Drinkalong Announcement!

Thanks to everyone who voted for when to hold the Goblet of Fire drinkalong.  The majority of you chose THIS FRIDAY, May 10th.  There were also a surprising number of you that wrote in, asking that we just do these weekly til we’re done.

I’d originally thought no one would want to do these every week, but it looks like I was wrong.

PLUS, if we do it weekly we can wrap everything up the first week in June, which will leave us free to watch Blues Brothers for my birthday weekend instead of DH2 (best news ever).

SO!  The new schedule is:

Goblet of Fire May 10

Order of the Phoenix May 17

Half-Blood Prince May 24

Deathly Hallows pt 1 May 31

Deathly Hallows pt 2 June 7

(links lead to countdown timers for each)

Tweetchat appears to be down for good, which gives me a sad.  Does anyone else know of another twitter app that automatically enters the hashtag?  Last week I had to follow the conversation on TweetDeck and paste the tag in (which was doable, but only just – especially at the end).

See you all this Friday at 10:15 EDT!

“She Remembers the Screaming Trees…”

I need to start out with a caveat. The Liars’ Gospel  is not for everyone. I don’t recommend it if:

A) You can’t sit through the movie adaptation of a book without saying “Wait, that never happened. And they left out…”

B) You are a new Christian with a limited knowledge of the New Testament.

I received The Liars’ Gospel for free as an auto-approve from Net Galley. I have not been paid for this review, nor have I received in kind goods or services. Which is too bad because my back itches, and I really wish they had at least offered to scratch it. Or sent me some lotion. But I’m not in this for personal gain, so I press forward.

Let me give you some background about me. I’m a believer.  For those who haven’t clicked out of this window and run screaming down the road, I’ll clarify. I’m for this one:

Not this one:

Believer, not Beleiber. With me? Good. It will become important later.

The Liars’ Gospel is the fictional account of Jesus told from the perspectives of four people who encountered him. Allow me to be very clear here. This is not a Christian book. It is the story of Jesus, not the story of Christ. No one in this book, including the author, believes in the divinity of the man, Jesus of Nazareth. Someone new to the Christian faith could easily be knocked off track. Alderman does her research so thoroughly that it is easy to forget this is a work of fiction. She knows the New Testament very well, but she plays with it. She relays stories straight from scripture, but then she takes a bit of artistic license;  maybe she ends the story differently, or skips over what happened next completely. It’s scripturally based, but this book should never, ever be confused with scripture. The author clearly does not believe in the divinity of Jesus and does what she can to lead the reader to question it, as well.

And yet, The Liars’ Gospel is the best work of fiction I have read in 2013. I started reading it, and I could not put it down. The prose is haunting and cuts straight to the heart without sentimentality.  It is ironic that the two books that have most captured the cruelty and horror of Christ’s crucifixion are both secular works. The other one is Lamb by Christopher Moore. I won’t get off-topic here, but I may review it later.

Names of characters are written in their original Hebrew gives the book a ring of authenticity. Alderman has done her research on life in Jerusalem under Roman rule. The book is brutal, at times graphic, but never without reason. There’s nothing gratuitous in the descriptions of the capricious violence of soldiers and rebels alike. That’s how it was. The Romans invented the gladiator games, after all. They weren’t there to play a game of hopscotch with the Jews. Life was ugly. It was bloody. This story captures the terror and the rage, the heartache and loss. The author pulls no punches. And I am glad of it.

My one frustration as I read was that I kept looking for the author’s point, her real one, waited for her to tie it all together. I wondered if she would. The four sections seemed to stand alone with very little connection to one another except that they each related to the death of Jesus. I waited. And waited. I was preparing to put this book aside with a “Well, that’s a nice little collection of short stories,” and a shrug. Until the last page, a gut punch  that hit deep. Yeah, there’s a connection. I hated it. I am haunted by it. Storytelling doesn’t get much better than this. For me, that’s all it is; a story. But a powerful one. It made me think.

I don’t even need a rubric to know that this book is a solid 5/5 stars. Because I can’t stop talking about it. Because I can’t stop thinking about it.

Six Books I Will Never Read

You all know by now that Heather and I are reading ALL THE SK this year, and I’m in the process of finishing up Danse Macabre.  I posted a status update on it earlier, and a friend of mine that had just finished reading Laurell K Hamilton’s Danse Macabre asked me what I thought of it so far.

I answered without thinking, but then realized…HEY!  This isn’t the book she thinks it is!  So I told her which book I was ACTUALLY reading and then texted Heather saying “I’ll read almost anything, but I won’t read that.”  Which got me pondering…what ARE the books I know I’ll never ever read?  There’s a lot of pretty popular stuff on here, so at the risk of alienating – um, everyone – here are the first things that popped into my head.

1. The Lost Symbol – Dan Brown
   

   For some reason, this cover looks diiiiiiirty to me.

   I know, I know – it’s totes popular to hate on Dan Brown now.  I only read his first…oh, FFS, FOUR(?!) books because my dad made me.  We’d gone over to visit him when we only had one child still and this was before all of the world was super excited about The Da Vinci Code, he handed me a stack of books as I was walking in the door and said “You HAVE TO read these.  I need someone to talk about them with.”  Being the most amazing daughter that I am, I DID read them and then pretended like I hadn’t.  Or I pretended I thought they were better than they were.  Whatever I did, I didn’t want my dad to know that I thought he had the worst taste in the world, so I tried to let him down easily…but I kind of failed because he now knows better than to even bring up this man’s name in my presence.  Score one for sj.  Except, really – I lost.  Because I read those stupid books and that’s time I will NEVER HAVE BACK.  Shame on you, Dan Brown, for making people think you have talent when all you REALLY have is a world class PR machine.

2. The Night Circus – Erin Morgenstern
   

   This cover IS super pretty, I’ll give you that.

   Yeah, yeah, yeah – EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU has read and loved this or has plans to read this, but…I already know it’s not for me.  I don’t like circuses.  I don’t like romances.  I don’t like overly florid prose.  This has all of those.  I’ve read excerpts that brought on allergy attacks because they were so flowery.  No.  Thank.  You.

3. The Notebook – Nicholas Sparks
   

   This cover is just as boring as I imagine the book to be.

   A few years ago I had a job that really sucked.  My boss sucked and the job itself was pretty much the worst, but it was at a really rough time for us (I’d been let go from my previous GOOD job and pretty much had to take whatever so that we could afford rent, groceries, etc) so I was pretty much just lucky to have a job at all.  When I was hired, my boss was excited to learn that I loved to read.  I was excited to learn that SHE loved to read.  Until she started going on and on about the crap she read that I had ZERO interest in.  Nicholas Sparks was one of her favourite authors and she sent me home with…one of his books, I don’t even remember which.  Much like with my dad in the Dan Brown story above, I read it so that I could tell her I had, and politely declined her further offers of books.  I don’t give a shit that this movie spawned America’s love affair with Ryan Gosling, I really don’t.  I won’t ever read it, nor will I ever watch the movie.  ROMANCE, BLECH.

4. Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn
   

   If I read the book, would this make sense?

   I don’t caaaaaaare that everyone read and loved this book last year, I really don’t.  I read the synopsis, I read ALL THE REVIEWS (no, seriously – I read so many reviews of this book last year I kind of want to vomit just thinking about it), I even read the first few pages…nope, not for me.  At all.  I’m glad you all found something you could bond over last year, but this is a club I won’t be joining.  Sorry.  Maybe next time (except I know there won’t be a next time).

5. My Sister’s Keeper – Jodi Picoult
   

   This one also makes me uncomfortable.

   Gahhhh, Jodi Picoult is another author that the aforementioned terrible boss was in love with.  I read one of her books and was pissed at the blatant attempt to manipulate my emotions.  Horrible Situations + Clichés ≠ Good Storytelling.  This is another author that I know many of you enjoy and I’m really sorry if this hurts your feelings, but ZOMG I DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW THIS IS SO EFFING POPULAR.  Like, at all.  Ugh.

6. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
   

   I actually kind of love this. I approve.

   I’ll admit it.  Having this book on here kind of makes me feel like an asshole.  Because it’s not so much anything that I have against the book or the author, it’s the personal associations I have with the book itself that make me sure I’ll never ever read it.  Have you ever had a friend that was just the bestest friend ever?  And then had that relationship fall apart in such a way that you never wanted anything to do with anything that even REMINDED you of that person ever again?  That’s what this book is for me.  This book is a painful reminder of a failed friendship, and for that reason I know I won’t ever pick it up.

So, there you have it.  Six books I’m 100% certain I will never in this life pick up.  What are the books you know you’ll never read?  What are the things you’re always saying “Oh, I’ll get around to that someday,” but that you actually know you never will?

Am I alone, here?  You’re not going to convince me to pick any of these up, but if you’d like to try you can go right ahead in the comments.

MERLIN’S PANTS, YOU GUYS!

WE WERE TRENDING!!!!

Siriusly, this is way more exciting than it should have been, I think.

If you’re interested in checking out the storify action, you can click here, but the biggest question…

[POLL COMPLETED]

So, um…let me know.  I’m cool with whatever.

Harry Potter Drinkalong the Third

Yay, it’s time for the Prisoner of Azkaban drinkalong!  I only just remembered to storify the last drinkalong, and you can find that here.

Here’s the stuff you need for this week:

• #DrunkHP tweetchat room
• Countdown Timer
• Rules:

Click to embiggen!

Guys.  Guys.  DID YOU KNOW that Alfonso Cuarón told David Thewlis to play Lupin like a “gay junkie”????  Now I’m totally going to be on the lookout for that ish while we watch.

As always, since you’re playing at home by yourself, no one is holding a wand to your head with an Unforgivable on their lips to make you drink for each rule.  Pick which rules work for you and even add your own.

If this is your FIRST drinkalong [waves] – just click on that countdown timer, hit play on the movie when it gets to zero and meet us at the #DrunkHP hashtag.

Can’t wait to see you all there!