Booking Through Thursday #2

Well, I could have saved my review of The Dream Thieves for today and posted a Waiting on Wednesday yesterday, but I was ready to post my review.  So, here we go for my second time of Booking Through Thursday:

Connected to last week’s—it’s one of the ways writing has changed. Books from a century or two ago spent huge swaths of text describing locations and character traits, but modern writing does all of this in shorthand. You might know a character is short with blond hair and blue eyes, but the author leaves the rest for you to figure out on your own. The writer might tell you the story takes place at a beachside town, but leaves the details to your imagination. Why do you suppose this is? Is it that we have shorter attention spans these days? That, bombarded with video and photos as we are, we don’t NEED every detail of an unknown scene described, because we have a stock of images already in our heads?

Now, since I didn't participate last week, I'm not sure how to connect it, but I will answer this question. And I'd actually have to say I disagree with this a bit.  And the reason I disagree comes from the book that I just finished, The Dream Thieves.  I feel as if that author, Maggie Stiefvater really does describe in great detail the people, the settings, etc.  So while I think maybe some authors don't spend as much time on that, I think maybe it has more to do with the specific author's writing style and technique.

How about you?  What do you think of today's books?  Do you feel that more of the details are left out because of the reasons listed above?  Or do you feel there are other reasons for it?  Or do you, like me, think it all depends on the author, and maybe even the type of book?

The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle #2) by Maggie Stiefvater

Wow, just almost don't know how to start this review.  Once again I really loved a book by this author.  It was the one book that I really wish I'd had the money to go to BEA last summer just to get.  But I didn't.  And so I spent all summer entering every contest I could to try to win one.  But no such luck.  Then, finally, I found it available on Netgalley, thanks to the wonderful Scholastic!!  But shortly after that, I found it on YA Book Exchange, the ARC, so I had to come up with a trade for it, so I could have the matching books.  My saddest thought at this moment?  How long do I now have to wait for book 3, and I've finished this book the day after it came out?  Now, at first, I had a bit of trouble remembering every detail from the first book.  You see, it had been awhile since I'd read it, and Ms. Stiefvater's stories are so incredibly detailed, in a good way, that I took a bit to get into it.  I wish I'd read the author's update HERE, before I'd started.  But I didn't, and eventually I got it figured out, and was once again in the world and hooked!  If you want to read my review of the first book, go HERE.  I am really going to try to not do any spoilers, and really, it is kind of hard to do because after just one reading, there is such a complex story, that I can't really give much away.  But if you haven't read the first one, you may not want to read further.  Just know that this book was really good, and Stiefvater once again, does not disappoint.
What confused me to start with, was that we started off with Ronan.  Now, I don't remember Ronan having as huge of a part in the first book, I mean that we got to know his background or spent as much time just with him, and so at first I was thinking of him as Gansey, which was totally wrong.  I soon figured out my totally stupid mistake though.  Although at first I was thinking Gansey was Adam.  So you can see I had my character names all mixed up in my head.  I did definitely remember that Noah was the ghost though.  And he is still such a sweet guy/ghost, that you still will love him, at least I did.  And then there is Blue, as really the only female character, I wasn't at all confused about who she was.  But honestly, I really loved getting to know more about Ronan, and wow did that really play into the story!  In such a neat way.  Remember Ronan's bird from the first book?  The one he "dreamed" into being.  Well, turns out that really will play into how the story progresses.  And I won't say how.  But again, really, it is just wow.  There are two villains you might say for this story.  One is Mr. Gray.  The other is Kavinski, a guy from school.  And you figure that Kavinski is just a normal spoiled brat from Aglionby.  And that while Mr. Gray is evil, but seems to show some feeling for Blue's mom, Maura, you just know in the end he'll probably end up being really evil, no matter what.  I mean, just his name, and how he is described.  You know that there is no way he could really change, like you will hope, I promise you will!  I still had about 80 pages to go when I went to see Maggie Stiefvater speak last night, and so something she said about how she felt about certain types of characters, again I won't tell you the specifics, as I don't want to give anything away, but it gave me hope that what I really wished would happen, would happen.  And it did.  I was pretty happy with how all the storylines ended up for this story.  The most disappointing is part is just how far we are left hanging at the end of this book.  I want to tweet, and email, and Facebook the author, and say she has to give me some answer!  I need to know if that person is really who is gone, or what happened.
So good, I'm so in love with this series, and the characters, and I feel I may actually go back and re-read the first two books right before the third one comes out, hopefully sometime in 2014?  And I haven't really done that, due to lack of time, since the Harry Potter books, the Twilight books, and the Hunger Games books.  Of course, if I'm lucky, Maggie will just do another awesome re-cap for us before book 3 comes out.
My main point to this?  If you haven't read this series yet, you need to.  I love, love, LOVED it!  Have I said that enough yet?
Since I shared my picture with the author yesterday, today I'll share the autograph from her!

3rd Time is the Charm

So I still have 100 pages left to read of my ARC of The Dream Thieves, so I'm not going to be ready to write the review till tomorrow.  Now normally I can get through 100 pages really quickly, but even the fact that Maggie Stiefvater's writing hooks me and doesn't want to let me go when I pick the book up, her books take me longer to read.  Why?  Because they are so detailed and so much to read, so much to catch, that they are not books that I can skim over and skip parts.  I want, need, however you want to describe it, have to read every little detail, every word.  And so, like I said before, it'll be tomorrow before I'm done.  So, I guess to tie my blog over with a post till then, I'll just have to talk about going to see Ms. Stiefvater speak tonight about this very book!
It was so neat to see her again!  So thanks to Rainy Day Books for hosting her visit and kickoff to the tour for her new book.  While we heard some of the same stories, (the wolf trainer), we also got to hear many new ones.  And as usual, she is such a great speaker, so funny!  Someone I wish I could hang out with in real life.  One main thing she started off talking about is how people always want to know which of her characters are most like her, or are her.  So then she went through all the main characters in The Raven Boys.  Afterwards she did a fun reading of one part of the new book, and even had guest readers!  One was Tessa Gratton, another author I really enjoy, in fact, I got to be the host for her during the Authors are Rock Stars Tour.  Along with Ms. Gratton were her parents, her dad was also in the reading, playing Mr. Gray, which was quite funny, until the parts where it kind of became awkward, as Maggie was reading the part of Maura, Blue's mom in the story, who may be interested in Mr. Gray.  Here is a picture of that scene:

After the reading, there was time for questions.  I waited till it seemed most others had asked their questions, and also after a mention of a deleted scene from a story.  And then I asked if the character who had an afghan, and was supposed to have my last name, that was in the first draft of The Raven Boys, might make an appearance in the 3rd book.  Happily at that point she remembered me, and explained to the rest of the audience what I was talking about.  Yay!  Then, after about half the people lined up for autographs, the other half got to go outside and start spray painting the Mitsubishi that she brought, that from her stories, was probably purchased accidentally while she was doing research for The Dream Thieves.  If you haven't seen the video about it yet, check this out:

I forgot to take a picture of the car tonight, and by the time I got to go out and paint something, it was dark outside.  So nothing else to add for that.
But I was in the first group to get autographs, so I'll share my pictures with Maggie and Tessa.  I only wish Brenna Yovanoff had been there as well, like she was last time, I brought two of her books to get signed.  And I also forgot to bring the copy of The Scorpio Races I just bought specifically to get signed.  Oh well, I guess it leaves me something to bring next time I see her!  I also told her about how my picture of her and Brenna and Tessa from BEA 2012 is going to be in a biography book about Maggie that is specifically for school libraries.  And while she and Tessa both told me not to give up on maybe my last name being used some day in one of her books, to keep bugging her about it, they said now I was kind of connected with her in print!  Anyway, below are my pictures, first with Maggie Stiefvater, then below that with Tessa Gratton.

So it was another rock star night for me!  Which means I'm not too upset that I was unable to finish The Dream Thieves today.