the Faceless Ones, or even that the Sceptre is real. 

So Stephanie and Skulduggery set off to find the Sceptre, fend off the minions of the bad guys, beat down vampires and the undead, prove the existence of the Ancients and the Faceless Ones, all while trading snappy, snippy banter worthy of the best screwball comedies.

Oh man... How do I begin to describe why I love this series, especially after a description like that. I can, and will, talk to you until the cows come home as to why I love it, but why you should love it too is another matter entirely.

For starters, to call it crazy is an understatement. In the first three books alone we have talking skeletons, little girls that do magic, killers for hire, teleporters, bumbling killer-wannabes, swordswomen, allies who can't be trusted, enemies who can be trusted, Frankenstein-like monsters, suits that can protect you from injury, vampires who change by peeling their skin off, sorcerers with every kind of magic under the sun, evil gods, powerful ancestors, very normal parents, obnoxious relatives, and an assortment of other beings both mystifying and horrifying alike. If I has a nickel for every sarcastic or witty comment uttered, or every time I have laughed out loud, I'd be pretty freakin' rich at this point.

I've been putting off this series to review for a while now, and I guess it's mostly because I wasn't certain how to approach it. There are six books out so far (nine planned), but only three have been released in the U.S. They're popular overseas, but never caught on here for some reason. I've read and own all six, but they haven't been easy to get: I live in the northeastern United States, and to buy and ship three books at a time from Amazon U.K. has cost me around $50*, but actually buying them was really hassle-free. Of course, I think the series is worth it, but other people may not.

My best tip to you is to find the first three, either from the library or buy them on the Internet, and give them a try. I prefer books four, five, and six and their story, but the first three will get you a good feel for the series.

Five Stars!

Title (book one): Skulduggery Pleasant: Scepter of the Ancients\
Author: Derek Landy
Publisher: Harper Collins Children's Books (U.K.); Harper Trophy (U.S.)
Publication Date: 2007- 2008 (U.K./ U.S.)
Pages: 371 (my U.K. copy)
Goodreads, Amazon U.S., Amazon U.K.