A Dance with Dragons, Interrupted

This picture represents how I feel right now about the newest 

Song of Ice and Fire book: burnt, terrified, 

and kind of excited that there’s a dragon on my shoulder. 

by Rachael Nisenkier

Rachael, you say, after post after post in breathless anticipation of A Dance With Dragons, how is it possible that you’ve yet to say anything about the latest in George R. R. Martin's saga?

Well, hypothetical internet reader, I am ashamed to report that my radio silence comes from a rather pathetic place: I haven’t finished it yet. I was the girl who prided herself on finishing Harry Potter first in a house full of speed readers. And yet now here I sit, almost two weeks out from the release of A Dance With Dragons, and I’m on page 370?

City of the Ick Factor

by Rachael Nisenkier

One of the unfortunate side effects to being addicted to young adult literature, particularly of the Sci Fi-Fantasy variety is you occasionally get sucked into a story that the whole time makes you feel like a fool. Lots of YA Lit is great, well-written stuff. But a lot of it (like any genre) is boring, or derivative, or weird. Or all of the above. Facing 16 hours in the car, I chose the audio book City of Bones by Cassandra Clare. This is one of those YA books with a really cool cover that normally shares a table with The Hunger Games and Twilight, so you can assume it’s pretty popular. Plus, it seemed like a pretty cool premise: otherwise ordinary-seeming Clary discovers a vast world of shadow hunters (basically, people with the same job as Sam and Dean on Supernatural), demons, underworlders, and deception and realizes, to her surprise, that she is an intricate part of this world. Okay, I’m with you. Add to that a nerdish best friend named Simon and a tantalizing bad boy demon hunter named Jace, and I was pretty much sold. And the issue with the book is not the plot (with one VERY large exception, which I’ll get to in the SPOILERS section).

Quick Hits: Memoir Edition

by Rachael Nisenkier

I have a passion for both memoirs and religious stories, so it seemed like Mennonite in a Little Black Dress was written for me. Yet the overall narrative left me cold.

The author, Rhoda Janzen, has had an interesting and occasionally tragic life. And she chronicles it all with a humor and good cheer that really helps to pull the reader in. But the book loses steam as she goes off on tangents and random anecdotes while living back in her parents' Mennonite community.

Janzen is at her best when chronicling the absurd or the melodramatic moments in her life, yet without a clear through-line in her narrative, the book left me feeling unfulfilled.

Top 10 Game of Thrones Characters

by Rachael Nisenkier

This little Game of Thrones thing sure is exploding, isn't it? I did a piece a little while ago on Event Books, and next Tuesday's (ONE WEEK!) release of the fifth book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, A Dance With Dragons, has me in a tizzy unseen since at least the last Hunger Games book. In anticipation, and since, as previously stated, I feel underqualified to judge the series as a whole, I thought I'd just share my love with a list of my top 10 favorite characters. Minor spoilers ahead. Feel free to disagree wtih me in the comments!

Books, Music and Love Stories...sigh

We've been trying to find the most fitting way of introducing My Bookshelf readers to our newest site, My Music. Lo and behold, the perfect answer fell into our laps. Here, in a joint-feature with My Music, is the best song ever written! (okay, slight exaggeration, but it's fantastic and wonderfully literarily dorky).

Share My Obsession!**

Name: Rachael

Currently Reading: A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin (book 4 in the Song of Ice and Fire series)

Currently Thinking: Holy crap!

I feel under-qualified to talk about A Feast for Crows, or any of the books in the Song of Ice and Fire series (better known by its television moniker, Game of Thrones). These books, already popular before HBO put them on television, have a rabid fanbase that rivals the obsessiveness of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Therefore, my newbie thoughts may have been interesting to a few people, and mockable to experts who would have found my absolute conviction that Kal Drogo would eventually face off against Robert Baratheon hilarious, but rarely capable of reaching the journalistic standards to which I mostly aspire.

But I've got to bet that there are a lot of you out there, like me, making their way through these books for the first time and feeling excited and terrified the whole time. At around 1,000 pages EACH, these books have been no quick slide even for a speed reader like myself, and the process can feel a little bit lonely. Therefore, if anyone else wants a judgment free zone to share their theories, excitement, or noticings about the books, please feel free to share here and join in on a semi-newbie conversation surrounding the Song of Ice and Fire series.

**Share My Obsession! is a recurring feature where either author or reader submitted obsessions with book series will be featured. To share your obsession with the readers of MyBookshelf, email kelly@myentertainmentworld.ca with a brief blurb about the book and why you are obsessed with it.

MyBookshelf: Quick Hits

Welcome to a new recurring feature over here at MyBookshelf. Quick Hits is a monthly feature that will allow us at MyBookshelf to share a little bit about some books that we love, whether they be classic favorites or new discoveries. Rather than providing long reviews, these quick hits will give you just a little taste of the books before sending you over to Amazon.com to check out the books more in depth.

Read on for our first edition of Quick Hits