Shine, Shine, Shine is a unique love story and an adventure between worlds. Lydia Netzer delivers a book about death, challenges, and what it means to be human. At times, even though I’m not married with children, I could relate to the anger, sadness, and triumphs of these characters. Again, it’s wonderful when you can feel and relate to a book like that. You should be able to at least finish the book in a weeks time, and it is not challenging at all. It was very refreshing to read such an interesting and not your average story. The books I have read lately seem to have the same tone about them. I never guessed right on the ending, if that gives you some insight.

When Maxon met Sunny, he was seven years, four months, and eighteen days old. Or, he was 2,693 rotations of the earth old. Maxon was different, as you can guess. Sunny was different, too. They were different together. Now, twenty years later, they are married, and Sunny wants, more than anything, to be “normal.” She’s got the housewife thing down, but Maxon, a genius engineer, is on a NASA mission to the moon, programming robots for a new colony. Once they were two outcasts who found unlikely love in each other: a wondrous, strange relationship formed from an urgent desire for connection. But now they’re parents to an autistic son. And Sunny is pregnant again. And her mother is dying in the hospital. Their marriage on the brink of imploding, and they’re at each other’s throats with blame and fear. What exactly has gone wrong?

When an accident in space puts the mission in peril, everything Sunny and Maxon have built hangs in the balance. Dark secrets, long-forgotten murders, and a blong wig all come tumbling to the light. And nothing will ever be the same….(cue cliff hanger music)

Our book trailer summarizes the plot.

Shelley was deliberately vague about Victor Frankenstein’s procedures in reanimating his creation–although she was versed in Galvanism and the current (no pun intended) scientific investigations regarding the human body’s function–presumably because she did not wish to outrage early 19th century readers with grisly details.  Shelley was probably more intrigued by the moral and philosophical issues than the precise scientific concepts involved.  Still, the novel remains the best early example of science fiction and provided generations of contemporary and future authors of horror stories with a solid template for generating a truly terrifying tale.

What I recently finished:
I just finished reading Jonathan Maberry’s Rot & Ruin, the first book in the Benny Imura series (the series will have four books total and book 3, Flesh & Bone, will be published this fall). This story takes place 14 years after First Night – the night when anyone who died turned into a zombie. As the night went on, more and more people died, and thus more and more people became zombies.

I’m not a fan of the zombie genre – or the post-apocalyptic or dystopian genres either – but this was a really good book. It’s not just a zombie slasher novel, though there’s some of that, too; Maberry looks into the emotions and mind sets of people living years in survival mode and the morality of killing zombies who once were people, too.

Look for my full review in the coming days, but I’d definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves a good zombie book or movie. I’d also recommend it to fans of The Hunger Games – those who dug into the story of a world-gone-wrong and a teenager’s fight to make it a better place.

I also finished Polterguys (Volume 1), a graphic novel by Laurianne Uy. Again, look for the full review in the next few days. But in the meantime, this graphic novel was a quick and cute read. It follows awkward and nerdy Bree, a new college student, who finds herself living alone in an old house. However, she’s not as alone as she thinks – she actually has 5 ghostly roommates. This story has the feel of Ouran, though it began without the same depth, with added paranormal elements.

What I’m reading now:
I just picked up The Lost Code (The Atlanteans #1), by Kevin Emerson. What I’ve discovered so far: global warming, and perhaps other ecological and man-made issues, have created some major problems for earth. The ice caps have melted, so earth has lost a lot of it’s coastal areas, and it’s so hot that only a few places are habitable. A lot of the remaining people live in bio-domes, though it seems that those are failing, too. And it turns out that this isn’t the first time tech-savvy humans have wreaked havoc on the earth; the Atlanteans did, too. And it seems that our hero, Owen Parker, may be connected to that ancient race, and that connection may be needed to save earth.

I’m only a few pages into this book, but I think (and I’m hoping) that it may have more of a Percy Jackson/adventure story feel, even though it has that post-apocalyptic flavor.

What I’ll read next:
Oh goodness, I have no idea. Some of the contenders include Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood, Obsidian by Jennifer Armentrout, or – depending on how quickly it gets cataloged – Soulbound by Heather Brewer (that’s the one I really want to get my hands on!).

So, what are YOU reading?

Rachel’s been filling out some of the series we don’t have as many volumes of this month, or completing others! For your reading pleasure this August, we offer:

Nightschool: the Weirn Books volume 3, by Svetlana Chmkova.

Karakuridoji Ultimo volume 4, by Hiroyuki Takei (based on the idea by Stan Lee).

Arisa volume 2, by Natsumi Ando.

Ghost Hunt volume 2, by Shiho Inada and Fuyumi Ono.

And finally (a pun!), Death Note volume 13, a.k.a. the “How to Read” book or the guide to the series, complete with profiles, mangaka interviews, 4koma previously not published in English, and the original pilot chapter Ohba and Obata used to shop the series.

Enjoy!

On Savvy Book Reviews, I’ll be showcasing books that we’ll be adding soon to the library!

This week’s pre-publication “can’t-wait-to-read” selection is:

Alice in Zombieland (White Rabbit Chronicles #1)
By: Gena Showalter
Publication Date: September 25, 2012

Description from Goodreads:
Had anyone told Alice Bell that her entire life would change course between one heartbeat and the next, she would have laughed. From blissful to tragic, innocent to ruined? Please. But that’s all it took. One heartbeat. A blink, a breath, a second, and everything she knew and loved was gone.

Her father was right. The monsters are real….

To avenge her family, Ali must learn to fight the undead. To survive, she must learn to trust the baddest of the bad boys, Cole Holland. But Cole has secrets of his own, and if Ali isn’t careful, those secrets might just prove to be more dangerous than the zombies….

I wish I could go back and do a thousand things differently.
I’d tell my sister no.
I’d never beg my mother to talk to my dad.
I’d zip my lips and swallow those hateful words.
Or, barring all of that, I’d hug my sister, my mom and my dad one last time.
I’d tell them I love them.
I wish… Yeah, I wish.

From Me:
I love all things Alice! I’m intrigued by any retelling of the classic, and I generally prefer them to the original. This is one zombie book that I’m looking forward to reading!

What you’ll need:
Composition Notebooks (I found them for $0.92/each at Target)
Mod Podge (if you don’t have mod podge, you can use a mixture of 50% “school” glue and 50% water)
Large paint brush or sponge brush
Old magazines, recycled books, construction paper
Extras like glitter, puff paint, sequins, feathers, etc.

Materials

To create your Dream Journal, first start digging through your magazines, book pages, etc for images for your cover. You can tear these out and have rough edges, cut clean edges with scissors, or if you have craft scissors, cut them out with a patterned edge.

Finding the best materials

Working hard, getting creative

When you are ready to apply your images, first brush the mod podge directly onto your notebook. While the mod podge is still wet, place your image – make sure to adjust it quickly because the mod podge dries fast. Once you have the image where you want it, cover the image with a coat of mod podge.

Using brush and mod podge

Repeat until you’re satisfied with your journal!

Helpful Hints:
*When creating a collage, like I did in the first photo, it’s best to have your images cover the whole space – use some larger pieces as a base and then cover them with smaller images. This will make the page more visually interesting.

*You can add texture to your journal using the mod podge and paint brush; add extra mod pod to your brush or make swirls with your brush strokes.

*To make your journal “sparkle,” add glitter as you’re brushing on the mod podge or add flat sequins (using the same method as you would your magazine images or paper cut-outs, though you may need additional mod podge to get it to stick).

Adding glitter liberally

This project doesn’t have to be used strictly for Dream Journals; we’ll be doing this craft again at our first Scribbles: Creative Writing and Creative Arts club meeting. Those who are interested in writing will make Writing Journals and those who are interested in art will make Art Journals.

Check out these other examples!

“NEET” is a Japanese acronym for “Not in Education, Employment, or Training” (yep, it’s Japanese, even though it’s in English), and is basically a way of saying someone is a jobless bum. It is not a kind term. It’s also not particularly embraced by those who fall under the category, the way ‘otaku’ can be–however, there are exceptions, and Eden of the East is one of them.

Eden of the East is a mystery/thriller with a dash of romance and several handfuls of comedy thrown in, set in a slightly futuristic (everything happens in 2011, though it was created in 2009) Tokyo. Saki Morimi visited Washington D.C. with a group of friends to celebrate graduating college. When she tried to throw a stone into the White House fountain to make a wish, she got noticed by the Secret Service–but they promptly forgot about her five seconds later when a stark naked Japanese guy started waving around a gun. Saki later lends him her coat, then has to chase him down to retrieve her passport in the pocket, and comes to find that the guy had erased his memory and consequently has no idea why he was on the street, or naked, or had a gun. All he knows is his name, Akira Takizawa–picked off of one of the many passports he discovered in his apartment–and that he has an insanely high-tech phone that can contact a woman named Juiz. The phone is also tied to a bank account with over 8 billion yen on it (remember, it’s ¥100 to $1, so Akira has the equivalent of $800 billion+ on there), and Juiz calls herself his concierge and is capable of arranging literally anything Akira wants. “Within reason” not necessary.

Akira takes this in pretty impressive stride.

The explanation for all this is that Akira is a Seleção, one of 12 people selected by “Mr. Outside” to play a game: they were all given one of these phones, each with a total of 10 billion yen on it (and therefore all the power that wealth can buy), and told to spend it all in the quest of becoming the ‘savior of Japan.’ Because Akira erased his memory, he has to learn not only the details of the game from other Seleçãos that he meets, he also has to determine what it was he did before–because going through his walk to try and recover his memories, it looks like he disappeared 20,000 NEETs. Not the greatest thing to ever learn about yourself!

But on the other hand, he wasn’t the Seleção who ordered a missile strike on Japan three times in a row, so at least he’s got that going for him.

The basic plot follows Akira as he struggles to unravel everything behind the game and his past role in it, aided by Saki and her friends, and then tries to prevent the third missile strike against the country using some very impressive crowd-sourcing. The plot never quite fills you in on all the details–fitting, considering most of what we’re seeing is from Akira’s POV, and he never does regain his memories; he just works with what he’s told or what the data of his past actions imply. But it does make things a little more complicated to understand.

Eden of the East ran for 11 episodes in 2009, and was licensed for English by Funimation. There are also two movie sequels, The King of Eden and Paradise Lost, which came out in 2009 and 2010 respectively and were both also licensed by Funmation. The animation of the series is gorgeous, which is no surprise, because it was produced by Production I.G.–those brilliant folks behind other equally stunning series like the Ghost in the Shell series, The Sky Crawlers, CLAMP’s xxxHolic and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, and Ghost Hound.

(You mean I haven’t talked about Ghost in the Shell yet? I’ll have to rectify this!)